Can South Korea Help Manage Nuclear Risk in the Age of AI?

24 Aug 2026 | APLN

24 August 2026

In our latest update, we are delighted to welcome Da Wei, Hina Rabbani Khar, Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, and Ilan Kiloe as APLN’s newest members. Our latest APLN Korea Times column features analysis by Salma Malik, who urges South Korea to spearhead regional norm-building and crisis-management mechanisms to address the growing risks from military AI. We are also pleased to share newly released summaries from our Beijing and Islamabad workshops as part of the Advancing Nuclear Fail-Safe in the Asia-Pacific project.

Our weekly roundup of member activities covers analysis on the US alliance commitments, China’s deterrence strategy, Japan’s 2026 defense white paper, and more.

We are delighted to welcome four new members to our network:

Da Wei is the Director of the Center for International Security and Strategy (CISS) and a Professor in the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University. His research focuses on China-U.S. relations, as well as U.S. security and foreign policy.

Hina Rabbani Khar served as the first woman Foreign Minister of Pakistan from 2011-2013. She has been elected Member of Parliament for four terms and is currently serving as Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Parliament of Pakistan.

Miriam Coronel-Ferrer is a founding member of the Southeast Asian Women Peace Mediators and served for three years on the UN Standby Team of Mediators. A retired professor of politics at the University of the Philippines, she is currently a senior fellow at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research and serves on the boards of the International Crisis Group and Interpeace.

Ilan Kiloe is an international legal practitioner and seasoned regional diplomat and civil servant. He has recently served as the Acting Director General of the Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat. As the Secretariat’s longest-serving official and inaugural legal adviser, he has led high-level missions to the UN, EU and European Parliament, advancing regional priorities including climate change, decolonization, security and international cooperation.

See all members

Nuclear Faultlines and South Korea’s Choices

Salma Malik points out that rising nuclear tensions and strategic rivalries are leaving the Asia-Pacific, especially the Korean Peninsula, increasingly vulnerable to miscalculation and escalation. The rapid development of military AI could further heighten these risks by shortening the time available for leaders to assess threats, consult with others and make measured decisions. Malik calls for stronger regional frameworks on military AI and nuclear risk, arguing that South Korea is uniquely positioned to lead these efforts and complement deterrence with effective crisis-management mechanisms.

Read the Korea Times column

APLN, together with the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), and the European Leadership Network (ELN) have worked since March 2020 to highlight the benefits of independent, internal “fail-safe” reviews in nuclear-armed states. These reviews would be effective unilateral nuclear risk-reduction steps, not requiring any negotiation, treaty, or verification.

In the second year of this project, we convened fail-safe workshops with partner organisations in China and Pakistan, exploring how emerging technologies affect nuclear use risk and examining pathways toward global fail-safe solutions. Explore the key takeaways from our workshops in Beijing and Islamabad.

Learn more about the project

Joel Petersson-Ivre, APLN Senior Policy Fellow, was featured in the second episode of the ELN’s Ok, Doomer! podcast series, where he discussed how nuclear-armed states in the Asia-Pacific understand fail-safe, what terminology they use, what measures they have adopted, and how openly they discuss them.

APLN has over 180 members from 26 countries in the Asia-Pacific.
Each week, we feature their latest contributions
to global and regional security debates.

See all member activities

Does the US deserve allies’ trust?

Chung-in Moon, APLN Vice Chair, wrote in his column for Hankyoreh that US deterrence alone is insufficient to reassure its Asian allies and called for greater US credibility through preventive diplomacy and confidence-building measures that address their distinct security concerns.

China’s New Nuclear Game: How India Should Play It

Manpreet Sethi, APLN Senior Research Adviser, wrote for India’s World on how China’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal is part of a deeper shift in Beijing’s deterrence strategy, which is steadily reshaping the Indo-Pacific’s strategic landscape and raising difficult questions for India.

The authoritarian axis looms over wars in Ukraine and Iran

Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, Resident Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), wrote on China and Russia’s growing military support for Iran, and the implications of these expanding security ties for the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.

Tough and Timely: Japan’s 2026 Defense White Paper

Rajaram Panda, former ICCR Chair Professor at Reitaku University, Japan, wrote for Global Asia and analysed how Japan’s latest Defense White Paper reflects a major shift toward strengthening its defense industry and embracing emerging technologies amid growing regional threats.

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