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An existential timeline of the Trump/Pence and Biden/Harris presidencies

Photo-illustration by Thomas Gaulkin; photos via Getty Images.

The 2024 US presidential election has already entered history books as one of the most unusual and tumultuous in the American experience. Through a political tornado of personality clashes, octogenarian misfires, assassination attempts, bizarre accusations, and a last-minute change of candidate, voters in the United States have had their work cut out for them trying to understand what is really at stake in the decision they make on November 5.

On that day, the world will hold its breath, waiting for a result that could dictate the entire planet’s future. The differences between the candidates on the ballot could not be more apparent: a 78-year-old white man from New York and Florida is up against a 60-year-old biracial woman from California. And yet, on the day Joe Biden yields the White House in January, the problems and crises the winning candidate will be tasked to solve will be the same.

Donald Trump, with Mike Pence, presided over four years of diplomatic upheaval (including the trashing of nuclear agreements) the emergence of a microscopic virus capable of global destruction, and repeated attacks on environmental regulation and scientific reason. Kamala Harris, as vice president to Joe Biden, has been at the top of US government while major wars and arms control failures have endangered the nuclear taboo, while climate temperature records fall and ice melts at a terrifying pace, and while artificial intelligence advances increasingly undermine confidence in reality. Democracy itself, many claim, is on the ballot. On election day, both candidates who hope to take charge should be scrutinized and held to account for their administration’s actions, and failures, to address the nuclear, climatic, and other major threats to the future of human civilization.

To help with that, Bulletin editors have gathered highlights (or in some cases low-lights) of the Trump/Pence and Biden/Harris administrations in the timeline below, which is arranged according to the Bulletin's four primary coverage areas: nuclear risk, climate change, disruptive technologies, and biosecurity. The editors identified key legislative and policy decisions alongside extraordinary public events and milestones during both  administrations. Regardless of your political inclinations, a scroll through this timeline of existential threats faced by the two most recent US presidencies is a stark reminder that the United States, and the world, continue to face some of the greatest dangers to world security and civilization in history—and that every vote cast is a vote for how to respond to those dangers, with profound consequences for every person in America, and around the world.

Thomas Gaulkin, Multimedia Editor

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An existential timeline of the Trump/Pence and Biden/Harris presidencies

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Select from the Bulletin's key topic areas to focus on specific existential concerns:

Biden →

Trump - Pence administration (2017-2021)

Trump - Pence administration (2017-2021)
March 28, 2017

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Two months into his presidency, Trump signs the Executive Order on Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth. Among other things, it requires agency leaders to review policies “that potentially burden the development or use of domestically produced energy resources, with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy resources.”

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June 1, 2017

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Building on a slew of climate policy rollbacks in his first 100 days in office, Trump announces his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord.

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July 2017

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The UN overwhelmingly adopts a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Largely dismissed by the United States and other countries possessing nuclear weapons, the ban treaty gains widespread attention after the leaders of the treaty effort receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their work.

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August 8, 2017

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Trump threatens to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea as tensions between Washington and Pyongyang escalate during a series of North Korean missile tests and one underground detonation of what was reported to be a hydrogen bomb. According to The New York Times, Trump tells reporters at his golf course in Bedminster, NJ that “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

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September 20, 2017

The United States and United Kingdom Sign Landmark Science and Technology Agreement

The White House announces that the United States and the United Kingdom have signed an agreement to cooperate on, among other things, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence.

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October 2017

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

As part of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, the US Global Change Research Program release the Climate Science Special Report, an authoritative assessment of global climate change with a focus on the United States. The report finds that the global annual average air surface temperature increased 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 115 years. It also predicts wetter and more destructive hurricanes in the East, and the possibility of chronic drought and water shortages in the West.

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January 2, 2018

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Trump taunts North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un over the relative sizes of the US and North Korean nuclear arsenals. “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” Trump tweets. The tweet heightens tension in US-North Korea relations and follows an earlier Trump reference to Kim as “little rocket man.”

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January 13, 2018

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

As US-North Korea tensions increase, residents of Hawaii receive a false alert instructing them to seek shelter due to an incoming ballistic missile. Thirty-eight minutes of panic ensue.

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April 2018

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un begin exchanging a 16-month-long series of “love letters” that mark an easing of tensions between the United States and North Korea.

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May 2018

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The United States withdraws from the Iran nuclear deal, a signature achievement of the Obama/Biden administration.

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June 2018

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Trump meets Kim Jong-un during the US-North Korea Singapore Summit. In a joint statement that seems to mark a distinct change in the countries’ relations, Trump and Kim say their countries “have committed to cooperate for the development of new US–DPRK relations and for the promotion of peace, prosperity, and security of the Korean Peninsula and of the world.”

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October 2018

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The United States threatens to withdraw from the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia.

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November 2018

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The Fourth National Climate Assessment warns that climate change could have drastic consequences for the nation's economy, reducing gross domestic product by up to 10 percent by the end of the century.

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December 21, 2018

National Quantum Initiative Act

Trump signs into law a bill that commits $1.2 billion to advance quantum technology over five years.

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January 2019

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

A Department of Defense report identifies dozens of military installations that could be vulnerable to climate threats like flooding, drought, and wildfires.

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February 11, 2019

The American AI Initiative

Trump signs an executive order asking federal agencies to dedicate more resources into artificial intelligence. The order is meant to bolster research and development, infrastructure, and governance, among other things.

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March 2, 2019

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

After two years of sometimes rancorous, sometimes flattering back-and-forth public diplomacy between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a much-heralded summit between the two in Hanoi, Vietnam ends in failure.

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May 2019

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The Trump administration sharply curtails federal climate science research by instructing the interagency task force that produces the National Climate Assessment to not look past 2040 when assessing the impacts of climate change under continued fossil fuel use.

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August 2019

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The United States formally withdraws from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and resumes testing missiles that would have been banned under the treaty.

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Autumn 2019

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The United States begins deploying the new W76-2 low-yield nuclear warhead on its ballistic missile submarines.

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December 20, 2019

Launching Space Force

Trump signs a $738 billion defense spending bill that created the US Space Force. The sixth branch of the country’s armed forces’ mission is to secure the United States’ interests in space.

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December 31, 2019

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

News media begin reporting on Chinese authorities investigating a mysterious pneumonia circulating in the city of Wuhan in China. By the end of January, the World Health Organization (WHO) declares the disease now called COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern.

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January 22, 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

After a case of COVID is detected in Washington State, Trump tells CNBC, “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” In the months that follow, Trump repeatedly downplays the severity of the crisis.

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February 10, 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Eleven days after the WHO declares COVID a public health emergency of international concern, the Trump administration releases a budget proposal that includes heavy cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as did his proposals in previous years. Experts criticize Trump for such moves, including his disbanding of the National Security Council directorate for pandemic preparedness in 2018. Trump has pledged to disband a similar unit, the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response, if re-elected in 2024.

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March 23, 2020

Secure 5G and Beyond Act

Trump signs legislation meant to adopt secure 5G technology, which, while more powerful than its previous iterations, is also more vulnerable to attacks.

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March 26, 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Trump’s EPA uses the pandemic as an excuse to weaken environmental rules, allowing power plants and other industrial facilities to monitor their own compliance with emissions rules and declining to issue fines for some reporting violations.

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March 31, 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Trump weakens emission standards for automobiles. It is estimated that the move will result in an additional one billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States.

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March/April 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Most states issue official “stay at home” orders that curtail non-essential business. But the moves, backed by health experts and intended to slow the spread of the pandemic, come along with a massive economic shock as schools, businesses, and travel shudder to a halt. After initially backing the pandemic mitigation measures, Trump quickly begins vacillating, telling reporters on March 23, “America will again and soon be open for business. Very soon. A lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting.”

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May 1, 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Trump claims that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese lab, siding, without offering any evidence, with those who believe that the pandemic was the result of a research accident in Wuhan, one of the world’s major bat coronavirus research centers. Trump initially had praise for Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s pandemic response, “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!” he tweeted in January. But as the pandemic worsens, Trump changes his tune, frequently calling COVID the “China virus,” language that some Asian Americans say leads to incidents of verbal and physical abuse against them.

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May 15, 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

After Chinese scientists release the genetic sequence for SARS-CoV-2, governments and companies like Pfizer and Moderna pivot toward quickly developing, testing, and mass producing a vaccine, a daunting task given that vaccines can take between 10-15 years to develop. The US government program, Operation Warp Speed, officially announced on May 15, sets out to have large quantities of vaccine by January 2021, eight months from the announcement.

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May 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The Trump administration reportedly discusses carrying out a nuclear test explosion, which would upend a consensus held by the previous four US presidents that refraining from such testing is in the country’s best interests. No test is conducted.

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May 26-27, 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The United States surpasses 100,000 COVID deaths. Trump credits himself with keeping the numbers at that level. “For all of the political hacks out there, if I hadn’t done my job well, & early, we would have lost 1 1/2 to 2 Million People, as opposed to the 100,000 plus that looks like will be the number,” he tweets.

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July 7, 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The United States officially tells the United Nations that it is withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO). Trump accuses China of concealing the seriousness of the pandemic and the WHO of being “China centric.”

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September 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The US Air Force awards the defense company Northrop Grumman an initial contract for the building of a new $100 billion intercontinental ballistic missile known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (now called Sentinel) to replace the existing fleet of Minuteman III missiles.

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October 2, 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Trump and his wife, Melania, test positive for COVID, amid a re-election campaign with frequent large gatherings of mainly maskless attendees and other risky situations. Trump receives experimental treatments while recovering from COVID, an indication to some of the severity of his illness. Before leaving the hospital, a defiant Trump tweets, “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!.”

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October 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The final month of the 2020 presidential election is dominated by concerns over the pandemic. Joe Biden makes Trump’s oversight over the US pandemic response and his (in Biden’s view) callousness toward the toll COVID was exacting a central argument for his candidacy.

COVID deaths had spiked past 200,000 in late September, but in the campaign’s final stretch, Trump had stopped embracing the pandemic control measures such as masking, social distancing, and restrictions on gatherings endorsed by many health experts in the days before a vaccine became available.

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November 3, 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Many voters choose to use mail-in ballots in the presidential election, in part due to fears over the pandemic. Some states allow these ballots to be counted before Election Day, but others require that authorities wait, leading to delays as batches of ballots are tabulated after the polls had officially closed. The Associated Press doesn’t project that Biden will win until four days after the election. Trump, who had long spread false conspiracy theories about mail-in voting, falsely argues that vote counting delays, which had been expected, were allowing Democrats to steal the election. On the day after the election, he tweets, “Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the “pollsters” got it completely & historically wrong!”

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November 4, 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The United States begins the process to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The withdrawal, which would not have taken effect for a year, is quickly rescinded by the incoming Biden administration.

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December 11, 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The Food and Drug Administration gives an emergency use authorization to Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, green-lighting the first phase of the US vaccinations. Trump, who for weeks has been making false claims about having won the 2020 presidential election, intermingles the vaccine news and his grievances as he tweets, “The Swine Flu (H1N1), and the attempt for a vaccine by the Obama Administration, with Joe Biden in charge, was a complete and total disaster. Now they want to come in and take over one of the ‘greatest and fastest medical miracles in modern day history.’ I don’t think so.”

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December 14, 2020

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Sandra Lindsay, a nurse in New York City, becomes the first person in the United States to receive a shot outside of clinical trials on December 14. Trump receives a COVID vaccine in January before leaving the White House, encouraging others to get the shot, too.

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January 6, 2021

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Trump’s election denialism culminates in a crowd of his supporters storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, an attempt to violently halt the official certification of the 2020 presidential election results. The event prompts global fear about the future stability of democracy in the United States. Subsequent reports document that the insurrectionist mob came within about 30 yards of then-Vice President Mike Pence—and the Air Force officer carrying the nuclear “football” that contains the codes to validate orders for launching nuclear weapons. In the days thereafter, according to an NBC News report about the book Peril by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post, then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley seeking to keep Trump “from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.” According to the book, Milley told Pelosi, “I can guarantee you, you can take it to the bank, that there'll be, that the nuclear triggers are secure and we're not going to do — we're not going to allow anything crazy, illegal, immoral or unethical to happen.”

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January 8, 2021

Twitter bans Trump

Twitter disables Trump’s account due to what it considers violent rhetoric. “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them—specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter—we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the company says in a statement.

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January 20, 2021

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The New York Times compiles a list of more than 100 environmental rules that the Trump administration rolled back while he was in office.

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← Trump

Biden - Harris administration (2021-2025)

Biden - Harris administration (2021-2025)
January 20, 2021

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

On his first day in office, President Biden moves immediately to rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change.

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January 22, 2021

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons enters into force, though none of the nuclear states have signed.

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March 10, 2021

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The US National Intelligence Council reports that “Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US … A key element of Moscow’s strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives—including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden—to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration.” The intelligence community also reports that Iran “carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects—though without directly promoting his rivals—undermine public confidence in the electoral process and US institutions, and sow division and exacerbate societal tensions in the US.”

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March 25, 2021

Tech CEOs appear before Congress

Lawmakers grill the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook, and Google about their handling of misinformation and violence. The hearing, which lasts longer than five hours, is the first of its kind, after the January 6 attack of the Capitol, which unleashed a wave of falsehoods and rhetoric on the internet.

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April 22, 2021

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

On Earth Day, Biden sets a target goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent across the entire economy by 2030.

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August 9, 2021

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The first part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report is published, stating that a global temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius is virtually guaranteed over the next two decades, even if emissions are slashed immediately. It states that climate changes are "unprecedented" and in some cases "irreversible."

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September 9, 2021

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Biden announces vaccination requirements for large employers and 17 million health care workers. By then, the FDA has granted full approval to a coronavirus vaccine, yet, many Americans remain unvaccinated, Biden says, citing a “distinct minority” of politicians and vaccine holdouts who were slowing progress on the pandemic. “Many of us are frustrated with the nearly 80 million Americans who are still not vaccinated, even though the vaccine is safe, effective, and free,” he says. “The time for waiting is over.”

These mandates and others become the subjects of numerous lawsuits and a growing anti-vaccine movement in the country.

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November 2021

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Biden attends COP26 in Glasgow, where nearly 200 nations sign onto the Glasgow Climate Pact, which includes the first ever commitment to "phase down" the use of coal.

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February 24, 2022

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Russia begins a full-scale attack on Ukraine. As Russian troops appear to make quick progress toward Kyiv, an old bit of disinformation—that the United States is developing biological weapons, now with Ukriaine—resurfaces. For many years, Russia, Ukraine, the United States and others had worked cooperatively to reduce the threat of Soviet nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons falling into the wrong hands and to prevent Soviet weaponeers from seeking employment with the highest bidder. But as Ukraine increasingly sought ties with the West, and the relationship between Russia and the United States frayed, Russia cast previous cooperative efforts in a false light. President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials and state media begin to falsely depict a public health laboratory program in Ukraine as a bioweapons operation, in a Russian effort to justify the invasion.

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March 10, 2022

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Right-wing figures in the United States parrot Russian bioweapons disinformation. Tucker Carlson, then a major figure on Fox News, mischaracterizes a Bulletin interview with Robert Pope, the director of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which worked with Ukrainian labs on public health research. Pope had told the Bulletin he was concerned that the war might damage labs holding pathogens or that Russia would use information from ransacked facilities to create disinformation.

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May 2022

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Countries in Europe begin reporting cases of mpox. The disease, which has long circulated in African countries, spreads quickly, mainly within communities of men who have sex with men. Some 100,000 people are infected in two years during the global outbreak, with many suffering debilitating but usually not fatal illness. Critics say the US response is allowing the disease to gain a foothold in the United States. Case numbers come down and in the United States a vaccine becomes available, but mpox is still circulating in October 2024, according to the CDC. A more worrisome variant is today circulating in several African countries, drawing renewed concern.

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June 21-23, 2022

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Participants in the first meeting of states parties of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), also known as the nuclear ban treaty, fail to agree on mentioning Russia’s nuclear threats and rhetoric in its war against Ukraine in their formal declaration.

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June 25, 2022

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Russian President Vladimir Putin announces that Russia will deploy some of its nuclear weapons in Belarus.

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August 9, 2022

CHIPS and Science Act

Signed into law by Biden, the CHIPS and Science Act authorizes $280 billion of funding (with $52 billion for semiconductor incentives) to revitalize the country’s semiconductor industry through research, development, and manufacturing.

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August 16, 2022

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act into law, providing $369 billion in tax credits for and investments in climate and clean energy projects. Biden calls the act “the biggest step forward on climate ever.”

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October 2022

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Russia reportedly contemplates the use of nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine, recklessly threatening the nuclear taboo, a 77-year tradition of non-use.

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October 27, 2022

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The Biden administration releases its 2022 Nuclear Posture Review—delayed because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February—which some experts view as a failure or even as a step backward in efforts to reduce global nuclear risk.

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October 27, 2022

Musk buys Twitter

After months of back and forth and legal challenges, Elon Musk buys the Twitter social media platform for $44 billion. Content moderation on the platform, renamed X, is greatly diminished, allowing a proliferation of misinformation, harassment, and hate speech.

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November 2, 2022

FTX collapse

The Bahamas-based cryptocurrency company FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, files for bankruptcy after its competitor Binance backs out of purchasing—and saving—the company. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is subsequently charged with and convicted of a host of criminal charges related to the company.

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November 30, 2022

ChatGPT launch

OpenAI releases a demo of its generative artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, which can engage in natural language processing tasks. The public launch of the chatbot, prompts other developers, including Anthropic and Google, to release their own generative AI apps.

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December 2022

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The Energy Department announces it conducted the first controlled fusion experiment at its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF), which the department and enthusiasts hail as a breakthrough that could lead to the use of fusion energy to provide carbon-free electricity and fight climate change. In reality, the NIF effort is aimed primarily at monitoring the United States nuclear weapons stockpile.

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February 2023

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Russia suspends its participation in New START (the US-Russian treaty that limits the two countries’ deployed long-range nuclear forces) and later revokes its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

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May 11, 2023

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The Department of Health and Human Services allows the Public Health Emergency for COVID to end. The administration claims that 270 million people have been vaccinated against COVID, and that deaths have dropped 95 percent from January 2021. Some experts worry that the end of the emergency might lead the pandemic to fall from public attention, even though the virus is still circulating. By this point, more than one million people have died of COVID in the United States.

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June 6, 2023

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Russia allegedly destroys the Kakhovka dam—located about 70 kilometers upstream of the city of Kherson in Ukraine—which serves as the cooling reservoir for the embattled six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and a major source of water for drinking and irrigation.

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July 21, 2023

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated biopic Oppenheimer premieres in IMAX theaters around the world, reviving public interest in arms control and nuclear weapons policy.

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October 12, 2023

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States releases its report, disappointing many in the arms control and disarmament community who see it as encouraging a new arms race and a nuclear buildup.

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October 24, 2023

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The International Energy Agency predicts that fossil fuel use will peak before 2030, as clean energy becomes more affordable.

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October 30, 2023

Executive order on AI

Biden signs an executive order on artificial intelligence, an effort for the United States to take the lead on AI regulation. Among other things, the order promotes innovation and competition and requires developers to conduct safety tests of their models.

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AI and biosecurity

The order deals, in large part, with ensuring the fast-developing technology won’t be used to develop biological weapons or facilitate bioattacks. It also calls for standards for the DNA synthesis industry, a field that will have enormous scientific research benefits but might also help in creating a bioweapon. The order warns that the danger of misuse of DNA synthesis could be “substantially increased” by AI. But researchers remain split on whether technologies like ChatGPT might help in the development of a bioweapon.

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November 1, 2023

Harris warns of AI existential threat

At a summit in the United Kingdom, Vice President Kamala Harris calls attention to the risks posed by AI: “From AI-enabled cyberattacks at a scale beyond anything we have seen before to AI-formulated bioweapons that could endanger the lives of millions, these threats are often referred to as the ‘existential threats of AI’ because, of course, they could endanger the very existence of humanity.”

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November 17, 2023

Sam Altman fired from OpenAI

The board of OpenAI fires its founder, Sam Altman, likely due to ideological differences; cofounder Greg Brockman quits in protest. Several days later Altman is reinstated as the company’s CEO and the two board members who had voted to oust him are replaced.

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December 2, 2023

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The United States and 21 other countries pledge to triple the global nuclear energy capacity by 2050. Many experts contend the goal is unattainable.

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December 2023

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

Kamala Harris attends the COP28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates. The resulting climate agreement is the first to directly call for a shift away from all kinds of fossil fuels. A loss and damage fund is created to support the most climate-vulnerable countries.

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January 9, 2024

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

The Copernicus Climate Change Service announces that 2023 was the hottest year on record, surpassing 2016, the previous record holder, by a large margin. Daily global temperatures briefly surpassed pre-industrial levels by more than 2 degrees Celsius.

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February 14, 2024

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

US intelligence warns—though it doesn’t offer details—about Russia wanting to place nuclear weapons in space, which would constitute a violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

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March 16, 2024

US vs Apple

The Justice Department files a lawsuit against the tech giant Apple for monopolizing the smartphone and applications markets. Among other things, the lawsuit aims to stop Apple from “blocking cloud-streaming apps, undermining messaging across smartphone operating systems and preventing the creation of digital wallet alternatives.”

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March 2024

Bird flu jumps to humans

H5N1 avian influenza is detected in US dairy cattle. The virus has been decimating wild and domesticated birds for years, worrying health experts who have long seen it as a pandemic threat. Finding it in dairy cattle raises concerns that the avian virus could adapt to better infect mammals, including humans. The Biden administration’s efforts to grasp the full extent of the outbreak run into political hurdles, however, as some farmers and local officials balked at or rejected federal inquiries. By October 21, there are 31 reported cases of H5N1 in people in the United States.

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May 6, 2024

Gain of function

The Biden administration releases a new policy on federally-funded research involving pathogens manipulated to enhance their pandemic potential as well as dual-use biological research (research that can have both positive and malicious applications). Experts had long been clamoring for a new “gain of function” policy. The debate over so-called “gain-of-function research” heated up during the COVID pandemic, when some began to believe the virus might have spread from a “lab leak” in Wuhan, China; researchers there, working with US funding, manipulated bat coronaviruses in ways that made them more harmful to lab mice. There is yet no conclusive evidence about how COVID began. A leading theory is that it resulted from the spillover of the virus from animals to people.

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July 19, 2024

Global CrowdStrike outage

A faulty update to Crowdstrike cybersecurity software causes what’s called “the largest IT outage in history.” The outage, which disrupts flights, crashes computers, and affects banks, hotels, and hospitals, is reported to cause more than $5 billion in damages.

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August 5, 2024

Courts declare Google a monopoly

In a landmark decision, a judge rules that the tech giant Google had violated antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly on searches and some of its advertising. The Department of Justice is now considering breaking up Google as a remedy to the ruling.

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September 25, 2024

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR

In a change to his country's official nuclear doctrine, Putin warns that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it is struck by long-range missiles the West provides to Ukraine.

Courts declare Google a monopoly

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