On 22nd September 2022, in Caen, Normandy, Strategic Foresight Group, Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and Region Normandy co-convened a roundtable of P4 experts for their Normandy P5 Initiative on Global Security and Catastrophic Risks on the background of deteriorating geopolitical and strategic environment.

It was initially planned to convene the roundtable in 2021, and early 2022, but the roundtable had to be postponed due to the Covid Crisis and the war in Ukraine. In particular, the war in Ukraine made it impossible to invite experts from Russia to the roundtable. Therefore, experts from China, France, UK and the US participated in the roundtable.

Prior to the roundtable, the convenors had held consultations with Disarmament Ambassadors of all the P5 countries based in Geneva to secure their perspectives on the subject of the roundtable.

Following the discussions at the diplomatic level, the roundtable of experts was held in Caen and hosted by Region Normandy, coinciding with the Normandy Forum for Peace.

Mr Francois - Xavier Priollaud, Vice President of Region Normandy delivered the welcome address. Ambassador Thomas Greminger, Director of Geneva Centre for Security Policy delivered the keynote address. Dr Sundeep Waslekar, President of Strategic Foresight Group presented the theme paper of the roundtable.

In his keynote address, Ambassador Thomas Greminger warned that the nuclear threat was real. It not only emanated from the Russian President, implicitly threatening the use of nuclear weapons, but also from North Korea passing a law to make pre-emptive nuclear attack legal, and other geopolitical developments. He warned that the use of artificial intelligence was decreasing the role of humans in the chain of command. Since machines have no moral compassion, AI can have a dangerous impact. It was in this context that catastrophic risk to global security had to be examined. Ambassador Greminger explained that it was important to assess the global security paradigm with a focus on the five permanent members of the Security Council, commonly known as the P5, due to the leadership position they have in the United Nations, as well as the architecture of global security.

Francois -Xavier Priollaud said in his concluding remarks that the world was ending the nuclear order as it had prevailed since the second world war. The world was also seeing the end of P5 group in the UN Security Council due to a split between the 5 members. The world was also ending an age of certainty. At the same time, a new theory of deterrence and a new threat of AI was on the rise. Moreover, the movement of technology using speed that is beyond the capacity of human beings had made our era that of unpredictability.

The key messages from the roundtable included the importance of revival of dialogue among P5 countries, the importance of keeping  “human in the loop” and not hand over important nuclear related decisions to AI, the need to create new channels of communication including new actors as well as developing a new framework for global security.