For half of a century, the world’s nuclear powers have relied on an intricate and complex series of treaties that have slowly and steadily reduced the number of nuclear weapons on the planet. The treaties are now gone, and it doesn’t appear that they will return anytime soon. As a stopgap measure, researchers and scientists are proposing a bold and surprising way forward: using a system of satellites and artificial intelligence to monitor the world’s nukes.

“To be clear, this is plan B,” Matt Korda, an associate director of the Federation of American Scientists, told WIRED. Korda wrote a FAS report outlining a possible future for arms control in a world where all old agreements have died. on Inspections Without InspectorsKorda and co-author Igor Morić describe a new way to monitor the world’s nuclear weapons that they call the “cooperative technical approach.” In short, satellites and other remote sensing technologies will do the work that scientists and inspectors used to do on the ground.

Korda says AI can help in this process. “One thing artificial intelligence is good at is pattern recognition,” he said. “If you have a large enough and well-curated dataset, you could, in theory, train a model that would be able to detect two-minute changes in particular locations but also be able to identify individual weapons systems.”

New START, an Obama-era agreement that limits the number of nuclear weapons deployed by the United States and Russia, expired last week, on February 5. (Don’t worry, the countries IS reported still plans to maintain the status quo—for now.) Both countries are spending billions to develop new and different types of nuclear weapons. China is building new intercontinental ballistic missile silos. as America has retreated from the world stageits nuclear vouchsafes are few, and countries like South Korea are eyeing the bomb. Trust between countries is at an all-time low.

In this environment, Korda and Morić’s plan is to use the existing infrastructure to negotiate and implement new agreements. No country wants “area inspectors roaming around their territory,” Korda said. So, failing that, the world’s nuclear powers can use satellites and other remote sensors to monitor the world’s nuclear weapons from afar. AI and machine learning systems take that data, sort it, and return it for human review.

It’s an imperfect proposition, but it’s better than literal nothing the world today.

For decades, the US and Russia have worked to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world. In 1985 there were over 60,000 nukes. That number has dropped to just over 12,000. Eliminating nearly 50,000 nuclear weapons will take decades of dedicated work from politicians, diplomats, and scientists. The demise of New START represents the undoing of decades of work. These site inspections fostered trust between Russia and the US and laid the groundwork for a reduction in Cold War-era tensions. That era is now over, replaced by an age of acrimony and a renewed nuclear arms race.

“The idea we have in this paper is, what if there’s some kind of middle ground between no arms control and just surveillance, and having arms control with intrusive inspections in place that might not be politically viable?” Korda said. “What can we do remotely if countries cooperate with each other to facilitate a remote verification regime?”

Korda and Morić’s proposal is to use the web of existing satellites to monitor intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos, mobile rocket launchers, and plutonium pit production sites. A major obstacle is that a good implementation of a far-reaching agreement regime will require a certain level of cooperation. Nuclear power has yet to agree to participate.