Reports & Papers

This paper argues that these potential vulnerabilities deserve rigorous, urgent, and thorough investigation. First, it draws from cybersecurity literature, and reviews general sources of vulnerability in digital systems. Next, with these sources of vulnerability in mind, it reviews the health intelligence systems used in the US as well as in a current Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It then It then reviews the possible motives state actors have to attack health intelligence systems, drawing on recent examples of state-led efforts to manipulate, conceal, or undermine health information. It then speculates about what an attack on a health intelligence system might look like. It concludes by proposing a research and education agenda to thoroughly interrogate these issues and generate policy recommendations needed to address them.

Since his book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, was published, Harvard Kennedy School Professor Graham Allison has been searching for ways to escape the structural stress that could inadvertently lead Washington and Beijing to a violent conflict. Convinced that there is no monopoly of strategic wisdom on either side of the Pacific, Professor Allison decided to take a classroom assignment on crafting a grand strategy to meet the China challenge and open it to the public as a case competition. His office received dozens of submissions from across the world.

Our previous Playbooks have focused on the threats posed by cyber attacks and information operations. This Playbook has a broader scope, and equips you with strategies to operationalize the guidance from past Playbooks through effective preparation, communication, incident tracking, and team organization. By compiling best practices from private and public sector actors, we hope to enhance the capacity of your election team, regardless of your staff or jurisdiction size. It will better prepare you to identify issues and respond to incidents of all types during election operations.

This discussion paper (available in English and Chinese) describes the evolution of decentralization over the reform period that began in China in 1978, different theories of institutional change in China, and how the empirical and theoretical literatures help scholars and policymakers understand the development of institutions for governing GHG-emitting activities.

The evolving strategic dynamics in the Indo-Pacific are of paramount importance for the future of the rules-based international order. While the United States is redirecting strategic focus to the region as part of its Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy, Europe is also stepping up its role—leveraging a strong economic profile, long-standing bilateral ties, and active engagement in various regional multilateral forums. The European Union (EU) and its member states can make distinct contributions to an open, transparent, inclusive, and rules-based regional order, though not necessarily always in lockstep with Washington.

This report charts some of the major developments in northeastern Syria from the December 2018 withdrawal announcement up until the start of Operation Peace Spring on 9 October 2019. It describes and notes the significance of the bitter dispute between Ankara and Washington over a proposed "safe zone," analyses how the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have sought to navigate the crisis and gauges the strength of the so‑called Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Providing this context enables this report to selectively incorporate more limited analysis on the latest and most pertinent developments in northeastern Syria at the time of this writing.

In this report, the authors conduct a benchmarking analysis for energy and CO2 emissions intensity of the steel industry among the largest steel-producing countries.

U.S. counterterrorism agencies lack the authorities, funding, and political direction to meet the evolving terrorist threat to the United States. Efforts to expand the counterterrorism toolkit to include prevention of all types of terrorism, known under the Bush and Obama Administrations as “countering violent extremism,” or CVE, and under Trump as “terrorism prevention,” have struggled to take hold and the programs have been underfunded and politically unpopular.  These efforts have also suffered from the perception that they were biased towards stopping al-Qaeda and ISIS-inspired terrorism and have ignored the threat posed by “right-wing” terrorists. The United States must accept that counterterrorism should evolve beyond relying on law enforcement and intelligence alone to prevent the growing threat of domestic terrorism. This evolution should include developing a bipartisan consensus for addressing all forms of terrorism; funding the types of CVE programs we deliver overseas at home; and updating our terrorism laws to incorporate preventative and restorative approaches that build on the best practices and lessons learned from tackling other forms of crime and targeted violence, such as hate crimes and gang violence.

How do the two major approaches to carbon pricing compare on relevant dimensions, including efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and distributional equity? This paper addresses this question by drawing on theories of policy instrument choice pertaining to the attributes — or merits — of the instruments.

Recent years have seen a cascade of revelations regarding Russian attempts to interfere with or disrupt elections in the West. While the Russian government’s influence campaign in the 2016 US presidential election is the most well-known, it was by no means an isolated incident. Western governments are waking up the threat that Russian cyber and information operations pose to the integrity of their elections and the stability of their domestic politics. However, the question of how to counter these efforts remains unanswered.