The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says the world is closer to catastrophe than ever before, setting the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight in January 2026. In an edited interview, Bulletin editor in chief John Mecklin points to nuclear expansion, wea
On a quiet night, the idea of “midnight” sounds almost theatrical. But when the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight in January 2026—the closest it has ever been to zero hour—this wasn’t treated like a prop. It was treated like a warning that the margins are thinning.
The clock is backed by a scientific and security board that. in Mecklin’s account. sees nuclear risk as extreme for reasons that aren’t reducible to one headline. His argument is that the danger isn’t primarily a perfectly planned first strike. It’s the cascade: false alarms. mistaken responses. and the use of a “small” or tactical nuclear weapon that then pulls countries into escalation.
Nine countries now possess nuclear weapons—the United States. Russia. the U.K. France. China. Pakistan. India and North Korea—and. according to the report Mecklin discusses. they are expanding and upgrading their arsenals. The global number of warheads is described as approximately 12,187. At the same time, efforts to stop proliferation are weakening and treaties are expiring.
Money, too, is part of the picture. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons reported that those nine nuclear countries spent a collective $119 billion on nukes last year. with the U.S. spending $69 billion—more than the eight others combined. And the scale of potential harm, Mecklin warns, is not just catastrophic in the moment. If even one warhead were detonated. it would likely trigger a chain reaction of missiles and bombs that could leave the planet all but uninhabitable.
This is where Mecklin’s message cuts against a familiar political pattern: the decisions that can slow risk are often treated as abstract until something goes wrong. He says leaders aren’t doing anything serious while threats continue to expand and intersect.
In the United States, he points to what he calls a retreat on climate change. He describes the Trump administration as going backward on climate policy “even though it’s a severe threat that would end civilization if we don’t address it.”
He connects that domestic slide to a broader erosion of restraint. In his view, the three major nuclear powers—United States, Russia, and China—have moved toward a world without constraints. He notes that China never joined any arms control treaties, while the U.S. and Russia have ended all treaties created over decades to constrain nuclear arsenals. “So now there are no constraints,” he says.
He also ties the danger to a separate arms race: artificial intelligence. Mecklin argues that the U.S. and China are in an arms race related to artificial intelligence that “doesn’t have to be. ” saying smart leaders could negotiate ways to prevent an expensive. unproductive. dangerous spiral. Instead. he says. Donald Trump. Xi Jinping. and Vladimir Putin aren’t the kind of leaders he believes we need to reduce the threat.
When Mecklin talks about why the public pays so little attention, his answer lands on frustration rather than panic. He’s spent 15 years trying to get people to care—and he says the Bulletin’s reach is roughly 15 or 20 times larger than when he became head editor in 2014. Still. he argues the media environment is polluted by disinformation and misinformation. and that nuclear risk is “offputting” and doesn’t generate the same clicks as more familiar entertainment.
But he also puts blame closer to policy. He says the anti-nuclear activist community hasn’t been effective enough in moving the general public or politicians. “Climate has become a movement,” he says, while the nuclear side needs better activism.
Congress, in his description, is mostly absent. He says a handful of people in Congress introduce measures about nuclear weapons once a year, “but that’s about all they do”—pro forma legislation with no chance of passing that draws little attention.
He then brings the argument back to money, and to the political ecosystem that money creates. “Think about the amount of money pushing to have more nuclear weapons and more defense spending,” he says. “It is vast.” In comparison, he says, the anti-nuclear community’s resources are “enormous” by contrast.
One example is the push for new nuclear components. Mecklin argues that the idea of building new plutonium pits—new triggers for nuclear weapons—is “utterly ridiculous. ” insisting that the U.S. already has “thousands of these in storage” and that there are studies showing they don’t degrade in a dangerous way. Yet, he says, the government spends “billions” building them.
He’s also blunt about why that spending persists: attention is local, not national. He says only members of Congress from South Carolina—where one of the pit production sites will be—or from New Mexico—where Los Alamos National Lab will start building plutonium pits again—pay attention to the program. “So the only people in Congress who care about that… are the members from those states. ” he says. while “nobody else gives a damn.”.
That dynamic. multiplied across defense spending and climate policy. becomes the heart of his explanation for why risk reduction fails to gain political traction. He argues it is not an impossible task: when a program is “that stupid” and “that wasteful. ” other lawmakers could stand up against it. But he says many members of Congress feed off the defense budget. in part because most counties have military bases—creating jobs and local incentives to keep them running.
He also points to how fear is marketed, especially in defense and technology circles. He is skeptical of statements from the military-industrial complex and AI tech companies about existential risks tied to claims that the U.S. is running out of munitions in the Iran war and therefore must build more bombs. He mentions Sam Altman of OpenAI saying AI is an existential threat that could take over the world. and that the argument becomes a pitch to put companies “in charge of it.” Mecklin calls that fear-mongering beneficial to those interests—while still acknowledging that nuclear and AI risks do exist to some degree.
The political pressure, in his view, becomes especially obvious in the numbers. He says the Trump administration asked for a 50% increase in the defense budget—$500 billion—and that officials haven’t explained what it would be spent on. He argues the U.S. is already spending “many times more than the nearest competitor on defense” and is “well on [its] way to enacting a $1.5 trillion defense budget.” He calls that a target the media should be able to pursue.
In his answer to whether the Doomsday Clock is effective or “gimmicky. ” Mecklin concedes the metaphorical nature of the clock but defends its reach. He says it explains existential risk to an audience in the “high tens of millions or low hundreds of millions” of people. and he describes it as unique in its ability to pull global attention for an extended news cycle.
The specific “why now” behind the January 2026 setting is central to his message. He says the board set the clock at 85 seconds to midnight in significant part because nuclear risk is extreme for a “lot of different. complicated reasons.” He points again to the internal logic of deterrence among the biggest nuclear powers—United States. Russia. and China—saying they know a purposeful attack is essentially suicidal and would end civilization.
That’s why he emphasizes miscalculation pathways: sensors can falsely indicate an attack. leading to mistaken responses and then responses to the response. Or a “small” or tactical nuclear weapon could be used to achieve a result that triggers escalation. He says Russia was considering this during the Ukraine war when some fronts looked like they could be overrun. describing the logic as “just the use of one or two. ” then escalation.
He also warns about the possibility that not all nuclear commands are perfectly centralized. He says it’s hard to say that all nuclear countries are led by level-headed. wise. deep-thinking people. and he argues that the risk could include attempted “small use” of nuclear weapons. mistakes. or individual commanders launching nuclear attacks that start escalation.
In that framing. he introduces an especially unsettling example: he says some Pakistani individual commanders can use battlefield nuclear weapons on their own and aren’t entirely centrally controlled during high tension. He asks the question aloud—if Pakistan used a nuclear weapon against India and India responded. would it drag in the whole world?. He doesn’t give a definitive answer. but says it could escalate. given ties between China and Pakistan and the U.S. and India.
Mecklin adds that he believes the risk could be reduced, including through agreements on notifications and continuing to abide by arsenal limits from previous arms control agreements. He argues that leaders aren’t even engaging in serious talks that could do that.
The political pressure around the Iran war and regional conflicts becomes part of his personal urgency. He says his science and security board’s assessment draws on the full range of nuclear hotspots. including ongoing U.S.-Israel war against Iran. the Ukraine and Russia conflict. Pakistan and India. and North Korea launching things. He calls it “an era of extremely heightened nuclear risk.”.
He also describes how that anxiety feels when it enters daily life. He says he remembers April 7. when Trump said “an entire civilization would disappear. ” and that he walked around with a “dark pit in my stomach” all day. struggling to focus. He tells readers he’s not surrendering to despair. but he says it seems possible that there could be a nuclear bomb dropped in his lifetime.
He pushes back against the idea that the answer is resignation. He says he views the situation as a challenge that is “fixable,” arguing that humans can undo what they’ve done if they have the will to care.
Mecklin is also pulled into one of the most persistent nuclear debates: whether giving up nuclear weapons makes a country less safe. He takes aim at the common Ukraine comparison. He says Ukraine had nuclear weapons stationed on its territory that were Soviet Union weapons. that “the keys were in Moscow. ” and that Ukraine had no ability to use them. He says Ukraine gave them back as part of an agreement to assure Ukraine’s independence.
He says Ukraine tried to have a security agreement and that the Russians violated the security agreement. But he argues that the nuclear arsenal itself wouldn’t have changed Russia’s decision-making. In his view. Russia’s ideology is the real driver: he describes Vladimir Putin’s obsession with reconstituting the Russian Empire or Soviet Union and says having a nuclear arsenal wouldn’t have protected Ukraine and may have caused Russia to invade sooner.
He contrasts that with what he says is a more straightforward test: South Africa is an example of a country giving up its nuclear weapons without being invaded afterward, “as far as I know.”
On the larger question—whether the world is safer if more countries have nukes—Mecklin’s answer is unambiguous. Nuclear proliferation, he says, multiplies the odds that there will be a mistake or miscalculation that causes nuclear weapons to be used.
That brings him back to Iran. He says focusing on preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is correct. but he criticizes how the Trump administration and the Netanyahu administration have handled it. He calls their approach “dumb. ” “thoughtless. shallow and unwise. ” and says it doesn’t reflect how to ensure long-term that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon. “And now it’s just a mess,” he says.
He also discusses the deal reached under President Barack Obama, saying he doesn’t think it was perfect, but that it was “at least diplomatic.” He argues there’s no way to bring people to the table by blowing them up.
He then shifts to a practical framework for risk reduction without requiring a world that goes straight to zero nuclear weapons. He says it’s complicated to debate the philosophical question of whether nuclear weapons create security or danger. and that he sticks to practical steps: existing nuclear countries could reduce their arsenals substantially without losing deterrence. and they could enter agreements that make accidental wars and escalations far less dangerous. That, he says, would let the world enforce the nonproliferation regime more effectively to keep more nuclear countries from emerging.
He doesn’t avoid the hard part either. The idea of getting to zero nuclear weapons. he says. becomes almost theological and theoretical once you consider that there are nine nuclear-armed countries. Even if the U.S. cut to 200 warheads along with Russia and China. he asks how you get to zero without feeling vulnerable to countries holding 20. 30 or 40 warheads.
But his core message stays fixed: the risk can be reduced through practical agreements and wiser leadership, and the failure to reduce it is what has brought the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight.
In his final sections, he insists the problem is leadership and incentives. He argues Trump’s money and alleged corruption don’t excuse the broader picture. He calls Putin’s Russia a kleptocracy. describes China as full of corruption and state-level companies “looting the place. ” and says all three countries have military-industrial complexes that support the political conditions for ongoing arms spending.
“What we need,” in his telling, is leadership that opposes mercenary interests when it’s really important to oppose them—leadership he says doesn’t exist right now.
When asked whether the public has an “empathy deficit,” he rejects the idea that Americans are numb to catastrophe. He says people are basically good and doesn’t believe they want the world to end. What’s different now, he argues, is that leaders haven’t harnessed that goodness.
Mecklin is retiring after 15 years as editor in chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. but the warning embedded in the clock is meant to outlast his tenure. The decision to set 85 seconds to midnight is, in his view, not a metaphor meant to soothe or entertain. It’s a statement that the danger remains high—because the political system still isn’t doing what’s necessary to reduce it.
And in a moment when the margins for error appear to be shrinking, he doesn’t argue that people should stop caring. He argues that they can’t afford to stop demanding restraint from the people holding the levers of escalation.
Doomsday Clock Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists nuclear proliferation arms control January 2026 85 seconds to midnight United States defense budget Trump administration Russia China Pakistan India North Korea Iran nuclear risk