Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 11th 2025

Posted: 12th December 2025

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December 11, 2025

(Cover by Thomas Gaulkin)

Yesterday, December 10th, 2025, marked 80 years since our nonprofit newsroom was founded. To mark this milestone—in true Bulletin fashion—we published a magazine issue that looks to the future. Below are the articles featured in this issue, which is available to all readers for a limited time.

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The recent past and foreseeable future of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: a conversation

Bulletin editor-in-chief John Mecklin interviews former executive director Kennette Benedict. Read more.

Eighty years and 89 seconds: It’s time to fight against midnight

In the 80th year of the nuclear age, with just 89 seconds left on the Doomsday Clock, every nuclear challenge is trending in the wrong direction, writes Bulletinpresident and CEO Alexandra Bell. Read more.

Algorithms of misperception: Managing nuclear risk in an AI world

The new nuclear age differs from previous eras in an important way: The current era is shaped by information abundance. But that abundance comes with a paradox, writes Héloïse Fayet. With more data, there is also an increase in noise, deception, and potential misperception that could have crucial consequences in managing nuclear crises. Read more.

Whence nuclear power in the 21st century?

Whether a nuclear renaissance actually occurs in the coming decade or two depends on three fundamental questions, writes Robert Rosner. Are the new designs safer than their predecessors? Do the new designs lead to changes in dealing with nuclear waste? And do these new designs raise additional (or new) questions regarding nuclear weapons proliferation? Read more.

The debate over nuclear energy must be reframed for the future

Discussion about nuclear energy has long been marked by extreme polarization, write Aditi Verma and Katie Snyder. Proponents and opponents make wildly different claims about the future of nuclear energy and they do not engage with one another, hoping to learn; rather, they try to evangelize. But there could be a different way of discussing the many issues around nuclear power. Read more.

The brightest light at the end of the tunnel

The Bulletin has written about renewable energy sources for nearly as long as it has about the dangers of nuclear weapons. In 1951, just six years after its founding, the magazine published an article about the possibilities of solar power. The first practical photovoltaic cell was developed three years later. If humanity survives the climate crisis, it will likely be due to the solar revolution, writes Bill McKibben. Read more.

Looming climate doomsday demands creativity, ambition, and societal transformation

The climate movement is at a crossroads. Youth climate strikes have dissipated, a climate change denialist is back in the White House, and the public is as apathetic as ever to the threat of climate crisis. A climate activist who has organized for climate justice since 2017, Zanagee Artis, shares his thoughts about the path forward for a movement in need of revitalization. Read more.

Upcoming event

The United States isn’t prepared for another pandemic. Here’s what should happen

Although the COVID pandemic led to a better understanding of coronaviruses and vaccines, a backlash emerged to public health measures that helped elevate hostility toward vaccines, including the mRNA vaccine platform that helped end the COVID emergency. Matt Field interviews epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, who believes that the response to the COVID pandemic hasn’t been properly examined, and that the Trump administration has made the United States less prepared for a future pandemic. Read more.

Use all the tools of the trade: Building a foundation for the next era of biosecurity

The coming era of biosecurity will demand a broader and more adaptive approach as AI, powerful biological engineering techniques, and globalized scientific research drive progress in biotechnology, write Steph Batalis and Vikram Venkatram. Read more.

Stopping the Clock on catastrophic AI risk

AI is already robust enough to introduce new global risks and exacerbate existing threats. Its development is being driven by some of the most powerful companies on Earth, and the technology is becoming increasingly intertwined in high-stakes geopolitics. There has never been a greater need for independent voices on AI’s science, risks, and governance. This is a role that the Bulletin is positioned to play, writes Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh. Read more.

What happens when seeing is no longer believing?

Two fast-accelerating trends in how people consume and produce information—selective exposure to agreeable content and our ability to generate realistic-looking audio, documents, photos, and video about things which never really happened—are coming together in ways that pose clear threats to the deliberation that makes those benefits possible, write Jacob Shapiro and Vestal McIntyre. Read more.

Division begets division in the age of algorithmic classification

The online information landscape, driven in large part by social media, rewards engagement and is curated by classification algorithms. This simple combination is the problem at the heart of society’s fracturing and discord, writes Trenton Ford. To slow societal division and potentially return from the brink, people must first understand how fundamental the problem is. Only then can they devise solutions to help push back against the algorithmic forces trying to tear society apart. Read more.

From the archives

To mark the Bulletin’s 80th anniversary, a selection of archival pieces—some of which were never before published on our website—will be available to all readers through the end of January.

2020’s

• “Will AI make us crazy?” by Dawn Stover (2023)

• “An extended interview with Christopher Nolan, director of Oppenheimer,”by John Mecklin (2023)

• ”’He did not speak the ordinary language’: Memories of Oppie, from a Manhattan Project physicist,” by Dan Drollette Jr (2023)

• “Why is America getting a new $100 billion nuclear weapon?” by Elisabeth Eaves (2021)

• “Is the next pandemic brewing on the Netherlands’ poultry farms,” by Paul Tullis (2022)

• “Gathering storm: The industrial infrastructure catastrophe looming over America’s Gulf Coast,” by Tristan Baurick (2021)

• “The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?” by Nicholas Wade (2021)

• “Counting the dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” by Alex Wellerstein (2020)

2010’s

• “Facing nuclear reality: 35 years after The Day After,” by Dawn Stover (2018)

• “Thanksgiving advice: How to deal with climate change-denying Uncle Pete,” by Richard C.J. Somerville (2018)

• “Putin, the one-man show the West doesn’t understand,” by Fiona Hill (2016)

• “The harrowing story of the Nagasaki bombing mission,” by Ellen Bradbury and Sandra Blakeslee (2015)

• “Chernobyl 25 years later: Many lessons learned,” by Mikhail Gorbachev (2011)

1940’s—2000’s

• “City on Fire,” by Lynn Eden (2004)

• “The H-Bomb: Who really gave away the secret?” by Daniel Hirsch and William G. Matthews (1990)

• “Hospital Number Six: a first-hand report,” by Michael McCally, MD (1986)

• “The Oppenheimer case: A study in the abuse of law,” by Harold P. Green (1977)

• “Polar Ice and the Global Climate Machine,” by Joseph O. Fletcher (1970)

• “The neutron bomb,” by Freeman Dyson (1961)

• “The Hydrogen Bomb,” by Hans Bethe (1950)

• “What the scientists are saying about the H-bomb,” by Albert Einstein and Edward Teller (1950)

• “The Bikini Tests and Public Opinion,” by William L. Laurence (1946)

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