A recent survey of 50 Nobel Prize laureates revealed that nearly 1 of 4 past believes that Nuclear Weapons are the gravest threat to mankind. When that sort of collective brainpower identifies and prioritizes an issue so highly, the rest of would do well to take heed. Yet, escalating tensions between the President of the United States and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un have not only brought nuclear weapons into the conversation, they’ve made the possibility of nuclear war all too real.

Donald Trump made headlines when he threatened “fire and fury” if North Korea further provoked the United States in early August, but Kim Jong-Un continues to rattle his nuclear sabers and test missiles. All of this talk of macho nuclear annihilation prompted online magazine OZY to ask its readers to weigh in on a question of fairness: “The United has Nuclear Weapons, Why Not North Korea?”

With that moral question in mind, researchers at Unanimous AI turned to our Swarm AI technology for a deep dive on the implications of different nations possessing nuclear warfare. Swarming complicated problems like this one allows groups of people – in this case thirty or so American voters – to amplify their intelligence and produce what we call Swarm Insight.

Here’s what the Swarm AI technology revealed in response to OZY’s question:

As you can see, the Swarm was clear in its conviction that a nuclear-armed North Korea could be disastrous. But, our researchers wanted to know about why the Swarm was so wary. In other words, what disqualifies North Korea from nuclear ownership that doesn’t also apply to the United States?

Here the Swarm AI platform reveals that a nation’s stability is the most important criteria for determining nuclear qualification. Donald Trump has been criticized for an incomplete knowledge of our nuclear capability and the aforementioned vivid threats, but the US signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 while North Korea initially signed but has since withdrawn. With that knowledge in hand, the Swarm of voters was asked “to what extent does North Korea meet the criteria for a nation with “unstable national leadership”? and quickly converged on an unmitigated answer: 100%.

Unanimous researchers asked the Swarm for guidance on how nations should decide who gets to have nuclear weapons, and its response — “the Leaders of Other Nations ( by a lot )” –reinforces the difficulty in living with the immense power of nuclear weapons. If North Korea is both unstable and aggressive in its pursuit of nuclear weapons, its desire to possess them suggests that listening to other nations is the last order they would follow. How then, to get a nation like North Korea to disarm? A complicated question like this is tailor-made for our Swarm AI platform. 

Pursuing sanctions alongside attempts at diplomacy has long been the United States’ approach to North Korea, and the nation must hope that the President can find the right balance between the carrot and the stick. But, the Swarm revealed one final insight that demonstrates why the proliferation of nuclear weapons is so difficult to prevent.

Given that North Korea’s motivation for creating nuclear weapons is the protection of its citizens, it’s fair to wonder whether nuclear ownership makes the tiny nation more or less likely to be attacked by foreign powers.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, of course, and the Swarm offered the same explanation for the United States’ desire to own nuclear weapons: having them makes the nation less likely to be attacked. Thus the promise of Mutually Assured Destruction remains the best reason to own – and at the same time completely rid the world of -nuclear weapons.

You can see the complete results of Unanimous AI’s deep dive on nuclear weapons in the chart below. Click the chart to see replays of all the swarms.

Every week Unanimous A. I. brings together swarms of regular people just like you to help us predict sporting events, investment opportunities, and technology as well as provide insight into everything from pop culture to politics. If you’d like information on joining a swarm – or just want to stay up to date on the latest predictions – click the button below.