The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future

by Mustafa Suleyman

A turning point came in 1968 with the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, a landmark moment when nations explicitly agreed never to develop nuclear weapons. The world had come together to decisively arrest the proliferation of nuclear weapons to new states. From the first test, their destructive power was clear. Popular revulsion at the possibility of a thermonuclear apocalypse was a powerful motivator for signing the treaty. But these weapons have also been contained by cold calculation. Mutually assured destruction hemmed in possessors since it soon became clear that using them in anger is a quick way of ensuring your own destruction. They’re also eye-wateringly expensive and difficult to manufacture. Not only do they require rare and difficult-to-handle materials like enriched uranium-235, but maintaining and ultimately decommissioning them is also challenging. Lack of widespread demand has meant little pressure to reduce costs and grow access; they are not subject to the classic cost curves of modern consumer technology. These were never going to spread like transistors or flat-screen TVs; producing fissile material is not like rolling aluminum. Nonproliferation is in no small part a function of the fact that building a nuke is one of the largest, most expensive, and most complicated endeavors a state can embark on.

MAD, Scarcity, and the NPT: Why Nuclear Tech Bucked the Cost Curve