In this issue, we are pleased to introduce the Belfer Center’s Technology and Public Purpose (TAPP) Project. The brainchild of Belfer Center Director Ash Carter, the goal of the project is to ensure that emerging technologies are developed and managed in ways that serve humanity as a whole. We also feature the latest effort by our Defending Digital Democracy Project: observing midterm elections in five states and meeting with election officials to further fortify their elections against malicious attacks.Since its launch 18 months ago, D3P has engaged 44 of 50 states to improve their readiness, resistance, and resilience.

We also highlight Belfer Center work on climate change impacts - from student presentations at the Arctic Circle Assembly and presentation of the Roy Award for a partnership working to prevent flooding to decarbonization efforts in China.  And there's much more.

“It was too quiet.”

That was the sentiment expressed by a number of the 45 election officials from 23 states who gathered earlier this month at Harvard for a Belfer Center Defending Digital Democracy (D3P) Midterm After-Action Conference to discuss problems around their November midterm elections.  Most said they experienced significant but mostly unintended misinformation – and some disinformation – along with a number of other challenges to their electoral processes, but not the extensive foreign cyber and other attacks that took place during the 2016 presidential election.

In this Summer 2018 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter, we are pleased to highlight the Center’s newest initiative – The Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship. Led by Nicholas Burns, Cathryn Cluver Ashbrook, and Karl Kaiser, the project will expand the Kennedy School’s teaching and research on Europe and a long-time relationship that continues to be vital to the United States. Also in this newsletter, we describe the Center's expanding efforts to help state and local election officials defend their elections and the electoral process against cyber and information attacks. Among the other Center activities featured in this issue: the Iran Project's first annual Symposium on Islam and Sectarian De-escalation;  the possible impact of Korean talks; and a focus on ensuring responsible use of artificial intelligence – and much more.

More than 120 election officials from 38 states gathered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, this week to participate in role-playing exercises that provided them with tips, tools, and training to fortify their election systems against cyber attacks and information operations. Organized by the Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P) at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the two-day event featured a tabletop exercise (TTX) scenario for officials that simulated attacks on election systems ranging from hacks and social media misinformation to  manipulation of voter information and trust. The state and local election officials learned how to better prepare, defend, and respond to a range of attacks on the integrity of American elections and how to empower their colleagues back home with this knowledge as they prepare for the 2018 and 2020 elections.   

In this issue, we highlight our work with state and local elections officials across the country that led to our recently published Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P) playbooks that include concrete suggestions to help campaign staff and election officials better safeguard critical systems and deter/respond to misinformation. Also in this newsletter, Belfer Center Director Ash Carter emphasizes the need for technologists to “steer technology in the direction of public good,” and a Belfer Center Elbe Group gathering in Moscow points to one area where the deeply divided U.S. and Russia might be able to work together. We also feature Harvard Kennedy School's student innovators who are tackling Arctic-related issues as part of the Belfer Center’s Arctic Initiative.

In this issue, new Belfer Center Director Ash Carter and Co-Director Eric Rosenbach describe their vision for the Center’s next chapter: sustaining its core mission while enhancing its unique ability to leverage science and technology to meet global challenges and priming the next generation of leaders in both scholarship and policymaking.

We highlight two new initiatives: the Defending Digital Democracy (D3P) Project and the Arctic Initiative, and welcome 12 new senior fellows. Ash Carter gives a definitive history of the campaign to defeat ISIS, and Center experts offer insight into the North Korean nuclear threat and into the Iran nuclear agreement.

For two hours on a March afternoon, Harvard Kennedy School’s Bell Hall buzzed as Kennedy School students huddled for 15-minute one-on-one sessions with Belfer Center fellows and project directors to get career advice and to ask questions about the others’ career trajectories, research, and methods.

The ancient Greek historian Thucydides said long ago that it was the rise of Athens and the fear this instilled in Sparta that led to the Peloponnesian War. Belfer Center Director Graham Allison calls this potential for conflict “Thucydides’s Trap” and warns that in today’s world, the rising China and ruling United States must work to escape falling into that trap and into war. We feature Allison’s studies and upcoming book on Thucydides’s Trap and U.S.-China relations in the Summer 2017 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter.

Also in this issue, we raise an editorial toast to Graham Allison who has directed the Center for 22 years and will hand the director reins in July to Ash Carter and Eric Rosenbach. We highlight a sampling of Graham’s – and the Center’s – accomplishments during his tenure and include tributes from Albert Carnesale, Jieun Baek, Robert Belfer, Ash Carter, Sam Nunn, and Samantha Power.

Read these articles and much more about recent Belfer Center activities.

We announce in this Spring 2017 issue of our newsletter that long-time Belfer Center Director Graham Allison will turn over the reins of the Center in July to former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and his new Co-Director Eric Rosenbach, both of whom are Center alums. Carter will return to the Kennedy School as the Belfer Professor of Technology and Global Affairs and Allison will remain actively involved at the Center through his teaching, researching, and writing.

Also in this issue, we are very pleased to welcome (and in some cases, welcome back) several high-ranking officials and former representatives who served during the Obama administration. Among those joining the Center following their government service: John P. Holdren (Obama Science Advisor), Ernest Moniz (Secretary of Energy), James Clapper (National Intelligence Director), and Laura Holgate (Ambassador and U.S. Representative to UN-Vienna and IAEA). In addition, we are happy to have as new senior or visiting fellows a number of additional former high-ranking public servants. And we are pleased that several Center and School alumni are serving the nation during the current administration.

And there's much more news from the Belfer Center.

Morgan Kaplan, a research fellow with the Belfer Center’s International Security Program, researches the international politics of rebellion with a focus on how insurgent groups use international diplomacy to solicit third-party support.