Science & Technology

56 Items

U.S. and UK flags

Alex Brandon | AP

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

Forging a Democratic Decision Advantage

| October 2023

2023 marked eighty years since the wartime adoption of the BRUSA Agreement between Great Britain and the United States. This 1943 document codified the growing relationship between
U.S. and U.K. signals intelligence organizations and included policies governing the exchange of personnel and joint regulations for handling sensitive material. Security directives and protocols aligned operational processes between the democratic governments, setting new cooperative standards for nation-states battling authoritarian regimes. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., signs the article of impeachment against President Donald Trump

AP/Alex Brandon

Analysis & Opinions - The Atlantic

How MAGA Extremism Ends

| Jan. 12, 2021

Juliette Kayyem argues that if Trump keeps losing, the risk of future violence will abate. Keeping Trump in office until January 20 won't assuage the supporters who falsely believe that the election was stolen from him, but removing him from office a week early would emphasize that he is losing. Recruitment is easier for a winning team. 

Donald Trump is greeted by Kurt Heise, left, Supervisor of Plymouth Township, Mich., and Speaker Lee Chatfield, of the Michigan House of Representatives

AP/Alex Brandon, File

Analysis & Opinions - The New York Times

What Makes Trump's Subversion Efforts So Alarming? His Collaborators

| Nov. 23, 2020

Henry J. Farrell and Bruce Schneier detail how Americans' shared beliefs about democracy can break down when political insiders make bogus claims about general fraud, trying to cling to power when the election has gone against them.

Protesters kneel

AP/Patrick Semansky

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

Revolutions Happen. This Might Be Ours.

| June 16, 2020

Stephen Walt writes that political institutions are not permanent phenomena: they are artificial human creations and only as enduring, adaptive, and effective as people make them. He hopes for a serious and sustained process of democratic change, one that respects the nobler features of the U.S. constitutional order yet addresses all the ways in which The United States has failed to live up to its own professed ideals. The alternative, he fears, will be something much more dangerous. 

Paper

The Congressional Futures Office

    Authors:
  • Justin Warner
  • Grant Tudor
| May 2019

This report interrogates the widening gap between responsive lawmaking in Congress and the deepening complexity of advancements in science and technology. It finds that certain weakened capabilities have atrophied the organization’s absorptive capacity, or the ways by which it recognizes the value of, assimilates, and makes use of knowledge outside of itself. We propose the design of a new internal body—the Congressional Futures Office—as an optimal response among a set of considered options. 

A global ransomware attack, as shown from the perspective of a computer user in Beijing, May 13, 2017.

Mark Schiefelbein (AP)

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

The Mueller Report Won't Fix the Problem Underlying It All

| Mar. 21, 2019

The Mueller report will have fiery consequences—of that, one can be sure. But it won't solve the larger cybersecurity dilemmas facing the American public, David Ignatius warns. And although the military recently began launching counteroffensives against cyber attacks, more steps are urgently needed from other sectors of American society.