On 8–9 May, SIPRI, in partnership with the EastWest Institute, held the fourth and final in a series of workshops on ‘Mapping the Impact of Machine Learning and Autonomy on Strategic Stability and Nuclear Risk’, at the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
With a transregional focus on doctrinal and technical dynamics spanning the Euro-Atlantic region, East Asia and South Asia, the workshop brought together over 25 academic, diplomatic, legal, military and technical experts from China, France, India, Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The two-day workshop included scenarios and presentations from its participants on regional and transregional trends. It concluded with an in-depth exploration of confidence-building measures to mitigate potential escalation and miscalculation.
The workshop was led by Dr Lora Saalman, Dr Vincent Boulanin and Dr Petr Topychkanov. The first workshop in the series was held at SIPRI in Stockholm on 22–23 May 2018. The second workshop was held in Beijing on 6–7 September 2018. The third workshop was held in Sri Lanka on 25–26 February 2019. The workshop findings will feed into a final project report, which will be available in the autumn of 2019. A series of edited volumes have been generated from each regional workshop, with the first on Euro-Atlantic dynamics released in May 2019.
About the project
The two-year project on ‘Mapping the Impact of Machine Learning and Autonomy on Strategic Stability and Nuclear Risk’ is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. It aims to gain a better understanding of the potential impact of the emerging technologies on strategic stability among all nuclear-armed states and their neighbours.