HuFo Baja Fusion

1ac---energy
Current U.S. nuclear patent disputes are the foundation of stagnating fusion
investment---only providing the guarantee of protection fills the void.
Behr ‘24 [Peter; senior energy reporter for Energywire covering power grid reliability, climate policy
and cybersecurity – Nieman Fellowship – Harvard university – BA in English from Colgate University; 2-
27-2024; "Intellectual property fights hobble DOE fusion program"; E&E News by POLITICO;
https://www.eenews.net/articles/intellectual-property-fights-hobble-doe-fusion-program/; ‫]بالل‬

The moonshot U.S. program to accelerate fusion energy has struggled to get started, held up by disputes
over the federal government’s control of scientific discoveries by startup companies, according to
several people familiar with negotiations. Intellectual property rights have been at the center of months
of talks between the Department of Energy and eight fusion technology companies vying for
multimillion-dollar federal grants. DOE selected the participants in its “milestone” program last May on the condition that a
company meet engineering and scientific benchmarks on the way to designing a pilot fusion reactor. But after nine months, no technology
investment agreements have been announced, and the Biden administration is approaching two years since it rolled out its vision for
developing fusion power. “We’re still in active negotiations with the DOE, and it isn’t all ironed out yet. I can’t comment on specifics, but
negotiations are progressing,” said Andy Freeberg, head of communications for Seattle-based Zap Energy, one of the milestone program
Several other program participants declined to comment. Backed by rare bipartisan support in
participants.
Congress, the administration aims to accelerate progress toward building one or more pilot reactors in
the 2030s. The goal is to show that the technical challenges of delivering fusion power at a commercial
scale can be overcome. Fusion mimics nuclear reactions inside stars. Andrew Holland, chief executive of the Fusion Industry
Association, said he and the participating fusion companies are confident the program will move ahead. Sources close to the program said a
But they said it’s notable that DOE and
delay of months isn’t significant since commercial fusion power is likely decades away.
fusion-tech companies are struggling to find common ground on the government’s right to own or share
rights to fusion breakthroughs, and that could affect future development. A DOE spokesperson declined to discuss
the agency’s position on federal rights to fusion discoveries. But leaders in the nascent fusion industry say the ability to own intellectual
property and benefit from any commercial success is critical. “That’s the bread and butter of what they have that appeals to their investors,”
said Stephen Dean, president of Fusion Power Associates, a nonprofit information resource about the technology. “For
any technology
startup, whether it’s in fusion or otherwise, the preservation and ongoing ability to commercialize
intellectual property is a crucial part of the value proposition for investors,” said Chris Kelsall, a former fusion
company chief executive. He said his comments in an interview with E&E News are solely his own and not expressed on behalf of or in relation
“To continue providing regular rounds of capital investment, investors want to know
to any former employer.
that a technology company’s secret sauce — the IP — remains intact and that the company’s ability to derive future
revenue from its core IP is not unduly compromised,” Kelsall said.

The Department Of Energy will assert control over patents, curbing development of
essential reactor technology.
Behr ‘24 [Peter; Senior energy reporter for Energywire covering clean energy, recipient of the Nieman
Fellowship from Harvard university; 2/27/2024; "Intellectual property fights hobble DOE fusion
program"; E&E News by POLITICO; https://www.eenews.net/articles/intellectual-property-fights-hobble-
doe-fusion-program/]//LASA-AB

Going from demonstration reactors to utility-scale fusion plants that can produce reliable and affordable
electricity requires more scientific breakthroughs and engineering solutions on an Olympian scale. Now,
fusion startups are heading into a vital phase of fundraising as they stretch to produce proof of concept
working models of their technologies before the end of this decade. The cost of a utility-scale fusion pilot plant could
exceed $5 billion, industry leaders say. That underscores the importance of getting the IP agreement right for both sides, experts said. Longview
Fusion, for example, is led by Edward Moses and Valerie Roberts, both former leaders of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s ignition
facility. Equipped with a bank of powerful lasers designed to test nuclear weapons, the lab made headlines in December by producing the first
fusion reaction that generated more electricity than the reaction consumed. The reaction was triggered when laser beams struck a tiny target
containing the hydrogen isotope fuel in a test that took an entire day to accomplish. Moses and Roberts explained that to make this process
commercial, their reactor will have to repeat the ignition process continuously 15 times a second. Key
to that success is the
scientific and engineering knowledge and patents they possess that will help them simplify and
automate the process, dramatically lowering costs, they said. Their goal is electricity from fusion in 10 years at $50 per
megawatt-hour. “We have our own IP, which is independent of the government. We have a strong technology moat around our process,” said
Moses, whose company isn’t involved in the DOE milestone program. The companies in the milestone program will have to share some of what
they discover. “DOE probably tells them this will be confidential,” said Dean of the nonprofit Fusion Power Associates. “But
DOE can look
at it in depth and see what they’re thinking about and what they want to hold secret.” “ If government
funding programs [DOE] insist on control or ownership of IP, they may end up slowing the pace of
technology development,” said Kelsall, the fusion entrepreneur. “Fusion has to be relevant and arrive on
time to impact the energy transition,” he added. “If there isn’t a first-of-a-kind pilot up and running by at least by the mid- to
late 2030s, there’s a risk it will miss the boat.”

That prevents licensing agreements necessary for innovation.

McEachran ’19 [Rich McEachran, MA in Postcolonial Culture & Global Policy, is a journalist;
3/20/2019; Raconteur; “Why companies must go about sharing IP with caution,”
https://www.raconteur.net/risk-regulation/sharing-ip-caution]//LASA-AB

The energy sector has been “far more secretive and disinclined to engage in an ethos of sharing” than
other sectors, says Colin Hulme, partner and IP specialist at Scottish law firm Burness Paull, which provides a range of services to exploration
and production companies. However,given the rapid technological advances being made, he adds, the sector is
under pressure to adapt and innovate to survive. “To deliver the efficiencies that are necessary for
survival, better planning is critical. Sharing IP and information can lead to the power to predict and
insights that can turn unviable plays into cash returns,” says Mr Hulme. Choosing to open source IP is about profit as
much as progress There is another reason why companies in the energy sector might want to open source IP, to build towards a greener and
sustainable future. It’s for this exact reason that Tesla open sourced all its patents in 2014. Entrepreneur Elon Musk believed it would help grow
the electric vehicle industry more rapidly and establish his Tesla brand as the market leader. While most key players in the energy sector are
unlikely to take Tesla’s total open book approach, says Mr Hulme, they are likely to take positive steps to increase collaboration and innovation,
while being careful to maintain clear ownership of the IP. On
the face of it, sharing IP may sound altruistic and
straightforward. In reality, it’s [is] profit-driven and is no easy process. No matter their size and the industry they’re
operating in, companies need to protect themselves so they can maintain a competitive advantage. In what was described as an all-time high,
the European Patent Office received nearly 166,000 patent applications in 2017. Closer to home, there were more than 22,000 patent
applications in the UK in the same year and just over 6,300 were granted, according to analysis conducted by the UK’s Intellectual
Property Office. Sharing IP is not the opposite of patenting it. Without
patents, companies run the risk of their technology
being exploited. Applying for and then securing patents puts them in a stronger position when it
eventually comes to sharing IP, says Peter Arrowsmith, patent attorney at one of the UK’s leading IP law firms Gill Jennings
and Every. “Sharing might seem like the antithesis of patenting IP, since the latter is about restricting the rights of other companies and making
sure technology remains proprietary. But
forward-thinking companies also need to consider how their technology
can be more readily adopted,” says Mr Arrowsmith. For Rockley Photonics, a company at the forefront of silicon photonics
which manufactures chipsets for datacentres and sensors, sharing IP is critical for successful manufacturing. While the company has an intimate
knowledge of photonics manufacturing, it doesn’t own any manufacturing facilities and instead contracts out the production, known as a
fabless operation. This means the company has to share its IP in full with the partnering foundries. One of the more effective ways
to drive innovation through collaboration is by licensing IP assets. “Startups, in particular, underestimate the value of
licensing. It doesn’t get talked about enough,” says Merlie Calvert, a former lawyer and founder of Farillio, a legal technology platform which
aims to simplify the law for entrepreneurs by providing them with all the legal documents and guidance they need to grow their business.
“Experts will tell you to protect your IP, and you should, but it’s only a step towards making real value out of creativity. When you license
creative ideas, products and technology, you turn them into real assets, market testers and door-openers for bigger
sales, orders and partnerships,” says Ms Calvert.

Recent DOE access is already deterring crucial investors from entering the industry,
driving bankruptcies across the sector.
Powers 24 [6/27/24, Mary B. Powers has reported on engineering and construction
issues in the global energy and environmental sectors for more than 30 years from
Washington, D.C. and Birmingham, Ala. , “Nuclear Fusion Pushes to Reach Commercial
Power Plant Stage,” ENR, https://www.enr.com/articles/58879-nuclear-fusion-pushes-
to-reach-commercial-power-plant-stage] HongruiH
Intellectual Property. Theissue of government access to startup firms’ patents, trade secrets and other
intellectual property has been a controversial part of Energy Dept. funding deal talks with developers,
executives told ENR on background. They considered government demand for such information in
certain circumstances too onerous since it is core to a firm’s market valuation and investor support. One
battery technology firm the agency supported financially declared bankruptcy in 2021 and was bought
by a Chinese firm that took its intellectual property to China, said a Congressional Research Service
report. Terms of Milestone funding program contracts were not disclosed, but developer unease remains, one executive told ENR. Rules also
mandate a ban on non-U.S. based investors in participating companies. The patent issue becomes more pronounced as
more private investors, particularly big tech firms, back fusion startups to secure a directed power
source as more and larger data centers and added artificial intelligence use escalate energy demand. Even
now, fusion power supply deals with major players such as Microsoft, Google and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI have propelled developers to
expedite timelines for prototypes and even full-size plants. Paul Wilson, University of Wisconsin-Madison nuclear engineering department chair,
says he is not confident firms will meet such deadlines but expects breakthroughs in the 2030s with full commercialization in the 2040s.
Scientific hurdles remain, but “engineering challenges are the long pole in the tent,” he says.

Fusion’s possible---patent development checks energy depletion, solves warming,

AND gets us off the rock---solving all existential threats.
Turrell ‘21 [Arthur; PhD in plasma physics from Imperial College London, for which he won the Atomic
Weapons Establishment thesis prize, is Deputy Director for Research and Capability at the ONS Data
Science Campus, as well as a visitor to the Bank of England, the plasma physics group at Imperial College
London and the Data Analytics for Finance and Macro Research Centre at King's College London; 08-05-
2021; “Epilogue: Can We Afford Not to Do Fusion?”; The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to
Power the Planet; Orion; https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/75/10/11/2845209/Fusion-power-s-
future; ‫]بالل‬

The aftermath of these extinction-scale events would be enormous climate change. Dust and earth from
asteroid impacts or volcanic eruptions could block out part of the Sun’s light, producing a cooling effect
and making it harder to grow food or use solar energy. What can we do to prepare for these rare but
world-changing disasters? Having a source of energy that can keep going despite sweeping and adverse
changes in climate seems like [is] a good precaution. As we know, fossil fuels will run out before too
long. And renewables that rely on large areas of land are susceptible to environmental changes. Fission could be one solution. Star power is
another: the fuels are (relatively) common—deuterium is found in all the world’s oceans while lithium is found on all the world’s inhabited
continents— and in any case not that much of either is needed. This may all sound scary. It is. But it’s also prudent to think about in the long
run. We know that these events can happen. On long enough timescales, they’re [they are] almost certain to. Personally, I’d like humanity to
thrive far into the future. The choices we make today have enormous consequences for future generations. Star
builders say that
using a fraction of world research budgets to perfect fusion energy is a small price to pay for a disaster-
resilient power source. Of course, there are reasons beyond just saving our skin to want to see fusion achieved. The pursuit of fusion
has led to scientific discoveries that are among the most extreme and surprising of any field. Think for a second about plasmas. Understanding
them is key for fusion, yes, but every plasma discovery also gives us a better understanding of 99 percent of the visible universe. Plasmas are
one of the most dramatic examples of how “more is different”: while we might understand the behaviors of the individual components—nuclei
and electrons —something changes when they’re combined in large numbers and complexity emerges out of simplicity. 4 Understanding these
rich phenomena can be its own reward, as with so many other topics in science. Even if the study of plasmas wasn’t worth it for the joy of
discovery alone, their emergent complexity holds practical lessons for other subjects, like economics, where people’s interactions are also
different from the sum of their parts. I5 A growing understanding of plasmas has led to more practical applications too, like cleaning surgical
equipment or, quite literally, growing diamonds. 6 Also, using lasers and plasmas together has resulted in new and better ways to fight cancer:
lasers can be used to accelerate protons in a plasma to very high energies, and those protons can more accurately target cancerous cells than,
for example, X-rays. 7 Machines like NIF are doing incredible science in addition to the experiments on inertial fusion energy and stockpile
stewardship. NIF has been used to recreate the conditions in the core of stars that have ten times the mass of the Sun, leading to better
estimates of their rate of fusion reactions. 8 NIF experiments have taken us elsewhere in space too. Shortly before his death at the age of
ninety-five, Livermore founder Edward Teller told scientists there that what he wanted for his one hundredth birthday was to get “excellent
predictions— calculations and experiments—about the interiors of the planets.” 9 The strides forward came too late for Teller, who passed
away in 2003, but since NIF opened, Livermore’s scientists have managed to re-create the huge pressures of the interiors of gas giants like
Jupiter and Saturn, albeit on a tiny scale. In the experiments, NIF’s laser beams were used to compress liquid deuterium to 6 million times Earth
pressure and to a temperature of a few thousand degrees. As the pressure increased, usually transparent deuterium liquid first became opaque
and then, most remarkably and bizarrely of all, turned into a shiny metal. It is like squeezing your coffee cup and finding that it has turned into a
plate. 10 The engineering challenges that star builders like Professor Ian Chapman are solving en route to commercializing fusion have industrial
spin-offs. Culham’s remote handling robots can be used in many situations that require dexterity but aren’t safe for humans to enter. Also,
developing resilient fusion reactors is pushing engineers to create new materials suitable for extremes. 11 Lawrence Livermore has filed a host
of patents based on what they’ve had to invent to make NIF work. As happened with research into crewed space flight, fusion research is
driving innovation beyond its own needs. The scientific and industrial reasons to pursue fusion, good as they are, aren’t the most bold or
ambitious arguments to perfect the power source of stars though. There’s a reason to achieve fusion that speaks even more loudly to our
existence as a species—which is that we could spread our wings and explore the universe. Venturing farther into space sounds like a wild
dream, and it is, for now. But we’ve been to the Moon. We’ve landed an un-crewed spacecraft on an asteroid. We’ve sent probes outside of the
solar system. Before too long, we may send a crewed mission to Mars. What person doesn’t want to open the next door and see what’s waiting
The only way we’ll travel to the universe beyond our celestial backyard is with
for us in the rest of the universe?
plasma physics and nuclear fusion. Fusion rockets are humanity’s best hope for traveling across the vast
distances of space. Rocket science has a reputation for being complicated, but it all boils down to two simple ideas. The first is this: if
you expel stuff in one direction, you’ll travel in the other direction. The second relates to how much force can be created. That’s determined by
how much mass is being expelled, and how quickly it’s being expelled. Rockets expel a lot of mass quickly to get into orbit. But there’s a
problem with expelling lots of mass; you have to carry the mass with you until it’s expelled. The more force you need, the more mass you have
to carry, which increases the force you need, and so on. To avoid this problem, propulsion methods that work in space won’t be able to rely on
You can
expelling lots of mass; instead they’ll need to maximize the speed of the mass being expelled (and to expel only a little mass).
probably guess why fusion is a good choice for the hasty space traveler. Fusion can create enormous
exhaust speeds with only small amounts of mass because of its high energy density. While the best
chemical rockets can achieve exhaust speeds of 4.5 kilometers (about 2.8 miles) per second, and nuclear
fission might reach 8.5 kilometers per second, a working nuclear fusion reactor could potentially
produce exhaust speeds of hundreds to thousands of kilometers per second. 12 Sticking a fusion reactor on a
spacecraft is, surprisingly, not the only fusionspacecraft option out there. Project Orion was part of Edward Teller’s “Plowshare” program to
turn nuclear weapons to peaceful purposes II and was co-led by physicist Freeman Dyson. 13 It looked at chucking exploding hydrogen bombs
out of the back end of a spacecraft to cause it to accelerate in the other direction. The scheme isn’t quite as insane as it may seem, and Dyson
himself estimated that it could produce exhaust speeds of one thousand to ten thousand kilometers (approximately six hundred to six thousand
miles) per second. Apart
from this approach to fusion-powered space travel posing significant proliferation
and safety risks, tests of pulsed nuclear explosion rockets are effectively banned by international treaties
—so it seems much more sensible to use controlled fusion reactors to achieve similar ends. However fusion-powered rockets are ultimately
achieved, research into fusion for energy will aid their development. 14 Anyway, developing fusion propulsion isn’t just
about exploring the universe; fusion rockets could also help us prevent planetary-scale extinction of life
from happening in the first place. The major challenge in preventing a humanity-killing asteroid or
comet is detecting and reaching it early enough so that mitigating action—such as steering it out of the
way—can be taken. Giving an asteroid a small push early on is as effective as a big push later on. Fusion-
powered rockets could travel through space faster than conventional rockets, buying us more time to
take action. And in the catastrophic event that we couldn’t save the Earth, the ability to travel to a new
home would be the ultimate insurance policy for humanity. Nuclear fusion reactor–powered spacecraft
bring space travel within reach. They’d cut down the time it takes to get to Mars significantly, making it
possible to do round-trips within a year. They could even allow us to travel outside of the solar system. The closest star system
outside of our own is centered on Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star four light-years away—that is, it takes light four years to make the journey
from Proxima Centauri to Earth. Proxima Centauri has a habitable zone, a region where—in principle—life could exist. Within that habitable
zone sits Proxima Centauri B, the closest exo-planet to Earth. While it’s highly unlikely that Proxima Centauri B is habitable, we don’t yet know.
With a fusion rocket, a trip to Proxima Centauri B would be possible in under forty years, a remarkably short time. 15 I began this book with a
crazy idea—to create a slice of star matter and do nuclear fusion reactions in it to produce energy. The scientists, entrepreneurs, and
governments that have pursued this goal aren’t so crazy though. The scientists are some of the best there are. Some whom we’ve met are
trusted with stewardship of the United States’ nuclear arsenal; they really know what they’re doing when it comes to nuclear physics. Others,
like Professor Ian Chapman at Culham, have won multiple awards for the quality of their research. The entrepreneurs in the race to build a star
are daring and ambitious, raising amounts that most start-ups can only dream of and making decades’ worth of progress in fusion in just a few
years. The governments funding fusion are leading the richest countries, and represent a majority of the world’s population. Their motivations
don’t seem crazy either. We’re causing an unprecedented change in our environment, and it’s mostly driven by
our use of energy. But our use of energy has improved life in ways that would have seemed impossible to our forebears. Reducing
energy demand enough to stop climate change seems impractical; if anything, we’re likely to need more energy, not
less. We have technologies to get us partway there—most notably, solar and wind power, and fission too,
where it’s accepted. But they won’t get us the whole way. Those pursuing this apparently crazy idea say that we can have
it both ways: we can improve quality of life for many more people and protect the environment at the same time. Fusion could deliver
CO2-free energy at scale and is likely to be one of the safest power sources, if not the safest, ever
devised. Climate change aside, we need new sources of energy because our primary sources of energy, fossil fuels, are dwindling. The
ingredients of even the most basic form of fusion, with deuterium and tritium, could last us around 33
million years. It’s not as long as the coelacanths have been swimming around, but it’s a damn good start.
And those 33 million years would surely buy us enough time to figure out how to do fusion reactions
that use even longer-lasting fuel. Even if you believe that fusion could save the planet, you might not be convinced that it’s possible
to make it work. And yet nature tells us not only that fusion can happen, but that it’s by far the universe’s most ubiquitous power source—the
one that lights each and every day on Earth, and maps the heavens at night. The universe’s visible matter began with nuclear fusion, and stars
end with it when they go supernova. We couldn’t exist without the atoms in our bodies being forged by it. Fusion is everywhere, so, star
builders say, why not on Earth too? As a species, we’ve already harnessed controlled fission (in today’s nuclear plants), and both uncontrolled
fission and fusion in nuclear weapons. Is it really so crazy to think that we might be able to harness controlled fusion too? Star builders say
“no!” and the machines that they’ve built have come very close to demonstrating that scientifically with net energy gain. Magnetic
confinement fusion has reached 67 percent of gain in fusion power, inertial confinement fusion 3
percent in energy. More important, we know from pen-and-paper physics that net energy gain from
fusion is possible. Experimental evidence strongly suggests that inertial confinement fusion will produce
net energy gain with a big enough laser. The conditions for self-sustaining nuclear fusion, or ignition, are
close, and there have been millionfold improvements toward them since the first fusion machines were
built. That progress has taken a long time, and now entrepreneurs are challenging the slow-moving government laboratories, pushing
progress to become faster, cheaper, and more commercially viable. While there is not complete agreement on how, and the when will depend
on money and luck, star builders all say that net energy gain is coming. Star builders are now looking beyond net energy gain, and setting their
sights on putting fusion energy on the grid. Huge engineering and commercial challenges remain. Entire plants must first produce more energy
than they use (every day, and not just in individual experiments). Fusion energy must be extracted and turned into electricity in a safe and
sustainable way. And fusion energy must be both widely available and affordable. To go from no fusion power to significant fusion power is a
change on a scale that is difficult to appreciate, requiring thousands of plants to be constructed all over the world. But
many star
builders won’t think they’ve really succeeded unless fusion is delivered quickly enough, and on big
enough scales, to help the planet avert a climate catastrophe that—right now—is coming toward us like
a juggernaut.

Warming triggers extinction. Tipping points and knock on effects overwhelm defense.
Kemp ‘23 [Luke; August 23; Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk,
Research Associate at Darwin College, Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations from the
Australian National University; OpenBook Publishers, “The Era of Global Risk,” Chapter 7: Ecological
Breakdown and Human Extinction]

Our focus will largely be on climate change. This is because it is the most well-researched and visible
contributor to global ecological risk. Yet, it cannot be easily disentangled from our other planetary
boundaries. This analysis should be seen as a partial and likely conservative overview. For this chapter I will use the definitions for terms
such as catastrophic and existential risk that are outlined in our previous paper Climate Endgame. The state of the science Uncertainty, tail-
risks, and tipping points. For many ecological risks, it appears that the more we know, the worse the threats appear. For
climate change,
the best indication for this is a change in the ‘reasons for concern’ across consecutive IPCC assessment
reports. The IPCC identifies five ‘reasons for concern’: unique and threatened ecosystems; frequency
and severity of extreme weather events; global distribution and balance of impacts; total economic and
ecological impact; and irreversible, large-scale, abrupt transitions. These are intended to be indicators to inform the
world of how close we are to “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”, the central mission of international climate
policy.3 These reasons for concern are determined by IPCC authors as a reflection of expert opinion, and underpin the famous ‘burning embers’
diagram. The diagram shows, in a thermostat fashion, at what temperature the risk of these different concerns is. Over time, with each
successive report, the risk levels for any given temperature have risen. That is, these reasons for concern have
become more worrisome, even at lower temperatures, as the science has progressed.4 In the fifth Assessment Report (AR5), all of the reasons
for concern were ‘high’ or ‘very high’ likelihood for just 2–3°C of warming.5 Tipping elements in the Earth System have followed the same trend
Tipping
as the reasons for concern. That is, over time the likelihood of crossing tipping points at low levels of warming has been rising.
elements refer to when warming breaches a critical threshold, causing a change in one part of the
climate system to become self-perpetuating, resulting in potentially significant Earth System impacts.
This includes Artic Winter Sea ice collapse and dieback of the Amazon Rainforest. The most recent assessment of
evidence on tipping elements found that out of 16 tipping elements, six are at a high likelihood of being tipped at 1.5–2°C of global heating. This
includes events such as the die-off of low-latitude coral reefs, as well as the long-term collapse of the West Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets.
Hence, even the ambitious goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures would likely activate multiple tipping
elements.6 The study of tipping points and regime shifts in ecosystems has progressed significantly, leading to new insights.7 We now have
nascent findings suggesting that such radical changes often occur in a domino effect.8 For
climate change, this has been termed
a ‘tipping cascade’.9 Moreover, it appears that the larger and more complex the ecosystem, the more
rapid and complete its potential collapse. Such lessons are not causes for comfort. Risk cascades still
largely exist under a fog of uncertainty. Studies currently suggest that climate change can worsen and trigger conflicts under
conditions such as weak governance and ethnic divisions,47 although we do not know how this relationship could morph under higher
temperatures. Similarly, temperature does seem to have an innate and often non-linear relationship with economic growth48 and even
population spread and density. It has been suggested that humans, much like other species, have a fundamental climatic niche—that is, a
specific climate envelope of approximately 13°C (mean annual average temperature) that the majority of human population and urban areas
Perhaps the best study to date on risk cascades and feedbacks used 41
have developed within over millennia.49
studies to empirically sketch the links between climate change, food insecurity, and societal collapse
(population loss through conflict, mortality, and emigration).50 Other researchers in global catastrophic risk have also
begun putting forward frameworks for more complex risk assessments,51 including for climate change52 and international governance.53 For
now, far greater attention and research is needed on these systemic effects, such as climate triggering
conflict, political change, or even financial crises. Indeed, understanding ‘societal fragility’ is a key part of the Climate
Endgame research agenda, alongside exploring long-term extreme Earth System states, modelling mass mortality and morbidity, and
undertaking integrated climate catastrophe assessments, which include climate change alongside a host of other catastrophic threats and
vulnerabilities.30 An existential end? Could global environmental collapse cause human extinction? This leads us to the central question: could
combined ecological crises cause this to be humanity’s final century? Few have been bold enough to directly broach the question. There have
been many prophesied warnings, especially within the collapse literature, but no truly comprehensive scientific assessments. Questions of
catastrophe are not directly addressed by any relevant, international scientific institutions, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) or Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Many individual papers have mentioned the
catastrophic potential of climate change. Peer-reviewed academic studies have referred to global warming as an
“existential threat”,5 “beyond catastrophic” (for above 5°C),54 and “an indisputable global catastrophe”
(for above 6°C).55 While the impacts of climate change alone seem capable of causing a global catastrophic risk, the authors never spell
out how the world would fall from such impacts to mass mortality. Importantly, the gloomy terms are never defined, leaving it unknown as to
whether the authors believe that certain levels of warming could plausibly lead to human extinction. These are no studies nor proofs of
existential risks from climate change, but rather indications of a lack of shared terminology. The lack of policy responses is also a concentrated
affair. For
climate change, a collection of organisations and individuals funded by the fossil-fuel industry
has deliberately undermined public trust in climate science and strangled the policy response. For decades,
the fossilfuel industry has funded scientists and firms—and even set up fake community groups—to muddy the science of climate change.
These are the well-funded and well-documented ‘Merchants of Doubt’.87 This was combined with the suppression of in-house climate research
from several fossil-fuel giants.88 Through other actions, such as lobbying and political subterfuge, the fossil-fuel
industry has played a central role in delaying and distorting efforts to reduce emissions over the past
three decades.89 Exxon, through the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA), has coordinated efforts across the industry to both discredit the science and stop
international climate policy since the 1980s.90 Neither emissions nor the lack of a policy response can be easily tied to the global public. The idea that ‘we are all to blame’ was, instead, part of an intentional rhetorical strategy
from ExxonMobil and others to shift responsibility to consumers.91 The threat is not humanity writ large. Rather, it is from a small, powerful band who overwhelmingly profit from the global machinery of extraction. It is largely a
matter of public risks and private benefits. Why is responsibility important? Does identifying, or targeting, the culprits behind ecological devastation bring us closer to solutions? Yes, of course it does. Across different risks and risk
determinants (hazards, vulnerabilities, exposures, and responses), there are often common drivers.92 Striking these common roots is a far more effective long-term solution than attempting to grapple with the symptoms. This is
not just true for climate change. For all anthropogenic catastrophic hazards, the responsibility is concentrated, and the powerful producers (the ‘Agents of Doom’) of these threats have played a starring role in thwarting societal
responses.93 Ironically, these actors also tend to disproportionately benefit from the execution of emergency powers during crises.94 Addressing risk will ultimately mean dealing with and curtailing the political power of these
actors. This should be a source of hope. The concentrated nature of responsibility means interventions should be easier to target and implement. It also means that reducing catastrophic risks could have the co-benefit of creating a
more equal world. The co-benefits of avoiding global ecological catastrophe Global catastrophe is rarely a matter for optimism. For anthropogenic hazards, such as advanced algorithmic systems and synthetic biology, the hyped
benefits are disconnected from their risk mitigation. They are dual use, and a common view is that we will either self-capitulate with them or achieve technological salvation. However, there may be many co-benefits from not
developing certain technologies. For example, avoiding the rapid development and deployment of AI systems would not just avert fears overreaching unaligned superintelligence, but also nearer-term concerns over surveillance
and disinformation. However, this is rarely discussed and is usually dismissed as being impossible or not worth the loss of the potentially beneficial applications. Ecological risks represent a different matter altogether. They are an
area where risk mitigation does not just involve building a safer world, but also one with greater welfare and health. This is the increasingly convincing story told by the ‘co-benefits’ literature. It is an area of study that has swelled
since the publication of Our Final Century. The message from most studies is that the mitigation of environmental problems—most notably climate change—yields many benefits, including improved health, economic performance,
employment, and energy security.95 Once these benefits are accounted for, the economics fundamentally shift: avoiding climate change is likely to result in net economic benefit, regardless of the warming averted. The same
calculus applies to ecosystem services. Estimates of global ecosystem services place their value at equal to or greater than double global GDP—for instance, approximately $125 trillion in 2011,96 a finding that should be entirely
unsurprising given that all economic activity is dependent on a functioning Earth System. Most actions to cut emissions are ‘no-regrets’ options. This is uncontroversial and well known for measures such as energy efficiency.97
What is less widely known, but increasingly clear, is that this holds for a much greater suite of actions, including vehicle electrification and renewable energy. Overall, decarbonization already appears cheap, and the projected costs
tend to fall with each new assessment due to the plummeting price of renewable energy.98 When the co-benefits and co-harms are included in an economic analysis, then optimal climate policy—which could be compatible with
2°C or 1.5°C, depending on our risk adversity and how we value human health—becomes an automatic net benefit.99 There are other potential trade-offs that we must be cognisant of, including the loss of marginalised workers in
the fossilfuel sector, disproportionate impacts on indigenous communities for resource extraction, and the potential for resource exhaustion. This has led to calls for a just transition.100 This is an admirable and necessary
approach. Nonetheless, the potential downsides of decarbonisation are still far less disturbing and costly than fossil-fuel extraction. The net benefit of mitigation is largely due to the dark, externalised costs of fossil fuels, most
notably on human health. According to one estimate, in 2012, particulate matter from the combustion of fossil fuels caused approximately 10.2 million excess deaths. In 2018, such deaths account for approximately 18% of global
deaths.101 This is only mortality. The cost is even higher when lost productivity and sickness are considered. These overall health costs are enormous. Even in the US, the health costs of coal-fired power are likely 0.8–5.6 times the
value added to the economy.102 Globally, the health effects of fossil fuels could justify a carbon price of $50–380.103 There are also a range of other potential advantages that are rarely included in naïve cost-benefit calculations.

Securing oil supply has been a suspected cause of many military

Chief among these is avoiding the geopolitical quagmire caused by fossil-fuel supply.

interventions in the Middle East, including the Iraq War.104 These have had dramatic knock-on effects
politically and socially, whether it be contributing to the rise of ISIS or potentially triggering new wars.
Even without these costly and corrosive excursions, the price of securing oil is high. The US alone spends a minimum of $81 billion on protecting
its oil supply chain.105 Decarbonisation will bring about its own set of geopolitical challenges, including the potential of new races for—and
conflict over—precious Earth metals and minerals that will fuel the transition to renewable energy, but these will likely be far less toxic and
dangerous than that of fossil fuels.

Meltdowns cause extinction.

Huff ‘14 [Ethan A.; Staff writer, 8/12/2014, “Nuclear power + grid down event = global extinction for
humanity,” http://www.naturalnews.com/046429_nuclear_power_electric_grid_global_extinction.html]

If you think the Fukushima situation is bad, consider the fact that the United States is vulnerable to the
exact same meltdown situation, except at 124 separate nuclear reactors throughout the country. If
anything should happen to our nation's poorly protected electric power grid, these reactors have a high
likelihood of failure, say experts, a catastrophic scenario that would most likely lead to the destruction
of all life on our planet, including humans. Though they obviously generate power themselves, nuclear
power plants also rely on an extensive system of power backups that ensure the constant flow of cooling
water to reactor cores. In the event of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), for instance, diesel-powered
backup generators are designed to immediately engage, ensuring that fuel rods and reactor cores don't
overheat and melt, causing unmitigated destruction. But most of these generators were only designed
to operate for a maximum period of about 24 hours or less, meaning they are exceptionally temporary
in nature. In a real emergency situation, such as one that might be caused by a systematic attack on the
power grid, it could take days or even weeks to bring control systems back online. At this point, all those
backup generators would have already run out of fuel, leaving nuclear reactors everywhere prone to
meltdowns.

Fusion eliminates scarcity, preventing resource wars and opening peacebuilding to

rejuvenate cooperation.
Carayannis ’22 [Elias, John Draper, Balwant Bhaneja; December; Professor of Science, Technology,
Innovation and Entrepreneurship at George Washington University, PhD in management of technology;
Nonkilling Economics and Business Research Committee, Center for Global Nonkilling and Visiting
Professor in Public Administration with the University of Nottingham Asia Research Institute; Center for
Global Nonkilling; Peace and Conflict Studies, “Fusion Energy for Peacebuilding: A Trinity Test-Level
Critical Juncture,” Vol. 29, No. 1]

Given these developments, as with the original Baruch Plan, the fusion burning plasma breakthrough
creates the opportunity for a new nuclear normative order, a new Baruch Plan, this time based on fusion
energy while likewise being oriented towards perpetual peace. Path dependence indicates, as with the Baruch Plan and
the Montreal Protocol, this would be a hybridized approach, an innovative specialized policy framework relying upon the external legitimacy of
the IAEA, followed by the U.N., and supported by the IAEA. It would be tasked with accelerating the development of fusion energy; ensuring co-
development by the Global South in pursuit of a “Future Fusion Economy” that is both competitive with, and complementary to, renewables;
and applying it to the grand challenges of climate change, energy for all, and peace, via its accelerated commercialization (Carayannis et al.,
2020a; Carayannis et al., 2020b; Carayannis et al., 2022). If such a framework can be designed and realized, developing
fusion energy will mitigate against conflict. As with the original Baruch Plan, incentivization is critical. Beginning with the Global
South, G77 co-development of fusion energy through funding around 6-10 competing public- and private-sector cost-sharing DEMO projects up
to the sum of around 30 billion dollars over two decades via their sovereign wealth funds lessens the risk of fusion energy’s accelerated arrival
destabilizing their economies. It achieves this via the Global Commission to Accelerate Fusion Energy providing them with a stake in the new
fusion-based Future Fusion Economy through co-ownership of core fusion energy patents, insuring them against fusion competing with fossil
fuels (see Suggested ToR for Global Commission to Accelerate Fusion Energy and Technical Annexes, available at the OSF Storage data
repository: https://osf.io/hqzak). For the West, several of their most advanced public- and private-sector fusion DEMOphase projects, like the
U.K. Atomic Energy Authority Culham Centre for Fusion Energy’s Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production project, or TAE Technologies’ project
in the U.S., could be effectively funded to continuously innovate and engineer fusion reactors. Moreover, co-development grows the market
more rapidly as Global South countries not only have a financial stake in sales but also have sufficient knowledge to build and operate their own
fusion reactors. This agreement would benefit both the Global South and the mainly Western global fusion innovation ecosystem, like the U.K.’s
South West Nuclear Hub. G77 co-ownership of patents would also benefit the global innovation ecosystem, as third-party countries would be
less likely to reverse engineer and sell technology to Global South countries that those same countries co-owned. Finally, in that the global
commission would establish ownership of fusion IP and implement a robust sanctions mechanism for breaches of patents, a regime will be
established whereby core patents held by Western companies could be securely licensed to China. SinoU.S. relations should then improve as a
new baseline for technological cooperation is developed and implemented, a return to the pathfinding element of fusion as a clean energy
technology and basis for science diplomacy (Claessens, 2020). Revisiting the example of the Spratly Islands, the accelerated arrival and
commercialization of fusion power in the 2030’s2040’s to contribute to transitioning from fossil fuels (National Academies, 2021) would mean a
railgun-powered military conflict over the islands would lack political utility. The most dangerous period between the deployment of railgun
weapon systems in the 2020s and the burning plasma in the 2030s-2040s, when military planners begin contemplating a fusionpowered railgun
arms race, would be governed by work towards the new nuclear order. In situating NKGPS within the QHFIE framework, we have resurrected
the U.S. goal, embodied in the U.N. and in the Baruch Plan, as well as in the Atoms for Peace program and in the ITER project, of a demilitarized
world with access to inexpensive energy (Carayannis & Draper, 2021). The
fusion energy critical juncture will introduce a
genuine scientific paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1970), a term typically overused in the literature but
appropriate here as conflict over fossil fuel resources could, within this century, subside. Given so much
U.S. foreign policy is geared towards a culture of war in large part due to the securitization of fossil fuel
energy (Marsella, 2011), much U.S. domestic and foreign policy could then shift from a killing-prone
nature to a killing-avoiding one within the unfolding fan of nonkilling alternatives. This could result in
demilitarizing other societies. Demilitarizing would mean increased funding for public infrastructure and services, enabling the U.S.
to revisit welfare reforms abandoned during the rise of its military industrial complex (Hooks & McQueen, 2010). Further, demilitarizing does
not present an existential threat to the U.S. military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC) (LeLoup, 2008). The MICC can re-purpose itself for
a post-fusion world, towards domestic and foreign aid to coordinate a global Fusion for Peace program to address energy for all and climate
change, to ensure planetary defense (National Science and Technology Council, 2018), and to conduct space exploration (Dawson, 2017). In
terms of Paige’s funnel of killing, preventing fusion-powered weaponry primarily requires action at the level of the structural reinforcement
zone, where socioeconomic arguments, institutions, and material means predispose and support a discourse of killing (Evans Pim, 2012, p. 116,
citing Paige, 2009, p. 76). Motlagh (2012, pp. 103–5) states that images of perpetual peace and weapon-free zones matter, as do actions like
removing economic support for lethality and protecting human rights. In the U.S., the basic Kantian concept of perpetual peace (Kant, 2003; see
Terminski, 2010) translated into President Roosevelt’s human security paradigm, as embodied in the 1941 State of the Union address (the Four
Freedoms Speech; see Kennedy, 1999) and then eventually into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the U.N. General
Assembly on December 10, 1948 as Resolution 217, in its 183rd session. Following Motlagh, we emphasize protecting the environment and the
Consequently, addressing
ecological responsibility of humanity to manage the planet’s climate responsibly in the Anthropocene Era.
climate change via our hybridized specialist fusion governance instrument, the global commission, also
serves as an inspiration for peacebuilding. A strategic North-South partnership on developing fusion energy that re-engages the
U.S. and China in science and energy diplomacy should also stimulate negotiations to use fusion energy for solely peaceful purposes. At the
We
time of the original Baruch Plan, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R, divided by ideological differences, lacked a common language for negotiations.
suggest that negotiations via the Global Commission for Urgent Action on Fusion Energy would start to
create that common language. They would lead to a new Baruch Plan via a technical report and business
prospectus that employ the NKGPS peacebuilding, life-affirming paradigm of nonkilling, as a science-
based philosophy of survival through cooperation that advocates pursuing mutually beneficial goals to
overcome deadly antagonisms. This is possible because NKGPS specifically emphasizes that “science provides knowledge for
liberation from lethality” and advocates humanity adopting multiple peace-bringing big science projects (Paige, 1996, p. 9). In other regards,
the North-South innovation diplomacy required to rapidly develop and direct fusion energy for peaceful ends would essentially revisit the same
basic philosophical arguments regarding realizing perpetual peace that were triggered by the Trinity Test critical juncture, provoking the U.N.
normative global governance regime. Once again, a completely novel nuclear energy source will emerge that could be militarized. Once again,
there will be a momentous opportunity for peacebuilding, involving the U.S. and the West, the Global South, and China. And once again, the
U.S. will be challenged to provide global leadership. Its
incentive will be the possibility of revitalizing the flagging
Washington consensus-based approach to global development (Löfflman, 2019), fueled by a Fusion for
Peace program through a Universal Global Peace Treaty, a successor to the world’s first Global
Ceasefire, called as a response to Covid-19 (Gifkins & Docherty, 2020). A UGPT could rejuvenate the U.N.
System in permitting humanity the opportunity to live without fear, or at least with less fear, while utilizing fusion
power to help address climate change and achieve the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal of energy for all, whiling reaching for other goals,
like the colonization of space, facilitated by fusion drives (United States Department of Energy, 2021).
 1ac---plan
The United States federal government should strengthen its protection of nuclear
fusion patents by prohibiting governmental agency infringement on those patents
through enhancing USPTO enforcement.
 1ac---solvency
We solve for 7 reasons
1. Abundance. Fusion tackles energy insecurity and the climate crisis, offering millions
of times more energy without the downsides of renewables.
Sadik-Zada 24, [Elkhan Richard Sadik-Zada-Institute of Development Research and Development
Policy, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, Centre for Studies on European Economy, Azerbaijan State
University of Economics, Azerbaijan. Andrea Gatto, Yannic Weißnicht. “Back to the future: Revisiting the
perspectives on nuclear fusion and juxtaposition to existing energy sources.” March 2024.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544223025446?casa_token=CP-
0_OXJWqQAAAAA:gIymmLXp11eUrmtPkvTCRKsTLRKkpj2BI4CD2-UToyavmy3pgV0akk09QXExj-
bz7Ovswzz3nw]//KAK
Human civilization is facing existential risks that in essence, emanate from the reliance on nonrenewable
fossil fuels on the one hand side and the ongoing climate crisis that is mainly driven and aggravated by
the reliance on fossil fuels and mankind's inexorably increasing energy demand on the other hand side
[ 1 ]. Transition to clean energy systems plays a central role in the prevention, or at least reduction of
global energy insecurity and global atmospheric pollution. Only a climate-neutral and abundant energy system can ensure
the current high living standards of the OECD member states and the growing population and converging living standards of the developing and
transition economies without breaking the planetary boundaries [ [2] , [3] , [4] ]. Hence, within the framework of the Paris Accord, the focus of
the overwhelming majority of the Nationally Determined Contributions for the reduction of atmospheric emissions concentrate on the rollout
of renewable energy sources (RES) such as solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro energy within the energy mixes of the individual countries. Solar
and wind energy are abundant enough to meet the growing energy demand of the planet and, at the same time, mitigate greenhouse gases
(GHG) [ 5 ]. There
are, however, also significant problems that correspond with the transition from fossil
fuels-based power plants toward systems that rely on solar and wind energy. Both wind and solar
energy for electricity generation pose the problem of intermittency due to exogenously conditioned
supply volatility [ [6] , [7] ]. Even if wind and solar energy are available around the year, the energy supply is not sufficient at wind- and/or
sun-scarce phases. In summer, solar collectors will produce more energy than on winter days and cloudy days will also interfere with the
efficiency of solar collectors [ 8 ]. This problem emanates from the lack of storage possibilities for solar energy during daytime and sunny phases
throughout the year. This explains the growing interest in the advancement of new technologies and more sustainable, cleaner, and renewable
energy sources are the object of investments and scholarly interest [ [9] , [10] , [11] , [12] ]. Geothermal and hydropower energy could also
serve as base-load fuel. These energy sources are, however, not uniformly available in the large quantities that are required for a base-load
power [ 6 ]. These vulnerabilities represent a burden for stable electricity supply through both extended grid networks and mini-grids. Due to
the grave fluctuations in energy generation, the grid may face overloads at some times and may not provide enough energy at other times [ 13 ,
14 ]. Hence, the solar and wind-based energy supply systems have to be backed by base-load fossil or nuclear fission-based power. Hereby,
natural gas has been deemed for a long time as the best option because of the relatively low carbon emission factor of natural gas and the
provision of the base load. Due to nuclear waste and the disproportional health and environmental risks of nuclear fission energy, for a long
period, natural gas was deemed to be superior to nuclear energy [ 6 , 15 , 16 ]. Furthermore, deep decarbonization of the energy systems
requires substantial amounts of critical metals and minerals, such as aluminum, cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, and rare earth elements [ 17 ].
Because of the concentration of these elements in China and Russia and the ongoing geopolitical tension between these countries and the
West, disproportional reliance on them could lead to supply chain disruptions [ [17] , [18] ]. The recent COVID-19 pandemic and the
corresponding global supply chain disruptions have foregrounded the significance of such disruptions for the global value chains [ 19 , 20 ].
Besides solar, wind, biofuel, and geothermal energy there is also nuclear fusion-based energy, which is oftentimes neglected in the discussions
on transition to clean energy sources. The energy that is released by nuclear fusion is several million times greater
than burning fossil fuels [ 21 ]. The central cause for this negligence can be attributed to the negative energy return on energy invested
(EROI) of the nuclear fusion technologies. Despite scientific efforts since the early 1950s to produce nuclear fusion energy in the US, European,
Soviet, and later Russian labs, the energy balance that is the EROI of the respective experiments was always negative. Hence, producing nuclear
fission energy to fuel the electricity and heat demand had been deemed a utopia. The dominating narrative for fusion energy has been that
“fusion is always 30 years away” [ 22 ]. This perception of nuclear fusion as a utopia seems to be, however, on demise [ 22 ]. At the same time,
despite the skepticism of the past seven decades, the research on nuclear fission has been inexorably on the rise. As shown in Fig. 1 , the
number of scholarly works focusing on nuclear fusion since 1968 exhibits an increasing trend. This implies that the interest and the stock of
knowledge on nuclear fusion has been steadily accumulating over the past five decades (see Fig. 1 ).In addition, according to the IAEA, the
number of discoveries in the field of nuclear fusion has had a positive trend over the past decades ( Fig. 2 ). This shows that a substantial share
of scholarly literature on fusion energy rather focuses on the presentation of the substantial findings related to fusion energy.In November
2021, for the first time, fusion energy has been incorporated into the official dialogue of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP), the main
decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Glasgow (COP26) [ 23 ]. The perception of
nuclear fission fundamentally shifted, however, a year later, in December 2022 – after the ground-breaking results of the Federal Livermore
National Laboratory in California (NLC). For the first time in history, the scholars of NLC succeeded in producing nuclear fusion energy with a
positive EROI. The fusion facility used 2.1 MJ of energy to power the super lasers for nuclear fusion yielding 2.5 MJ of energy [ 24 ]. On July
30th, 2023 NLC attained net energy for the second time, whereby this time within the laser-driven fusion, the energy input was 2 MJ and the
energy output was 3.15 MJ. The
attainment and even a substantial improvement of the energy balance has led
to greater scientific enthusiasm and backs the expectations that fusion could be a viable and market-
aligned source of electricity by even earlier than 2055, the year which is indicated in the EU fusion
roadmap that sets the earliest date for commercial fusion plants [ 25 ]. This optimism has been fostered by the very
recent breakthrough in controllable nuclear fusion technology of Chinese researchers.

2. Commercialization. Fusion tech needs patent protection for key innovations, or

without it, DOE and public programs will hinder commercial adoption.
Emma Graham and Alex Savin sep 30th 2023 Emma Graham is a partner and patent attorney,
engineering, at IP firm Mewburn Ellis in London. Alex Savin is an associate and patent attorney, with a degree in
engineering, also working at Mewburn Ellis. “Why nuclear fusion breakthroughs should herald an IP race”
https://www.worldipreview.com/patent/why-nuclear-fusion-breakthroughs-should-herald-an-ip-race
In July 2023, a research team in California achieved a breakthrough in nuclear fusion ignition. This wasn’t the first time that the scientists at the
National Ignition Facility (NIF) of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) had achieved net energy gain in inertial confinement
fusion (ICF). It followed on from the landmark success in December 2022, led by LLNL’s Dr Annie Kritcher, which reported the first ever ICF net
gain. Thecontinued success of the ICF project is a significant milestone in the path towards the goal of
realizing commercial fusion energy (arguably the holy grail of limitless clean energy). What it also means
however, is that there will be a race to protect innovations in this space. But what is nuclear fusion, how does ICF
work, and what comes next in an IP context? Nuclear fusion At a simplistic level, nuclear fusion is the process of pushing two nuclei so close to
each other that they fuse together to form a new species. Overcoming the natural repulsion between nuclei is an immense challenge but
overcoming this energy barrier releases huge amounts of energy, meaning that nuclear fusion is a particularly attractive option as an energy
source in a post-carbon world. While nuclear fusion is a naturally occurring process in the interior of every star, it is completely impractical to
build a star-sized power plant, and so research teams over the past 70+ years have been researching mechanisms that could induce fusion in
the laboratory. The key to successfully producing a self-sustaining nuclear fusion reaction lies in driving up the confinement pressure and
confinement time of a hydrogen plasma fuel. You need to confine the fuel with enough pressure and for a long enough time to induce fusion
and allow some of the energy generated by each fusion reaction to cause subsequent fusion reactions within the plasma. The threshold for this
self-sustaining burn is known as ignition. There are two principal approaches in the bid to achieve nuclear fusion. One of these, magnetic
confinement fusion (MCF), attempts to propel a stream of hydrogen plasma around a tokamak reactor under the influence of intricate and
powerful magnetic fields for a sufficiently long time for the fusion reaction to achieve ignition. Inertial confinement fusion Approaching the
problem from the other side, ICF seeks to achieve fusion in a nanoscale pellet of deuterium-tritium fuel by subjecting the pellet to enormous
pressures very quickly. At the NIF, 192 laser beams deliver approximately 2 mega-joules of energy to a pellet of fuel over the course of just a
handful of nanoseconds. The extreme intensity of this laser radiation instantly evaporates the outer shell of the fuel pellet, causing the outer
surface to ablate (explode) away from the fuel pellet at extreme speed. In response to this implosion, the inner core of the fuel pellet implodes,
drastically increasing the internal pressure of the fuel pellet to such an extent that fusion becomes possible. Sounds easy enough? Not even
slightly. Technically
achieving this is like attempting to crush a bar of soap down to a millionth of its size
with a pair of chopsticks without dropping the soap. Practically speaking, it’s one of the biggest
engineering and scientific hurdles that humanity has ever faced. At the NIF, using an indirect drive approach, the laser
beams are simultaneously focused down onto a gold canister (hohlraum) that has a frozen pellet of deuterium-tritium fuel stored inside. The
hohlraum absorbs the huge amounts of energy incident on the outside of the canister and re-emits approximately 60-70% into the interior of
the hohlraum in the form of soft x-rays. These x-rays symmetrically irradiate the fuel pellet, ablating its outer surface and imploding its inner
core. This controlled implosion drives the fusion reactions but requires an almost perfect control of the laser and soft x-ray profiles, and
exceptionally precise target fabrication so that a uniform implosion can be achieved. Without a uniform implosion, the laser system effectively
‘drops the soap’, making ignition Impossible. That’s why LLNL’s success, and now repeated success, is so exciting. If
LLNL has been able
to replicate its original groundbreaking results, then we’re one step closer to being able to realize this in
a commercial power plant and provide an almost limitless supply of clean energy. What’s next for fusion-based
IP? Now that the principles underlying fusion have been successfully proven, we can expect an increased
drive in the ancillary technologies that will support fusion projects to make their commercialization a
reality. While the NIF is a fantastically powerful machine, it can only fire its lasers once or twice a day because of the time needed to build up
the energy required for a fusion-inducing shot, and allow the components of the laser system to cool down between shots so that the desired
laser profile can be reliably reproduced shot after shot. To make ICF, or an ICF-based approach, a commercial reality therefore requires
significant innovations in the technologies that contribute to high-power laser systems—including energy generation and storage, amplifier
systems, cooling systems, and control systems for reliably modifying the laser profile. Development in target design, and reactor control
systems is also needed to increase efficiencies throughout the reaction chain. All of the IP in these developments could—and
should—be protected to ensure that any commercialization of fusion is successful. Ancillary innovations, such as
those listed above, potentially have wide-ranging applicability across different, and potentially unrelated, industries. Obtaining patents
for these developments could, therefore, represent a significant licensing opportunity that could provide
much-needed revenue to commercial fusion operations. In order to capitalize on these opportunities,
innovators and inventors will need to consult experienced patent attorneys with a broad range of
expertise so that the resulting patent protection they obtain has the necessary breadth and robustness
to provide a powerful commercial tool in their arsenal. This opportunity to help fusion endeavors to commercialize their IP
with a coherent big-picture strategy represents a fantastic opportunity for patent professionals to have a material impact on establishing
nuclear fusion as a commercial reality for clean energy.

3. Research. Patents drive scientific research and tech development in fusion

Kerstin Hotte et al. April, 2021. Oxford Martin Programme on Technological and Economic Change,
University of Oxford, OX13BD, UK
Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, University of Bielefeld, Anton Pichler Institute for
New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, OX13UQ, UK Mathematical
Institute, University of Oxford, OX13LP, UK Complexity Science Hub Vienna, A-1080, Austria. François
Lafond Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, OX13UQ,
UK. Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, OX13LP, UK
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2020.110654 [HOCH-TUAH]
To meet the Paris Agreement and to reduce climate risks, the transition to Low-Carbon Energy
Technologies (LCETs) needs to be accelerated [[1], [2], [3]]. R&D can stimulate the invention and diffusion of LCETs [[4], [5], [6],
[7]], but it is not clear whether the main driver of technological progress is fundamental science, applied science or applied technological
development [[8], [9], [10], [11]]. Since
the drivers of progress differ across technology types [12,13], a systematic
and technology-specific understanding of these drivers is essential to design targeted and efficient
innovation policies. To this aim, we look at the patterns of citations of LCET patents over two centuries, and
describe quantitatively and qualitatively how the relative importance of different knowledge resources differs across technology types, and how
citation patterns evolved over time. Over the past decade, an increasing number of studies using patent data has documented that green
inventions are more novel, more radical and have a more pervasive effect on subsequent innovation compared to non-green alternatives [[14],
[15], [16], [17]]. This
suggests that the shift of innovative efforts from fossil to low-carbon technologies can
be a trigger of positive innovation dynamics and growth. But which LCET is the most promising? And should innovation
policy target fundamental science or applied technological development? While it is well acknowledged that public research institutions, often
oriented toward more fundamental science, play a central role in the invention of LCETs [11,[18], [19], [20], [21]], it remains poorly understood
how this role differs across technologies and over time. Following Brian Arthur's definition [22], technologies are “a collection of phenomena
captured and put to use”. Different “families of [scientific] phenomena” (chemical, electrical, quantum, etc.) lead to distinct families of
technologies based on these phenomena. Intuitively, it is known that LCETs rely on very different scientific principles or physical phenomena,
and on rather distinct fields of science. Nuclear fusion is based on the physics of plasmas, Hydro energy on mechanical forces, Biofuels on
chemistry and Solar photovoltaics (PV) on the photoelectric effect. In this article, this theoretical conception of technological heterogeneity is
systematically linked to data. Interactions of science and technology work in both directions, and there are strong interdependencies among
different technological and scientific domains [10,13,[23], [24], [25]]. This makes it difficult to map the exact relationships between specific
technologies and specific technological domains. A systematic, data-driven analysis can be based on the study of patent citations to the “non-
patent literature”, which is often of scientific origin [26]. However, it is only recently that high-quality and comprehensive data became
available. Analyses at the aggregate level have shown that most patents are linked to a scientific paper and vice-versa, typically through a path
of 2–4 citations [27]. Two recent studies, using slightly different methods and data, found that patent value is related to the quality of the
science it relies on [28,29]. A recent related study based on data from the European Patent Office (EPO) found that renewable energy
technologies rely on more recent, more diverse and more frequently cited scientific literature, compared to fossil-fuel based technology [30],
but did not investigate the evolution of these patterns over time. Another
study [31] found that the number of citations to
scientific literature increased for “alternative energy production“ and Nuclear power patents, but did
not look at single technologies and the qualitative nature of citation links. The analysis reported here
expands the study of science-technology interactions for LCET development to a historical scale. It is based
on a significantly larger data set covering a much higher number of patents and citation links. The size of the data set enables a systematic
comparison of different LCETs among themselves and over time, and a closer analysis of the content of the scientific literature cited by LCET
patents. Specifically, this paper studies the evolution of citation links between virtually all patents filed at the United States Patent and
Trademark Office (USPTO) since18361 and published scientific work (Fig. 1). The analysis disaggregates 10 technology types: Solar PV, Wind
energy, Solar thermal (“Thermal” for short), Ocean power, Hydro energy, Geothermal, Biofuels, Fuels from waste, Nuclear fission, and
Nuclear fusion. The data set (Reliance on Science (RoS)), which was only recently assembled, links Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) data
with USPTO patents [[32], [33], [34]]. US patents are well suited for comprehensive historical studies, due to the
extensive time coverage and high quality of the historical records. Moreover, the US plays a leading role
in green patenting [31], and valuable patents tend to be filed in more jurisdictions [35] so that important patents of non-US origin are
likely to be filed in the US too. The data covers more than 179 million academic papers classified into 251 scientific fields, 10 million patents
classified into more than 240,000 highly detailed technology categories, and 34 million citations from more than 2 million unique patents to 4
million papers (Table 1). This paper focuses on a subset of 65,000 patents assigned to 10 different technologies accounting for all low-carbon
electricity generation2 (Table 2) and describes their interactions with scientific knowledge across time. As in Ref. [30], we find that some LCETs
are vastly more science-intensive than others. The scientific dependence of all LCETs has increased substantially over time reflecting the
evolution from individual inventors in the 19th century to industrial systems of innovation .
In terms of composition, LCET
patenting shifted from Hydro and Wind, to Nuclear, and to Solar PV and Wind recently. Looking at the reliance
on science, 4 key findings emerge: 1) All LCETs increasingly rely on science. 2) Biofuels and Fuels from Waste rely most heavily on science which
is due to their close connection to biochemical research. Solar
PV and Nuclear fusion also rely heavily on science, in
sharp contrast to other technologies, particularly Hydro. Science-intensive technologies tend to rely more strongly on
basic rather than applied science. 3) Looking at the qualitative nature of the knowledge base, the two fuel-based,
the six non-fuel-based Renewables and the two Nuclear energy technologies form separate clusters that
rely on strikingly different kinds of science. 4) The scientific bases of Renewables have become more
similar over time, suggesting synergies in technological development and research. This is also true for fuel-
based technologies, but not for the two nuclear power technologies.

4. Investment. Current investment is lacking—boosting investor interest will

accelerate innovation.
FIA ’23 [Non-profit independent trade association for the international nuclear fusion industry; Fusion
Industry Association, “Congress Provides Record Funding for Fusion Energy,”
https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/congress-provides-record-funding-for-fusion-energy/]
In the 2023 Appropriations bill, expected to pass Congress this week, the U.S. government would provide record funding for fusion energy. This
funding comes on the heels of the breakthrough fusion results from the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Lab,
announced on December 13. The Fusion Energy Sciences program within the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which funds most of the
U.S. government’s fusion research, would receive $763 million for the coming year, $50 million (about 7%) above 2022 funding levels, and $40
million above what the Biden Administration requested. Inertial Confinement Fusion research, which supported the breakthrough at the NIF,
comes from a separate budget allocation, through the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Congress would fund $630 million for
Inertial Confinement Fusion, a $50 million increase over 2022, of which at least $380 million will go to funding the NIF. Put together, the $1.4
billion funding for fusion will be a record amount from the U.S. government. It is also less than is needed to capitalize on the scientific
breakthroughs happening in fusion around the world. More
Funding is Still Needed. Even though this funding is the
most that the U.S. government has ever allocated to fusion energy research, there is broad agreement
in Congress, the fusion science community, and the private fusion industry that more funding is needed
to accelerate towards a fusion power plant. In the CHIPS and Sciences Act, Congress authorized funding for Fusion Energy
Sciences at $1.025 billion for 2023, so the allocation of $763 million is only 74% of the funding necessary to achieve the aims laid out by
Congress. In March, 2022, the White House held a summit on fusion energy, calling for a “Bold Decadal Vision” for commercializing fusion
energy that would accelerate beyond the plans outlined in the fusion community’s plan. Achieving
this accelerated pathway will
be ambitious, but it must start by funding at least at the amount authorized by Congress in the CHIPS
and Sciences Act – $1.04 billion. An important section of the funding in the Omnibus bill will provide “not less than $25 million” for
the Milestone-based Development Program, a public-private partnership that supports private fusion companies as they meet their milestones
towards a fusion pilot plant. This program was initiated in the fall, with applications due on December 15. DOE will announce the recipients of
funding in 2023. Applications to the milestone program were significantly oversubscribed, with more that 15 applications requesting more
nearly three times as much funding as the $50 million program had allocated. The initial program duration is 18 months, and new funding will
be required to accelerate the program and move towards pilot fusion power plants. All money spent in this program would be matched by
private-sector investments. In the CHIPS and Science Act, Congress authorized the program for $415 million over 5 years. The Fusion Industry
Association supports significant increases in funding for this program – industry and investors could support over $1 billion in funding. Other
earmarked funds in the FES program include: $130 million for research at General Atomics’ DIII-D, $104 million for NSTX-U operations at
Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, and $242 million for ITER. Prospects for Funding in the 2024 Budget While the record funding for fusion in the
budget can be seen as a qualified success, the next budget cycle starts again in February, when the President delivers his budget to Congress.
Fusion energy research, development, and commercialization presents an opportunity for bipartisan support. Senator Booker of New Jersey led
a letter with his colleagues in the Senate requesting funding of fusion in the Fusion Energy Sciences program at the full authorization level of
$1.04 billion, sent last week to Shalanda Young, Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Achieving a bold vision for fusion will take
innovative thinking and new programs, along with full funding of the existing program. The FIA stands ready to support Congress and the
Administration as they push this forward.

5. Sustainability. Fusion is the most sustainable option, avoiding the extractive

downsides of nuclear fission.
Baker ’22 [David R; December 13; Energy and clean tech reporter at Bloomberg; Bloomberg, “Fusion Is
Nuclear Power Without the Meltdowns and Radioactive Waste,”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-13/what-is-fusion-power-and-why-is-it-better-
than-nuclear?embedded-checkout=true]
Abundant fuel. No danger of a meltdown. No lingering radioactive waste. Nuclear fusion, the process US researchers successfully demonstrated
this month, has big potential advantages over the nuclear power plants operating today, which run on an entirely different principle. If
perfected into a form that can run in a power plant — not just an advanced government lab — fusion
could offer[s] a clean power source that avoids many of the pitfalls that have dogged nuclear energy for
decades. All existing nuclear plants use fission — splitting atoms apart — rather than fusion, which
involves fusing them together. Fission plants are fueled by uranium pellets that are crammed inside long
metal rods. The uranium must be mined and refined, and after its use, it stays radioactive for thousands
of years. Unless it’s reprocessed, that waste must be carefully stored and monitored, decade after decade. Fusion, however, uses
as its fuel two isotopes of hydrogen, the universe’s most abundant element. One of the isotopes, deuterium, is
readily available in seawater. The other, tritium, can be made by exposing lithium — the same metal used in batteries — to neutrons. Fusion
merges those two hydrogen isotopes into helium, with no long-lived waste. Neutrons from the reaction will, over
time, render the reactor materials themselves radioactive, but with a far shorter half-life than the waste from a fission plant.

6. Markets. Markets are crucial for creating the regulatory and economic environment
needed for effective fusion technology.
Dunn 21, [Peter Dunn. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, MIT. “An aggressive market-driven
model for US fusion power development.” February 24, 2021. https://news.mit.edu/2021/aggressive-market-
driven-model-us-fusion-power-development-0224]//KAK
Electricity generated by fusion power plants could play an important role in decarbonizing the U.S.
energy sector by mid-century, says a new consensus study report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine, which also lays out for the first time a set of technical, economic, and regulatory standards and a timeline for a U.S. fusion pilot plant
that would begin producing energy in the 2035-40 time frame. To
achieve this key step toward commercialization, the
report calls for an aggressive public-private effort to produce by 2028 a pilot plant design that can, when
built, accommodate any of the developmental approaches seeking to realize fusion’s potential as a safe,
carbon-free, on-demand energy source. These include what it calls the “leading fusion concept, a deuterium-tritium fueled
tokamak,” like that being pursued at MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) with support from the Institute’s Plasma Science and
Fusion Center (PSFC) and Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. Martin Greenwald, deputy director of the PSFC, notes that “the
report can be seen as confirming and validating the vision that motivated the founding of CFS in 2018.” The new report follows and extends a
2018 National Academies study that (while acknowledging the significant scientific and technical challenges still faced by fusion) saw promise in
the tokamak approach, called for continued U.S. participation in the international ITER fusion experiment, and suggested a pilot plant effort .
PSFC director and Hitachi America Professor of Engineering Dennis Whyte helped develop the new study as a member of the National
Academies’ Committee on the Key Goals and Innovation Needed for a U.S. Fusion Pilot Plant, which also included representatives from other
universities, national laboratories, and private companies. It sought out a broad range of expertise from government, academic, and private-
sector sources, including U.S. utilities and energy companies. “The biggest thing,” says Whyte, is that the diverse group “came to a consensus
that fusion is relevant, and that this effort is important.” Driving
factors include utility industry commitments to deep
cuts in carbon emissions in coming decades, along with a combination of simultaneous synergistic
advances in fusion science and technology, application of new resources from areas outside the
traditional fusion community, and particularly the rise of interest in private fusion developers like CFS,
which collectively have received some $2 billion in funding in recent years. There has also been a broad pivot by
much of the nation’s fusion research community away from a focus on science and toward a mission of practical energy production. This
consensus was expressed in a recent report by the Federal Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) that urged the nation to “move
aggressively toward the deployment of fusion energy, which could substantially power modern society while mitigating climate change,” and
suggested development of a pilot plant. The new National Academies study advances the concept with specifics on what a successful pilot plant
would look like. The report’s authors took a marketplace-driven approach to defining the pilot plant’s
characteristics, based on discussions with utilities and other energy-sector organizations that would
ultimately be the builders, owners, and operators of fusion generating facilities, says Whyte. “Setting
those goal posts is very important, laying out the technical, regulatory, and economic performance
requirements for the pilot plant,” he explains. “They’re demanding, but they should be, because that’s
what’s needed to make fusion viable.” Those requirements include a total pilot plant cost of less than $5-6 billion and generating
capacity of at least 50 megawatts. In addition to proving the ability to create reliable, sustained net energy gain
and power production from fusion for steadily increasing periods of time, says the report, the plant
must provide “cost certainty to the marketplace in terms of capital cost, construction time, control of
radioactive effluents including tritium, the cost of electricity, and the maintenance/operating schedule
and cost.” These results would inform subsequent construction of first-of-a-kind commercial fusion
plants in the 2040s, and then broader propagation of fusion energy facilities onto the grid around mid-century, by which time major U.S.
utilities have committed to deep reductions in their carbon emissions. A key near-term factor in achieving these goals is formation of multiple
public-private teams to conceptualize and design aspects of the pilot plant over the next seven years. These include improved fusion
confinement and control, materials that can withstand the withering temperatures and stresses produced during fusion, methods of extracting
fusion-generated heat and harnessing it for generation, and development of a closed fuel cycle. All are technically challenging and also require
close attention to cost, manufacturability, maintainability, and other system-level considerations. Combining resources from national labs,
academic institutions, and private industry is a good approach to addressing these tasks, says Martin Greenwald, deputy director of the PSFC
and senior research scientist. “Technologies
like fusion come to market through the private sector, especially in
the U.S., and once you understand that you can see appropriate roles for government labs that can do
basic research, universities that are free to work with private industry, and companies that can use their
own capital to pick up and commercialize the work.” Private space programs provide an example, he notes, with companies
building rockets and using NASA facilities for things like testing and launch. “The question,” adds Greenwald, “is whether we can collectively
gather the resources and investments and execute in a way that meets the pace. We don’t want to be complacent about how audacious this is,
but we have to be audacious if we’re going to meet the need.” Bob Mumgaard, chief executive officer of CFS, says the new report is another
indication of fusion’s growing momentum. In addition to the two National Academies studies, growing private investment, and FESAC’s
community-driven recommendations, he points to the January enactment of federal appropriations legislation that funded both domestic and
international fusion activities, including ongoing participation in ITER. “For first time in 40 years, the U.S. government has a policy of building a
new energy industry, a whole ecosystem,” says Mumgaard. “The legislation sort of pre-authorized many of the things the National Academies
report says are good ideas, like the pivot into energy technology, the more-aggressive timeline, and getting regulation sorted out, which is going
pretty well, actually — that’s all in the bill. It lays the groundwork for the broad community to take all this to heart and start doing the work. It’s
very different from isolated companies doing their own thing, and universities running experiments, and has been very rapid in terms of how
these things usually go. We are entering a whole new era for fusion.” Cecil and Ida Green Professor Emeritus Ernest Moniz, who served as U.S.
secretary of energy during the Obama administration, adds that “The academy report alerts the scientific community, the Congress, and the
Biden Administration, which is prioritizing climate change risk mitigation, to the incredible progress over the last years towards fusion as a
viable energy source —
innovation along several technology pathways, supported largely by private capital.
Public-private partnerships can help take several of these technologies to demonstrations in this decade,
allowing fusion to be a critical enabler of a decarbonized electric grid before mid-century.”

7. Spillover. Fusion tech drives broader innovation in areas like space and commercial
technologies.
Peter Bruns et al 2012---Peter Bruns is currently head of patent experts in engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual
Property which he joined in 2002. Prior to the work in IP, he was for ten years at universities and research institutions in Germany, the U.S. and
The Netherlands performing basic research in geochemical studies of marine sediments and investigating past environmental changes. He holds
a master and a doctorate degree in geology from the Universities of Heidelberg and Kiel. minhquang Tran Author information Current
affiliation: EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland Daniel Kunz is a patent expert in the field of mechanical engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Intellectual Property. Before he started working at the Institute in 2005, he held positions for ten years in pressure, force and torque metrology.
Amongst others he was head of the pressure laboratory at the Federal Office of Metrology (METAS) for several years. Since 2006, he has been
responsible for patent statistical analysis at the Institute. He has a university of applied science degree in mechanical engineering. Heinz Mueller
Educated at the ETH Zurich and having received his PhD in biochemistry, he worked for several years at different research institutions in San
Diego and Chicago. He then returned to Switzerland to work as a principal investigator in cancer research at the University of Basel where he
obtained the title of a professor. Several years ago he joined the patent department of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property while
remaining a regular lecturer in biochemistry at the University of Basel. He also teaches intellectual property at different Swiss universities and
writes articles for several publications on this topic. Christian Soltmann has worked for several years as a materials scientist in the field of pure
and applied research. In addition to a PhD in materials science, he holds a MAS in Intellectual Property. He is a patent expert at the Swiss
Federal Institute of Intellectual Property and specializes in patent statistics and data mining. “Spillover benefits from controlled nuclear fusion
technology – A patent analysis” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wpi.2012.06.001 [HOCH TUAH]

The search for alternatives to existing energy technologies such as nuclear power, hydroelectric power
and the combustion of fossil fuels has become more and more important in the light of volatile fossil
fuel prices and supply, accelerated exploitation of natural resources, and ecological concerns. A sheer
endless energy source is the sun, sending its energy in the form of radiation to our planet. This energy is produced in the sun by nuclear fusion
reactions. Thus, for many decades, nuclear fusion has been believed to make a significant contribution to meet the energy needs of tomorrow
[1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. However, despite the impressive scientific and engineering progress, important technical obstacles still need to be
overcome [6]. Some of the challenges to create a “sun on earth”, to name a few, are to understand and control the hot dense plasma, to keep
temperature to a few hundred million degrees for getting the fusion reaction going and to produce an energy gain by overcompensating the
energy needed to maintain and control nuclear fusion. The
way to such a benign and almost inexhaustible energy
source is a prime example for the cumbersome development of a complex technology, which requires
significant expenses in research and development over a long period. Unsurprisingly, decision makers are interested
in assessing the economic benefits of such complex technology in its early stage. This information helps to take educated decisions for the
technology’s further development and to better justify to the public the substantial financial investment in research and development.
Evaluation of indirect economic and industrial effects of other long-term public research and technology programs has shown that industry is
able to benefit from public R&D activities under these programs. Spinoffs and spillovers of knowledge and technology can generally be found in
all stages of the long-term programs. Some authors are in fact very optimistic regarding the existence and the importance of spinoffs from for
example space research, another complex technology. Investigating and better understanding spinoff effects is important and attractive for
economics and management specialists alike. Approaches to measure the benefit of spinoffs and spillovers are manifold and are usually based
on economics models [7]. However, a prerequisite for applying and testing these models is the identification of existing spillovers from the
complex technology under investigation. A more recent economic approach to identify technology spillovers used the North American Industry
Classification (NAICS) codes in a specific advanced technology program [8]. The conclusion of the authors was that “future work should focus on
matching commercialization and patent[s] outcome data to the NAICS coding”. Such an approach has been applied to identify knowledge
spillovers in general in Europe, but this work shows the knowledge flow between countries and regions rather than between technology areas
[9]. In the past, spinoffs and spillovers were identified in different technological areas such as space technologies [10], [11], [12], high energy
physics [13] as well as in fusion technology [14], [15], [16], [17]. Plasma and other technologies developed in part by
nuclear fusion research are nowadays used in a wide variety of commercial applications [18]. Nevertheless,
spillover effects are difficult to identify and account for [19]. The disadvantage of these previous approaches is that spinoffs and spillovers were
only identified if they were obviously related to the complex technology while technologies not directly linked were left undetected and
unconsidered. A more comprehensive way of identifying spillover technologies is the analysis of patent literature. However, such an approach
will only help to identify the technologies per se that stem from complex, large and mostly governmentally funded technology programs and
does not take into account the social and economic returns. Nevertheless, since patent data is well structured, organized and indexed, including
extensive and detailed classification of technological areas, the patent-based approach may be a good basis for further analysis: Patent analysis
at large allows accurate illustration of the activities of applied research, is an excellent tool to monitor such activities and to depict trends in the
highly complex and interdisciplinary field of nuclear fusion technology. Statistical and text mining analysis of published patent documents in the
concerned technology field can help to identify spillovers. Applying such an approach facilitates the identification of technologies previously
unknown to stem from the field of nuclear fusion. An earlier approach using patent data to identify spillovers was applied in the past to the
field of biotechnology, in particular recombinant DNA (rDNA) technology [20]. This work attempted to assess the efficacy of various measures of
knowledge diffusion, comparing patent citations, publications citations, and licensing data. Patent data was used by identifying the three core
rDNA patents issued by the USPTO and analyzing the patent documents that cite one of these three documents. This approach therefore
depended on the identification of a few basic patents in a well-defined technology area. By the same token, the work relied on the availability
and reliability of all these data in a very specific case. In this paper, we use a broader approach and show that by analyzing larger sets of patent
data, spillovers and spinoffs from nuclear fusion research can indeed be identified, i.e. a technology that has not as yet been shown to be
directly applicable to commercialization. In general, such an approach can be used for further evaluation of the economic impact of long range
research in complex technology areas. Section snippets. Methods. The term spillover can be defined as “any positive externality that results
from purposeful investment in technological innovation and development” [21]. For this paper, spillover describes economic or social payoffs
from a technology that is not yet ready by itself to generate a return on investment, i.e. mostly basic research such as nuclear fusion research.
Furthermore, spillovers can manifest in various, very often intangible forms, and for that reason are extremely difficult to measure in Results
and discussion One crucial finding of our analysis is that the most important fields outside fusion technology are materials science (assigned to
14 percent of the retrieved documents), superconductive or hyper conductive conductors (13 per cent), plasma and laser physics (7 per cent)
and particle physics (6 percent) (Table 5). The first two technologies are important in the construction of large fusion devices and hence new
innovations necessary for nuclear fusion devices might be of commercial interest. Conclusions. Results
of the patent analyses
suggest that spillover and spinoff effects are real for nuclear fusion research. The data demonstrates that patents
belonging to non-nuclear fusion technologies but are linked to nuclear fusion can be found in patent analysis approaches such as forward
citation analysis. In fact, the diversity of possible application of technologies stemming from nuclear fusion research is somewhat surprising.
 1ac---competition
The tech race is on - China is doubling down on fusion and it's getting close.
Hiller and Hua 7/8/24 [Jennifer is a reporter covering renewable energy, the emerging electric-vehicle
charging industry and the energy transition in the The Wall Street Journal’s bureau in Houston, Sha is a
former reporter in The Wall Street Journal's Singapore bureau, where she covered China's climate,
energy and science policy as well as China-Europe relations, “China Outspends the U.S. on Fusion in the
Race for Energy’s Holy Grail,” The Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-us-
fusion-race-4452d3be, FYI - the diagram on how fusion works was omitted from the body of the card
(can be accessed at hyperlink)]RVP

A high-tech race is under way between the U.S. and China as both countries chase an elusive energy
source: fusion. China is outspending the U.S., completing a massive fusion technology campus and launching a national fusion consortium
that includes some of its largest industrial companies. Crews in China work in three shifts, essentially around the clock, to complete fusion
projects. And the Asian superpower has 10 times as many Ph.D.s in fusion science and engineering as the U.S. The
result is an
increasing worry among American officials and scientists that an early U.S. lead is slipping away. JP Allain,
who heads the Energy Department’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, said China is spending around $1.5 billion a year on fusion, nearly twice
the U.S. government’s fusion budget. What’s more, China appears to be following a program similar to the road map that hundreds of U.S.
fusion scientists and engineers first published in 2020 in hopes of making commercial fusion energy. “They’re building our long-range plan,”
Allain said. “That’s very frustrating, as you can imagine.” Scientists familiar with China’s fusion facilities said that if the country continues its
current pace of spending and development, it will surpass the U.S. and Europe’s magnetic fusion capabilities in three or four years. Fusion
has long been a clean-energy dream. The process of combining atoms is the same process that powers the sun, and scientists
hope to harness it to deliver almost-limitless energy. The technology faces daunting scientific and engineering hurdles, and some experts
consider it a mirage that will remain out of reach. Though a scientific breakthrough on fusion could benefit all of humanity, some in the U.S.
fear it would give China a leg up in a growing competition over energy resources as the U.S. and others try to shift more production and supply
chains within domestic borders. China already has a fast-growing nuclear-technology industry and is building more conventional nuclear power
plants than any other country. The country’s nuclear-plant development will give it an advantage when commercial fusion is reached, according
to a report released last month by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank with backers
that include big tech companies. Nuclearfusion occurs when two light atomic nuclei merge to form a single
heavier one. That process releases huge amounts of energy, no carbon emissions and limited
radioactivity—if someone can get it to work. Scientists around the world are trying to figure out how to sustain fusion reactions and
engineer a way to turn that energy into net power. The U.S. leads on a technology that uses lasers to create fusion reactions, though magnetic
fusion—using magnetic fields to confine plasma—is where many experts expect commercialization first. China’s fusion push. China
is
putting vast resources into chasing the abundant-energy dream. Crews in China break only around Lunar New Year,
according to scientists familiar with the efforts. “They’re going to put a lot of human capital and a lot of money and a lot of organization around
it. And the question will be, can they figure out the technology?” said Bob Mumgaard, chief executive of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, the
largest private fusion company in the U.S., with investors that include Bill Gates. The Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Plasma Physics
in the eastern Chinese city of Hefei in 2018 broke ground on a nearly 100-acre magnetic fusion research and technology campus. The facility is
expected to be completed next year but is already largely operational and focused on industrializing the technology. Late last year, China said it
would form a new national fusion company, and said the state-owned Chinese National Nuclear Corp. would lead a consortium of state-owned
industrial firms and universities pursuing fusion energy. Among the largest efforts by a private Chinese company are those of ENN, an energy
conglomerate, which created a fusion division from scratch in 2018. Since then, ENN has built two tokamaks, the machines where fusion can
happen, using powerful magnets to hold plasma. ENN’s fusion work isn’t well-understood outside of China and its pace of development would
be difficult to replicate in the U.S. or Europe. Fusion has seen a burst of interest from governments and private investors since August 2021.
Investments in fusion technology surged in 2022 after scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved “ignition”—a
fusion reaction that produced more energy than it consumed. The federal research lab has achieved the key milestone four times since. The
Biden administration in 2022 set a goal of achieving commercial fusion energy within a decade and requested $1 billion for fusion in its recent
budget proposal. Organizing a U.S. public-private fusion consortium, similar to a 1980s and ’90s semiconductor program, was a suggestion
discussed at a recent White House event. Some recent DOE awards were structured similarly to the way NASA has boosted the commercial
space industry. China, Russia and the U.S. are among the 35 countries involved in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or
ITER, in France. China, Russia and the U.S. are among the 35 countries involved in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or
ITER, in France. Photo: Olga Maltseva/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Tammy Ma, lead for the Inertial Fusion Energy Initiative at Lawrence
Livermore’s National Ignition Facility, said the U.S. fusion budget of $790 million for the 2024 fiscal year, a 4% increase from the year prior,
hasn’t been enough to keep pace with inflation. The sluggish growth has meant fewer research grants and grant-funded positions available in
U.S. graduate schools, Ma said. Not clear who will win. The
fusion world is full of frenemies who believe their
technology and approach is the best to meet the world’s energy needs. Most are collegial competitors
with partnerships that spiderweb the globe. But cooperation has been complicated by the increasingly
adversarial relationship between China and the West, especially the U.S. China for decades has invested in raw
materials and technologies that are key to the low-carbon transition. Many of those are also used by fusion firms and researchers, including
powerful magnets to hold plasmas in place and lithium, which can be used as a blanket layer around a fusion reactor to absorb neutrons
produced in plasmas, among other technologies. Fusion scientists have swapped and shared information since the late 1950s, when countries
began declassifying fusion energy research. China, Russia and the U.S. are among the 35 countries involved in the International Thermonuclear
Experimental Reactor, or ITER, in France. Chinese scientists participate in international fusion conferences and seem most comfortable sharing
information through direct conversations, other scientists say, though language is an obstacle. U.S. Rep. Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat and co-
chair of Congress’s Fusion Energy Caucus, said that much U.S. fusion spending goes to legacy programs, “not the cutting-edge stuff.” “In China,
from what we can tell, most of their billion and a half is actually going to build stuff that would compete with Helion or Commonwealth Fusion,”
Beyer said, referring to two of the largest private fusion firms in the U.S. For decades, China had “almost nothing” of a fusion program, said
Dennis Whyte, a professor of engineering at MIT, who for several years sat on Chinese fusion advisory committees. It took China about 10 years
to build a world-class fusion science program and national labs. “It was almost like a flash that they were able to get there,” Whyte said.
“Don’t underestimate their [Chinas] capabilities about coming up to speed.” The U.S. has advantages
with an entrepreneurial approach but needs better coordination between private companies,
universities and the government, similar to what was used in the 1950s to develop the nuclear submarine program, Whyte said.
“It’s not clear to me who will win,” he said.

Fusion is key to power competition - first-movers secure global dominance.

Zou ’24 [Chris Qihan; June 11; DC-based researcher on climate policy, geopolitics, and China; The
Diplomat, “China and the Race for Nuclear Fusion,” https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/china-and-the-
race-for-nuclear-fusion/]
A flurry of nuclear fusion legislation has mushroomed globally in the past few years. Within the United States, the Department of Energy set out
a 10-year plan in 2022, which includes an initiative that coordinates all fusion-related work under a single program to streamline fusion
research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) activities. Data from the International Atomic Energy Agency indicates that there are 96
nuclear fusion pilot projects worldwide, with an additional 11 under construction and 29 planned. Most of them emerged in the last two years.
Controlled nuclear fusion emulates the process that powers the sun, merging two lighter atomic nuclei into a heavier one under extreme
pressure and heat, releasing immense energy. This process is the exact opposite of nuclear fission, which involves splitting a nucleus into two
lighter ones and is the basic mechanism for power generation in nuclear power plants. Like nuclear fission, nuclear fusion is emission-free, but it
surpasses fission in one crucial aspect: It produces no long-term radioactive waste. Utilizing two heavier hydrogen isotopes,
abundant in seawater, nuclear fusion could provide[s] humanity with an almost inexhaustible energy
source. The energy yield from nuclear fusion is also incredibly high: according to the IAEA, fusion could generate four times more energy per
unit of the weight of fuel than nuclear fission and nearly 4 million times more energy than oil or coal. These advantages make
nuclear fusion the celebrated “Holy Grail” of 21st-century [key to] technological advancement. Climate Crisis
and Geopolitics Driving the Hype of Nuclear Fusion. The surging enthusiasm for nuclear fusion is driven by two goals: the urgent need to
identify substantial, low-carbon energy solutions to mitigate the climate crisis, and the strategic imperative to gain a competitive advantage
amid escalating geopolitical tensions. In recent years, many countries have rolled out decarbonization plans outlining a path to net-zero
emissions, which involves significant decarbonization of power generation. In the U.S., the Biden administration set a target of 100 percent
clean electricity by 2035 and net zero by 2050. However, reaching this target would require a significant overhaul of power generation
infrastructure. The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s “Annual Energy Outlook 2023” projects that the United States will continue relying
heavily on coal and natural gas for power generation until 2050. These projections raise concerns about the feasibility of achieving net-zero
emissions by mid-century. In light of these challenges, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences suggested that the country should start the
operation of its large-scale fusion power generator around 2035 to 2040 to achieve net-zero emissions in the power sector by 2050. By
incorporating nuclear fusion into the energy mix, the United States could potentially overcome the obstacles posed by its current reliance on
fossil fuels and make significant progress toward achieving net-zero emissions in the power sector by 2050. China faces an even more dire need
to abate emissions in its energy mix. The country’s pledge to reach net zero by 2060 means that it must either eliminate or neutralize emissions
from its coal power sector by then. In 2023, coal still accounted for over half of China’s power mix. Although China has made substantial
progress in installing renewable power capacity with unmatched speed and scale, the variable nature of renewable power, like solar and wind,
poses new challenges for its grids. Intermittent power output from solar and wind, which varies daily and seasonally due to changes in weather
and sunlight, requires greater market flexibility and more adequate long-distance transmission systems. If realized, nuclear fusion would
produce power much more steadily and efficiently than solar or wind while remaining emission-free. As a breakthrough clean energy
technology, nuclear fusion could bridge the gap in the global effort to decarbonize the power sector and help countries like China meet their
ambitious climate goals while navigating the complexities of transitioning away from fossil fuels. In addition to its potential role in addressing
climate change, nuclear fusion is another aspect of geopolitical competition with far-reaching implications for the fight for dominance in this
century. Energy has long shaped international politics, building alliances and stoking rivalries. The past few years have seen escalating
geopolitical tensions, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas conflict, and a potential military confrontation in the Taiwan
Strait. These
disruptions are vivid reminders that a lack of energy self-sufficiency can leave countries
vulnerable to the whims of others. As a result, countries are increasingly seeking to strengthen their
energy independence and gain a technological edge in the development of next-generation energy
sources, and nuclear fusion precisely affords such an opportunity. As a net energy importer, China has long sought to
curb its reliance on oil and gas by increasing clean energy production. The country has been successful in building out a competitive
manufacturing sector across clean energy industries through strong R&D capabilities, manufacturing prowess, and effective supply chain
vertical integration. Declaring
that nuclear fusion has “strategic importance to economic development and
national defense,” China sees the field as the next frontier to solidify leadership in clean energy
technologies and strengthen energy security. Since 2011, China has filed more patents in nuclear fusion technology supply
chains than any other country, according to Nikkei. In 2023, China’s fusion testing facility set a world record for the longest run time for a
magnetic confinement fusion device, a crucial step toward operation maintenance. It plans to construct a nuclear fusion reactor independently
as a demo project and aims to commercialize nuclear fusion on a large scale by 2050. Meanwhile, the country is assembling a growing cadre of
scientists and engineers, with a goal of training 1,000 new fusion physicists to support this program. China’s increasingly prominent leadership
in clean tech supply chains has heightened concerns among developed countries, as demonstrated by the new rounds of tariffs on Chinese
electric vehicle exports. The push toward nuclear fusion is taking place amidst the latest wave of green industrial policy rush, as these countries
are learning from past policies that allowed China to become a front-runner in strategic clean tech industries. Nuclear fusion has the potential
to revolutionize the entire energy industry, combat climate change, and meet the growing energy demand worldwide. The
country that
can effectively control the nuclear energy sector can dominate the market through a virtually unlimited,
clean, and cheap energy source and possess an enormous first-mover advantage. With the rapid transition in the
energy sector toward clean energy sources, countries would be wise to bolster investment in nuclear fusion at this critical juncture.

Chinese expansion establishes a new world order - one marked by inequality,

revisionism, and wars.
Wang ’19 [Fei-Ling; October 24; Professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Ph.D. from
the University of Pennsylvania; The Cipher Brief, “The China Order: A Challenge for the U.S. and the
World,” https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/the-china-order-a-challenge-for-the-u-s-and-
the-world]

It is no longer hard to see that the rising power and the mounting pugnaciousness of the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) have become a comprehensive challenge[s] for the United States. China’s
Machiavellian policies and actions at home and abroad have turned an otherwise naturally complementary Sino-American economic
relationship into a near zero-sum, if not already a zero-sum, competition for market, jobs, technology, and financial primacy. Beijing
now
openly flexes its new muscles in its neighborhood and beyond to resist, reduce, and replace American
leadership and presence everywhere possible, seeking to undermine the U.S.-led international economic
order and American-anchored collective security arrangements. The PRC has been burning billions, for example, hoping
to replace the U.S. dollar with the over-printed Chinese Renminbi (RMB). Extraordinarily heavy extraction of its own economy, the world’s
second largest, and its enormous foreign currency reserve resulting from the gross imbalance in U.S.-China trade have enabled the PRC to
massively expand its military. That military is already the world’s second largest; its navy, for example, is projected to soon surpass the U.S.
Navy in fleet tonnage. At the same time, massive but opaque spending sprees has allowed the PRC to actively procure power and proxies even
inside the United States, positioning Beijing to reshape international opinions and norms more easily than ever. What
is less known,
perhaps, is that the rising PRC state also seeks an overhaul of the very world order that has enabled the
greatest advances of human civilization over the past few centuries – the Westphalian system of nation-states. This
world order was codified in the 17th century, expanded to a global scale in the 20th century, and now is in its post-World War II and post-Cold
War iteration — the so-called America-led Liberal International Order (LIO). The rise of Chinese power, under the autocracy of the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP), is not just contesting U.S. national security and American global leadership but also the existing world order. Never
since the heyday of the Cold War has the world seen such a full challenge to the United States and to the Westphalian system. The CCP is
leading the PRC toward a Chinese Dream of a world order in its own image, which I call the China Order. The China Order is a millennia-old
political tradition and ideology that mandates a unitary, authoritarian (often totalitarian), omnipotent and omnipresent government for the
whole known world. This alternative world order has had a variety of euphemisms in the long history of China: from tinaxia yitong (unification
of all under heaven) and shijie datong (world’s grand harmony) in the imperial past, to Mao Zedong’s world solidarity for Communist revolution
only forty years ago, to now Xi Jinping’s community of common human destiny. The China Order has powerfully revived to guide rising PRC
power, under the banner of a Chinese version of globalization, ingeniously taking advantage of the various calls in our time for global
governance to address transnational issues such as climate change, inequality, epidemics, and terrorism. This China Order is normatively and
practically at fundamental odds with the LIO version of the Westphalia system that enshrines comparison and competition among nations
coexisting with equal sovereignty. The China Order has been widely addictive to the powerful and ambitious in history, whether they have been
ethnically Han or not. It has been highly effective in practice, in great part because it became deeply legitimized and internalized in elite Chinese
culture over many centuries. The China Order is now the sole acceptable model of the world under the authoritarianism known as the Qin-Han
polity that the PRC now practices. But under this world order, as documented by The China Order (#ad), human civilization is socio-
economically very suboptimal and hopelessly stagnant, inevitably shortchanging the lives of just about everyone, especially nonelites, as the
tragic and often catastrophic history of Eastern Eurasia under the China Order before the nineteenth century amply demonstrates. Since 1949,
when the PRC restored traditional Chinese autocracy under the guise of imported Marxism-Leninism, the CCP has been ceaselessly and
callously fighting its own people internally and the United States and American allies externally to preserve its monopoly over power. Only
sheer exhaustion and near collapse could force the CCP to slow down and retreat, at home and abroad. External powers have influenced and
facilitated the rise of PRC power, but have so far failed to transform the Qin-Han autocracy and its China Order ideal, thus remaining unable to
change Beijing’s world views and global pursuits. Various, often false, rationalizations have justified the continuation of American/Western
engagement with the PRC, which has greatly enriched and enabled the CCP to persist in its consolidation of power. Beijing’s push for
power is nothing personal; it is a brand of authoritarianism just happens to be anchored in the
remarkably persistent belief that failing to achieve control over the whole known world would spell the
loss of the “mandate of heaven” and political extinction. Thus, the CCP is driven (or doomed) to methodically and
opportunistically seek ever greater influence. The rise of China, or more precisely the ever-greater power of the PRC state, represents a shift of
the distribution and concentration of power in the international system (conceptually known as power transition) and an effort to reorder the
units in the system and change the system’s governing norms. Chinese leaders have already openly claimed that they are
now moving to the center of the world stage, leading a revolutionary change in the world order,
upending the Peace of Westphalia established “four hundred years ago,” in the words of PRC leaders.
This points to a systemic change of world politics and a choice for all of us at the grandest possible scale: a scale that could reshape
nations and redirect the path of human civilization. The PRC’s challenge is therefore greater than the struggle between the
two European ideologies of Capitalism and Communism. The confrontation between the U.S.-led LIO and the PRC-dreamed China Order
If the PRC challenge, the rise of an unscrupulous, ever more
transcends these often vaguely defined civilizational clashes.
resourceful and determined PRC state, is not managed well and promptly, the United States will have to
face a much worse choice in the not too distant future between tragic capitulation and a desperate war
for its national security and world leadership and for the way in which humankind is organized
worldwide. In the age of many kinds of weapons of mass destruction, this will be a harrowing decision. Of course, one may argue that the
grandiose China Dream of a China Order may be just another pretentious way for the CCP to invoke traditional, nationalist, and populist ideals
to justify its autocratic governance of the Chinese people forever, similar to the splendid slogans and missions fabricated by many other
dictators. Perhaps the highly insecure CCP leadership is fighting for its survival, not world domination. However, words have consequences.
Propaganda and dilution often greatly mesmerize and mislead the pretenders themselves. More importantly, the CCP has been steadily
following up its words with action and money for years (basically nonstop since 1949); it has just pledged over 10 times the total sum of the
Marshall Plan (in today’s dollars) for its Belt and Road Initiative alone, for instance. As
the logic of the China Order dictates, the
rising Chinese power will not stop short of unseating the United States and reordering the world, unless
Beijing’s Qin-Han polity is transformed and/or the ever richer and more powerful PRC is checked. The
alternatives, American capitulation or world war, are horrific to contemplate, but not necessarily impossible. Unlike in Hollywood, the “good”
guys do not always win necessarily in the real world. A mighty autocracy that tightly controls one-fifth of humankind, willfully spends a
disproportionately larger portion of the fruits of the world’s second largest economy, and vows (even if only hypocritically) to reform and
reorder the world under its leadership, is and will always be a mortal challenge to the national security of the United States. America’s
global position and way of life, world peace, and the overall world order all rest on how the PRC
challenge is managed—soon.
American hegemony is a stopgap for every conflict---reversing it guarantees
extinction.
Michael Beckley 18. Professor of political science at Tufts. Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the
World’s Sole Superpower. Cornell University Press.
The story of world politics is often told as a game of thrones in which a rotating cast of great powers battles for top-dog status. According to
researchers led by Graham Allison at Harvard, there have been sixteen cases in the past five hundred years when a rising power challenged a
ruling power. 3 Twelve of these cases ended in carnage. One can quibble with Allison’s case selection, but the basic pattern is clear:
hegemonic rivalry has sparked a catastrophic war every forty years on average for the past half
millennium. The emergence of unipolarity in 1991 has put this cycle of hegemonic competition on hold. Obviously wars and security
competition still occur in today’s unipolar world—in fact, as I explain later, unipolarity has made certain types of asymmetric conflict more likely
—but none of these [no] conflicts have the global scope or generational length of a hegemonic rivalry. To
appreciate this point, just consider the Cold War—one of the four “peaceful” cases of hegemonic rivalry identified by Allison’s study.
Although the two superpowers never went to war, they divided the world into rival camps, waged proxy
wars that killed millions of people, and pushed each other to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. For forty-
five years, World War III and human extinction were nontrivial possibilities. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, by
contrast, the United States has not faced a hegemonic rival, and the world, though far from perfect, has
been more peaceful and prosperous than ever before. Just look at the numbers. From 1400 to 1991, the rate of war deaths
worldwide hovered between 5 and 10 deaths per 100,000 people and spiked to 200 deaths per 100,000 during major wars. 4 After 1991,
however, wardeath rates dropped to 0.5 deaths per 100,000 people and have stayed there ever since.
Interstate wars have disappeared almost entirely, and the number of civil wars has declined by more
than 30 percent. 5 Meanwhile, the global economy has quadrupled in size, creating more wealth between 1991 and 2018 than in all prior
human history combined. 6 What explains this unprecedented outbreak of peace and prosperity? Some scholars attribute it to advances in
communications technology, from the printing press to the telegraph to the Internet, which supposedly spread empathy around the globe and
caused entire nations to place a higher value on human life. 7 Such explanations are appealing, because they play on our natural desire to
believe in human progress, but are they convincing? Did humans suddenly become 10 to 20 times less violent and cruel in 1991? Are we orders
of magnitude more noble and kind than our grandparents? Has social media made us more empathetic? Of course not, which is why the
dramatic decline in warfare after 1991 is better explained by geopolitics than sociology. 8 The collapse of the Soviet Union not only ended the
Cold War and related proxy fighting, it also opened up large swathes of the world to democracy, international commerce, and peacekeeping
forces—all of which surged after 1991 and further dampened conflict. 9 Facedwith overwhelming U.S. economic and
military might, most countries have decided to work within the American-led liberal order rather than
fight to overturn it. 10 As of 2018, nearly seventy countries have joined the U.S. alliance network—a Kantian community in which war is
unthinkable—and even the two main challengers to this community, China and Russia, begrudgingly participate in the institutions of the liberal
order (e.g., the UN, the WTO, the IMF, World Bank, and the G-20), engage in commerce with the United States and its allies, and contribute to
international peacekeeping missions. 11 History may not have ended in 1991, but it clearly changed in profound ways—and mostly for the
better. Constant warfare, outer space may well be the next frontline.

Fusion development breaks nuclear norms, drives global arms control, and fosters
peace and diplomacy.
Carayannis ’22 [Elias, John Draper, Balwant Bhaneja; December; Professor of Science, Technology,
Innovation and Entrepreneurship at George Washington University, PhD in management of technology;
Nonkilling Economics and Business Research Committee, Center for Global Nonkilling and Visiting
Professor in Public Administration with the University of Nottingham Asia Research Institute; Center for
Global Nonkilling; Peace and Conflict Studies, “Fusion Energy for Peacebuilding: A Trinity Test-Level
Critical Juncture,” Vol. 29, No. 1]

Given these developments, as with the original Baruch Plan, the fusion burning plasma breakthrough
creates the opportunity for a new nuclear normative order, a new Baruch Plan, this time based on fusion
energy while likewise being oriented towards perpetual peace. Path dependence indicates, as with the Baruch Plan and
the Montreal Protocol, this would be a hybridized approach, an innovative specialized policy framework relying upon the external legitimacy of
the IAEA, followed by the U.N., and supported by the IAEA. It would be tasked with accelerating the development of fusion energy; ensuring co-
development by the Global South in pursuit of a “Future Fusion Economy” that is both competitive with, and complementary to, renewables;
and applying it to the grand challenges of climate change, energy for all, and peace, via its accelerated commercialization (Carayannis et al.,
If such a framework can be designed and realized, developing
2020a; Carayannis et al., 2020b; Carayannis et al., 2022).
fusion energy will mitigate against conflict. As with the original Baruch Plan, incentivization is critical. Beginning with the Global
South, G77 co-development of fusion energy through funding around 6-10 competing public- and private-sector cost-sharing DEMO projects up
to the sum of around 30 billion dollars over two decades via their sovereign wealth funds lessens the risk of fusion energy’s accelerated arrival
destabilizing their economies. It achieves this via the Global Commission to Accelerate Fusion Energy providing them with a stake in the new
fusion-based Future Fusion Economy through co-ownership of core fusion energy patents, insuring them against fusion competing with fossil
fuels (see Suggested ToR for Global Commission to Accelerate Fusion Energy and Technical Annexes, available at the OSF Storage data
repository: https://osf.io/hqzak). For the West, several of their most advanced public- and private-sector fusion DEMOphase projects, like the
U.K. Atomic Energy Authority Culham Centre for Fusion Energy’s Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production project, or TAE Technologies’ project
in the U.S., could be effectively funded to continuously innovate and engineer fusion reactors. Moreover, co-development grows the market
more rapidly as Global South countries not only have a financial stake in sales but also have sufficient knowledge to build and operate their own
fusion reactors. This agreement would benefit both the Global South and the mainly Western global fusion innovation ecosystem, like the U.K.’s
South West Nuclear Hub. G77 co-ownership of patents would also benefit the global innovation ecosystem, as third-party countries would be
less likely to reverse engineer and sell technology to Global South countries that those same countries co-owned. Finally, in that the global
commission would establish ownership of fusion IP and implement a robust sanctions mechanism for breaches of patents, a regime will be
established whereby core patents held by Western companies could be securely licensed to China. SinoU.S. relations should then improve as a
new baseline for technological cooperation is developed and implemented, a return to the pathfinding element of fusion as a clean energy
technology and basis for science diplomacy (Claessens, 2020). Revisiting the example of the Spratly Islands, the accelerated arrival and
commercialization of fusion power in the 2030’s2040’s to contribute to transitioning from fossil fuels (National Academies, 2021) would mean a
railgun-powered military conflict over the islands would lack political utility. The most dangerous period between the deployment of railgun
weapon systems in the 2020s and the burning plasma in the 2030s-2040s, when military planners begin contemplating a fusionpowered railgun
arms race, would be governed by work towards the new nuclear order. In situating NKGPS within the QHFIE framework, we have resurrected
the U.S. goal, embodied in the U.N. and in the Baruch Plan, as well as in the Atoms for Peace program and in the ITER project, of a demilitarized
world with access to inexpensive energy (Carayannis & Draper, 2021). The fusion energy critical juncture will introduce a genuine scientific
paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1970), a term typically overused in the literature but appropriate here as conflict over fossil fuel resources could, within
this century, subside. Given so much U.S. foreign policy is geared towards a culture of war in large part due to the securitization of fossil fuel
energy (Marsella, 2011), much U.S. domestic and foreign policy could then shift from a killing-prone nature to a killing-avoiding one within the
unfolding fan of nonkilling alternatives. This could result in demilitarizing other societies. Demilitarizing would mean increased funding for
public infrastructure and services, enabling the U.S. to revisit welfare reforms abandoned during the rise of its military industrial complex
(Hooks & McQueen, 2010). Further, demilitarizing does not present an existential threat to the U.S. military-industrial-congressional complex
(MICC) (LeLoup, 2008). The MICC can re-purpose itself for a post-fusion world, towards domestic and foreign aid to coordinate a global Fusion
for Peace program to address energy for all and climate change, to ensure planetary defense (National Science and Technology Council, 2018),
and to conduct space exploration (Dawson, 2017). In terms of Paige’s funnel of killing, preventing fusion-powered weaponry primarily requires
action at the level of the structural reinforcement zone, where socioeconomic arguments, institutions, and material means predispose and
support a discourse of killing (Evans Pim, 2012, p. 116, citing Paige, 2009, p. 76). Motlagh (2012, pp. 103–5) states that images of perpetual
peace and weapon-free zones matter, as do actions like removing economic support for lethality and protecting human rights. In the U.S., the
basic Kantian concept of perpetual peace (Kant, 2003; see Terminski, 2010) translated into President Roosevelt’s human security paradigm, as
embodied in the 1941 State of the Union address (the Four Freedoms Speech; see Kennedy, 1999) and then eventually into the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on December 10, 1948 as Resolution 217, in its 183rd session. Following
Motlagh, we emphasize protecting the environment and the ecological responsibility of humanity to manage the planet’s climate responsibly in
the Anthropocene Era. Consequently,
addressing climate change via our hybridized specialist fusion
governance instrument, the global commission, also serves as an inspiration for peacebuilding. A strategic
North-South partnership on developing fusion energy that re-engages the U.S. and China in science and energy diplomacy should also stimulate
negotiations to use fusion energy for solely peaceful purposes. At the time of the original Baruch Plan, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R, divided by
We suggest that negotiations via the Global
ideological differences, lacked a common language for negotiations.
Commission for Urgent Action on Fusion Energy would start to create that common language. They
would lead to a new Baruch Plan via a technical report and business prospectus that employ the NKGPS
peacebuilding, life-affirming paradigm of nonkilling, as a science-based philosophy of survival through
cooperation that advocates pursuing mutually beneficial goals to overcome deadly antagonisms. This is
possible because NKGPS specifically emphasizes that “science provides knowledge for liberation from lethality” and advocates humanity
adopting multiple peace-bringing big science projects (Paige, 1996, p. 9). In other regards, the North-South innovation diplomacy required to
rapidly develop and direct fusion energy for peaceful ends would essentially revisit the same basic philosophical arguments regarding realizing
perpetual peace that were triggered by the Trinity Test critical juncture, provoking the U.N. normative global governance regime. Once again, a
completely novel nuclear energy source will emerge that could be militarized. Once again, there will be a momentous opportunity for
peacebuilding, involving the U.S. and the West, the Global South, and China. And
once again, the U.S. will be challenged to
provide global leadership. Its incentive will be the possibility of revitalizing the flagging Washington
consensus-based approach to global development (Löfflman, 2019), fueled by a Fusion for Peace
program through a Universal Global Peace Treaty, a successor to the world’s first Global Ceasefire, called
as a response to Covid-19 (Gifkins & Docherty, 2020). A UGPT could rejuvenate the U.N. System in
permitting humanity the opportunity to live without fear, or at least with less fear, while utilizing fusion
power to help address climate change and achieve the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal of energy for
all, whiling reaching for other goals, like the colonization of space, facilitated by fusion drives (United
States Department of Energy, 2021).

The collapse of cooperation and arms control will inevitably lead to the third nuclear
age.
Aylward ’24 [Mary Kate, Peter Engelke, Uri Friedman, and Paul Kielstra; Atlantic Council, publications
editor for the Atlantic Council’s editorial team; Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative and
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Global Energy Center; senior editorial director at the Atlantic Council;
Atlantic Council journalist; **Global Foresight survey citing survey data of 288 expert forecasters;
“Welcome to 2034: What the world could look like in 10 years, according to nearly 300 experts,”
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/atlantic-council-strategy-paper-series/welcome-to-
2034-what-the-world-could-look-like-in-ten-years-according-to-nearly-300-experts/#nuclear]

We appear to be [are] entering a third nuclear age following those that occurred during the Cold War
and post-Cold War periods. And a lack of international governance is likely to be one of the new nuclear
age’s defining features, as geopolitical competition intensifies and nuclear arms-control treaties unravel.
What happens when the guardrails for limiting the buildup, spread, and use of nuclear weapons are removed? A huge majority of respondents
foresees proliferation: Eighty-four percent say that at least one currently non-nuclear state will obtain these weapons by 2034. The most likely
country, cited by 73 percent of experts, is Iran, but considerable numbers also expect Saudi Arabia (40 percent), South Korea (25 percent), and
Japan (19 percent) to join the nuclear club. These numbers are similar to the results from last year’s survey, but one difference is worrying. In
the survey conducted at the end of 2022, on average respondents thought that 1.4 new actors would have nuclear weapons within a decade.
This has now risen to 1.7.
Though this may seem like a small increase, it suggests that compared with 2022,
experts now believe nuclear weapons will spread more quickly—about 21 percent more quickly, in fact. When
asked about which actors they expect to actually use a nuclear weapon within the next ten years, 20
percent of our experts said a terrorist group—up from just 3 percent last year. In this year’s survey we included
terrorist groups explicitly among our multiple-choice options whereas in last year’s we included a more general “other state or a non-state
actor” option, which may account for some of the year-over-year difference. But the fact that one in five respondents is forecasting such an
alarming scenario is still noteworthy and concerning. Around 14 percent of respondents expect Russia to use a nuclear weapon by 2024, while
roughly 15 percent forecast that North Korea will do so. But on a more positive note: More than 60 percent of respondents believe nuclear
weapons won’t be used over the coming decade.

International cooperation solves existential threats.

Burns ’20 [Nicholas; July/August; Goodman Family professor of the practice of diplomacy and
international relations, is chair of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Transatlantic Relations,
director of the Future of Diplomacy Project, and a co-leader of the American Secretaries of State Project;
Harvard Magazine, “The Indispensable Power,” https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/06/features-
forum-indispensable-power]

Diplomacy has never been so important as now, when we are confronting the most serious crises since
the Second World War: the global pandemic and economic collapse. When we emerge finally from the grip of the
coronavirus, Americans will need to account for a public-health disaster that has killed well over 100,000 people to date and shuttered nearly
every institution in our society (including Harvard) for much of the spring and into the summer. But we’ll also need to look beyond our borders
to assess what went wrong globally. Why did the World Health Organization—its long and continuing record of expertise in matters of global
health notwithstanding—not press China more aggressively to tell the truth about the virus in early January? How should nations be better
prepared for a possible second wave? Can they agree to share a vaccine equitably among the world’s 7.7 billion people? Will the major
economies collaborate to prevent the current recession from turning into another Great Depression? The answer to these questions will
depend in large measure on our ability to work diplomatically across the world in this multi-front struggle. As a former career Foreign Service
officer, I have spent four decades of my professional life representing the United States overseas and teaching about America’s role as the
indispensable power in the international arena. For much of that time, the nation leaned heavily on its unmatched military might—during the
Cold War, after 9/11, and in the Afghan and Iraq wars. Now,
with the spread of the coronavirus to every inhabited
continent, diplomacy’s time has come in the reconstruction of a more stable and better world.
Unfortunately, restoring the role of U.S. diplomacy won’t be easy. One early casualty of the pandemic is our plummeting credibility as the
unmatched global power. For the first time since World War II, America has chosen not to lead in confronting a quintessentially global threat.
With American energy and confidence in short supply, President Donald Trump is a spectral figure on the world stage as nations struggle to
contain the virus. Instead of leading the G-20 major economies against the contagion, the world has watched an American president castigate
China for birthing the “Wuhan Virus,” pin the blame for the failed response on the World Health Organization, and—as one of my European
students lamented—fail even to offer a simple word of sympathy in all those endless news conferences to those dying in Italy and Spain and
other bedrock allies. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has long maintained that America should place its diplomats out in front (“on
point” in the military vernacular), with the armed forces in reserve, to be used only when diplomacy fails. Powell’s dictum is an important
reminder of how the United States should seek to lead in this time of pandemic, for the coronavirus is only one of many among a new type of
threat that requires us to lead as much through the power of diplomacy as through that of the military. Many
of the students I teach
point to transnational threats that affect every nation and person on earth as our greatest challenges:
climate change, food and water shortages, narcotics and crime cartels, the lack of cyber security, and
pandemics top the list. We cannot succeed in containing them without forming diplomatic alliances
among governments, universities, foundations, businesses, and citizens.