Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to reshape not only the interface between people and machines but also fundamental questions of privacy and equality in all areas of society—from finance and healthcare to retail and manufacturing. To ensure that ethical and policy issues keep pace with AI and machine learning and that this game-changing technology serves people—not the other way around—the Belfer Center is creating The Council on the Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence.

The computers, networks, and systems of cyberspace have become an integral part of daily life. They control critical infrastructure, ease and speed communication, enable financial transactions, and much more. However, the same aspects of connectivity that allow us to innovate also put us at risk.

Michael Sulmeyer, former director for Plans and Operations for Cyber Policy at the Department of Defense, has joined the Belfer Center as director of its new Cyber Security Project. The cyber project, created by a $15 mil­lion gift from Center namesake Robert Belfer and his family, aims to build a conceptual arsenal to address the ways conflict may be waged and avoided in cyberspace.

Daniel Schrag, the Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology and professor of environmental science and engineering at Harvard, is the new director of the Belfer Center’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program (STPP). Schrag, who has a doctorate in geology, also directs the Harvard University Center for the Environment. He studies climate and climate change in the distant past and works on issues related to energy technology and policy. Schrag is also a member of President Obama’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology.

As a young man in the small city of Ogden, Utah, Brandon Parker found himself increasingly interested in the U.S. Air Force, a service where his step-father had made his career. Recruited by the Air Force Academy to play basketball, Parker didn't initially want to become a pilot. But after his initial flight-screening program, he called his mother out of excitement to let her know that he had found exactly what he was meant to do. Until recently, Lieutenant Colonel Parker commanded a nuclear bomber unit based in North Dakota. This year, Parker a research fellow with the Center's International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom, is conducting research on nuclear nonproliferation.

The Middle East Network of Arms Control Specialists (MENACS) aims to bring together young professionals who work on arms control and regional security issues from the Middle East to promote a better understanding of arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament in the region, and to facilitate indigenous processes and expertise. The network was the idea of Chen Zak, the Middle East project manager at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and a former research fellow with the Belfer Center.

For the past four years, faculty and fellows from Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have partnered in a project called "Explorations in Cyber International Relations." The ECIR project’s brief is "to explore alternative cyber developments, assess challenges and threats, and identify possibilities and opportunities in cyberspace for security and well-being."

A small sampling of Belfer Center perspectives on Iran and the country's nuclear program.