The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has reset the Doomsday Clock from 89 to 85 seconds to midnight, signalling that humanity is moving closer to catastrophe. The new setting reflects a world facing escalating nuclear dangers and a full-blown new nuclear arms race, widening wars, rapid advances in artificial intelligence, and the accelerating climate crisis. Together, these threats are compounding global instability and increasing the risk of miscalculation and mass harm.
A central driver of this worsening outlook is the collapse of nuclear restraint. The impending end of the New START Treaty will remove the last remaining, binding limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals, stripping away vital guardrails against escalation at a time of heightened tension and mistrust. The Doomsday Clock has long delivered a consistent message: tweaking nuclear weapons does not make the world safe. As long as these weapons exist, the risk of catastrophic use—by design, accident or miscalculation—remains.
ICAN co-founder, A/Prof Tilman Ruff AO, said:“The Doomsday Clock is telling us what nuclear-armed states refuse to acknowledge: restraint is breaking down, and the danger is growing. They are repudiating international law and cooperation, making threats and using mis- and dis-information campaigns, and ratcheting up nuclear brinkmanship. With New START ending next week, the last limits on US and Russian nuclear arsenals are disappearing. Deployed nuclear weapons can be expected to rise alongside an arms race in space. Their failure of leadership puts everyone at risk. Wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the integration of artificial intelligence into military systems, and the accelerating climate crisis all intensify instability—but nuclear weapons remain the most immediate existential threat.”
“Decades of arms control have failed to deliver disarmament. Now even those hard-won constraints are in tatters.Nuclear-armed states continue to modernise, expand and threaten to use their arsenals while forcing the rest of the world to live with the consequences,” Ruff added. “The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons exists because this approach has failed. It sets a clear international standard that nuclear weapons are illegal for everyone and must be eliminated, and includes the only internationally agreed framework for their elimination.”
The new Doomsday Clock setting reinforces the urgency for Australia to move beyond statements of concern and align its security policy with international law by joining the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Ruff said: “Australia cannot credibly respond to this warning while standing outside the nuclear weapons ban, and providing increasing assistance for the possible use of US nuclear weapons, including by the deployment in Australia this year of B-52 bombers that can now carry nuclear weapons, and in future years, submarines that are likely to again carry nuclear weapons. Joining the treaty is the most meaningful step we can take to help turn the Doomsday Clock back.”
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