On October 7, 2026, PRIF experts presented the CNTR Monitor 2026, published by the Cluster for Natural and Technical Science Arms Control Research (CNTR), during the 81st session of the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly.
Following opening remarks by Ambassador Albrecht von Wittke, Malte Göttsche, Kadri Reis, and Niklas Schörnig engaged in a discussion moderated by Giorgio Franceschini (Federal Foreign Office). The focus was on new technological developments and their impact on the future landscape of verification. Advances in physics, biotechnology, and AI, for example, can support verification tasks and enable precise measurements where this was previously impossible. These technologies should be taken into account in future negotiations on new arms control regimes or updates to existing ones.
The event was organized by the Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations together with CNTR and the Federal Foreign Office.
The new CNTR Monitor 2026, “Verification in an Era of Rapid Technological Change,” will be published on November 3, 2026, as an open-access publication. In addition to its focus on verification technologies, it also examines selected current technology trends and analyzes their implications for global security.
