Growing nuclear stockpiles, saber-rattling leaders, disappearing treaties, and threats to restart testing. The world has entered a renewed age of nuclear peril. Yet despite the rising danger, this moment is marked by an unsettling sense of complacency across the globe . . .
Nuclear Complacency: A New Report from Carnegie Council and The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation
Nuclear weapons pose the threat of a mass casualty event, every day. What prevents catastrophes is the prudential judgment of leaders, based on a set of principles, including deterrence, nonproliferation, and just war. In recent years, nuclear capabilities have grown, while restraints are weakening, and principles are eroding.
In response, Carnegie Council and The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation assembled a community of researchers, academics, practitioners, journalists, and religious leaders for a one-day convening under Chatham House Rule to examine the issue of nuclear complacency. Insights from the convening are now available in a new report.
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Ethics on Film: Discussion of A House of Dynamite
The new era of nuclear threats has also been noticed by Hollywood, with Kathryn Bigelow and Noah Oppenheim’s A House of Dynamite depicting a scenario in which a nuclear missile is launched at the continental United States. Carnegie Council’s Kathleen Egan, co-author of the Nuclear Complacency report, reviews the film, discussing the many ethical decisions facing American leaders in the minutes leading up to a possible catastrophe.
Carnegie Council’s Alex Woodson explores ethical issues around nuclear weapons and nonproliferation, the military-industrial complex, and the role of political satire in Stanley Kubrick's classic 1964 film.
In this review of Christopher Nolan’s 2023 Oscar-winning biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Woodson discusses the morality of building the first nuclear weapons, empathy for victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and the Cold War arms race.
A Time of Sorrow and Renewal, by J. Robert Oppenheimer
In this emotional address at the tenth anniversary conference of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Berlin—and published in Encounter magazine in February 1961—Oppenheimer discusses his hopes and concerns about the new “scientific age,” with the bombings at the end of World War II still fresh in his mind.
“We may well have learned that if we of the West do not look to our virtue, and that of our institutions and our life and lives,” he said, “we shall be ill equipped to bring liberty to our colleagues now deprived of it, or to make either our culture or our liberty relevant and helpful to the lands newly embarked on unprecedented change.”
Addressing Climate Migration & Considerations for the Future
Rising global temperatures and a shift in climate patterns have rapidly increased the number of climate migrants. How can nations collaborate to ensure the rights of people moving due to climate change?
Re-envisioning Humanitarianism for a Changing World
In the Global Ethics Day 2025 keynote event, an expert panel discussed the present and future of humanitarian aid, in this challenging political environment.
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