Highlights of the 2024-2025 Achievements of the ETSAGP Program in its inaugural year

ETSAGP kicked off in September 2024, with the selection of Dr. J. Michael McQuade as the Director.  Dr. McQuade delivered a strong vision for the Program, building on his decades of experience in private industry, government policy, and academia.  ETSAGP has already begun conducting research, building communities of practice, and training leaders for an era where science and technology are increasingly crucial drivers of societal change and geopolitics.  ETSAGP focuses on the frontier where emerging technologies create new global policy challenges. New frontiers demand new vocabularies—ETSAGP is cultivating bilingual competency among future policy professionals and technology leaders to ensure they can collaboratively chart the paths forward.

During its first year, ETSAGP broke new ground with its first class of Technology and Geopolitics Fellows, three exciting faculty research award projects, and the initiation of two new projects: AI+X+G and Move37. In its second year, ETSAGP will expand its work to include new scholarship and policy engagement in biosecurity, technology futurecasting, and critical supply chains and begin work on a policy/technology exchange program to build bilingual competency among mid-career technologists, scientists, and policy makers.

Six fellows from multiple disciplines conducted original research at the intersection of emerging technology and global affairs. Scholarship developed in the Fellowship’s inaugural year include the role of technology in the U.S.- China and broader geopolitical competition, international collaboration and competition in the regulation of technology, space and geopolitical competition, emerging technologies and their implications for defense, technology and authoritarianism, artificial intelligence, and cyber challenges and opportunities.

Three cross-disciplinary teams led by Harvard faculty at the boundary of technology and policy received funding from ETSAGP and Harvard SEAS for two-year research projects leading to significant new scholarship on AI in democracy movements; AI trade policy; and how electricity grids can manage the energy demands of large grid-connected computing centers.

Systematically integrating non-human intelligence into negotiation and conflict management, Move37 is developing powerful, validated tools to enhance decision-making accuracy, strategic foresight, and operational effectiveness​ supported by deep theoretical frameworks to drive a richer discourse on the normative implications of artificial intelligence. 

ETSAGP Fellows organized three student study groups to explore the intersection of AI and a variety of topics plus governance.  In 2024-25, AI+X+G study groups explored AI+Geopolitics, AI+Conflict Resolution, and AI+Theater Campaigning.