Igor Gielow
SAO PAULO, SP (Folhapress) – Created in 1947 by renowned scientists concerned with the apocalyptic implications of the nuclear era, the Judgment Clock adjusted its pointers to the closest level of the end of human existence on Tuesday (28).
The mechanism, updated annually by 18 scientists from the American NGO Referential Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer and others, is now 89 seconds of midnight that symbolizes the end of life on the planet.
With that, he moves a second of the last moved two years ago. The clock always reflects the events of the year before being adjusted; In the 90 seconds stuck in 2023, he was talking to the beginning of the Ukraine War in 2022.
“The pointer is at its worst level because we have not seen progress in 2024. There is an increased nuclear risk, active conflicts involving nuclear powers, the year was even warmer than 2023 and disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence continues to develop without control,” he said Daniel Holtz at the update event at the Peace Institute in Washington.
He heads the panel of newsletter experts who, after two annual meetings, defines the change in the pointer. Invited to speak at the launch, former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, who heads the world governance group The Elders, pointed to an even harder 2025.
In the sight, of course, Donald Trump, the US president who happened to humble his country’s government by threatening sanctions if Bogota did not accept planes with refugees over the weekend.
“The fact that Trump has left Paris’s agreement is serious. We urge the other world leaders to act, ”he said about the US departure from the treaty trying to curb the increase in carbon emissions that affect the climate. The republican justification for the exit is his search for more economic dynamism and his bet on fossil fuels.
Other aggressive movements of the American, such as the threat of resuming the Panama Canal, do not enter the account either. On the other hand, the good news of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is not yet evaluated.
Initially a thermometer of the risks of a nuclear war -algo remembered to the world with the Nobel Peace Award given in 2024 to an NGO dedicated to the theme -, the clock passed in 2007 to put the effects of the climate crisis in the equation, associated with industrial emissions carbon and other actions of man in nature.
The results are visible, such as floods in Rio Grande do Sul or fires in points with California show. The year 2023 had already been the hottest in the record of the historical series with scientific measurements in 1850. “In 2024, it was even warmer,” said Holz.
During the Cold War, despite the Mad doctrine (mutually secured in the acronym in English, which also forms the word “crazy”) between the United States and the Soviet Union, the closest that the pointer came from the end was in 1953, marking two minutes to midnight.
The most famous crisis of the period, the Soviet missiles in Cuba 1962, took the hands to one of their lowest levels, 12 minutes to midnight, because the bulletin considered that its solution inaugurated an era of greater communication between. nuclear rivals.
The farthest point of the end of the world on the clock was in 1991, the year when Soviet Union imploded without widespread war and the world entered a phase of very relative global peace for almost a decade, with the usual exceptions.
With the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, the adjustment was annual, as early as 2015. From the point of view of pure geopolitics, this year’s marking points to the continuity of the war in Ukraine, invaded by the world’s largest nuclear power in 2022, and for the shock between Israel, which has nuclear warheads, and its regional rivals -irã, which has atomic claims ahead.
The surprising arrival in the Deepseek market, the Chinese Generative AI program, which toppled US technological actions on Monday (27), was also the subject of comments. For the newsletter, the event reinforces the need for global control over such technologies.
“I think the Chinese have shown, assuming that the allegations [sobre as capacidades do DeepSeek] They are valid that this is not a single -side race now that the US is not alone, ”said Herb Lin, a panel member and a professor at Stanford University.
Technology expert, Lin said that “many worry about the AI taking over nuclear weapons, but no country talks about doing so.” “The risk of lack of control and misinformation is much greater,” he said.
Still, aligning crises ranging from fire to the outbreaks of aviary flu, through the list of active wars, the bulletin in its 2025 report returns to nuclear and antimilitaristic origin in its conclusions.
“The US, China and Russia have the collective power of destroying civilization. These three countries have the primary responsibility to bring the world back from the cliff, ”says the text. Russians and Americans add 90% of the world’s warheads, but Chinese have expanded their arsenal fast.
