"Krone" commentary

Doomsday Clock

Christian Baha is a stock market expert and founded Austria's first stock exchange terminal in 1993, which delivers data in real time. In 1996, he established the world's first hedge fund for private investors. Baha has always pursued the vision of making funds for wealthy individuals accessible to smaller investors.(Bild: Krone KREATIV/stock.adobe.com)

Robert Oppenheimer, whose filmed life story as the father of the atomic bomb won this year's Oscars, founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists together with Albert Einstein and other scientists in 1945. To this day, this high-caliber committee not only provides information on developments in atomic research, but has also reset the Doomsday Clock every year since 1947. The Doomsday Clock shows how close the world is to the precipice of thermonuclear war. Since January 2024, the hands have been at 90 seconds to midnight. Never before, warns this committee of researchers and Nobel Prize winners, has the risk of nuclear war been as high as it is now - through pure chance, pure intent or gross miscalculation.

In fact, the risk is also increased by artificial intelligence, which takes the use of nuclear weapons into account as a further component in the calculation of possibilities. Added to this is the sword of Damocles known as a super-GAU: just this week, a drone attack was carried out on Europe's largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhya, which is under Russian control in southern Ukraine.

In view of this real threat, Switzerland is doing the only right thing: it is organizing a peace summit for mid-June. If this is to be successful, Russia must also accept the Swiss invitation. De facto, this means holding out the prospect of a compromise. Nobody wants to see a second part of Oppenheimer and nobody will.