Doomsday and the Best Complexion of Your Life

It's 100 seconds to midnight. You need to attend to those fine lines and blemishes fast

I was—to put it mildly—surprised by the enthusiastic reception to my last newsletter. That was a desperate cri de coeur, for those of you who didn’t learn reading comprehension at the knee of Captain Obvious. (This seems to be disturbingly many of you—how could you all be so excited about my malaise?)

But I don’t feel malaise anymore, because of you, my dear readers. That was the most popular—and shared—newsletter in the history of Claire Berlinski’s Invariably Interesting Newsletter.

You have taught me that the most interesting thing I have to say concerns skincare.

Folks, there’s a lot more skincare advice where that came from.

I could write about skincare all day. And apparently, you could read about it all day!

I don’t know quite why this surprises me so much. I mean, if I procrastinate by reading about amazing beauty hacks on the Internet, why wouldn’t you? It’s logical. If the Internet teaches us anything, it’s how debased of intellect we all really are.

Now, I guess I could feel bad that my thoughts about press-on nails and skincare proved vastly more popular than my thoughts about US foreign policy. Maybe it suggests my earlier newsletters haven’t been as interesting as I believed. But I choose to see this glass not just as half-full, but positively overflowing. I now have invaluable data about my readers, whom I aim to please.

Thus Claire Berlinski’s Amazing Beauty Hacks will henceforth be a regular bonus feature for this newsletters’ readers.

WHY MY BEAUTY HACKS ARE BETTER

I don’t mean to boast, but my beauty hacks are the best on the Internet.

Why? Because when I procrastinate by contemplating the purchase of miracle Korean face creams and Chinese slimming potions, I bring the full apparatus of an Oxford-trained intellect to the task. I’m not taken in by clever packaging, outlandish claims or fads. (Well, I am wearing a single, sparkly gold nail—but at least I know that’s a fad.) When I recommend a product, it’s because I’ve figured out what’s in it, how it works, and what the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled research says about its efficacy. I even check to see who funded the studies and whether they’ve been replicated.

I don’t make enough money just to take a flyer on some new-fangled Wuhan Miracle Virus. I will not spend a single Euro on a potion unless I fully understand the mechanism by which it works. Nor will I spend a single Euro more than it takes to get the active ingredient in that potion in my hot little hands. I am absolutely immune—I am stone-cold indifferent, I am cold as ice—in the face of elaborate, expensive packaging. I spit on cosmetic marketing.

You won’t find me paying a hundred Euros for a bottle of this, that’s for sure:

Tip: If you want that for cheap, just take an old bottle, fill it with cheap olive oil—it doesn’t even have to be virgin olive oil; your skin truly doesn’t know or care whether the oil is skanky—and stir in a bit of glitter.

You’re welcome.

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INTRODUCING THE CBIIT CUSTOM BEAUTY DELIVERY SERVICE

Some of you—a surprising number—wrote to say that you couldn’t find Dermadik’s 70 percent lactic acid solution on the Internet. I was amazed that anyone looked it up, no less many of you. Had I known you’d take me seriously, I would in fact have recommended this: Dermadik’s professional grade 50 percent glycolic and and 60 percent lactic acid. (But the 70 percent lactic acid will do the job, no doubt.)

STRONG WARNING: Follow the directions on this one or you’ll burn your face clean off. In fact, that might happen anyway. I can’t believe they just sell this stuff on the Internet. This is what a dermatologist would put on your face if you went for a professional face peel, and you’d pay nearly a thousand dollars for the privilege. When I found this stuff on Amazon, I couldn’t believe it.

Those of you who couldn’t find it on Amazon, I suspect, live in countries where they quite properly keep this stuff out of the hands of civilians. It makes perfect sense for the nanny state to conclude no one but trained professionals should touch this stuff—make a mistake and you’ve got a third-degree burn.

But you know me: I am a longtime enemy of the nanny state and I am all about liberal democracy, emphasis on liberal, meaning I think you should be free to choose whether you wish to accept the risk of using a dangerous but amazingly effective skincare product. I trust your God-given intelligence—yes, even those of you who keep telling me I suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome whenever I point out that the man is yet again insulting your God-given intelligence.

Trump, by the way, would really benefit from a regular series of chemical peels. His skin looks like hell. Oh, and don’t fall for Elizabeth Warren’s mishagos about Ponds Cold Cream being the secret to her youthful-looking skin. No one her age has skin like that because of Ponds Cold Cream. She looks that way because she’s had Botox and fillers, and as you can see, both are very effective, and come recommended by Claire Berlinski’s Invariably Interesting Newsletter, though I still haven’t figured out how to order them at a discount adequate to my frugality. (I’m working on it: If I crack this, you’ll be the first to know.)

Anyway, I trust that you’re smart enough to do a skin test, to not leave the peel on longer than the instructions say, and to not apply it to your nads or your hoo-hah. Am I right to put that trust in you? Because here’s my offer to all loyal faithful readers: If you’re living in some hellhole totalitarian nanny state that doesn’t let you buy Dermadik’s professional grade 50 percent glycolic and and 60 percent lactic acid peel over the Internet, I’ll do you a solid. Send me your mailing address and your personal affidavit of competence—“I [state your loyal reader name] do solemnly pledge to do a skin test, follow the instructions, and refrain from putting this highly corrosive acid on my eyeballs or other similarly sensitive body parts”—and I will send you a bottle from my own personal stash to reward your loyalty to the Claire Berlinski brand. I will not allow any reader of mine to suffer from dull, lifeless skin.

(Your conscience will tell you if you’re loyal enough.)

It may take a while to get to you, depending how many of you take me up on it. I may not have enough in my personal stash, in which case I’ll have to order more—and I think they make it in outer Mongolia or something; it always takes forever to arrive.

But I had an even better idea. When I realized you were as crazy for amazing beauty hacks as I am, I thought, “Why not go where the market is? If there’s more money in amazing beauty hacks than serious appraisals of the quality and future of liberal democracy, why, that is a market signal. I still believe markets are awfully good at allocating resources efficiently, and if skincare is, to my suprise, my special skill, why would I be a snob about it?”

Thus the Claire Berlinski’s Invariably Interesting Thoughts Custom Beauty Delivery Service.

I will send you not one, not two, not three, but ten specially-chosen amazing beauty products, customized for your particular beauty concerns. You may discuss them in the comments, below, or if you’d prefer confidentiality—and I know I sure would—you can send me an e-mail. Going bald? Breaking out? Sagging skin? Cellulite? Getting jowly? I alone can fix it. With science. On the cheap. Personalized, for you.

Please tell me the nature of the problem—the more detail, the better, but don’t be disgusting about it—and I will devise a miracle regimen for you.

Now, how much would you pay for a full head of hair, thin thighs, and skin that’s smooth and youthful as a newly-hatched egg?

Loyal reader: Oh, I bet that would cost at least a million dollars.

Claire: Nope! It’s much, much less than that.

Loyal reader: You couldn’t give away secrets like this for less than … 500,000 dollars!

Claire: Nope! I’m giving away a cure for cellulite, baldness, and acne for the low, low price of $69.99—not $100,000, and not even $100.

Loyal reader: Wow!

Claire: But wait, there’s more!

Loyal reader: More?

Claire: You can pay in four easy monthly payments of just $17.49, plus shipping and handling!

Loyal reader: Really? Sign me up!

Claire: But wait, there’s more!

Loyal reader: More?

Claire: I’ll also send you copies of the research that caused me to conclude these were miracle products. Once you see the obscure, jargon-laden randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled research that comes with these amazing rejuvenating products, the placebo effect alone will vaporize your wrinkles.

Loyal reader: That’s amazing, Claire!

Claire: Now how much would you pay for the world’s most potent placebo?

That’s right, folks: Send me your beauty concerns, your address, and your money, and I will have the world’s most potent placebos (and damned good products, even absent their placebo power) delivered straight to your doorstep.

Hurry, don’t walk. Operators are standing by:

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HURRY, BECAUSE THE WORLD’S ABOUT TO END

I was surprised that the resetting of the Doomsday Clock resulted in so little media hype. The whole point of resetting the clock is to generate media hype. They should have announced it simultaneously with a cure for cellulite.

As some of you may have heard, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently announced that the hands of the doomsday clock now rest at 100 seconds to midnight. This is closer to midnight than the clock has ever been set before. It’s closer than 1953, when the US and the Soviet Union detonated the first hydrogen bombs. It’s closer than it was during the Suez crisis, or the Cuban missile crisis. Closer than it was during the Vietnam war.

I’m sorry the event generated so little interest, because unfortunately, I think they’re right.

I hate to be a downer. I know you were excited about receiving the Fountain of Youth in the mail. It’s okay, though: We can fix your skin in less than a hundred minutes.

WHY THEY’RE RIGHT

I can already hear my readers—the ones who always write to tell me I’m clutching my pearls, and I should sleep like a brick knowing that Donald Trump has the power to launch on command—screaming hysterically and gripping their pearls until their knuckles turn white. Don’t I realize the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is comprised of a bunch of dreary vegan feminist fruit-juice drinkers and Irishmen in beards and sandals who come flocking to the smell of “progress” like bluebottles to a dead cat?

Why yes. Yes, I do. But that doesn’t mean they’re not right.

Here are the parts of their statement with which I agree. I’m unsure about their other arguments—I’ll return to those.

Humanity continues to face [an existential danger]—nuclear war … compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond. The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode.

In the nuclear realm, national leaders have ended or undermined several major arms control treaties and negotiations during the last year, creating an environment conducive to a renewed nuclear arms race, to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and to lowered barriers to nuclear war. Political conflicts regarding nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea remain unresolved and are, if anything, worsening. US-Russia cooperation on arms control and disarmament is all but nonexistent.

Continued corruption of the information ecosphere on which democracy and public decision making depend has heightened the nuclear [threat] In the last year, many governments used cyber-enabled disinformation campaigns to sow distrust in institutions and among nations, undermining domestic and international efforts to foster peace ....

This situation … would be serious enough if leaders around the world were focused on managing the danger and reducing the risk of catastrophe. Instead, over the last two years, we have seen influential leaders denigrate and discard the most effective methods for addressing complex threats—international agreements with strong verification regimes—in favor of their own narrow interests and domestic political gain. By undermining cooperative, science- and law-based approaches to managing the most urgent threats to humanity, these leaders have helped to create a situation that will, if unaddressed, lead to catastrophe, sooner rather than later.

Civilization-ending nuclear war—whether started by design, blunder, or simple miscommunication—is a genuine possibility. And for a variety of reasons that include a corrupted and manipulated media environment, democratic governments and other institutions that should be working to address these threats have failed to rise to the challenge. …

The world is sleepwalking its way through a newly unstable nuclear landscape. The arms control boundaries that have helped prevent nuclear catastrophe for the last half century are being steadily dismantled.

In several areas, a bad situation continues to worsen. Throughout 2019, Iran increased its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, increased its uranium enrichment levels, and added new and improved centrifuges—all to express its frustration that the United States had withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal (formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), re-imposed economic sanctions on Iran, and pressured other parties to the Iran nuclear agreement to stop their compliance with the agreement. Early this year, amid high US-Iranian tensions, the US military conducted a drone air strike that killed a prominent Iranian general in Iraq. Iranian leaders vowed to exact “severe revenge” on US military forces, and the Iranian government announced it would no longer observe limits, imposed by the JCPOA, on the number of centrifuges that it uses to enrich uranium.

Although Iran has not formally exited the nuclear deal, its actions appear likely to reduce the “breakout time” it would need to build a nuclear weapon, to less than the 12 months envisioned by parties to the JCPOA. At that point, other parties to the nuclear agreement—including the European Union and possibly Russia and China—may be compelled to acknowledge that Iran is not complying. What little is left of the agreement could crumble, reducing constraints on the Iranian nuclear program and increasing the likelihood of military conflict with the United States.

The demise of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty became official in 2019, and, as predicted, the United States and Russia have begun a new competition to develop and deploy weapons the treaty had long banned. Meanwhile, the United States continues to suggest that it will not extend New START, the agreement that limits US and Russian deployed strategic nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and that it may withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, which provides aerial overflights to build confidence and transparency around the world. Russia, meanwhile, continues to support an extension of New START.

The assault on arms control is exacerbated by the decay of great power relations. Despite declaring its intent to bring China into an arms control agreement, the United States has adopted a bullying and derisive tone toward its Chinese and Russian competitors. The three countries disagree on whether to pursue negotiations on outer space, missile defenses, and cyberwarfare. One of the few issues they do agree on: They all oppose the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which opened for signature in 2017. As an alternative, the United States has promoted, within the context of the review conference process of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), an initiative called “Creating the Environment for Nuclear Disarmament.” The success of this initiative may depend on its reception at the 2020 NPT Review Conference—a landmark 50th anniversary of the treaty.

US efforts to reach agreement with North Korea made little progress in 2019, despite an early summit in Hanoi and subsequent working-level meetings. After a North Korean deadline for end-of-year progress passed, Kim Jong Un announced he would demonstrate a new “strategic weapon” and indicated that North Korea would forge ahead without sanctions relief. Until now, the willingness of both sides to continue a dialogue was positive, but Chairman Kim seems to have lost faith in President Trump’s willingness to come to an agreement.

Without conscious efforts to reinvigorate arms control, the world is headed into an unregulated nuclear environment. Such an outcome could reproduce the intense arms race that was the hallmark of the early decades of the nuclear age. Both the United States and Russia have massive stockpiles of warheads and fissile material in reserve from which to draw, if they choose. Should China decide to build up to US and Russian arsenal levels—a development previously dismissed as unlikely but now being debated—deterrence calculations could become more complicated, making the situation more dangerous. An unconstrained North Korea, coupled with a more assertive China, could further destabilize Northeast Asian security.

... information is an essential aspect of human interaction, and threats to the information ecosphere—especially when coupled with the emergence of new destabilizing technologies in artificial intelligence, space, hypersonics, and biology—portend a dangerous and multifaceted global instability.

In recent years, national leaders have increasingly dismissed information with which they do not agree as fake news, promulgating their own untruths, exaggerations, and misrepresentations in response. Unfortunately, this trend accelerated in 2019. Leaders claimed their lies to be truth, calling into question the integrity of, and creating public distrust in, national institutions that have historically provided societal stability and cohesion.

…Countries have long attempted to employ propaganda in service of their political agendas. Now, however, the internet provides widespread, inexpensive access to worldwide audiences, facilitating the broadcast of false and manipulative messages to large populations and enabling millions of individuals to indulge in their prejudices, biases, and ideological differences.

The recent emergence of so-called “deepfakes”—audio and video recordings that are essentially undetectable as false—threatens to further undermine the ability of citizens and decision makers to separate truth from fiction. The resulting falsehoods hold the potential to create economic, social, and military chaos, increasing the possibility of misunderstandings or provocations that could lead to war, and fomenting public confusion that leads to inaction on serious issues facing the planet. Agreement on facts is essential to democracy and effective collective action.

Other new technologies, including developments in biological engineering, high-speed (hypersonic) weapons, and space weapons, present further opportunities for disruption.

Genetic engineering and synthetic biology technologies are now increasingly affordable, readily available, and spreading rapidly. Globally, governments and companies are collecting vast amounts of health-related data, including genomic data, ostensibly for the purpose of improving healthcare and increasing profits. But the same data could also be useful in developing highly effective biological weapons, and disagreements regarding verification of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention continue to place the world at risk.

Artificial intelligence is progressing at a frenzied pace. In addition to the concern about marginally controlled AI development and its incorporation into weaponry that would make kill decisions without human supervision, AI is now being used in military command and control systems. Research and experience have demonstrated the vulnerability of these systems to hacking and manipulation. Given AI’s known shortcomings, it is crucial that the nuclear command and control system remain firmly in the hands of human decision makers.

There is increasing investment in and deployment of hypersonic weapons that will severely limit response times available to targeted nations and create a dangerous degree of ambiguity and uncertainty, at least in part because of their likely ability to carry either nuclear or conventional warheads. This uncertainty could lead to rapid escalation of military conflicts. At a minimum, these weapons are highly destabilizing and presage a new arms race.

Meanwhile, space has become a new arena for weapons development, with multiple countries testing and deploying kinetic, laser, and radiofrequency anti-satellite capabilities, and the United States creating a new military service, the Space Force.

The overall global trend is toward complex, high-tech, highly automated, high-speed warfare. The computerized and increasingly AI-assisted nature of militaries, the sophistication of their weapons, and the new, more aggressive military doctrines asserted by the most heavily armed countries could result in global catastrophe. …

To say the world is nearer to doomsday today than during the Cold War—when the United States and Soviet Union had tens of thousands more nuclear weapons than they now possess—is to make a profound assertion that demands serious explanation. After much deliberation, the members of the Science and Security Board have concluded that the complex technological threats the world faces are at least as dangerous today as they were last year and the year before, when we set the Clock at two minutes to midnight (as close as it had ever been, and the same setting that was announced in 1953, after the United States and the Soviet Union tested their first thermonuclear weapons).

But this year, we move the Clock 20 seconds closer to midnight not just because trends in our major areas of concern … have failed to improve significantly over the last two years. We move the Clock toward midnight because the means by which political leaders had previously managed these potentially civilization-ending dangers are themselves being dismantled or undermined, without a realistic effort to replace them with new or better management regimes. In effect, the international political infrastructure for controlling existential risk is degrading, leaving the world in a situation of high and rising threat. Global leaders are not responding appropriately to reduce this threat level and counteract the hollowing-out of international political institutions, negotiations, and agreements that aim to contain it. The result is a heightened and growing risk of disaster.

I’m afraid it’s impossible to deny this. Any of it.

ON CLIMATE CHANGE

I did not reproduce their warnings about climate change, and discount them as I do all such warnings—with the words, “I sure hope not.” I simply don’t have the expertise required to evaluate the claims now commonly made about the climate. The science is far too difficult for me.

I hope those who foresee doom are wrong, and think it entirely possible they are, because frankly, the science is far too difficult, period. From what I can tell, the most apocalyptic claims are not supported by anything like strong scientific evidence. Our understanding of the climate is still nascent, and the effect of climate change hotly debated among those better qualified than I to assess it.

I’m instinctively chary of the Climate Doom movement because it so obviously resembles a millenarian cult. (If anyone is curious, I wrote a chapter about these cults in this book, it’s called “The Nine Lives of José Bové.” I might reprise some of those arguments in future newsletters.)

I find it plausible that our carbon consumption is making the planet uninhabitable. I don’t think the idea prima facie absurd; I understand the basic argument about the greenhouse effect. I also find it plausible to imagine the effects of carbon consumption will be much less apocalyptic than feared, and plausible, too, that millenarianism is some species of innate human subroutine such that at times of wider social and economic anxiety and dislocation, people tend often to believe the world is coming to an end.

The elements of this fantasy—which has so far been wrong, every time—are always the same, and the climate-change-apocalypse fantasy contains every classic millenarian element: It rests upon the belief that society as currently organized is corrupt, unjust, or otherwise wrong, and will soon be destroyed by a powerful force. The harmful nature of the status quo is considered intractable without the anticipated dramatic change.

It seems more plausible to me, given that we’re living through precisely the kind of social and economic circumstances that gave rise to these cults in the past, that this is what’s prompting the millenarian subroutine, not the real prospect of the climate-driven extinction of our species. I could be wrong. I hope not. But come on: It is awfully suspicious, all this Garden-of-Eden-that-we-despoiled-with-our-sin imagery, isn’t it?

In any event, I hope we don’t all perish as a result of climate change. I really don’t know enough to say whether we will. I do know enough to say that if the most dire predictions are correct, there’s not a thing we can do about it.

Yes, that’s right—not a thing. There is simply no way that eight billion human beings will concede to return to pre-industrial ways of life. Even if they could be coerced into doing so—and the scale of coercion required would make Stalin and Hitler look like pikers—the mass extinction that would result from forced re-primitivization would be on the scale of the die-off envisioned by Greta Thunberg in the event we “do nothing.” The reason, and the only reason, there are eight billion people on the planet—as opposed to the 700 million alive at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution—is, obviously, that industrialized economies are remarkably good at sustaining human life. Repeal it and we’ll go right back to historic population norms. And if anyone’s excited about that, don’t be: Statistically speaking, that doesn’t mean some faraway people you don’t know will die. It means you will die.

But you can’t repeal it, anyway. If you try, someone will bump you off, sooner or later. No one, but no one, is really prepared to go back, no matter what they say.

I’m therefore against doing anything to mitigate this threat except for building more nuclear plants, doing more research into renewables, crossing our fingers, and hoping for the best.

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I’ll explain why I think the threat of nuclear war is a very different kind of threat—and not whatsoever a species of millenarian fantasy—tomorrow. It is this threat with which the Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is chiefly concerned, not climate change, and there’s not a thing wrong with their arguments, alas.

Please wait to read what I say before telling me I’m wrong, okay? Or don’t—the comments are open for your pleasure.

So, order your skincare products now, because the end is nigh. You wouldn’t want to meet your maker looking anything less than your best, would you?