Hello and welcome to the World Ahead on Economist Radio. I'm Tom Standridge, Deputy Editor

at the Economist and in this Future Gazing Podcast series we consider speculative scenarios

and provocative prophecies to give us a different perspective on the present and help us better

prepare for what might come next. For the past few months we've been taking our inspiration

from articles in our annual publication The World in 2020. In this episode we'll be asking

how difficult will it be for Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to keep both China

and America happy in 2020? Mr. Trudeau has been trying to not alienate one and try to warm things

up with the other. And is the future of video gaming to be found in the cloud? The idea these days

that gaming means buying an expensive box and plugging it into your TV and doing everything in

your own living room. That's maybe not the way things are going. But we'll start by considering

the outlook for nuclear arms control. 50 years after the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or NPT

came into force to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Not for many years the Economist wrote at

the time has a broad international agreement been concluded that involves such specific and far

reaching obligations in the political, economic and military fields. But have signatories to the NPT

been doing what they promised? 50 years on tensions remain high between Russia and America

and the NPT's ability to curb the spread of nuclear weapons is in doubt. Joining me to discuss

all this is Shashank Joshi, the Economist Defence Editor. Welcome, Shashank. Thanks Tom.

Okay well let's look back because it's the 50th anniversary of the NPT. If you look at it over

that long term it's been quite successful hasn't it? It's done really well. If you look at the 1950s

or early 60s before it was signed you have these CIA assessments of which countries will be the next

to get nukes. And these are sort of apocalyptic things. They've got projections saying we'll have

dozens and dozens of countries that will have nukes. Don't forget you had countries like Sweden

...