Doomsday Clock left unchanged amid 'new abnormal'

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON

A clock meant to serve as a metaphor for how close the world is to Armageddon was left unchanged Thursday amid a "new abnormal" security situation.

"Though unchanged from 2018, this setting should be taken not as a sign of stability but as a stark warning to leaders and citizens around the world," the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said in announcing their decision to leave the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight - the symbol of global disaster.

The group in January 2018 moved the clock ahead 30 seconds to 11:58 as it inched closer to proverbial cataclysm, tying the mark for the closest it has ever been to that point.

It said this year that the two most existential threats to the globe -- climate change and nuclear weapons -- "were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger."

Bulletin President Rachel Bronson said: "There is nothing normal about the complex and frightening reality we are describing today."

"This setting should be taken not as a sign of stability but as a stark warning to leaders and citizens around the world," she said in a statement accompanying the Bulletin's official announcement.

The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by scientists who were part of the team that developed the first nuclear and concerned about the implications of their discovery. It has maintained the Doomsday Clock since and has shifted the time from 17 minutes to midnight to where it stands now, the closest to Armageddon it has reached since 1953 at the height of the Cold War.

"The longer world leaders and citizens thoughtlessly inhabit this abnormal reality, the more likely it is that we will experience the unthinkable," warned former California Governor Jerry Brown, who serves as the Bulletin's executive chair.

In addition to nuclear arms and climate change, the group cited the major threats of relatively unchecked disruptive technologies, including developments in synthetic biology, artificial intelligence cyber sabotage.