Science & Technology

172 Items

Tractors on Westminster bridge

AP/Matt Dunham

Paper - Institut für Sicherheitspolitik

The Global Order After COVID-19

| 2020

Despite the far-reaching effects of the current pandemic,  the essential nature of world politics will not be transformed. The territorial state will remain the basic building-block of international affairs, nationalism will remain a powerful political force, and the major powers will continue to compete for influence in myriad ways. Global institutions, transnational networks, and assorted non-state actors will still play important roles, of course, but the present crisis will not produce a dramatic and enduring increase in global governance or significantly higher levels of international cooperation. In short, the post-COVID-19 world will be less open, less free, less prosperous, and more competitive than the world many people expected to emerge only a few years ago.

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. 

U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Jennifer Oberg, background, a communications maintenance instructor, and Senior Airman Raquel Martinez, foreground, check a ground control station during training

USAF

Analysis & Opinions - Real Clear Defense

AI and Quantum Supremacy Will Not Defeat Revolutionary Warfare

| Nov. 13, 2019

Nathaniel Moir writes that Revolutionary Warfare is not insurgency or guerrilla warfare: It is driven by ideology and commitment, not technology. Revolutionary Warfare's foundation is the perceived legitimacy of its political rationale among the population in which it is propagated. No matter how expertly or technologically advanced contemporary conflict is fought, it will not compensate for lack of political rationale.

Vice President Mike Pence, left, and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, right, watch as President Donald Trump shows off an executive order

AP/Evan Vucci, File

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

5 Very Important Things About the World Nobody Knows

| Apr. 02, 2019

Stephen Walt writes that the future will be determined by a handful of big questions: What is China's future trajectory; How good are America's cybercapabilities; What's going to happen to the EU; How many states will go nuclear in the next 20 years; and Who will win the debate on U.S. grand strategy?

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall

U.S. Department of Energy

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

Former Deputy Secretary of Energy Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall Named Senior Fellow With Harvard's Belfer Center

| July 12, 2017

Former Deputy Secretary of Energy Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall is joining Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a Senior Fellow, the Center announced today. Sherwood-Randall, who has served in the White House and Departments of Energy and Defense, is returning to the Center where she worked in the 1990s to help establish two pioneering projects – the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project with Graham Allison, who this month stepped down as the Center’s director, and the Preventive Defense Project with Ash Carter, the former Secretary of Defense who is the new Belfer Center director.

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

American Nuclear Diplomacy

| August 4, 2016

In this report, American Nuclear Diplomacy: Forging a New Consensus to Fight Climate Change and Weapons Proliferation, Former Deputy Secretary of Energy and Belfer Center Senior Fellow Daniel Poneman writes that we face two existential threats: nuclear annihilation and catastrophic climate change. Each, he says, stems from human origins. Both must be fought aggressively.

"Multiple studies confirm the grim truth that, even if all nations fulfill their Paris Climate Agreement emissions pledges, the world will still far overshoot the 2°C warming limit scientists say we must not exceed to prevent devastating climate impacts. Carbon-free nuclear energy can help close the gap. But can we expand its environmental benefits without increasing the risks of nuclear terror?"

Poneman outlines a diplomatic strategy and tough-minded, bipartisan policies to get us there.