Horizon 2045 Framework for Change

FRAMEWORK FOR CHANGE

WHAT

HOW WILL WE DRIVE CHANGE FORWARD?

WHAT ARE WE AIMING TO CREATE?

Horizon 2045 is an initiative to secure the long-term future, starting with bringing an end to the nuclear weapons century. Spearheaded by N Square, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and Rhode Island School of Design’s Center for Complexty, Horizon 2045 is advancing a unique approach to reimagining global security that is informed by systems thinking, strategic foresight, and an awareness of the entanglement of nuclear weapons with other existential threats. What we accomplish and learn by achieving a nuclear prohibition will bring collateral lessons for changing other systems, for reimagining security and threat management, and for creating the kinds of institutions, tools, and infrastructure that a more secure future requires.

Horizon 2045 launched in 2020 in response to both a challenge and an opportunity. All around us is evidence that we humans are confronting a proliferation of existential threats—from pandemics to rising autocracy, from radical economic inequities to the heat waves, foods, migrations, extinctions, and melting ice of climate change—that our current systems, structures, and approaches are not designed for. To say that we are living in a time of rapid fux and growing public concern about the future is putting it lightly. What we are is deep inside the Anthropocene, the geological era that some argue began with the 1945 Trinity Test, the frst detonation of a nuclear bomb—an era characterized by humankind’s newfound capacity to destroy itself and irevocably alter life on the planet.

We believe it is now incumbent upon humanity to think holistically about the dynamics that have led us to this moment and to reengineer our systems in ways that prepare us to address the thicket of interconnected anthropogenic and natural threats that now confront us—not just for the beneft of current generations but for those who come after us, and for those who come after them. It is our responsibility to develop new structures, agreements, and behaviors purpose-built for the world ahead.

We believe that the achievement of a full nuclear weapons prohibition by the middle of this century—a world-changing accomplishment by itself—will pave the way toward these and other critical transformations.

While Horizon 2045’s most obvious goal is to make the world safe from the preventable threat of nuclear catastrophe, the superordinate goal driving our research, our experiments, our team, and our investments is to bring about a future in which we have a new framework for human and planetary security and a more authentically and perpetually secure planet. We aim to shift the Anthropocene from an era marked by enduring threats to an era in which we rise to the challenge of prioritizing and tackling our planet’s most vexing challenges, deeply changing the dynamics of our past and inventing new dynamics designed for a brighter future.

Anyone can observe today that the world is in a period of deep and rapid transformation. Many of the old stories we use to make sense of the world, and the systems that organize our world, are crumbling. We are seeing new urgency and public demand

to solve the existential threats that confront us and move to a more secure future. The mental models that drive our behaviors and shape our perspectives are curving in new directions. Institutions at all scales are changing in form and practice. Indeed, we are living within a kind of status quo void where massive change feels both impossible and just within our reach. With so much change upon us, what once seemed improbable can also begin to feel inevitable including the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Humankind, having created the nuclear threat, must now resolve that threat. Doing so will help us address the thicket of other anthropogenic and natural threats confronting us.

OUR APPROACH

APPROACH

REIMAGINING GLOBAL SECURITY

Overcoming our perilous present will require a more expansive defnition of global security and a new system for achieving and maintaining it. We seek to redefne security as a bigger system in which humanity can fourish free from the risk of existential threats.

LINKING EXISTENTIAL THREATS

Nuclear weapons are part of an intertwined set of threats facing humanity. By exploring intersections between nuclear weapons and other existential threats like climate change and biological pathogens, we can draw new resources, incent innovation, increase the surface area for collaboration and shared learning, and lay the groundwork for a much larger-scale efort.

A SYSTEMS APPROACH

Like all wicked problems, the nuclear problem is a systems problem that is, a complex, multifactorial problem driven by an interplay between policies and procedures, human actions and decisions, infrastructure, incentives, and beliefs and assumptions. Studying the deeply interdependent factors driving a system and holding it in place also reveals potential areas for leverage.

THE HORIZON 2045 APPROACH

LONG-TERM THINKING

Horizon 2045 aims for deep and durable long-term disruption. We are using the tools of strategic foresight to articulate a more compelling, ambitious, and optimistic future beyond nuclear weapons while specifying the types of innovation and engagement it will require with all of that work driven by intelligent interpretation of both qualitative and quantitative data.

BUILDING A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

There are complementary, like-minded eforts underway in other threat spaces, nearly all of them operating independently. We are building a hub for these eforts, drawing people, ideas, and networks together into a diverse multi-threat community of practice focused on shared learning and collaboration.

THE THREE HORIZONS

The three horizons framework, a tool well known in the strategic foresight community, serves as scafolding for this long-term work. The frst horizon represents the challenges in our present, the third horizon our aspirations for the future, and the second horizon a bridge between the two, or a period of purposeful experimentation, investment, and intervention designed to test ways to move a system most efectively. When applied to any complex system, this framework helps illuminate what is worth conserving from the past and present, what to let go of or disrupt, the contours and requirements of the better future we want to compel, and what types of innovation are most promising for creating that change.

HORIZON 1

What are we aiming to disrupt?

HORIZON 2

How will we drive change forward?

HORIZON 3

What are we aiming to create?

Horizon 1 (the present) centers on the nuclear system. The nuclear system comprises a complex network of components and interactions that makes it difcult for anyone to comprehend both the whole and its parts. The goal of our Horizon 1 work is to better understand the full contours of the nuclear system including its characteristics, the interplay between elements, the underlying beliefs and mental models that drive it, and how it is nested within and connected to other systems in order to gain the information necessary to transform it.

HORIZON 1

What are we aiming to disrupt?

The nuclear system is hard to describe, dynamic in nature, and rife with competing interests and interdependencies.

Horizon 2 (the bridge) defnes the opportunity space between the frst and third horizons. It captures the types of specifc interventions big and small, rapid and long term that will help us to take advantage of the frailties of the current system and the opportunities presented by changes to the wider contextual landscape so that we can help move the system toward the future we prefer. Horizon 2 also includes purposeful outreach and connection, drawing decision-makers and wider publics into both the conversation and the work of building new systems for maintaining and ensuring global security.

HORIZON 2

How will we drive change forward?

The nuclear system is not isolated, though it is often viewed as such. Rather, it is situated within a growing landscape of systems and dynamics that are increasingly connected and interrelated.

If Horizon 1 is about better seeing the system, then Horizon 3 (the future) is about seeing beyond the system, building a detailed understanding of what could replace it and how we might get there. Thinking about the wider future frst, and then considering the implications for the nuclear system, reveals a larger canvas, highlighting a broader set of opportunities to bring about real and lasting change and to build a shared vision of a future beyond existential risks.

HORIZON 3

What are we aiming to create?

We envision a future in which our systems are reimagined and reinvented in ways that bolster the security and longevity of our planet and all the life it supports.

HORIZON 1

The nuclear weapons problem is a systems problem that is, a complex, multifactorial problem driven by an interplay between policies and procedures, human actions and decisions, infrastructure, incentives, and beliefs and assumptions. Like most systems problems, it is hard to describe, dynamic in nature, and rife with competing interests and interdependencies. The current global nuclear system comprises multiple dynamics relating to controlling nuclear materials and weapons, nuclear weapon infrastructure and investments, drivers of risks of nuclear weapons use, power and authority structures, structural discrimination, dynamics that help sustain the status quo, and dynamics working to resist it. Some aspects of the system have been developed intentionally; others have emerged over time as consequences of, or reactions to, other elements. When we say “the system” or “the nuclear system,” our defnition includes all of this.

What are we aiming to disrupt?

This whole planet is systems interacting with systems embedded in systems that are conglomerations of systems. Decades of social change work tells us that to move a system, we can’t just be reactive to events of the moment. We have to get underneath what is visible, all the way down to the structures and beliefs at the base layer of a system. We have to challenge the mental models that drive a system, sustain it, and protect the status quo.

If our future is at risk, then what we believe shapes our capacity to address that risk. Mental models are powerful, stubborn, and often unconscious but systems change cannot happen if we do not aim to upend them. The behaviors, motivations, beliefs, and mental models of people orbiting in and around the nuclear system are not external to it they are a core part of it. We believe that going straight into the difcult work of confronting values and beliefs about nuclear weapons will enable the kind of transformation that has eluded us so far.

MOVING A SYSTEM

Systems change means exposing and challenging old mental models—and pushing for new ones.

If we want to improve outcomes, we have to uncover, understand, and infuence change within the system that produces them. Systems thinking is both a mindset and a set of tools that help us to look more deeply at complex issues, exploring the interconnected, messy, and unpredictable interplay between humans and the environments in which we operate.1 Systems thinking helps us make sense of patterns from the past and unpack current dynamics so we can better understand and identify new ways to drive change.

Systems are always in fux as they respond to both internal and external disruptions. Eforts to change a dynamic system reward a learning orientation: We constantly have to listen to what is happening, make sense of it, and adjust accordingly. Just like long-term thinking, systems work relies on acute attention to and keen analysis of social, cultural, political, economic, and technological changes and how they infuence our mental models.

D. H. McCauley, “Failing With Single-Point Solutions: Systems Thinking for National Security,” Small Wars Journal, 29 Sept 2015.

Mental models are our deeply held, deeply internal, and often unconscious ways of understanding how the world, or a particular part of the world, works. They are a mix of ideas, images, and beliefs that ground us; they feel familiar and comfortable. Mental models can both infuence and be infuenced by myths and metaphors (notable in the nuclear feld, which regularly refers to a “priesthood” and to the potential for “Armageddon”). The ways we feel about and make sense of the world are shaped, in part, by society and culture, but mental models can also be passed down through families. They are then reinforced or challenged by our experiences of and in the world.

Our mental models are often not specifc to a given system. However, the context of the system we’re working in and thinking about can “activate” a particular mental model we already hold. By visualizing or mapping a complex system, we can become conscious of, and make more visible to ourselves and others, our underlying mental models, which allows us to challenge and explore them more deeply.

The nuclear weapon system is sprawling and secretive, maintaining itself and resisting change through a complex set of dynamics. We’ve used causal loop diagramming a mapping tool that helps visualize complex systems and how diferent variables within these systems interrelate — to create a representation of the present system. We understand the Horizon 2045 systems map to be the frst and only map of the behaviors and mental models that underpin the nuclear weapons status quo.

VISUALIZING THE NUCLEAR SYSTEM

What underlying patterns and interactions drive the system?

What is the system beyond what we think it is?

The dynamics depicted in the systems map are not the institutions or structures that are in the system, but rather the persistent, hidden, underlying behaviors and dynamics of the system that are driving the status quo. The map shows us who the key stakeholders are in each of the nodes and their role — along with the benefts and challenges involved — in the current system, and grants us a new ability to explore how high-impact projects could help change or shift the system in some way. As one nuclear expert put it: “This is a completely new way of conceiving the nuclear threat. Trying to understand a system at the meta level and what’s driving actors in the system is totally new.”

The Horizon 2045 systems map creates a “topview” of the current state, depicting the dynamics, mental models, and behaviors that are driving the status quo. It also reveals the system’s frailties and leverage points. The map provides various ways to enter into and think about the system depending on interest and orientation. For instance, a scholar of political power dynamics might be drawn to enter the map through one node while nuclear deterrence advocates might enter through another, but each would quickly fnd their way to other countervailing dynamics and interests. Funders might use the map to identify areas of underinvestment, while innovators could use it to pinpoint opportunities to drive novel forms of impact. In this way, the map has wide application but also draws various users into shared conversation about the system and its dynamics.

THE SYSTEMS MAP

HORIZON 2045 NUCLEAR WEAPONS SYSTEMS MAP

Nuclear Weapons Utility

Nuclear Weapons Infrastructure & Investments

Controlling Nuclear Weapons & Materials

Consequences

Decline of the State

Structural Discrimination

We use this simplifed diagram to reference the systems map throughout this document.

The map itself is a work in progress. We continue to rigorously test the map with diverse audiences, using feedback and insight from those sessions to refne and improve both the confguration of the map and the stories and strategies that we see emerging from it.

The Horizon 2045 systems map serves as a tool for identifying levers for change, testing our strategies, and building a broader shared understanding of the system’s complex dynamics.

To date, our work to untangle the complexities of the present-day nuclear system in order to create a clearer picture of how it operates and how it might be infuenced has revealed a set of deeply interdependent factors that are driving the system, serving to hold it in place, and making it vulnerable to disruption. Together, these factors paint a picture of a system ripe for transformation, pinpointing areas where there might be potential for leverage.

THE SYSTEM’S CORE CHARACTERISTICS

On July 16, 1945, at 5:45am, the frst nuclear detonation lit up the skies above the New Mexico desert with a freball brighter than the sun. In the aftermath of what can only be described as a world-changing experiment, a post hoc system emerged. It was not “designed” per se. Rather, a complex set of dynamics, institutions, norms, laws, and beliefs have evolved over decades to manage the risks of nuclear materials and weapons.

It’s tidy to think of the nuclear system as a bounded, technocratic system that can be controlled but it isn’t. We have created a problem that is very difcult to fx, not least because the existence and maintenance of nuclear weapons generate enormous proft and power. This sprawling system is not designed to protect humanity. Instead, the system has curled itself around the purpose of self-protection and is therefore protecting an existential threat. And if the current nuclear system is not protecting us now, it certainly will not be doing it 20 or 30 years into the future when the needs and issues facing humanity will have changed dramatically. The system has not adapted to the changes in the world; it is almost completely disconnected from today’s circumstances. It is also disconnected from and stands in opposition to the future we want.

The system is doing both more and less than it purports to do.

The system runs on unproven beliefs and assumptions

The system is self-isolating

The system is riddled with risk

The system creates and perpetuates deep inequity

The system has mechanisms for resisting change

The system runs on unproven beliefs and assumptions.

CORE BELIEFS

The system is driven by untestable beliefs, including: nuclear weapons are a source of national security, the risks of disarmament are greater than the risks of possession, there could be a winner in a nuclear war, and nuclear deterrence theory “works.” Meanwhile, neither the state nor the system can imagine a future in which they do not exist or are rendered anachronistic.

ROOT MYTHS

Underlying myths prop up the system and feed a willingness to maintain nuclear weapons, including: Western anthropocentrism (humans are the most important entity in the universe), the idea that competing states must win at the expense of others and that cooperation is self-sacrifce, and traditional notions of colonialism.

POLARIZED VISION / PURPOSE

The system has multiple conficting, incompatible, and often mutually exclusive ideologies and understandings of the role of nuclear weapons in providing security, whether risks of nuclear weapons can be managed, and the desirability of a world free of nuclear weapons.

The system is self-isolating.

SILOED

The system is largely closed of from adjacent felds, issues, and movements, ignoring the interconnected nature of systems, the truly global risks and impact of nuclear weapons, and the exponential value of intersectionality and collaboration for problem-solving.

OPAQUE

The system’s lack of transparency and reliance on inaccessible techno-strategic language alienate lay audiences, close of understanding and debate, and keep it removed both from public view and engagement and from necessary scrutiny and accountability.

OSSIFIED

Performative/ritualized statements and interactions dominate the space, squashing inquiry and novel interaction. The bureaucratization of this issue space and its eforts draws it further away from civil society.

NARROW

The system is addicted to its own expertise and largely unreceptive to new approaches and ways of knowing that would widen the usual set of perspectives and engage new audiences.

The system is riddled with risk.

ACCIDENTS AND CLOSE CALLS

Since the 1950s hundreds of nuclear weapon incidents and accidents have occurred, leading to deaths, radioactive contamination, and non-nuclear explosions and fres involving nuclear weapon systems. Many other accidents or close calls have been averted by luck or human intervention, and the likelihood of more happening keeps growing.

WIDENING THREATS

Nuclear weapons are highly vulnerable to cyber-threats, miscalculations, human error, and other dangers. The system in which they sit faces a host of broader, contextual global challenges that it is neither accounting nor preparing for.

ESCALATION BIAS

The system bends toward escalation, requiring states to continually hold military exercises, rehearse pushing the button, and otherwise appear willing to use nuclear weapons for deterrence to be “credible.” There are more mechanisms and habits to support ramping up and increasing risk than ramping down/de-escalating.

RISK BLINDNESS

There is disagreement about the system’s vulnerabilities and how to manage them, as well as avoidance of serious discussion about the risks of nuclear deterrence and the consequences of both the possession and use of nuclear weapons. As a result, the system is not taking sufcient action to understand, address, and avoid these knowable dangers.

The system creates and perpetuates deep inequity.

UNDEMOCRATIC

Only a limited group of individuals have the authority to shape or infuence world-changing decisions about nuclear weapons. This exclusivity stands in sharp contrast to the scale of the impact if weapons are ever used.

IMPERIALIST

Nuclear weapons grant dramatically more global power to nuclear weapon states than non-nuclear weapon states. Frontline communities that have been most impacted by nuclear weapons have had little or no voice or rights when it comes to nuclear decisions and policies.

BLINKERED

The system is dominated by insular national security considerations, rendering it unable or unwilling to factor broader human security into its decision-making. The devastating human and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons — including secondary impacts are not well understood and almost entirely disregarded by governments of nuclear weapon states.

ANTI-PLANET, ANTI-POSTERITY

The problems created by the lifecycle and potential use of nuclear weapons are planetary yet considered narrowly. The well-being of the planet, its diverse environments, and non-human living beings are not considered; neither are the rights and welfare of future generations.

The system has mechanisms for resisting change.

INHERENTLY COMPLEX

The nuclear system is technically, politically, culturally, and economically complex and operates within an even more complex and rapidly evolving global security architecture, making foundational change difcult to achieve.

EMBEDDED

The system is well established, expensive to maintain, supports a vast enterprise that provides thousands of jobs, and delivers signifcant profts to powerful actors. By framing the possession of nuclear weapons as the highest-order expression of national security, nuclear weapon states entrench the nuclear system and ensure its continuity.

LACKING INCENTIVES

Under nuclear deterrence, a state’s incentives to “give up” weapons are extremely weak, while the disincentives remain extremely strong, further perpetuating the system’s inherent inertia.

SELF-PERPETUATING

Nuclear deterrence theory presents a kind of circular logic: The belief that nuclear threats will prevent nuclear war drives states to maintain nuclear deterrence and thus nuclear weapons forever. The nature of these weapons also necessitates arms races/competition between states.

RISK REDUCTION ITSELF

Risk reduction eforts, rather than disrupt the system, largely reinforce the status quo. The system only allows risk reduction measures that de-risk the existing system, versus those that aim to disrupt or transform it.

RISK REDUCTION AND DISARMAMENT

Steps that reduce the risk of nuclear weapons use have become a neutral ground in the system; because risk reduction is critical to making the system safer and to making progress toward disarmament it has widespread support. But risk reduction not tied to the goal of disarmament often just serves to make the system safer to itself, which can inhibit progress toward disarmament. This “dual use” of the term risk reduction creates problems of language and understanding, and its overuse prevents all who aim for disarmament from getting behind one bold goal. Risk reduction is a necessary but insufcient mechanism toward disarmament, but disarmament must be the goal.

Read a story told by Joan Rohlfng, president and COO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and chair of Horizon 2045’s advisory board, about the insularity of the nuclear system and those who hold decision rights within it. The story helps to make clear not just the siloed nature of the system and those who perpetually protect it, but also the enormous scale of the impact that the system and its decision-makers have on the rest of the world.

Scan the QR code to read the full text of fortress deterrence.

“Think of the system as a fortress manned by a small but powerful and well-armed cadre of international monks.”

While we focus here on the characteristics and dynamics of the nuclear system that are inhibiting progress, there are bright spots within the current system — positive dynamics and behaviors that, if amplifed, could help shift the system so that catastrophic risk no longer sits at its core.

provide information about other seismic and acoustic events that could help us better understand oceans, volcanoes, the impacts of climate change, and even the movement of whales. The CTBT and its monitoring tools, knowledge, and networks will be critical to retain and build upon for the future.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) is one of several examples of strong cooperative arrangements that could form the foundation for new governance structures in the future. The CTBT verifably bans nuclear explosions by all state signatories, establishing a norm against nuclear testing and making it very difcult for countries to test without detection. The CTBT is almost universal but can only enter into force after specifc countries with nuclear technology have ratifed it. Its International Monitoring System, comprising 337 facilities using advanced technologies to conduct seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound, and radionuclide monitoring, is already operational. These facilities are collecting huge amounts of data that ensure detection of nuclear testing and also

While still a limited feature of the nuclear system, transparency practices including the provision and exchange of information about nuclear weapon stockpiles, policies, doctrines, forces, and activities, as well as information about fssile materials have been an important part of the nuclear system for decades. Transparency is an essential ingredient for accountability, building trust among parties and demonstrating where progress on disarmament has, and has not, been made. There are many examples of agreements that have been essential to promoting transparency, even between competitor nations (e.g., arms control agreements such as the intrusive inspection procedures allowed by both the US and

Russia under the New START Treaty). The US has over the years provided the most information about its nuclear weapons and fssile material stockpiles. For example, in 2021 the US government released its aggregate number of active and inactive nuclear warheads (no other nuclear state produces a public unclassifed accounting of their nuclear stockpile) and in 2006 released a report on historical highly enriched uranium production and disposition. The UK has also released information on its fssile material production. If we are going to succeed in dismantling global nuclear stockpiles, and do that with confdence, all nuclear possessing states will have to disclose the number of weapons and fssile material stocks, both civilian and military, they possess by making an initial baseline declaration that can then be verifed.

While collaboration and trust can seem difcult to establish, we have demonstrated a capacity for both as well as for cooperative agreements based on verifcation in the past and must build on these precedents in the future,

making them a more prominent feature of the nuclear story. For example, the end of the Cold War shifted the fear of nuclear war to the fear that Russia and the former Soviet states would lose control of their huge nuclear assets tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, an estimated 600 tons of weapons-grade nuclear material, hundreds of thousands of nuclear workers, and a huge nuclear complex. This quickly led to a mutual understanding between Russia and the US of the benefts of collaboration between their scientifc communities, paving the way for the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program to help safeguard and reduce these weapons and materials, as well as US/Russian scientifc “lab-to-lab” exchanges. For the next two decades scientists and engineers at US Department of Energy laboratories and the Russian nuclear weapon institutes joined forces to address nuclear dangers. These kinds of deep collaborations can (and must) happen again.

Horizon 2045 is doing research to advance global understanding of the full efects of nuclear weapons. Shockingly, research on the broad and cascading societal, economic, and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons use is thin to nonexistent; there has been very little study of the immediate, medium, and long-term efects of nuclear use beyond the prompt, short-range physical efects. As a result, government decision-makers are not fully aware of the global-scale implications of their nuclear policies and any potential decision to use nuclear weapons, and global publics do not know the full range of harms that these weapons pose to our societies, our environments, and our future. Our research into the full efects of nuclear use will more fully reveal the risks at the core of the current nuclear system and could help drive demand for a less risky system. We aim to address serious gaps in global knowledge about the dynamic long-term impacts that nuclear explosions could cause including environmental, legal, economic, industrial, agricultural, societal, and public health harms and produce documents and fndings that make the problem of nuclear weapon detonations proximate and newly vivid.

NUCLEAR EFFECTS AT SCALE

HORIZON 2

Articulating the vulnerabilities and leverage points of the present system (Horizon 1), defning and detailing the components of a prohibition future (Horizon 3), and rigorously studying the contextual forces infuencing both (horizon scanning) will reveal numerous opportunities to infuence, alter, and wholly rethink the present-day nuclear system in service of moving the world toward a more cooperative future free from the threat of nuclear weapons. If Horizon 1 is the present and Horizon 3 is the future, then Horizon 2 is the bridge a set of actions, investments, and explorations capable of sparking signifcant change, opening new pathways, and creating still more opportunities yet to be imagined.

Horizon 2 is a real-world experimentation space where we aim to make carefully calculated interventions and investments that have lasting systemic efects. We will launch and support test projects, facilitate collaborative innovation, and accelerate the adoption of new approaches. We will engage in “progressive approximation,” getting closer and closer to the third horizon through disciplined trial and error and dedicated observation and learning. This will be a prolonged period of action, during which we lead projects, support aligned projects led by others, and build partnerships across threat spaces in an efort to create broader infrastructure for a more secure planet.

HORIZON 2

How will we drive change forward?

PLACES TO INTERVENE IN A SYSTEM

While the projects we pursue or support will vary widely, common to all will be the kinds of systems change they are designed to provoke. Systems thinking suggests that, in order to disrupt a system’s visible dynamics, it is valuable to craft interventions that change a system’s:

MENTAL MODELS

The paradigms, deeply held mindsets, and value structures out of which the system’s culture, goals, behaviors, and priorities arise; arguably the highest leverage place to intervene in a system

GOALS

The superordinate goal of the system and/or subordinate objectives of various actors in diferent parts of the system

RULES & NORMS

Laws, regulations, standards, and tacit and explicit expectations

INFORMATION FLOW

How, why, from whom, and to whom information travels

POWER & DECISION-MAKING

Which actors hold formal and/or informal power over critical decisions

INTER DEPENDENCIES

Ways that diferent actors, diferent structures, and diferent behaviors consistently infuence one another in the system

DRIVING BELIEFS

Widely accepted core beliefs and/or contradictory or competing beliefs

Horizon 2045 as a whole is an intervention aimed at reevaluating the mental models and goals of the nuclear system and their ft in the complex security environment of the future. While our Horizon 2 work will ultimately attend to all these levers for change, we are beginning with interventions that target the system’s rules and norms, information fow, and driving beliefs as described in the Horizon 2045 systems map.

RULES & NORMS

Laws, regulations, and standards

While there has been progress on nuclear issues in some aspects of international law, there remain few legal “bright lines” making the manufacture, possession, or use of nuclear weapons illegal. This intervention will explore novel approaches to reshaping international law and norms as a precursor to nuclear weapons prohibition, examining recent legal precedents in international humanitarian and environmental law as well as emergent legislation regarding protections for future generations of humans and for other beings both sentient and non-sentient. This research will inform a feasibility study to determine whether, how, and with whom Horizon 2045 might develop testable approaches to alter the views of international courts on the legality of nuclear weapons.

Intended outcomes of this work include the development of a broader understanding of the international legal landscape (the extent to which legal standing has been/ may be established for both sentient and non-sentient beings, not only today but in the future) that extends beyond conventional thinking about legal remedies for nuclear harms; clear understanding of the feasibility (including both challenges to and enablers of success) of further intervention in this area; a plan of action based on the feasibility study; and a model legal framework that supports a new conception of human and planetary security, along with model legislation (that can be propagated globally) that borrows precedent from other issue areas to demonstrate the connectedness of nuclear weapons to other threats.

RULES & NORMS

Decentralized governance, new methods for creating and exchanging value, and shifting incentives

Web3 is the next generation of the internet, characterized by data and value exchanges that are more decentralized than Web2 platforms like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, or Google. Examples of Web3 technologies include cryptocurrencies; non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are unique digital assets; and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), in which members collectively set the rules and make decisions, using automated algorithms to reduce the need for traditional governance structures.

Blockchain software is the underlying technology that makes these innovations possible, enabling greater transparency and accountability than Web2 platforms. In principle, Web3 makes it possible to design systems that could radically disrupt existing social, political, and economic hierarchies, up to and including our understanding of sovereignty.

inclusive, post-nuclear weapons future. This might include dynamics such as exploring the potential for global crowdsourcing and crowd management of fnances for research, advocacy, and action on humanitarian disarmament; using digital art (in the form of NFTs) to enable communities impacted by nuclear harms to tell their stories in their own ways, retaining the related IP while creating new revenue streams; and, in the longer term, helping to fnance and facilitate the promise of “societal verifcation” — that is, citizens helping to monitor and verify their governments’ compliance with disarmament agreements thus ofering citizens a sense of agency in helping provide for their own security and that of the planet.

Horizon 2045 is exploring trends in Web3 so that we can consider how they might empower us to create an

At the same time, we will look at ways to use and amplify economic incentives for change, drawing on methods used to drive sustainable investment in and incentivize a new paradigm of global security and risk management that accounts for nuclear weapons threats.

INFORMATION FLOW

Information fow helps defne the feedback loops in any system; what information moves through the system, who receives it, and who is empowered to act on it can infuence other system behaviors. Interventions that change the who, what, where, how, when, and why of information fow can make visible how the system is operating (including when it is in confict with stated goals or values) and even shift power dynamics.

Information fow includes the structures by which information fows and to whom, what types of information are fowing, and how quickly it fows. Equally important is where information does not fow. In our information fow interventions, Horizon 2045 is learning what happens to the system when we:

Build support among a broad range of stakeholders for compelling new narratives about a far brighter future (Horizon 3) and for a replacement strategy for managing the nuclear threat

Create better ways to communicate the consequences of nuclear use or nuclear accident and strategies for preventing them on the road to building an architecture that replaces the current system

Raise awareness and repair the harm done by the nuclear weapons system, particularly to marginalized communities, and ensure that further harm cannot be perpetrated going forward

Boost understanding of the stories that non-military exceptionalism countries tell themselves that contribute positively to the global condition

Identify where/how to rewire behavioral and feedback loops so that actions can create signifcant disruptions to the system rather than marginal improvements

Build support among a broad range of stakeholders for compelling new narratives about a far brighter future (Horizon 3) and for a replacement strategy for managing the nuclear threat

DRIVING BELIEFS

The deeply entrenched beliefs undergirding the nuclear system, including the nuclear deterrence myth, limit the possibilities for change. Exposing these beliefs and their attendant frailties and replacing them with something far better will open new opportunities and momentum for change. Horizon 2045 seeks to:

Expose the ways in which many of the assumptions fundamental to the nuclear system are fragile, fawed, or simply wrong, and create deeper knowledge of the underlying myths feeding these assumptions and how to infuence their reexamination and re-creation

Reveal the ways in which human decision-making and behaviors have protected us in some high-risk nuclear situations by overriding the deterrence system, and how human or machine errors have increased risks of accidental or unintentional use

Research emerging concepts or myths from other cultures and felds that lend themselves to the change we seek here (e.g., “managing the commons” in a time when we are painfully aware of planetary constraints)

Like most existential threats, nuclear weapons are a wicked problem, presenting problems and subproblems of various kinds that fall into two broad categories: well-defned (with relatively clear boundaries and predictable outcomes) and ill-defned (the parameters of the problem itself can only be discovered through an unpredictable, emergent process).

In Horizon 2 we are learning our way forward by engaging with both types of problems in a rigorous, evidence-based process that involves disciplined experimentation, data gathering, and evaluation.

Well-defned problems (e.g., detailing the requirements of a future nuclear weapons prohibition regime) submit to systematic, specifcation-driven approaches. Ill-defned problems (e.g., developing future legal frameworks) rely on the more inductive

“What if?” reasoning associated with the prototyping process. This process is an exercise of discovery that begins with low-fdelity, exploratory, even naive sketches of an emerging concept. Over time, prototypes gain detail and sophistication through a series of tests, failures, and improvements.

Horizon 2045 has adopted a three-stage prototyping model in which Horizon 2 systems interventions move from proof of concept to “alpha” and “beta” stages only if they meet certain criteria for ongoing investment. While the criteria vary depending on the intervention, they generally include viability (Can we show evidence that the concept has the potential to produce the outcomes we desire?), scalability (What does our data tell us about the potential for this concept to achieve greater impacts over time?), feasibility (Do we have the human, fnancial, and other resources required to do justice to this concept?), and strategic value (Does this concept accelerate or advance the Horizon 2045 mission?).

This approach is rooted in the “Rule of Tens,” an engineering and product development concept that asserts that with each successive stage of development a new product, program, or service becomes an order of magnitude more costly in terms of time, fnancial investment, brand equity, and/or team morale. By this reasoning, it is imperative to “fail” as often and as early as possible in the process to ensure that we learn and improve as much as we can when it is relatively inexpensive to do so. Using this approach, some Horizon 2 interventions will make it all the way to the beta stage of development and beyond. Others will be abandoned if/when we lack evidence to support continued investment.

BUILDING A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

Our work is already attracting diverse leaders and organizations who see value in being part of a bold network of systems thinkers who are exploring, inventing, and informing pathways toward a more secure future. We are designing joint projects with world-class futurists who work in multiple issue spaces, giving them insight and topsight into intersectional challenges and the opportunities embedded within them. We are engaging governments and organizations, mavericks and iconoclasts, philanthropists and funders who value making bold investments in the future and see particular value in the kinds of convergences that an intersectional community of practice can both reveal and create. We are forging partnerships with academics and researchers, and gamemakers and change experts, who are eager to apply their expertise to existential challenges. Two foundational Horizon 2045 commitments are driving these eforts:

Engaging diverse and necessary voices in this work

The best and freshest ideas for achieving a future where states no longer depend on nuclear weapons will come from a wide range of voices and backgrounds from around the globe, drawn together into a far more diverse community of practice. Horizon 2045 seeks to:

Make

Engage, elevate, and empower leaders and populations of states without nuclear weapons that resist the belief that nuclear weapons provide security

Engage greater numbers of, and more diverse, problem-solvers and partners, including outsized policy infuencers, Gen Z leaders of the future, members of the communities most impacted by nuclear weapons, and experts in felds far outside the nuclear realm

Apply proven strategies/methods for successfully reshaping social views and beliefs to this issue space

Linking the nuclear issue to other challenges facing mankind

Tying nuclear system questions to a broader feld of questions related to security and the future will bring nuclear issues into more prominent light, revealing how nuclear weapons impede our collective ability to address other global challenges and how achieving a full nuclear weapons prohibition can help advance work on these other challenges. Horizon 2045 seeks to:

Connect/partner with issue spaces outside the nuclear realm, including those centered on climate change, biological risks, and social justice, as well as the growing community of people looking at all existential risks collectively

Assess what base-layer changes and disruptions these other issue spaces aim to drive through their work, in order to surface linkages and synergies that are authentic, natural, and useful to all, and seek to apply theoretical and practical work from other global challenges that center cooperation over coercion

Create increased global understanding of the gap between human and technological evolution and the criticality of developing new ways of working together as a global community to mitigate the existential risks we have created for ourselves

HORIZON 3

Most eforts to bring about nuclear prohibition focus on the push: standing frmly in the present, they seek to push the system, or actors within the system, to address the risks posed by nuclear weapons and take steps toward an eventual disarmament. While this is critical and necessary work, what’s notably absent from this issue space is a focus on the pull. We know what we’re trying to move our world away from, but what are we moving it toward? What does a nuclear weapons prohibition future look like? What systems and innovations will it require, and what other existential threats might those innovations also help to address?

We can learn a great deal about how to transform complex systems by situating ourselves in the future and backcasting to identify the strategies and tactics needed to get us there. Understanding in detail the requirements of a nuclear weapons prohibition system while also exploring the many pathways we might take to get there broadens our view of what’s possible and lifts us out of the mental frame where incremental progress and perpetual risk management are the main focus. Put bluntly: We can’t just say we don’t want nuclear weapons we have to envision and defne what we want instead, in practical terms. Our Horizon 3 work is about rigorously defning the future we want and untangling the unknowns and the complexities about how to achieve it, in order to create a blueprint for a transformed system and a transformed world.

What are we aiming to create?

Ending the nuclear weapons century will require novel approaches that enable the application of equitable and efective long-term thinking to this problem space. Through Horizon 2045 we are developing and advancing foresight work that is cross-disciplinary, rigorous, and bold. This core competency helps us engage with the complex forces of change shaping the nuclear system and its adjacent issue spaces.

STRATEGIC FORESIGHT

Developing a deep understanding of our evolving future context is a critical frst step in envisioning a new security paradigm for the Anthropocene, allowing us to explore opportunities for large-scale sustainable transformation. Taking into account the intertwined nature of existential threats, our foresight work seeks to challenge the assumptions that sustain the status quo and to facilitate new discussion, new partnerships, and new action informed by a shared vision of a desirable future that is currently deemed impossible.

In imagining and building this audacious vision of the future, we are taking great care to ensure that our foresight eforts do not perpetuate the inequities embedded within the current system. With each foresight project, we aim to move beyond conventional foresight methodology by designing processes that are culturally informed, innovative, and participatory.

Like all complex systems, the nuclear system does not operate in a vacuum. Some of the highest-value levers for change stand outside the system, tied into larger global currents of change building up all around it. These contextual factors present both opportunities for and obstacles to change; regardless, they alter the fundamental conditions in which the nuclear system operates and threaten the endurance of the underlying mental models that support it. Together, they infuence and shape the possibilities of the present and future and our options for moving from one to the other. Surfacing and studying contextual forces of change political, social, technological, environmental, and economic drivers that will shape the future lets us look at nuclear weapons challenges in relationship with other elements of a dynamic and changing world.

FORCES OF CHANGE

All of Horizon 2045’s work is grounded in the dynamic forces shaping our world.

For instance: How will our notions of security (and insecurity) evolve over the next decade as we emerge from a pandemic, confront a rise in authoritarianism, or endure climate-induced weather catastrophes? How might the role of nation states evolve? How will emerging technologies empower new forms of public engagement? And how might all of that change the way we deal with nuclear challenges? Breaking the frame in this way is what distinguishes Horizon 2045 from other approaches, where the tendency is to center nuclear weapons at all stages of analysis. We are intent on reversing a tendency to wonder why the rest of the world is not paying more attention to nuclear threats by focusing our curiosity outward: How will changes in the world around us inhibit or accelerate achievement of our nuclear disarmament goals?

FORCES THAT COULD INFLUENCE, INHIBIT, OR ACCELERATE CHANGES TO THE NUCLEAR SYSTEM

Fluctuating but ever-present geopolitical tensions

Accelerating climate change

OF

Continued habitat destruction driven by development

Changing awareness of high-consequence/ low-probability incidents like COVID-19 and future pandemics

Rising authoritarianism and waning faith in state authority Military innovation growing faster and more consequential

Circular economies and alternatives to prescribed economic value

Infrastructure failing physically and/or being vulnerable to hacking

The changing mechanics for decision-making and democratic engagement

COULD INFLUENCE, INHIBIT, OR ACCELERATE CHANGES TO THE NUCLEAR SYSTEM

Rising acknowledgment that we’ve entered the Anthropocene

State borders/boundaries under the stress of increasing migration

Major demographic shifts

Augmented intelligence and memory

Deepening divide between those who are secure and those who are insecure

Growing sophistication of blockchain technology

People/companies creating their own forms of security

Democratization of information

The speed and scale of dis/misinformation

Corporations driving solutions to large-scale problems

Expanded use and occupation of “outer” space

Rising social movements

Rise of cryptocurrency

Rapidly emerging new technologies outpacing human comprehension, like data analytics and AI

Horizon scanning is a systematic tool for identifying and exploring the contextual factors that are infuencing the present and will infuence the future. The process of horizon scanning diferentiates between developments that are “predetermined” (the evolution of artifcial intelligence, for instance) and those that are uncertain but highly relevant to the issue or question at hand (the specifc ways in which artifcial intelligence will afect the threat landscape). Horizon scanning picks up novel and unexpected signals from both mainstream and unconventional sources. A comprehensive scanning proposes that certain shifts be monitored closely over time because they have the power either to facilitate or to disrupt achievement of particular outcomes. In all cases, horizon scanning provides an evidence base from which to challenge assumptions and formulate efective strategy.

HORIZON SCANNING

Horizon 2045 has developed a global horizon scanning process designed to draw and synthesize insights from a wide range of sources. We have also built an international horizon scanning network that features at least two scanners from each continent. Working individually and collectively, network members identify contextual forces that are already shaping the future, so that we can better understand how they interact with the nuclear system as well as other systems and be prepared to leverage those changes in ways that serve our Horizon 2045 goals. Insights from this process serve to deepen our awareness of the contextual forces and dynamics changing the landscape in and around the nuclear system and other existential threats, feed our futures/strategic foresight work, and inform our prioritization of experiments and investments.

Horizon scanning is a way of looking for evidence of the future that’s coming and in some cases is already here.

THE SEVEN SHIFTS

Our early horizon scanning work and analysis inspired us to more deeply contemplate the nature of change over the next several decades the ways in which our mental models may be shaped or reshaped by our coming up against planetary boundaries and the intertwining of global concerns. The result was the “seven shifts,” a narrative exploration of the kinds of upending and rebuilding of mental models that humanity might need to pass through to get to a better future. One key provocation ofered by each shift is shared below. In the world of 2045 and beyond:

What kinds of practices, conventions, norms, beliefs, policies, institutions, or default patterns have we let go of, and what others have we embraced, in order to ensure planetary and humanity’s future?

What are we doing diferently, and intentionally, to safeguard future generations and begin operating with humanity’s longterm future in mind?

Have we come to see and respect the necessity of applying diverse forms of knowledge to questions about our world and our eforts to solve pressing challenges?

Have we broken the longstanding hubris that humans have dominion over all things, perhaps ofering legal protections to animals and the planet’s habitats and ecosystems?

Has governance become more dynamic and participatory, and if so what does that look like? Have enabling technologies spurred a rise in political will and created new mechanisms and pathways for inclusive governance?

Has managing the commons become “common sense”—and perhaps even a new organizing principle running through our systems and behaviors?

Have advanced transparency technologies, like hyperspectral imaging and blockchain, moved us into a diferent kind of information environment?

Scan the QR code to read the full text of the seven shifts.

Speculative artifacts are well-designed objects that do not exist in the present but could in the future, giving shape and weight to a possible future we want to explore. Speculative artifacts give alternate possibilities a sense of reality that helps bring them to ground because they show (not just tell) what the future could look like. Just as many of the objects and the devices we encounter have histories and meanings that are only hinted at in their physical manifestation, a speculative artifact can hint at a diferent world without becoming too polemic. Great props bring a particular movie world to life; similarly, speculative artifacts invite us to consider many possible futures and act as a focus for conversation and debate about the kind of future we want to inhabit.

Systems designer Irina Wang created a series of speculative artifacts for Horizon 2045 based on the seven shifts described above, translating insights contained within the shifts into instruments that resonate. These objects do what speculative artifacts do best: evoke a possible future that has yet to arrive. Seeing tangible objects from the future and their uses can compel us to “see” our current mental models, the future, and pathways to the future diferently.

At the heart of Horizon 2045’s futures work are four complementary and foundational eforts. Each aims to illuminate a particular piece of the larger picture of how we might achieve, sustain, and beneft from a full nuclear weapons prohibition, and how the innovations, processes, systems, and agreements we create as part of that efort will enable progress on other existential threats.

DEFINING THE FUTURE

The sentiment that nuclear weapons efectively serve as a tool for global governance in lieu of other mechanisms has shaped world afairs since the inception of the bomb.

By using the tools of strategic foresight to consider how a durable, verifable nuclear weapons prohibition might be achieved by 2045, we are essentially asking: Absent nuclear weapons, through what mechanisms, institutions, or apparatus might we establish and maintain global security and stability within this timeframe?

next several decades) and critical uncertainties (In what ways, how quickly, and in what societies will authoritarianism express itself? How will global politics shake out in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis?) to derive those pathways.

For each scenario we will ask such questions as: What innovations in governance, technology, culture, diplomacy, education, etc., will make this future possible? In what sequence might those innovations need to take place?

What resources will they require? What are the most powerful frst steps we can take, or the most useful experiments we can conduct? Are there changes or innovations that make sense in only one future, and if so how will we know that future is coming into play so we can activate strategies that will be most efective? What leading indicators must we pay attention to? Conversely, are there changes or innovations that make sense in several or all of the scenarios, and should we then prioritize initiatives that lead to those innovations?

In collaboration with the School of International Futures, we are building a set of scenarios that illuminate alternative pathways to achieving a global nuclear weapons prohibition, examining both predetermined elements (the social, technological, environmental, economic, and political shifts we are relatively confdent will take place over the

The lack of a tangible model and concrete requirements for a durable nuclear weapons prohibition a blueprint for a prohibition future makes it hard to rally support and easy for policymakers to dismiss prohibition as “unrealistic” or “unattainable.”

While there has been some scholarship around various aspects of the steps needed to achieve a world without nuclear weapons, there is no comprehensive, detailed, practical elaboration of the requirements and elements that would allow for such a world. For example, scholars have acknowledged that the “end state” will require more intrusive monitoring and verifcation and/or more rigorous safeguards around management of fssile materials. But more work is needed to elaborate what these procedures and capabilities would entail and how they would ft into a broader framework of legal and institutional arrangements required to achieve and sustain a prohibition on nuclear weapons.

A primary goal of this project is to elaborate a credible, detailed description of the characteristics, institutions, and capabilities needed for a future in which nuclear weapons are prohibited, peaceful nuclear uses are permitted, and the threat of breakout is mitigated. To close gaps in the ability to imagine and work toward this future, we must articulate the technical and policy requirements for this new system. Through a comprehensive analysis of the building blocks for a disarmed world in 2045, we aim to open up new discussions, explorations, and partnerships that catalyze innovation in technology, governance, and international law all key components in a sustainable future nuclear weapons prohibition system.

In a world where we continue to accept the risk of a nuclear system that operates on the basis of threatening mass annihilation to prevent nuclear use, we will always be living with unacceptable existential risk. We believe it is both possible and necessary to design a new nuclear security paradigm that prevents the use of nuclear weapons through the implementation of efective, universal controls around nuclear technologies without the accompanying risk of civilizational catastrophe. Unlike the world of 1945, when the initial operating model of the nuclear system began to take shape, the technological capabilities of today’s world provide a strong basis for a shift from a threat-based system to a control-based system.

A durable nuclear weapons prohibition is feasible if we have the controls necessary to ensure that nuclear technologies are never again used for anything but peaceful purposes (powering our communities, healing the sick, conducting research). Such a system will require...

New forms of legislation and regulation

Nuclear weapons must be prohibited and their development, possession, and use made illegal under international law. Global publics, private-sector actors, and NGOs must be well equipped to monitor states’ adherence to the law.

Innovative technologies that shape new and more transparent protocols for detection, monitoring, and verifcation

Strong global mechanisms and institutions cooperating to maintain the prohibition and control system

These institutions must continually evolve and adapt to changing power dynamics and circumstances to anticipate and resolve potential clashes of interest. Operating at global and regional levels, including both private-sector and governmental entities, and powered by the most advanced forms of technology, a new breed of global mechanisms and institutions will assume responsibility for enforcement, verifcation, inspection, monitoring, and detection.

We must take advantage of evolving technical capacity to build and retain the systems we need to safely and securely manage the entire nuclear lifecycle, including to detect, monitor, and verify the use of nuclear technology, the dismantlement of nuclear weapons, and the safe disposal of spent fuel. These systems will help build confdence that nuclear disarmament, once achieved, is universal, verifable, and irreversible. This includes robust and efective mechanisms for controlling prohibited and dual-use capabilities, facilities, materials, and activities in order to assure states and publics that cheating will be quickly detected and addressed.

While we already have much of the requisite technical capacity, the system will, perhaps most importantly, require that leaders and societies come to believe that the global risks and consequences of nuclear weapons including to human health, economies, ecosystems, and future generations outweigh any perceived security benefts. Active, diverse, and robust global networks including engaged publics, private companies, and nongovernmental organizations must directly promote and support the changes necessary for a sustainable nuclear weapons control system grounded in new conceptions of planetary security.

3

In a 2014 article for the Earth Island Institute, Richard Heinberg—senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and a leading expert on energy and environmental issues wrote, “We humans have started the Anthropocene, and we’ve proudly named it for ourselves, yet ironically we may not be around to enjoy much of it. The chain of impacts we have initiated could potentially last for millions of years, but it’s a toss-up whether there will be surviving human geologists to track and comment on it.”2 We would argue that if we play our cards right it is indeed possible for us not only to survive the Anthropocene but to transcend its challenges, moving into a future in which we fnally meet the basic needs of billions of people lessening poverty, reducing hunger, and unleashing new sources of energy.

The era of relative abundance that we and others imagine hinges in great part on how we choose to manage the existential challenges before us, and whether and how we unleash new solutions that redefne the word “possible.” These solutions will both shape how we behave and present new ethical and decision-making provocations, as we develop new shared rules and constraints to govern how humanity deploys planet-changing technologies and explore new methods of democratic engagement and new expressions of collective power and agency. To thrive in the Anthropocene, we need to develop the new norms, values, institutions, and behaviors necessary to manage global challenges and existential threats nuclear weapons among them and solve for how to cooperate at planet-scale.

Horizon 2045, in partnership with experts in the future of governance and democratic practice, public intellectuals, environmentalists, systems change experts, technologists, and designers, is codifying new “rules of the road” for the Anthropocene. We are exploring the cultures, logics, operating systems, and political theories necessary to construct institutions commensurate to the challenges we face. A durable, verifable nuclear weapons prohibition provides a boundary object 3 for our multidisciplinary, cross-issue community of practice: We are confdent that what we learn about managing the nuclear challenge in the latter part of the 21st century and the norms, practices, and institutional models we will prototype will inform other existential challenges and the reengineering of other systems as well.

2 Richard Heinberg, “The Anthropocene: It’s Not All About Us,” Earth Island Journal, 7 May 2014.

https:/is.theorizeit.org/wiki/Boundary_object_theory

While overwhelming majorities of the public desire a world without nuclear weapons, most people don’t believe it is possible. The key reason, research by the Nuclear Threat Initiative suggests, is the near complete absence of positive stories, in any medium, about a future that does not feature nuclear weapons. In our eforts to compel a world that no longer relies on these weapons for global security, we have not yet collectively and fully imagined what that world might actually look like. By eradicating the nuclear threat, what will we have unleashed and enabled?

What becomes possible when nuclear weapons have been removed from the human story? In a world in which a durable nuclear weapons prohibition has been achieved, what might be diferent, and what are the dividends?

of what that world would look like so we can ask ourselves what steps we must take to create it. How do we describe, and bring alive, a future on the other side of nuclear weapons? And what if that future only becomes possible because we developed a vision of what it might look like the big “so what” to all of our eforts?

We need a clearer depiction of how much brighter our future will be when nuclear weapons no longer hold the world hostage and global security has been deeply reimagined. We need a picture

Created in collaboration with Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination, the Far Futures Lab invites science fction authors, visual artists, musicians, and other creatives, along with experts in nuclear weapons and other issue areas, to explore a future in which we successfully manage our way through a combination of preventable manmade threats with a durable nuclear weapons prohibition as a cornerstone of that future. Through the Far Futures Lab, we are playing out the assumption that by ridding ourselves of existential threat, we will have opened up new possibilities for a better future.

Ending the existential threat of nuclear weapons is a giant goal all by itself. But we believe that the success of that endeavor is bound up in something bigger that is just now coming into view. As we contemplate the myriad natural and anthropogenic risks clouding our view of the future, we are confronted with a choice: 1,000 years from today, 10,000 or 100,000 years from today, will the Anthropocene be notable for humanity’s failure to overcome challenges many of which, like nuclear weapons, we created ourselves — or for being the beginning of a much healthier, safer, and more prosperous era for planet and people alike? What is possible on the other side of the challenges we face today?

THE PROMISE OF A REIMAGINED GLOBAL SECURITY

Homo sapiens emerged about 200,000 years ago. As philosopher Toby Ord points out, humanity is still in its adolescence, “just coming into our power, just old enough to get ourselves in serious trouble.” 4 Yet even as we contemplate the dangers we have wrought, every day we make extraordinary advances in science, technology, and healthcare that improve the lives of billions. We make strides in artifcial intelligence, nanotechnology, and quantum science; we develop neural interfaces that help diagnose brain disorders; we eradicate more diseases and educate more children.

If humanity survives to “maturity” and all these advancements converge, what might we the species distinguished by our capacity to cooperate be capable of in the future? Might the story of the Anthropocene ultimately be one of problem-solving and regeneration, beginning with our decision to improve our odds of survival by ridding ourselves of nuclear weapons?

Like Toby Ord, we believe that “the future of a responsible humanity is extremely bright.” It is time to ignite the world’s most creative minds to solve our planet’s most vexing challenges —beginning with nuclear weapons.

4 Tony Ord, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, illustrated ed. Hatchette Books, 2020.

Horizon 2045’s three founding partner organizations bring the creative process expertise of designers, innovators, and futurists together with the political, diplomatic, and subject matter knowledge of nuclear security professionals.

Launched in 2014 by fve of the world’s largest peace and security funders, N Square is a path-breaking initiative intent on transforming the nuclear risk reduction feld into one of the world’s brightest sources of cross-sector creativity and innovation.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative is a nonproft, nonpartisan global security organization focused on reducing nuclear and biological threats imperiling humanity, with a proven track record of innovating and galvanizing real-world, systemic solutions that create lasting change.

Center for Complexity at Rhode Island School of Design brings state-of-the-art project design capabilities to the collaborative, along with a history of applying the craft of design to complex human challenges. nsquare.org

ABOUT HORIZON 2045

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Altimeter Design Group

Arizona State University

Center for Science and the Imagination

Center for Complexity & Rhode Island School of Design

Dark Matter Lab

MacArthur Foundation

Metaculus

N Square

Nuclear Threat Initiative

PATH Collective

Policy Solve

Politics for Tomorrow

Pop Tech

School of International Futures

Skoll Foundation

Worldview Studio

OUR PARTNERS