Science, Technology, and Public Policy

The risks posed by the proliferation of cyber weapons are gaining wide recognition among security planners. Yet the general reaction of scholars of international relations has been to neglect the cyber peril owing to its technical novelties and intricacies. This attitude amounts to either one or both of two claims: the problem is not of sufficient scale to warrant close inspection, or it is not comprehensible to a non-technical observer. This seminar challenged both assertions.

The Internet is at a crossroads. Today it is generally open, interoperable and unified. Tomorrow, however, we may see an entirely different Internet, one not characterized by openness and global reach, but by restrictions, blockages and cleavages. In order to help ensure that the Internet continues to serve as a source of global integration, democratization, and economic growth, American policymakers must be aware of the most significant technical, political and legal challenges to a unified Internet.

Technology+Policy | Innovation@Work offers a platform for exchange of views on matters at the intersection of science, technology and public policy. Principal bloggers are Harvard faculty and Fellows from across the Belfer Center, the Kennedy School, and Harvard University.

"Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi were powerful women; all of them led their countries to war. But it is also true that these women rose to leadership by playing according to the political rules of "a man's world." It was their success in conforming to male values that enabled their rise to leadership in the first place. In a world in which women held a proportionate share (one-half) of leadership positions, they might behave differently in power."

Cell phone use has grown faster in Africa than in any other region of the world since 2003....Of course, South Africa—the most developed nation—still has the highest penetration, but across Africa, countries have leapfrogged technology, bringing innovation and connectivity even to remote parts of the continent, opening up mobile banking and changing the way business is done.

"The rising concern over global food price volatility has put agriculture at the centre of international cooperation. But unlike the 1950s, when food aid became a major tool in international food policy, modern interactions among states are being redefined by globalisation and the associated knowledge flows. The interactions are part of a field that can be loosely referred to as agricultural diplomacy."

"The surge in interest in Africa by China and India requires a different approach that does not view the continent as a helpless victim of foreign influence. To that end African countries are seeking to replace classical foreign policy that focuses on access to markets in return for raw materials with a new vision of economic diplomacy."

"The rising concern over global food price volatility has put agriculture at the center of international diplomacy. But unlike the 1950s when food aid became a major tool in international relations, modern interactions among states are being defined by trade and knowledge transfer. A new field — agricultural diplomacy (AgroDiplomacy) — is emerging as countries learn more about their shared ecological experiences and agricultural trade interests. The prospects for building such relations are evident in the rise in cooperation between Africa and Latin America."

"The conventional wisdom among those who looked at the Middle East used to be that you had a choice either of supporting the autocrat or being stuck with the religious extremists. The extraordinary diffusion of information created in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries reveals a strong middle that we weren't fully aware of. What is more, new technologies allow this new middle to coordinate in ways unseen before Twitter, Facebook, and so forth, and this could lead to a very different politics of the Middle East. This introduces a new complexity to our government's dealings with the region."

"It is possible that sudden eruptions of rebellion could occur in other countries, such as Sudan, in ways that mirror some of the events in North Africa. What's much more likely is that sub-Saharan Africa will go on as it has been, with a relatively revolution-proof mixture of slow democratic reforms and gradually rising economic prospects, a dual transformation that has kept its citizens just happy enough to avoid outright rebellion."