Artificial intelligence can help stop nuclear proliferation

The international nuclear arms control regime is approaching a critical juncture. If new nuclear weapons treaties are to be negotiated, ratified and enforced, they will need to be underpinned by strong technical monitoring capabilities. The Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration is leveraging its expertise and technology to meet this challenge, understanding that in nuclear nonproliferation, you can't verify what you can't see. The United States is placing renewed urgency on developing the science and technology required to monitor our adversaries' nuclear activity -- specifically by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and the unmatched, high-performance computing capabilities found at DOE's national laboratories. DOE houses four of the world's top 10 fastest supercomputers, including the top two, and we are already at work on developing three next-generation, exascale machines, able to conduct a billion billion calculations per second.