37 Items

Americans watch President Kennedy speak on television during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

James Vaughan/Flickr

Journal Article - Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament

Nuclear Hotlines: Origins, Evolution, Applications

| 2021

Soviet and American leaders learned during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 that inadequate communication raised perilous risks and dangers in the nuclear age. The US–Soviet Hotline was created soon thereafter, in 1963, and has operated continuously ever since. It was intended to provide a quick, reliable, confidential, ever-ready communications between heads of state in the event of crisis or war.  Hotlines remain a prudent, low-cost preparation that could prove essential in the event of a crisis that seems to be slipping out of control.

COVID-19 Testing Site

Wikimedia CC/Prim8acs

Report - opcast.org

Testing for the Pathogen During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Future Ones

    Authors:
  • Christine Cassel
  • Christopher Chyba
  • Susan Graham
  • Eric Lander
  • Richard C. Levin
  • Ed Penhoet
  • William Press
  • Maxine Savitz
  • Harold Varmus
| Aug. 18, 2020

The United States has failed to deploy adequate testing for the presence of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 during the Covid-19 pandemic and has been unable to avoid continued spread of the virus. In this report, the authors explain why such testing is an essential factor in efforts to control the pandemic, why adequate testing has been difficult to achieve, and why the United States has not met the challenge. They conclude by recommending ways to provide more extensive testing in this and future epidemics.

man wearing a shirt promoting TikTok

AP/Ng Han Guan

Analysis & Opinions - Project Syndicate

The Other Global Power Shift

| Aug. 06, 2020

Joseph Nye writes that the world is increasingly obsessed with the ongoing power struggle between the United States and China. But the technology-driven shift of power away from states to transnational actors and global forces brings a new and unfamiliar complexity to global affairs.

Permafrost thaw ponds

Wikimedia CC/Steve Jurvetson

Analysis & Opinions - ArcticToday

The Arctic Needs Better Cross-sector Crisis-related Collaboration

| Aug. 06, 2020

Arctic Innovator Jenna Stark recommends closing the crisis-related collaboration gap in the polar region. Greater communication between emergency response specialists is needed both for the Arctic to weather the current coronavirus crisis and also to prepare for and mitigate future disasters, such as assuring food security for remote communities in the event of a wildlife disease outbreak.

Hospital Beds

U.S. National Guard

Analysis & Opinions - Quartz

Bruce Schneier Says We Need to Embrace Inefficiency to Save Our Economy

| June 30, 2020

Bruce Schneier writes that efficient systems have limited ability to deal with system-wide economic shocks: shocks that have been coming with increased frequency. These shocks are caused by global pandemics, climate change, financial crises, and political crises. In order to be secure against these crises and more, redundancy, diversity, and overcapacity need to be added back into certain systems.

President of the Republic of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro during a videoconference with Governors of the Southeast

Wikimedia CC/Palácio do Planalto

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Why Developing Countries Should Build Computational Modelling Capacity for Policy Analytics

| June 04, 2020

Kaveri Iychettira and Afreen Siddiqi explain why computational modelling is a useful tool, especially when stakes are high and resources are constrained, and detail why developing countries should build capacity for it. 

In this photo taken Friday Oct. 10, 2014, a dilapidated rice box, normally used to control the flow of water between two rice fields, sits idle on a field that has been fallowed due to the drought, near Davis, Calif.

AP

News - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Climate Change: Voters Will Be Hot Under the Collar by 2099

| October 26, 2016

By 2099 the nature of democratic politics could change in costly ways for politicians because of climate change, according to Nick Obradovich, research fellow with Harvard Kennedy School’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy program. Leveraging a century’s worth of political science research, he predicts in an article in Springer’s journal Climatic Change that voters’ disgruntlement about the societal effects of climatic extremes and weather-related disasters they experience will translate into more frequent turnover of political parties elected in and out of office, and will keep politicians of especially warmer, poorer countries more on their toes than is currently the case.

Paper - Potomac Institute for Policy Studies

Cyber Readiness Index 2.0

    Authors:
  • Chris Demchak
  • Jason Kerben
  • Jennifer McArdle
  • Francesca Spidalieri
| November 30, 2015

"Building on CRI 1.0, Cyber Readiness Index 2.0 examines one hundred twenty-five countries that have embraced, or are starting to embrace, ICT and the Internet and then applies an objective methodology to evaluate each country's maturity and commitment to cyber security across seven essential elements."