December 12, 2025
Stephen Herzog
The award-winning article can be read in Risk Analysis.
CNS Professor of the Practice Dr. Stephen Herzog and co-author Dr. David M. Allison have been honored with a Best Paper 2025 Award by the Society for Risk Analysis and the Risk Analysis editorial board. The award was presented at the Society’s Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. and recognizes articles from the year “that have made the most significant impacts on the theory or practice of risk analysis.”
Allison and Herzog’s research uses mathematical modeling to provide one of the first systematic assessments of how the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities may reshape nuclear proliferation and verification dynamics. It was recognized alongside operational research studies addressing risks from global pandemics, school shootings, and aviation threats to bird species.
In their article, Allison and Herzog ask: As AI capabilities spread, how might the hider–seeker game between nuclear proliferators and verifiers change?
Their work provides scholarly and policy-relevant insights regarding:
- Where AI could shift proliferation incentives among highly latent nuclear states;
- How AI could strengthen nuclear monitoring and verification in some cases, and complicate it in others;
- What this means for risk governance and policy.
Read the article in Risk Analysis.
