Matt Boyd & Ben Payne TLDR Introduction The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet proactively released two Cabinet papers describing a plan for improving how security risks of national significance are managed in New Zealand. These Cabinet papers address aspects of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch terror attacks, the ongoing development of … Continue reading "Development of a National Security Strategy (plus NEMA) is one part of a National Risk Approach"

Matt Boyd, Nick Wilson, Ben Payne (12 min read) TLDR: The draft NZ National Security Long-term Insights Briefing (already informed by a public survey) is currently out for public consultation.

Seminar 21 Oct 2022 Ahead of our forthcoming Aotearoa New Zealand Catastrophe Resilience Project, I presented a seminar at the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. You can listen to the audio of the seminar here (90 min total, question time with the CSER audience begins at 58:30). The slides associated with the presentation can be downloaded here.

This post introduces the Aotearoa NZ Catastrophe Resilience Project (NZCat), and outlines the aims, methods, and results of the project. You can read a range of project blogs here.

This is a link post to our new long-read on nuclear winter and abrupt sunlight reducing scenarios.

This short piece is a reply to Dr Reuben Steff’s insightful new article about geopolitics and strategic risks to New Zealand on Newsroom : https://www.newsroom.co.nz/nz-cant-kick-the-can-on-global-crises Great piece Reuben, and I largely agree with your assessment.

TLDR : This post surveys Peter Zeihan’s new book on demographic trends and geopolitical strife, in which he warns of future severe disruptions to global trade, and the likelihood of industrial collapse in many regions.

This instalment of the Adapt Research Blog brings you a selection of Matt’s recent audio and video presentations. These appeared in podcast, radio and conference format through April–June 2022. Podcast with Ben Reid of Memia (6 June, 2022): Global Catastrophic and Existential Risks (66 min) – Covering: Risks, risk analysis, refuges, strategic planning. Full details in the show notes.

The CCCR 2022 was held as a hybrid in-person and online conference 19–21 April 2022. Opened by Lord Martin Rees, the conference attracted researchers and policymakers with an interest in global catastrophic risks such as biological threats, artificial intelligence, nuclear war, volcanic eruption and food shortages. Attendees engaged with keynote speakers, panel discussions, workshops and 7 minute lightning talks.

Dr Matt Boyd & Prof Nick Wilson* Efforts to prevent nuclear war should be greatly intensified – but we must also consider what happens if prevention fails. NZ is often cited as somewhere most likely to preserve a thriving society through a nuclear aftermath. However, our society is a complex adaptive system heavily dependent on trade.

(9 min read) Dr Matt Boyd & Prof Nick Wilson In this blog we briefly review the literature on the probability of nuclear war and what various models estimate to be the potential global climate impacts (eg, of nuclear winter). Although New Zealand is relatively well placed as a major food producer – a range of mitigation strategies could increase the probability of sustaining food security during a recovery period.