Nuclear Threat Initiative

So I think what you're referring to is the Global Health Security Index, which is a project that I co-lead, which is informed by the Global Health Security Agenda, but is totally separate from it.

So with the index, what we tried to do, and this is something that I started when previously I was on the faculty at Johns Hopkins and started there, but now are working on at my new academic home at Brown, along with colleagues at the Nuclear Threat Initiative and in partnership with Economist Enterprise, which is the research arm of the Economist magazine.

And what the Global Health Security

Index aims to do is to bolster things like the WHO and the Global Health Security Agenda by providing an independent measurement of what capacities countries have using publicly available data.

Meanwhile, the IAEA says it's observed construction activity at Iran's Pickaxe Mountain site, which is suspected of housing nuclear-related activities.

Joining us now is Ernest Moniz, the former US Secretary of Energy, former CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

He is now the CEO of the Energy Futures, uh, Initiative.

Secretary Moniz, thank you very much for being with us once again.

But policy that's based on only how the technology is being used today will underreact.

That was Haley Severance, Deputy Vice President at the Nuclear Threat Initiative's biosecurity program, NTI Bio.

Haley has spent her career at the intersection of public health, biosecurity and national and global security, including time supporting the government at the Pentagon and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

She now works with governments and other stakeholders on how to manage emerging biological risks without stifling innovation.

So AI is a safety net then too, another important utilization of it.

You've been listening to the FedThread podcast.

I'm your host, Alex Witt, joined today by Haley Severance, Deputy Vice President at the Nuclear Threat Initiative's Biosecurity Program, NTI Bio.

She's sharing with us some of the extraordinary advances happening at the intersection of AI and biology, as well as how government can hedge against the double-edged sword of the threats that rapid innovation creates without undoing the gains.

Looking forward to you joining us on our next episode, The Breakthrough Problem.

Can government innovate without creating bigger risks? We'll pull the thread with Haley Severance, Deputy VP of the Nuclear Threat Initiative's Biosecurity Program, about how government can encourage scientific breakthroughs without opening itself up to even bigger security threats.

I'll see you then.

Well, you could do the same with nuclear weapons.

One of my colleagues at the Nuclear Threat Initiative produced a wonderful report on this warning that you could have a hacker, not even a state, but an independent hacker spoof the US early warning system, make us think we're being attacked when we're not.

You could penetrate the weapons to make them so they won't go off when we push the button.

You could penetrate the weapons here or in other countries so that they would go off even when nobody pushed a button.