A Safer Future Is Still Possible: Technology, Risk, and Global Cooperation

How close are we to global disaster?

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ 2026 Doomsday Clock—currently at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest ever—serves as a metaphor for thinking about today’s biggest dangers and what we can do about them. The clock represents not a literal prediction, but a clear public warning that combines many kinds of evidence about how close we may be to major global disaster.

This talk will look at four major areas of risk—nuclear conflict, climate change, biological threats, and fast-moving new technologies like AI—and, most importantly, how these problems can reinforce each other.

We’ll focus on how practical choices: how leadership, cooperation, strong public institutions, and specific steps—like rebuilding arms talks, improving climate policy, strengthening public health, and setting limits on risky uses of AI—could reduce these dangers and “move the clock back.”

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Bebo White is a famed and phenomenal science communicator. He is widely recognized as an internet pioneer and one of the key contributors to the development of the World Wide Web. He spent years at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford. And last but not least, he plays with "The Yerba Buena Jug Band" - the official jug band of E Clampus Vitus.