HORIZON 2045

In 2019, N Square, in partnership with the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Rhode Island School of Design’s Center for Complexity, launched Horizon 2045, a long-term project to redefine global security and bring an end to the nuclear weapons century. N Square’s commitment to Horizon 2045 stems from an increasing desire to put the insights we’ve gained over the last eight years into practice at an audacious scale—including and especially our foundational belief that achieving a full and durable nuclear weapons prohibition hinges on our ability and commitment to reframe nuclear weapons within a broader context.

Horizon 2045 is doing this by:

Leading an effort to reimagine “global security.”

Overcoming our perilous present will require a more expansive definition of global security and a new system for achieving and maintaining it. We seek to redefine security as a bigger system in which humanity, our planet, and future generations can flourish free from the risk of existential threats.

Connecting nuclear weapons to other existential threats. Nuclear weapons are part of an intertwined set of threats facing humanity, and these threats exacerbate and complicate one another. 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 effort.

Taking 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.

Advancing 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 wider community of practice. There are complementary, likeminded efforts underway in other threat spaces, most of them operating independently. We are building a hub for these efforts, drawing people, ideas, and networks together into a diverse multi-threat community of practice focused on shared learning and collaboration.

After a soft launch in 2021, Horizon 2045 is now in its public launch phase, with many promising projects already up and running. But getting such an ambitious initiative off the ground would not have been possible without the early support and engagement of N Square’s extended network. Network members from the Center for Humane Technology, the Vatican, the United Nations, and the Black Speculative Arts Movement, academic institutions like Arizona State University and Temple University, as well as futurists, science fiction writers, scientists, and leaders in philanthropy are among those who have shown an eagerness to collaborate with Horizon 2045 and with others who are thinking broadly about existential risk.

We are eager as well. Horizon 2045 expands our ability to collaborate with others and is helping us to disentangle ourselves from narratives that exceptionalize nuclear weapons. We can see ways to bring new value to our partners. We can see ways to expand our network, but also give our network more ways to have concrete impact. We see Horizon 2045—and this broader conception of existential risk over the next 20 years—as a pathway for accelerating our longstanding mission to create the conditions for innovation and collaboration in the field, extending our impact beyond the boundaries of what we could do as N Square alone, and finding and seizing opportunities to create lasting systems change.