Regarding the merits of the EA community working on nuclear war risk, I think it’s worth pursuing. Yes, the existence of an established nuclear weapons community means there is more supply of work on this topic, but there is also more demand, especially more high-level demand. I see a favorable supply-demand balance, which is a core reason why GCRI has done a lot on this topic. (We also happen to have relevant background and connections.) Of note, the established community has less inclination towards quantitative risk analysis, and also often takes partisan nationalistic or ideological perspectives; people with EA backgrounds can make valuable contributions on both fronts. My big piece of advice for EAs seeking to get involved is to immerse yourself in the nuclear weapons community to understand its concepts, perspectives, etc., and to respect all that it has already accomplished, instead of showing up expecting to immediately teach them things they didn’t know already. This is comparable to the situation with foreign aid projects that don’t bother to see what local communities actually benefit from.
Thanks for this conversation. Here are a few comments.
Regarding the Ukraine crisis and the current NATO-Russia situation, I think Max Fisher at Vox is right to raise the issue as he has, with an excellent mix of insider perspectives. There should be more effort like this, in particular to understand Russia’s viewpoint. For more on this topic I recommend recent work by Rajan Menon [http://nationalinterest.org/feature/newsflash-america-ukraine-cannot-afford-war-russia-13137], [http://nationalinterest.org/feature/avoiding-new-cuban-missile-crisis-ukraine-12947], [http://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Ukraine-Unwinding-Post-Cold-Originals/dp/0262029049] and Martin Hellman’s blog [https://nuclearrisk.wordpress.com]. I do think Fisher somewhat overstates the risk by understating the possibility of a “frozen conflict”—see Daniel Drezner’s discussion of this [http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/01/the-perils-of-putins-grim-trigger]. That said, the Ukraine crisis clearly increases the probability of nuclear war, though I think it also increases the prospects and opportunities for resolving major international tensions by drawing them to attention [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-baum/best-and-worst-case-scena_b_4915315.html]. Never let a good crisis go to waste.
Regarding the merits of the EA community working on nuclear war risk, I think it’s worth pursuing. Yes, the existence of an established nuclear weapons community means there is more supply of work on this topic, but there is also more demand, especially more high-level demand. I see a favorable supply-demand balance, which is a core reason why GCRI has done a lot on this topic. (We also happen to have relevant background and connections.) Of note, the established community has less inclination towards quantitative risk analysis, and also often takes partisan nationalistic or ideological perspectives; people with EA backgrounds can make valuable contributions on both fronts. My big piece of advice for EAs seeking to get involved is to immerse yourself in the nuclear weapons community to understand its concepts, perspectives, etc., and to respect all that it has already accomplished, instead of showing up expecting to immediately teach them things they didn’t know already. This is comparable to the situation with foreign aid projects that don’t bother to see what local communities actually benefit from.