For US Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg, the Arctic is a strategic hot spot that usefully illustrates the challenges and opportunities facing the Obama Administration as it recalibrates US foreign policy.

Leaders of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS)'s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs brought together about 80 of the nation's top policymakers and entrepreneurs in information technology for a two-day conference this month to brainstorm ideas for a new HKS initiative on information and communication technology and governance.

Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey has closely followed events in Mexico since he was the White House anti-drug czar in the 1990s, and he has never been so worried. The violence generated by the drug cartels has grown so deadly, McCaffrey says, and the police and prosecutors are under such sustained attack, "that if it were not for the armed forces, Mexico's institutions would be fundamentally at peril."

Security expert Richard A. Clarke offers stark examples in arguing that the threats of cyberwar and cyberespionage are not just science-fiction hype.