The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan global security organization focused on reducing nuclear, biological, and emerging technology threats imperiling humanity, recently released a paper urging a re-assessment of the economic consequences of nuclear conflict amid rising nuclear risks and deep global interdependencies.
The paper, Global Nuclear Effects: Economic and Financial Fallout of Nuclear Use, examines existing research on the economic and financial effects of nuclear use from the 1950s to the present and highlights what has changed since scientists last focused on the issue.
The global economic and financial system has undergone drastic changes following an increasing reliance on digital infrastructure and emerging technologies, and an expansion of global trade, supply chains, and financial markets. The integration of global systems is essential to the modern global economy, but it introduces deep systemic vulnerabilities that would exacerbate the cascading environmental, economic, and societal effects of nuclear use.
The paper includes an agenda for bringing attention to nuclear effects and closing gaps in the current understanding of economic and financial consequences of nuclear use
NTI is committed to providing policymakers and business leaders with a more complete understanding of the global consequences of nuclear weapons use, and supporting efforts to answer these high-stakes questions.