christian.r

MIT hiring: Cli­matic effects of limited nu­clear wars and “avert­ing ar­maged­don”

• christian.r 11 Mar 2024 19:00 UTC

  5 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Why are we not us­ing up­per-room ul­tra­vi­o­let ger­mi­ci­dal ir­ra­di­a­tion (UVGI) more?

  FWIW, @Rosie_Bettle and I also found this surprising and intriguing when looking into far-UVC, and ended up recommending that philanthropists focus more on “wavelength-agnostic” interventions (e.g. policy advocacy for GUV generally)

• christian.r 11 Mar 2024 18:54 UTC

  8 points

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  on: Fo­cus on broad (and pas­sive) defense tech­nolo­gies for biosecurity

  Thanks for writing this! I like the post a lot. This heuristic is one of the criteria we use to evaluate bio charities at Founders Pledge (see the “Prioritize Pathogen- and Threat-Agnostic Approaches” section starting on p. 87 of my Founders Pledge bio report).

  One reason that I didn’t see listed as one of your premises is just the general point about hedging against uncertainty: we’re just very uncertain about what a future pandemic might look like and where it will come from, and the threat landscape only becomes more complex with technological advances and intelligent adversaries. One person I talked to for that report said they’re especially worried about “pandemic Maginot lines”:

  

  I also like the deterrence-by-denial argument that you make…

  [broad defenses] might also act as a deterrent because malevolent actors might think: “It doesn’t even make sense to try this bioterrorist attack because the broad & passive defense system is so good that it will stop it anyways”

  … though I think for it to work you have to also add a premise about the relative risk of substitution, right? I.e. if you’re pushing bad actors away from BW, what are you pushing them towards, and how does the risk of that new choice of weapon compare to the risk of BW? I think most likely substitutions (e.g. chem-for-bio substitution, as with Aum Shinrikyo) do seem like they would decrease overall risk.

[Question] Ne­glected Trans­mis­sion-Block­ing In­ter­ven­tions?

• christian.r 10 Jan 2024 11:43 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Ulrik Horn’s comment on: Are Far-UVC In­ter­ven­tions Over­hyped? [Founders Pledge]

  Hi Ulrik, thanks for this comment! Very much agreed on the communications failures around aerosolized transmission. I wonder how much the mechanics of transmission would enter into a policy discussion around GUV (rather than a simplified “These lights can help suppress outbreaks.”)

Are Far-UVC In­ter­ven­tions Over­hyped? [Founders Pledge]

• christian.r 20 Dec 2023 18:19 UTC

  8 points

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  on: chris­tian.r’s Quick takes

  An interesting quote relevant to bio attention hazards from an old CNAS report on Aum Shinrikyo:

  “This unbroken string of failures with botulinum and anthrax eventually convinced the group that making biological weapons was more difficult than Endo [Seiichi Endo, who ran the BW program] was acknowledging. Asahara [Shoko Asahara, the founder/​leader of the group] speculated that American comments on the risk of biological weapons were intended to delude would-be terrorists into pursuing this path.”

  Footnote source in the report: “Interview with Fumihiro Joyu (21 April 2008).”

• christian.r 12 Dec 2023 19:28 UTC

  1 point

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  on: The Offense-Defense Balance Rarely Changes

  Thanks for this post! I’m not sure cyber is a strong example here. Given how little is known publicly about the extent and character of offensive cyber operations, I don’t feel that I’m able to assess the balance of offense and defense very well

• christian.r 19 Nov 2023 23:17 UTC

  6 points

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  on: Where should I give to help pre­vent nu­clear war?

  Longview’s nuclear weapons fund and Founders Pledge’s Global Catastrophic Risks Fund (disclaimer: I manage the GCR Fund). We recently published a long report on nuclear war and philanthropy that may be useful, too. Hope this helps!

• christian.r 15 Nov 2023 15:13 UTC

  22 points

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  on: chris­tian.r’s Quick takes

  Just saw reporting that one of the goals for the Biden-Xi meeting today is “Being able to pick up the phone and talk to one another if there’s a crisis. Being able to make sure our militaries still have contact with one another.”

  I had a Forum post about this earlier this year (with my favorite title) Call Me, Maybe? Hotlines and Global Catastrophic Risks with a section on U.S.-China crisis comms, in case it’s of interest:

  “For example, after the establishment of an initial presidential-level communications link in 1997, Chinese leaders did not respond to repeated U.S. contact attempts during the 2001 Hainan Island incident. In this incident, Chinese fighter jets got too close to a U.S. spy plane conducting routine operations, and the U.S. plane had to make an emergency landing on Hainan Island. The U.S. plane contained highly classified technology, and the crew destroyed as much of it as they could (allegedly in part by pouring coffee on the equipment) before being captured and interrogated. Throughout the incident, the U.S. attempted to reach Chinese leadership via the hotline, but were unsuccessful, leading U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to remark that “it seems to be the case that when very, very difficult issues arise, it is sometimes hard to get the Chinese to answer the phone.”

chris­tian.r’s Quick takes

Global Catas­trophic Biolog­i­cal Risks: A Guide for Philan­thropists [Founders Pledge]

• christian.r 2 Oct 2023 12:40 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Angelina Li’s comment on: AMA: Chris­tian Ruhl (se­nior global catas­trophic risk re­searcher at Founders Pledge)

  There is currently just one track 2/​track 1.5 diplomatic dialogue between the U.S. and China that focuses on strategic nuclear issues. ~$250K/​year is roughly my estimate for what it would cost to start one more

• christian.r 29 Sep 2023 17:25 UTC

  4 points

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  in reply to: Jaime Sevilla’s comment on: AMA: Chris­tian Ruhl (se­nior global catas­trophic risk re­searcher at Founders Pledge)

  China and India. Then generally excited about leveraging U.S. alliance dynamics and building global policy advocacy networks, especially for risks from technologies that seem to be becoming cheaper and more accessible, e.g. in synthetic biology

• christian.r 29 Sep 2023 17:15 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: JoshuaBlake’s comment on: AMA: Chris­tian Ruhl (se­nior global catas­trophic risk re­searcher at Founders Pledge)

  I think in general, it’s a trade-off along the lines of uncertainty and leverage—GCR interventions pull bigger levers on bigger problems, but in high-uncertainty environments with little feedback. I think evaluations in GCR should probably be framed in terms of relative impact, whereas we can more easily evaluate GHD in terms of absolute impact.

  This is not what you asked about, but I generally view GCR interventions as highly relevant to current-generation and near-term health and wellbeing. When we launched the Global Catastrophic Risks Fund last year, we wrote in the prospectus:

  The Fund’s grantmaking will take a balanced approach to existential and catastrophic risks. Those who take a longtermist perspective in principle put special weight on existential risks—those that threaten to extinguish or permanently curtail humanity’s potential—even where interventions appear less tractable. Not everyone shares this view, however, and people who care mostly about current generations of humanity may prioritize highly tractable interventions on global catastrophic risks that are not directly “existential”. In practice, however, the two approaches often converge, both on problems and on solutions. A common-sense approach based on simple cost-benefit analysis points us in this direction even in the near-term.

  I like that the GCR framing is becoming more popular, e.g. with Open Philanthropy renaming their grant portfolio:

  We recently renamed our “Longtermism” grant portfolio to “Global Catastrophic Risks”. We think the new name better reflects our view that AI risk and biorisk aren’t only “longtermist” issues; we think that both could threaten the lives of many people in the near future.

• christian.r 29 Sep 2023 16:58 UTC

  2 points

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  in reply to: Hauke Hillebrandt’s comment on: AMA: Chris­tian Ruhl (se­nior global catas­trophic risk re­searcher at Founders Pledge)

  I think: read a lot, interview a lot of people who are smarter (or more informed, connected, etc.) than I am about the problem, snowball sample from there, and then write a lot.

  I wonder if FP’s research director, @Matt_Lerner, has a better answer for me, or for FP researchers in general

• christian.r 29 Sep 2023 16:26 UTC

  11 points

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  in reply to: Stephen Clare’s comment on: AMA: Chris­tian Ruhl (se­nior global catas­trophic risk re­searcher at Founders Pledge)

  Thanks for the question! In 3 years, this might include:

  • Overall, “right of boom” interventions make up a larger fraction of funding (perhaps ¹⁄₄), even as total funding grows by an order of magnitude

  • There are major public and private efforts to understand escalation management (conventional and nuclear), war limitation, and war termination in the three-party world.

  • Much more research and investment in “civil defense” and resilience interventions across the board, not just nuclear. So that might include food security, bunkers, transmission-blocking interventions, better P4E, better national stockpiles and distribution systems, resilient crisis-communication systems, etc.

  • There are multiple ongoing track 2 and 1.5 talks, and eventually official dialogues between the U.S., Russia, and China to better understand each other’s views on limited war and find common ground on risk reduction measures and arms control beyond formal treaty-based tools

• christian.r 29 Sep 2023 16:17 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: mikbp’s comment on: AMA: Chris­tian Ruhl (se­nior global catas­trophic risk re­searcher at Founders Pledge)

  Not that I know of, but my colleage @jackva may have more to say here

• christian.r 29 Sep 2023 16:13 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: Jaime Sevilla’s comment on: AMA: Chris­tian Ruhl (se­nior global catas­trophic risk re­searcher at Founders Pledge)

  A few that come to mind:

  • Risk-general/​threat-agnostic/​all-hazards risk-mitigation (see e.g. Global Shield and the GCRMA)

  • “Civil defense” interventions and resilience broadly defined

  • Intrawar escalation management

  • Protracted great power war

• christian.r 29 Sep 2023 16:09 UTC

  3 points

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  in reply to: Davidmanheim’s comment on: AMA: Chris­tian Ruhl (se­nior global catas­trophic risk re­searcher at Founders Pledge)

  Definitely difficult. I think my colleagues’ work at Founders Pledge (e.g. How to Evaluate Relative Impact in High-Uncertainty Contexts) and iterating on “impact multipliers” to make ever-more-rigorous comparative judgments is the most promising path forward. I’m not sure that this is a problem unique to GCRs or climate. A more high-leverage risk-tolerant approach to global health and development faces the same issues, right?