B-61 nuclear bomb, the same model as stored at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey; Image courtesy of Phil Schmitten / United States Department of Defense

by Matthijs Maas

A failed coup attempt against the Turkish government raised fears over the safety of the US nuclear stockpile stored at Incirlik Air Base after authorities temporarily locked down the base and arrested the base commander for supporting the mutineers’ air operations. Under NATO’s nuclear sharing agreement, Incirlik Air Base plays host to an estimated 50 US B61 hydrogen bombs–over a quarter of the nuclear weapons in NATO’s European stockpile. Concerns over terrorism at the base, which is located less than 70 miles from the Syrian border and is also used for US airstrikes against Islamic State, have previously led to a $160 million upgrade of the security perimeter. Nonetheless, the ongoing political turmoil in Turkey led James Stavridis, retired four-star admiral and former NATO supreme allied commander to call for the US to pull its nuclear arsenal out of Turkey. “I think the key lesson is that the benefits of storing nuclear weapons in Turkey are minimal but the risks have increased significantly over the past five years,” said Hans Kristensen, a senior nuclear weapons expert at the Federation of American Scientists. “I would say that the security situation in Turkey and in the base area no longer meet the safety requirements that the United States should have for storage of nuclear weapons.”

President Obama decided to seek a new UN Security Council resolution affirming a ban on nuclear testing, and will push for this at the UN this September, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The CTBT was adopted in 1996, but was never ratified by the Senate; as such a Security Council resolution would allow the Obama administration to enshrine in international law a United States’ pledge not to test nuclear weapons, effectively bypassing this need for Senate ratification. The decision has been harshly received by Republican lawmakers, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who argued that the plan cedes the Senate’s constitutional role to the UN, and “directly contradicts the processes that are in place to make sure that Congress appropriately weighs in on international agreements.” The move comes as Obama is seeking to enact major changes to US nuclear policy during his final six months in office, which could include unilaterally offering Russia a five-year extension of the New START arms control treaty; reducing the US nuclear modernization budget; and scrapping the Long-Range Stand-Off nuclear cruise missile. Although the Obama administration also hinted at its intent to declare a “no first use” posture, it appears to have backtracked from this pledge, in order to reassure US allies of security guarantees in the wake of controversial comments made by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Nonetheless, in remarks made to the Arms Control Association in June, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes promised that “President Obama is continuing to review a number of ways he can advance the Prague [nuclear disarmament] agenda over the course of the next seven months.”

In the UK, the House of Commons voted 472 to 117 to renew the Trident nuclear weapons programme, approving the development and manufacture of four replacement ballistic missile submarines at an estimated cost of £31bn. These are slated to come into service by the early 2030s, replacing the four aging Vanguard-class submarines which are the current backbone of the UK nuclear deterrent. The debate was marked by sharp division amongst Labour benches, with 140 of 230 MP’s rebelling against leader Jeremy Corbyn and backing the motion. Prime Minister Theresa May said during the debate that she would not hesitate to authorize a nuclear strike.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula rose following an agreement between Seoul and Washington to deploy the advanced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile-defense system to South Korea. Although US Secretary of State Kerry has said that THAAD is “a purely defensive weapon”, Chinese officials protested the decision, arguing that THAAD deployment “would break the strategic balance in the region” and could lead to an escalating arms race.

Scientists from Google, OpenAI, Stanford and Berkeley released a new paper, “Concrete Problems in AI Safety”, detailing five key practical research questions related to accidental risks from artificial intelligence, and mapping out productive avenues of research. In addition, Google’s DeepMind and Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) cooperated on a research paper, ‘Safely Interruptible Agents’, which examined possible design features of an AI ‘kill switch’. The Foundational Research Institute produced a paper entitled “Suffering-focused AI safety: Why “fail-safe” interventions might be our top intervention”, which argues that a ‘fail-safe’ approach to AI is promising because avoiding the worst outcomes might be both easier and more important than ensuring we achieve one particular future scenario. Finally, the nonprofit OpenAI released a public call for applicants to work on one of four special projects relevant to the long-run impact of AI on society.

In June, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported a new record spring low in Arctic sea ice extent. July saw the hottest temperatures ever recorded in the Eastern Hemisphere, with two measurements in excess of 129°Ft (54°Cs) in Kuwait and Iraq. A heat wave struck Siberia, where it re-awakened bacteria which had lain dormant in a frozen reindeer carcass. The resulting anthrax outbreak killed 2 people and over 2,000 reindeer, with a further 90 people hospitalized on suspicion of infection as the governor declared a state of emergency.

A US Geological Survey (USGS) report released in June suggested that, contrary to expectations, the state of Alaska is acting as a net carbon sink. It also suggested that Alaska’s boreal forests could experience an ‘Arctic greening’ through the year 2100 as they pull even more carbon out of the atmosphere, offsetting carbon released through permafrost thaw and wildfires. Nonetheless, the study’s authors cautioned that the study omits little-understood carbon sources such as methane emitted from lakes, and that “it is likely that Alaska would be a source of greenhouse gases under all climate simulations if these emissions were considered in the assessment”.

Researchers at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a leading Brazilian health institute, reported that they have identified signs of the Zika virus in a second mosquito species–one that is 20 times more common than the species which Brazilian authorities have previously targeted as the main vector of the disease. In June, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first clinical trial of an experimental vaccine for the Zika virus, clearing the way for the first use of the vaccine in healthy adults, according to a press release by Inovio Pharmaceuticals. The Inovio Zika product, called GLS-5700, is a so-called “DNA vaccine” which works by embedding DNA coded to produce specific proteins that neuter the Zika virus into cells, helping the immune system identify and fight the Zika virus. While the move to rapidly test the vaccine reflects the urgency surrounding the crisis, STAT reports that there are still several years of testing and development ahead before the vaccine would be available to the broader public.

In early June, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) endorsed continued research on “gene drives”, a technique first proposed in a controversial 2014 study which would enable targeted interventions to alter or even wipe out populations of organisms in the wild, such as malaria-carrying mosquitoes or invasive species that damage local ecosystems. Gene drives work by using gene-editing tools such as CRISPR to ensure that a particular trait (such as the inability to transmit an infectious disease) is inherited by all of an individual’s offspring, rather than the usual half, progressively ‘driving’ the trait through a wild population as the edited individuals and their descendants interbreed with it. The report argued that while there is not yet enough research on the unintended consequences to justify using a gene drive, the potential benefits make it crucial to research and eventually conduct “carefully controlled field trials” of gene drives. However, Kevin Esvelt, a MIT evolutionary biologist and gene drive pioneer, said the NASEM report failed to adequately flag key risks, arguing that “any time you release an organism with a gene drive system into the wild you must assume there is a significant chance that it will spread–globally—and factor that in.”

Thanks to Tony Barrett, Seth Baum, Kaitlin Butler, Robert de Neufville, and Grant Wilson for help compiling the news.

For last month’s news summary, please see GCR News Summary May 2016.