The world faces urgent nuclear and biological risks, compounded by artificial intelligence and emerging technology. At NTI, we don’t just talk about solutions—we work with partners to design, test, and scale them. Using this model, we have a 25-year track record of making the world safer from preventable catastrophe.
What will look different in five years, if we act now?
Looking ahead, we are deepening our impact by empowering policymakers and holding them accountable, fostering innovative technologies that fill critical gaps, and rallying influential voices to demand a safer world.
Global security around nuclear and biological threats will be stronger and more transparent.
Governments will have clearer plans to keep us safe and better tools to reduce risks.
Public understanding and demand for safer policies will grow, driving meaningful change.
Emerging technologies will be managed responsibly to prevent misuse
Together, we’ll transform today’s threats into tomorrow’s safer world.
Why are we optimistic? We’ve made progress before.
NTI Makes the World Safer
We permanently eliminated terrorist threats by helping remove poorly secured highly enriched uranium (HEU) from a Serbian nuclear reactor, then catalyzed a $3+ billion U.S. government program which removes or safeguards vulnerable HEU and plutonium globally.
We persuaded the U.S. government to undertake an independent, fail-safe review of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, with an emphasis on cyber vulnerabilities—to make sure we’re protected against an unauthorized, inadvertent, or accidental use of a nuclear weapon. And now we’re working to convince other nuclear-armed countries to do the same.
NTI Creates New Paradigms
We have a new strategy for the global expansion of nuclear energy—a unique partnership to bring governments, industry, and experts together to provide electricity around the world, support climate goals, and ensure that nuclear technologies and materials are used only for peaceful purposes, not to build nuclear weapons.
We established the world’s first low-enriched uranium bank to prevent the spread of technology which could be used peacefully or to develop nuclear weapons, enabling countries to access nuclear fuel without risking the spread of nuclear weapons to new countries.
NTI Develops Revolutionary New Tools
We developed a free, open-source, globally available software tool for DNA synthesis providers to screen incoming orders to prevent the building blocks of life from being misapplied to cause harm.
We provided a blueprint for identifying high-risk or illicit nuclear trade activities at scale. By using machine learning techniques to analyze commercially available trade data, analysts uncovered previously unknown companies that constitute a nuclear proliferation risk from millions of trade transactions.
NTI Incubates New Organizations
We helped conceive and create the independent Vienna-based World Institute for Nuclear Security (WINS) to disseminate best practices for nuclear materials security among a membership that now totals more than 10,000 members from 172 countries.
We launched IBBIS, International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS), a Geneva-based organization working collaboratively with global partners to strengthen biosecurity norms and develop innovative tools to uphold them.
We created the Cyber Nuclear Forum to strengthen cybersecurity of civilian nuclear facilities around the world. Convening operational and technical experts from nuclear facilities, the Forum addresses shared challenges against this constantly evolving and growing threat—a successful attack could have consequences that reverberate around the world and undermine global confidence in civilian nuclear power.
NTI Benchmarks Global Progress
We produced the first comprehensive assessment and benchmarking of health security and related capabilities across 195 countries. The GHS Index spurs measurable changes in national health security and improves international capability to address one of the world’s most omnipresent risks: infectious disease outbreak that can lead to international epidemics and pandemics.
We created the NTI Nuclear Security Index, a first-of-its-kind, public benchmark of nuclear security conditions in 176 countries. This data-rich index tracks progress on nuclear security and identifies priorities for action. Editorializing on NTI’s recommendations, The New York Times wrote: “World leaders should push this agenda forward.”
NTI is Shifting the Narrative
We organized cultural leaders and seeded stories that help the public to challenge the outdated belief that nuclear weapons make us safer.
We built a coalition to persuade Nevada lawmakers to pass a unanimous, bipartisan resolution opposing any resumption of dangerous explosive nuclear weapons testing.
NTI Empowers Leaders
We are consistently an engine of talent for women in the nuclear-policy field and bringing new perspectives to a field historically dominated by men.
We’ve built a network of next-generation, rising stars in the Euro-Atlantic region who are working collaboratively to tackle nuclear threats once fueled by historic animosities. Now 150-members strong, the network includes specialists in security policy, economics, journalism, law and civil society from across Europe.
At NTI, we’re driven by a vision of a safer, more secure world. That future isn’t inevitable, but if we act now, we can build it. Together.
Our Impact Model
NTI’s Impact Model drives our work to create the necessary systemic change for a safer world by galvanizing large-scale institutional adoption of proven global security practices and programs.
Our expert analysis shines a bright light on critical security gaps and generates actionable threat-reduction solutions. By stimulating the collective self-interest of government and private-sector forces around the world, NTI then cultivates collaboration and momentum around those solutions. These partnerships forge pilot initiatives that demonstrate and de-risk proposals to catalyze large-scale, enduring institutional adoption.
Build a Brighter Future
Join us to address threats and build a safer world
And with your Nuclear Threat Initiative, you helped us ratify the New START treaty, rally the world to secure nuclear materials, strengthen the global non-proliferation regime, and create an international fuel bank for peaceful nuclear power. … That’s an extraordinary legacy and an extraordinary record.
The Nuclear Threat Initiative has undertaken a large number of practical activities that have directly improved international security and U.S. security. They have done things that will ensure that nuclear material can never be in the hands of terrorists.
