Matthew Bunn

OpenAI’s latest release, ChatGPT Agent, marks a significant step forward in AI capabilities—and a high-stakes moment for AI safety.

OpenAI says Agent poses a “high” biosecurity risk. Their safeguards are comprehensive, but will they be enough? 🧵 ⤵️

Why Force Fails to Stop Nuclear Proliferation Only diplomacy can ultimately keep Iran from getting the bomb.

ICYMI: Important article from former MTA fellow David Allison, outlining how using force to stop nuclear programs often backfires, convincing the country attacked that they really need the bomb to deter future attacks. Based on a chapter for "Atomic Backfires," forthcoming from MIT Press.

Important development: President Trump advocates maintaining limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear forces after New START expires, saying it's a "big problem for the world" if there are no agreed nuclear arms restraints.
www.armscontrol.org/pressroom/20...

Mass starvation stalks Gaza as deaths from hunger rise Aid agencies warned for months that Israel’s harsh limits on food aid would bring acute malnutrition and widespread suffering to Gaza’s 2.1 million people.

Shocking, predictable, avoidable. "testimonies from doctors, relief workers and Gazans this week make it clear that a worst-case scenario is finally unfolding: Nearly one in three people are going multiple days without eating" washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

Revealed: Harvard publisher cancels entire journal issue on Palestine shortly before publication As Harvard’s feud with Trump escalated, so did tensions over an ‘education and Palestine’ issue of a prestigious journal. Scholars blame the ‘Palestine exception’ to academic freedom

Harvard tarnishes its reputation -- including its reputation for standing up to President Trump's assaults -- by canceling a journal issue on Palestine and education, over the objections of both the journal editors and the authors. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Amid Fear of Retaliation, N.S.F. Workers Sign Letter of Dissent

NSF staff -- with other science staffers across the government -- are complaining of arbitrary cuts, politicization of science... and now the Trump team is taking NSF's building with no plan for where NSF would go. NSF staff have sent a whistleblower complaint to the Hill.

‘It’s a nightmare.’ U.S. funding cuts threaten academic science jobs at all levels “There is a lot of pressure to essentially leave the country or not pursue research,” one Ph.D. student says

Under recent cuts, NSF expects to support 78% fewer young researchers in the coming year. The United States will have a generation of unemployed scientists while China and others surge ahead. www.science.org/content/arti...

Indeed. We're back to McGeorge Bundy's famous remark that any decision that led to even one bomb on one city would be understood as a catastrophic blunder. Extended deterrence is an interesting example of something that doesn't work at all in theory but has worked in practice for decades.

How to Tell If Someone Is a Criminal (According to the DHS) “Except for the tiny, tiny, minuscule quibble that we have no evidence they’ve done any crimes, these people deserve to be locked up.”

Except for the tiny, tiny, minuscule (I hate to even mention it) quibble that we have no evidence they’ve done any crimes, these are the worst of the worst

In another few years, as Chinese early warning systems improve and China becomes more reliant on silo-based ICBMs, the same is likely to be true of their forces.

Moving the Population in Gaza is a Manifest War Crime We wrote this essay to fulfill our human, conscientious, and civic duty, as Israelis – and as Zionists – who have expertise in areas related to the IDF’s order.

1/ A remarkable essay by two eminent Israeli scholars

"We wrote this essay to give [former IDF chief of staff's] words legal backing... We felt compelled to fulfill our human, conscientious, and civic duty, as Israelis – and as Zionists – who have expertise in areas related to the IDF’s ... order."

In particular: (a) only a modest number of nuclear weapons are required to destroy the United States as a functioning modern society, and (b) in a situation so awful that a U.S. President would seriously consider a counterforce strike, alerted Russian forces would launch before the attack arrived.

Well, it seems reasonable to argue that the less the cost to the United States of intervening, the greater the likelihood that the United States would judge that the benefit of intervening was worth the cost. BUT, damage limitation isn't really doable against substantial forces.

The Nobel Laureate Assembly Declaration for the Prevention of Nuclear War Tremendous progress has been made in reducing global nuclear stockpiles and nuclear risks, but we are now heading in the wrong direction. Poised at the beginning of a new, complex, and dangerous nucle...

An important declaration from Nobel laureates and nuclear experts on steps to reduce the danger of nuclear war, on the 80th anniversary of the nuclear age. thebulletin.org/2025/07/the-...

Reflections on the 80th Anniversary of the Trinity Test

Colleagues at the Belfer Center and I offer some thoughts on the 80th anniversary of the Trinity nuclear tests. www.belfercenter.org/quick-take/r...

A black and white, high-speed photograph of the Trinity explosion at 0.025 seconds, showing what looks like a very large, slightly irregular bubble with a curtain of dust all around its bottom edge against a pitch dark sky. A scale indicating “100 meters” shows that the fireball was already approximately three times that size.

Another black and white photograph of the Trinity explosion a few milliseconds later, showing an almost ghostly mushroom cloud with glowing tendrils rising from the ground above the very bright fireball.

Another black and white photograph of the Trinity explosion with the same 100-meter scale, this time at 60 seconds post-detonation, showing a very large and billowy mushroom cloud rising into the sky.

Another black and white photograph of the Trinity explosion taken some minutes after the previous photograph and showing the ominous looking mushroom cloud at a distance, its top spreading out and merging with regular clouds.

80 years ago this morning—at 5:29 AM (Mountain War Time)—about 35 miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, the nuclear age began with a big bang. Contrary to widespread assumptions, the area surrounding the remote Trinity test site was not uninhabited, and the fallout did not drift away harmlessly.

Was planning to take part in this important assembly, but my flights got messed up by weather and lack of air traffic controllers.

Fair amount of Chinese glee over U.S. self-undermining, coupled with annoyance at U.S. unpredictability. But optimism on both sides about the chance of a near-term Xi-Trump summit. We offered some ideas on nuclear steps that could be taken at a summit.

My trip to China last week included a number of sharp American nuclear experts, and we had a broad range of meetings in Beijing, along with a 1.5-day workshop in Shanghai. Trying to convince the Chinese that a rapid buildup with no info on where it's headed could provoke an arms race.

I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better

Some of my friends don't like it because it doesn't specifically talk about disarmament. That's because of the circumstances in which it was written, including instruction not to say anything about policy the Clinton administration hadn't already said...

Bombing Iran has put one of the most successful treaties ever in doubt - The World from PRX Almost every country on Earth has signed it — the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, widely known as the “NPT.” It became effective on March 5, 1970. At the time, US President Richard...

In an episode of The World, @matthew-bunn.bsky.social provides his thoughts on the bombing of Iran and how those may affect the efficiency and sustainability of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. 
theworld.org/segments/2025/07/09/bombing-iran-has-put-one-of-the-most-successful-treaties-ever-in-doubt

Nevertheless, avoiding a new nuclear arms race would serve the interests of all the nuclear-armed states, and the world; there is still some hope that the nuclear-armed states will see that their interests lie in mutual nuclear restraint and measures to reduce the nuclear dangers the world faces.

Today, we face a more multi-polar nuclear world with thousands of nuclear weapons, intense animosity among nuclear-armed states, a weakened regime of nuclear arms restraint, and evolving technologies making nuclear balances ever more complex to maintain.

30 years ago, I ended up drafting the U.S. government's main statement on the 50th anniversary of the nuclear age -- a speech by President Clinton's science advisor Jack Gibbons, describing nuclear weapons as offering "a peril and a hope." www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/aia09...

The nuclear fire lit for the first time in the Trinity test 80 years ago today kindled both fears of horrifying nuclear destruction and hopes that the nuclear threat would force nations to cooperate for peace. Unfortunately, 80 years later, the nuclear horizon is darkening.

The Disintegration of the USSR and the Fate of the Soviet Nuclear Arsenal: Assessing Ukraine's Relinquishment of Nuclear Weapons Left on Its Territory Mariana Budjeryn, Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. 328 pp. $34.95.Editor's Introduction: Mariana B...

New in the Journal of Cold War Studies (Winter 2025): A forum on @mbudjeryn.bsky.social book "Inheriting the Bomb", featuring insights from Steven Pifer, Polina Sinovets, Robin E. Möser, and a reply from Budjeryn:
direct.mit.edu/jcws/article...

Tomorrow marks the 80th anniversary of the Trinity nuclear test and the dawn of the nuclear age. Discussions on how to manage nuclear risks in the years ahead are well underway at the first-ever meeting of Nobel Laureates and nuclear weapons policy experts.

Sorry to be radio silent so long -- been on a trip to China for discussions of nuclear weapons and broader U.S.-China relations. Will post some thoughts on that later.

Ah, Exactly What the Founders Wanted! “Understandably, after almost 250 years, the legislature is tired of being a coequal branch of government and wants to take a nap.”

happy Fourth of July!