Asia & the Pacific

25 Items

A Watrix employee works at his desk in their company’s offices in Beijing, October 31, 2018. Watrix, a Chinese technology startup hopes to begin selling software that recognizes people by their body shape and how they walk, enabling identification when faces are hidden from cameras.

AP Photo / Mark Schiefelbein

Paper - Project Syndicate

Is China Beating the U.S. to AI Supremacy?

| August 2020

Combining decades of experience advancing frontier technologies, on the one hand, and analyzing national security decisionmaking, on the other, we have been collaborating over the past year in an effort to understand the national security implications of China’s great leap forward in artificial intelligence (AI). Our purpose in this essay is to sound an alarm over China’s rapid progress and the current prospect of it overtaking the United States in applying AI in the decade ahead; to explain why AI is for the autocracy led by the Chinese Communist Party (hereafter, the “Party”) an existential priority; to identify key unanswered questions about the dangers of an unconstrained AI arms race between the two digital superpowers; and to point to the reasons why we believe that this is a race the United States can and must win.

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Correspondence: Military-Technological Imitation and Rising Powers

| Fall 2019

Michael C. Horowitz and Shahryar Pasandideh respond to Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli’s winter 2018/19 article, “Why China Has Not Caught Up Yet: Military-Technological Superiority and the Limits of Imitation, Reverse Engineering, and Cyber Espionage.”

Chinese stealth fighter in the air

(China Military Online)

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Why China Has Not Caught Up Yet: Military-Technological Superiority, Systems Integration, and the Challenges of Imitation, Reverse Engineering, and Cyber-Espionage

| Winter 2018/19

The extraordinary complexity of today’s advanced weapons systems has significantly reduced the ability of states to imitate other states’ military technology. Consequently, U.S. rivals such as China will continue to struggle to develop indigenous capabilities that can match those of the United States.

Image of China’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force drill with a ballistic missile launcher

(China Military / 81.cn)

Policy Brief - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Inadvertent Escalation and the Entanglement of Nuclear Command-and-Control Capabilities

    Author:
  • James Acton
| Oct. 29, 2018

The risks of nuclear escalation between the U.S. and China or Russia are greater than ever given the possibility of misinterpreted cyber espionage and military strikes against early warning systems. What can be done to reduce this risk?

A worker is silhouetted against a computer display showing a live visualization of the online phishing and fraudulent phone calls across China during the 4th China Internet Security Conference in Beijing. Aug. 16, 2016 (Ng Han Guan/Associated Press, File). Keywords: China, cyberattack

Ng Han Guan/Associated Press, File

Newspaper Article - The Wall Street Journal

Review: An Uneasy Unpeace

| Jan. 21, 2018

In the cyber arena, the same technologies that are creating unprecedented benefits for billions are also democratizing destruction. Graham Allison reviews ‘The Virtual Weapon and International Order’ by Lucas Kello.

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Testimony - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Living in a Glass House: The United States Must Better Defend Against Cyber and Information Attacks

| June 12, 2017

Belfer Center Co-director Eric Rosenbach testified at a hearing on "Sponsored Cyberspace Threats: Recent Incidents and U.S. Policy Response" before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy.

Madame Tussauds' designers apply the final touches to the wax figure of US President-elect Donald Trump, as they unveil the figure just days ahead of the American's Presidential Inauguration in Washington in London, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2017. The figure will now reside in Madame Tussauds' London Oval Office alongside fellow famous politicians and global icons also immortalised in wax.

(AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

Analysis & Opinions - Financial Times

Donald Trump masters the art of the unexpected

| Jan. 17, 2017

As Donald Trump's inauguration approaches, people around the world are struggling to understand the inhabitants of the newest Trump Tower, the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC. With freewheeling leadership, uncertainty about the enduring guidance of presidential statements and less ideological coherence than in previous cabinets, the processes by which decisions are reached will be vital. 

In 2011, science advisors to the presidents of China and the United States, Wan Gang and John P. Holdren, hold a photo of the historic 1979 U.S.-China agreement on science and engineering.

USDA

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

Center's Energy Work Wields Impact and Influence Around the World

| Fall/Winter 2016-2017

The Belfer Center began researching energy technology issues in the late 1990s. Its mission was “to determine and promote the adoption of effective strategies for developing and deploying cleaner and more efficient energy technologies that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce dependence on fossil fuels and stress on water resources, and improve economic development.”

In this issue, we look at the history and influence of the Center’s energy innovation efforts in the past two decades by focusing primarily on ETIP’s work in the U.S. and China.