NTI Calls for Reassessment of Economic and Financial Fallout of Nuclear Use

In today’s globally interconnected world, the use of a nuclear weapon could trigger cascading disruptions across international markets, supply chains, and digital networks. However, efforts to fully understand the economic havoc nuclear use would wreak have waned since the 1980s; the limited research that exists is outdated and insufficient. A new paper from NTI, “Global Nuclear Effects: Economic and Financial Fallout of Nuclear Use,” calls for an urgent reassessment of the economic consequences of nuclear conflict amid rising nuclear risks and deep global interdependencies.

The paper examines existing research on the economic and financial effects of nuclear use dating back to the 1950s and highlights how much has changed since scientists last focused on this issue. The global economic and financial system has undergone drastic changes in recent decades following an expansion of global trade, supply chains, financial markets, and an increasing reliance on digital infrastructure and emerging technologies. While the integration of global systems is a boon to the modern global economy, it also introduces deep systemic vulnerabilities that would exacerbate the cascading environmental, economic, and societal effects of nuclear use.

The paper lays out a forward-looking agenda for bringing attention to nuclear effects and filling key gaps in the current understanding of economic and financial consequences of nuclear use, including:

• How nuclear use could disrupt critical nodes in infrastructure and manufacturing and trigger cascading global effects across highly integrated supply chains

• How digitalization impacts both the vulnerabilities and the recovery prospects of economies following nuclear use

• How technologies at the heart of the financial system would respond to the direct effects of an electromagnetic pulse (a burst of energy from a nuclear detonation that can disable electronic systems) and to the secondary disruptions caused by failures in telecommunications, the electric grid, and other critical systems

• How the accelerating electrification of the economy and rapid integration of artificial intelligence across sectors drives exposure to prolonged infrastructure disruptions

• How governance structures would perform in the aftermath of nuclear use

• How social and psychological factors influence financial recovery.

With nuclear risks on the rise, NTI is committed to supporting efforts to answer these high-stakes questions and providing policymakers and business leaders with a more complete understanding of the global consequences of nuclear weapons use.