This Carnegie Council special event features a roundtable conversation with author Peter Osnos on human rights, security, and the legacy of the Helsinki Accords. Osnos is the founder of the publishing house PublicAffairs and is a former correspondent and editor for The Washington Post. His latest book is titled Would You Believe . . . The Helsinki Accords Changed the World? This event took place at Carnegie Council on January 24, 2024. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Women are underrepresented at all levels of decision-making worldwide. According to the latest United Nations data, only 11.3 percent of countries have women heads of state, and 9.8 percent have women heads of government. Representation at ministerial and local levels is higher but nowhere near parity leading to missing voices in national policymaking. With the globe enflamed in multiple crises from wars to climate disasters, new frameworks for cooperation are needed. In the new English translation of her book on feminist foreign policy, activist and political scientist Kristina Lunz seeks to define what an innovative approach to global diplomacy looks like. How can this inclusive, visionary policy become a reality? In this virtual book talk, Lunz and Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev discuss a new paradigm for foreign policy, which re-envisions a country’s national interests by prioritizing equality and shifting the focus from the state to the individual. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

This special episode features Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen in conversation with University College London's Professor Geoff Mulgan. They reflect on the year 2023, delve into trends shaping technology's impact on society, and discuss the critical interplay between science, governance, and power dynamics. Mulgan, renowned for his work on technology's societal implications, shares insights from his varied career in policy, academia, and technology. They explore the evolving landscape of AI and its broader societal implications and the "billionaire problem," which underscores the urgent need for informed leadership and innovative institutional design in navigating these transformative times. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this Ethical Article, Visiting Fellow Zhanna L. Malekos Smith writes that quantum technology could usher in a "new era of computation." How can states, international institutions, and industries prepare? To read this article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Judah Grunstein, editor-in-chief of World Politics Review, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin for his annual review of global power shifts. With military and social conflicts pressuring nation-states, Grunstein discusses the fracturing, power vacuums, and identitarianism that will re-shape international politics in 2024. With nearly half the globe headed to the polls, major changes are on the horizon. How will migration and extreme weather impact electorate demands? To what extent will organized labor shift economic paradigms? Will the Global South finally gain more influence vis-à-vis the Global North? For more, please go to: https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/series/the-doorstep/nation-state-survive-2024-judah-grunstein

Many objections to solar radiation modification (SRM)--such as the fear it could undermine other forms of climate action--have been overtaken by events, says The Ministry of the Future author Kim Stanley Robinson in this C2GTalk. The world is in a growing crisis, and cutting and removing emissions is taking too long. It’s time to learn whether SRM can help, and how to govern it. Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer. His books include the best-selling Mars trilogy, Red Moon, New York 2140, and The Ministry for the Future. He was part of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers’ Program in 1995 and 2016, and a featured speaker at COP-26 in Glasgow, as a guest of the UK government and the UN. For more, please go to C2G's website.

More research is needed to explore all aspects of solar radiation modification, including the technology and its impact on society, says UNESCO's Assistant Director-General Gabriela Ramos. It is important to build public trust in the research by engaging a wide and inclusive cross-section of society, including people from the arts and humanities. Gabriela Ramos is the assistant director-general for the social and human sciences of UNESCO, where she oversees the institution's contributions to building inclusive societies. Her mandate includes tackling economic inequalities of income and opportunity, and promoting social inclusion and gender equality For more, please go to C2G's website.

Celebrity and social media are changing the political game globally. Next year, 2024, will see more than 40 national elections from the U.S. to Mexico, India, Russia, and Taiwan; meanwhile 27 European Union nations will vote for 720 European Parliament seats. Seton Hall University's Dr. Brandon Valeriano joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev to discuss the resurgence of soft power and what that means on the global stage. How will Taylor Swift, BTS, and Bad Bunny reshape our discussion of international affairs and social issues? What cybersecurity threats do we need to address as Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok take over the information space? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

The world is due to exceed 1.5°C warming, and countries will face more extreme consequences in the near-term, warns Andy Reisinger in a C2GTalk. Significant levels of carbon dioxide removal will be required, and policies are needed to reduce adverse consequences. Solar radiation modification is more uncertain, and would reflect a failure of global governance to cut emissions. Andy Reisinger is an independent consultant specializing in the science-policy interface of climate change, with particular expertise in livestock agriculture and the role of methane as part of mitigation strategies. He was vice-chair of Working Group III (Mitigation) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) during its 6th Assessment cycle completed in 2023, and previously served as coordinating lead author in the IPCC focusing on impacts and adaptation for Australia and New Zealand. For more, please go to C2G's website.

In this discussion with Senior Fellow Arthur Holland Michel, researcher and author Stephanie Hare describes the fundamental dimensions of technology ethics. She explains the importance of keeping the AI ethics discourse grounded in the needs and rights of those who will ultimately be most affected by the technology, and offers a few thoughts on how to brace—and empower—ourselves for the work that lies ahead. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

While there are certainly benefits, the breadth of concerns that AI, and particularly generative AI, pose for consumers is broad. And beyond privacy, governments are not doing much in the way of consumer protection. Furthermore, real protections will require worldwide standards and enforceable regulations. In this far-reaching conversation, Helena Laurent, director general of Consumers International, and Senior Fellow Wendell Wallach outline the challenges. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this episode, host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . ethics from another angle, with Christian Hunt, author of Humanizing Rules: Bringing Behavioural Science to Ethics and Compliance. It's mind-boggling how many principles and guidelines are available on creating ethical cultures or delivering ethical technologies. But these are often high level and abstract, easy to talk about, and hard to do. Hunt’s book explores ethics not top down from the c-suite, but from the bottom up; using behavioral understanding and decades of hands-on experience to help organizations look at ethics from a human perspective, and design the rules and process that make ethics stick. For more, please go to: 

All eyes are on San Francisco today as U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet in a highly anticipated session during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit being held in the U.S. for the first time in 12 years. The tightly choreographed discussions are expected to lead to announcements on a diverse array of topics from re-starting climate talks to improving military to military communications and combating the fentanyl trade. Bethany Allen, China reporter for Axios and author of Beijing Rules, joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev to discuss what motivates Xi and how China continues to wield its authoritarian economic statecraft to expand its illiberal influence worldwide. What can governments do to counter this influence? And what can businesses expect as Xi sits down to a $2,000-a-plate dinner with executives, including Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Citigroup's Jane Fraser, and Tesla and SpaceX's Elon Musk? For more, please go to: https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/series/the-doorstep/beijing-rules-bethany-allen

It is important for scientists from the Global South to be engaged in research and discussions around solar radiation modification (SRM) because its potential impacts would affect everyone, says Inés Camilloni from the University of Buenos Aires. Researchers need to consider the risks of SRM against the risks of a dangerously warming planet. More research is needed, because the world currently does not know enough to make informed decisions. Dr. Camilloni is currently associate professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires, senior researcher of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council at the Center for Atmosphere and Ocean Research (CIMA) in Argentina, and vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group 1. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this episode, host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . trustworthy tech development from another angle, investigating not just fresh thinking, but fresh doing. As part of her work on trust and technology governance, she seeks to understand the processes of those organizations who are taking trust and responsibility seriously from the start, and find out what they do and how they do it. Sutcliffe explores the practicalities of how a company can provide evidence of trustworthiness with Julie Dawson, the chief policy and regulatory officer of global digital identity company Yoti. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this discussion with Senior Fellow Arthur Holland Michel, Wired senior writer Will Knight reflects on a busy decade of reporting on artificial intelligence. Taking a step back from the hype (and a deep breath), Knight and Holland Michel discuss whether a true AI revolution is actually upon us, consider how the technology is and is not governable, and talk about the experience of coming face to face with a military robot. For more on this talk, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.  For more from Knight, check out his Wired archive.

Does a "national interest" articulated largely from a Washington, DC perspective connect with the "doorstep" interests and concerns of citizens across a large and diverse country? As we come to the end of several important cycles in world affairs—the close of the post-Cold War era and the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution—how might a new generation of Americans redefine the goals and purpose of U.S. global engagement? This special Doorstep episode was recorded live at The Ohio State University on Global Ethics Day. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

At Carnegie Council, we believe that cooperation is an essential virtue in the pursuit of an ethical life. And yet, it seems that cooperation is often absent from public life today. If we don’t take steps to enhance cooperation—both in our personal lives and collectively as a society—there is little hope of addressing shared global challenges such as climate change, AI, political violence, and more. In this keynote event for Global Ethics Day 2023, Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal led a conversation with MIT's Erez Yoeli and Tufts University's Abiodun Williams on the psychology behind cooperation; ways that states, institutions, NGOs, and businesses can work together; and how we can all create the conditions for enhanced cooperation. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this episode, host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . technological progress from another angle. Does technology increase prosperity, make our lives better and create lots of new jobs? Or in reality does it promote greater inequality, more badly paid jobs and exploited workers, with the prosperity going to the few and not the many? Sutcliffe explores with Professor Simon Johnson the lessons of over a thousand years of technological progress and they discuss the practicalities of what he calls a more "human complementary" approach to what technology may be. Professor Johnson is an economist at MIT and co-author with colleague Daron Acemoglu of a new book, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this Ethical Article, Visiting Fellow Zhanna Malekos Smith discusses China's effort in space and lunar exploration. As Xi Jinping tries to soften China's "wolf warrior" style of diplomacy, how is this reflected in its space policy? To read this article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

For ethics to be truly global, voices from all around the world need to be part of the international affairs discourse. And as these discussions still often begin in Western publishing houses and take shape in Global North classrooms, the academic world must make sure Global South perspectives are welcomed.  Ahead of Global Ethics Day 2023, scholars from the Global South and North will come together to discuss the barriers to knowledge production in the academic world and how to bring new voices into the classroom, library, and bookstore. What are the structures and systems that need to be re-examined or broken? What does a more diverse and inclusive approach to knowledge production look like? For more on this issue, please check out Joy Gordon and Anthony Lang's essay "Making Global Ethics More Global" which appeared in January 2023 as an Online Exclusive for Ethics & International Affairs. Fore more on this podcast, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Does a "national interest" articulated largely from a Washington, DC perspective connect with the "doorstep" interests and concerns of citizens across a large and diverse country? As we come to the end of several important cycles in world affairs—the close of the post-Cold War era and the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution—Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin discuss a new generation of Americans, who are looking to redefine the goals and purpose of U.S. global engagement. What are the ripple effects of the simultaneous challenges related to the “polycrises” (environmental shifts, including extreme weather, food and water shortages, and pandemics)? As the U.S. undergoes demographic change, what sorts of shifts in U.S. foreign policy might we expect? This live episode of The Doorstep was recorded on September 28, 2023 at Metropolitan State University of Denver, with collaboration from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Young people need to learn more about solar radiation modification, and provide their inputs to governments, think tanks, and policymakers, says Brazilian climate activist Clara Botto, in this C2GTalk. “We need to have global conversations to address something that might have global impacts,” she adds. That is why she and her colleagues have launched SRM Youth Watch, a global platform aimed at informing and bringing new communities into the debate. Clara Botto has been engaged with sustainable development at a grassroots and international level, from arts to politics, for the past eight years. She is currently one of C2G’s Youth Climate Voices. For more, please go to C2G's website. During this interview at 17:22, Botto acknowledges that she says “micro hollow sphere glasses” instead of the correct term "hollow glass microspheres."

Cities around the world are facing numerous climate-related challenges such as rising sea levels, flooding, and extreme heat. These challenges place significant strain on local economies and disproportionately impact the most vulnerable residents. The severity of the situation is further compounded by population growth within cities, with the UN projecting that nearly 70 percent of all people will reside in urban areas by 2050. In order to support safe and sustainable urban environments, city leaders must urgently prioritize decarbonization and climate resiliency policies. However, there are complex ethical questions and tradeoffs that lawmakers must confront when planning for and implementing such policies. This in-depth panel discussion and Q&A looks at how to address urban-specific climate challenges in an ethical manner. What are the latest climate policy innovations for cities? What are some ethical approaches that balance the needs of current residents while ensuring sustainable urban environments for future generations? This event was hosted by Carnegie Council together with the NYC Mayor's Office for International Affairs and the NYC Mayor's Office of Climate & Environmental Justice on September 20, 2023, on the margins of Climate Week and the UN General Assembly. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this Ethical Article, Visiting Fellow Arta Moeini analyzes the ongoing "Great Transition" in international affairs. With the U.S.-led "rules-based" world order seemingly at its endpoint, how can Western nations adapt? To read this article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

What does "foreign policy for the middle class" look like on the ground three years into President Biden's policy to integrate global and local concerns? Foreign Policy for America Foundation's Kristina Biyad joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev to discuss her new report "Intermestic Policy Initiative: Local Perspectives on U.S. Foreign Policy." Biyad spent two years traveling, visiting five cities across the U.S. to speak with a diverse array of community leaders about what issues keep them up at night and how their concerns resonate globally. Her key takeaway: Local participants are eager to partner in developing outcome-driven and locally informed foreign policy recommendations. How will this movement reshape the way foreign policy decisions get made in the future? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

As world leaders gather in New Delhi for the G20 summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi takes India center stage. Jawaharlal Nehru University's Dr. Happymon Jacob joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev to assess what to expect from India's leadership on a vast array of global challenges from climate to green energy initiatives to the Ukraine-Russia war. With China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin missing from the table, will India take the lead in representing the voices of the Global South? What opportunities are there for India and the U.S. to jointly shift the geopolitical order? How can India leverage its economic and military strength to take the global spotlight? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this thought-provoking episode of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Carl Miller tackles the pressing question: Can we code power responsibly? And moreover, how do we define "power" in this context? Diving headfirst into the complex intersection of artificial intelligence and power dynamics, Miller, author of The Death of the Gods, warns against ascribing human-like understanding to AI systems and applications. He posits that power enables us to discern how lives are being shaped, identify the architects of change, and realize what has diminished in influence and importance over time. Reflecting on historical cycles of innovation and upheaval, Miller expresses cautious optimism, anticipating that humanity will navigate the complexities and harness these potent tools with sensible control. Tune in for a rich discussion that promises to fuel a deeper reflection on the evolving landscapes of power and technology. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

It is essential for young people in the Global South to become more involved in international climate discussions, including around solar radiation modification, says Ghanaian climate activist Nii Noi Omaboe. His decision to screen a documentary about SRM at Accra sustainability week prompted many questions, both about the risks and insufficient governance, but also about opportunities for research. Omaboe is experienced in youth governance, human rights, and global sustainable development processes. He has organized and worked for nonprofit and international organizations like Amnesty International, Red Cross, and 350 Ghana. In 2019, Omaboe co-founded Sustainability Week Accra, the first local Sustainability Week in Africa, and he currently provides strategic support to Green Africa Youth Organisation’s Ghana team as well as supporting establishment of Youth Climate Councils in the Global South. He is also a program analyst at Impact Hub Accra. For more, please go to C2G's website.

In this Ethical Article, Visiting Fellow Zhanna L. Malekos Smith discusses U.S.-UK space and cyber policy and the ethics and sustainability concerns around "counterspace" weapons. What’s at stake if there’s a war in space? To read the article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Nuclear weapons today remain a very real existential threat to the future of humanity. Recent developments such as Putin’s posturing regarding use in Ukraine, combined with the stalling of international efforts to reduce nuclear stockpiles, force us to reconsider the ethics of nuclear weapons at this critical moment for global security. On August 9 —78 years to the day after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki—Carnegie Council convened a virtual panel to reflect on and explore emerging ethical questions surrounding nuclear weapons, including the maintenance, potential use, and position as an instrument of deterrence and political power. The event builds upon a symposium collection on nuclear ethics published in the most recent issue of Ethics & International Affairs, the quarterly journal of Carnegie Council. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Consultation and engagement with civil society in the Global South is essential for inclusive governance of solar radiation modification (SRM), says Dr. Shuchi Talati, the founder of the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering in this  C2GTalk. This will not be easy, and requires building trust and knowledge over time, but as international attention to SRM increases, it will be increasingly important to empower vulnerable communities. Talati is an emerging climate technology governance expert co-chair of the Independent Advisory Committee to oversee SCoPEx, an effort to provide oversight for the potential outdoor solar geoengineering experiment proposed by Harvard University. She most recently served as a presidential appointee in the Biden-Harris administration as chief of staff of the Office of Fossil Energy & Carbon Management at the U.S. Department of Energy where she was focused on creating just and sustainable frameworks for carbon dioxide removal. For more, please go to C2G's website.

In the governance of AI a few small initiatives have had a large impact. One of these is the Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP), led by Marc Rotenberg and Merve Hickok, our guests in this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast. Among CAIDP activities is the yearly publication of an Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Index, in which more 75 countries (as of 2022) are rated on an array of metrics from endorsement of the OECD/G20 AI Principles to the creation of independent agencies to implement AI policies. Furthermore, the CAIDP staff and collaborators have been involved in and helped shape most of the major AI policy initiatives to date. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Skies turned saffron-colored and smoke blanketed parts of the Midwest and Northeast this summer as Americans experienced the impact of fires raging in Canada. The 2023 Canadian fire season has been record-breaking with nearly 3,500 new fires—significantly above the ten-year average—with about 600 active fires and over half "out of control. In this virtual event, John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather: A True Story From A Hotter World, joins Doorstep co-host Tatiana Serafin to discuss how we have created a climate where fires thrive: a new "century of fire." For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Small islands face devastating impacts from climate change, not just from rising seas, but from threats to their economic underpinnings such as fishing and tourism. In this C2GTalk, Ronny Jumeau explores the challenges of adaptation, and outlines the expertise climate nations can bring to tackling the climate crisis, especially through nature-based solutions in the ocean. He says islands must be at the table when considering new climate-altering approaches, but is wary of efforts that might divert resources and end up as a distraction. Ronald (Ronny) Jumeau is a former cabinet minister and ambassador of the Republic of Seychelles. He is now an independent consultant specializing in advisory services in the climate change, conservation, and sustainable development (including the ocean and blue economy) nexus from an island and ocean state perspective. For more, please go to C2G's website.

Carnegie Council, in collaboration with IEEE, proposes a five-part AI governance framework to enable the constructive use of AI. To read the framework, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

The NATO summit in Lithuania, Ukraine's summer counter-offensive, and the recent instability between Russia and the Wagner Group have kept Ukraine in the headlines. But what is happening behind closed doors and on the ground that may be influencing the direction of the Ukrainian-Russian war? Mark Temnycky, journalist and nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev to unpack the latest news and conflicting reports. How strong is Western and global support for the continuing war effort and eventual reconstruction program? What options does President Zelenskyy have? What are ethical trade-offs being made? For more, read Gvosdev's recent article on ethical tensions in Ukraine or go carnegiecouncil.org.   

In this Ethics Article, Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev analyzes new ethical tensions around ongoing U.S. support of Ukraine. To read this articl, please go to: https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/article/ethical-tensions-of-track-two-dialogues-and-cluster-munitions

With the proposed merger of the United States' PGA Tour with Saudi Arabia's LIV Golf, and the world's wealthiest athletes according to Forbes funded via Middle East entities, questions about the role of "sportswashing" are on the rise. Sarath Ganji, founding director of the Autocracy and Global Sports Initiative, joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev, to explain what sportswashing entails and why autocratic regimes are betting on the practice to lift their global brands. How does money flow to change sporting industries? What role do sports influencers play? How can ethical questions raised by sportswashing stay at the forefront?

In this Ethics Article, Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev discusses four different approaches for policymakers to consider when grappling with the ethical questions of whether and how to engage with authoritarian or increasingly illiberal states and actors. To read this article, please go to carnegiecoucil.org. 

McKinsey & Company is one of the most prestigious consulting companies in the world, but what does it actually do? In When McKinsey Comes to Town, New York Times investigative journalists Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe have written a portrait of the company sharply at odds with its public image, revealing corrupt and dangerous practices from China to South Africa to Wall Street. In this virtual book talk, Bogdanich and Forsythe joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev for a discussion on one of the world’s most influential consulting firms and the drastic impact of its work on employees and citizens around the world. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this episode host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . accidents from another angle. There is one thing we thought we knew about accidents, that they are accidental, no-one's fault, simply the result of human error. But author and journalist Jessie Singer’s in her compelling book There Are No Accidents shows that whilst one person dies by accident in the United States alone every three minutes these deaths are in fact far from accidental. The majority are not random acts of God but are the predictable and preventable if only money and power were not prioritized at the expense of ordinary people. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

This interview was recorded on December 16, 2022. Solar radiation modification may one day be needed to reduce climate risks, but great uncertainties remain, and more research and inclusive governance is needed to assess it, says Maarten Van Aalst, during a  C2GTalk. That requires discussions at all levels with people from a range of political and ethical backgrounds, in ways which respect different perspectives. Van Aalst is director general and chief science officer at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), having assumed that role on February 1, 2023. Before that, and at the time of this recording, he was director of the International Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, the reference center on climate risk management for the international Red Cross Red Crescent movement. Van Aalst is also coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC WGII) and member of the European Advisory Board on Climate Change under the European Climate Law. For more, including translation into 中文, Español, and Français, please go to C2G's website.

Current iterations of AI are increasingly able to encourage subservience to a non-human master, telling potentially systematic untruths with emphatic confidence. Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen, AIEI Board Advisor Kobi Leins, and Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach argue that AI is closing, not opening, many pathways for work, meaning, expression, and human connectivity. To read this article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Governing climate-altering technologies fairly will be very challenging, because of a democratic deficit, a transparency deficit, a coherence deficit, and an accountability deficit in global governance systems, says Kumi Naidoo in a C2GTalk. Nonetheless, it will be crucial to put justice at the heart of these considerations, by ensuring balanced participation of peoples, rooted in science, and in a spirit of redressing past injustice. Kumi Naidoo is a South African human rights and climate justice activist. As a 15-year old, he organized school boycotts against the Apartheid educational system in South Africa. Naidoo was later part of the leadership that sought to establish the African National Congress (ANC) as a political party and he then served as the official spokesperson of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), the overseer of the country's first democratic elections in April 1994. He was previously secretary-general of Amnesty International, international executive director of Greenpeace International, and has led several other organizations, including the South African National NGO Coalition (SANGOCO), CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, and Africans Rising for Justice, Peace and Dignity. For more, please go to C2G's website.

In this episode, host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . expectation from another angle. Her guest David Robson delves into the science of expectation in his award-winning new book The Expectation Effect. They discuss how changes in our expectations can have dramatic effects on our bodies, minds, actions, and life outcomes. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

As a UN vote in February revealed, the world is divided on how to respond to Russia's continuing war against Ukraine. In this Ethics Article, Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal says that, for the sake of global security, "common interests," like protecting civilians, must be forged when there is disagreement on values. To read this article, please go to carengiecouncil.org. 

In this episode host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . ourselves at work from another angle. She talks with Gabriella Braun about her intriguing book All That We Are: Uncovering the Hidden Truths Behind Our Behaviour at Work, which in a series of compelling stories about company problems, strips away the outward trappings of status, power, and even our skills and experience, and shows that what goes on beneath, and in our past, is what really drives our behavior. They discuss how this knowledge can empower us to better understand our colleagues and ourselves making the work place a kinder, better place to be. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Caribbean countries have led the global push to limit warming to 1.5°C because the impacts of going above that would be so severe for their future wellbeing. In a C2GTalk, University of the West Indies' Professor Michael Taylor said it was important for the region to be involved in the research and governance of solar radiation modification, because decisions may soon be needed as to whether it could be an option to keep temperatures down. Taylor is professor of climate science and dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at the Mona campus of The University of the West Indies (UWI). He is the co-director of the Climate Studies Group, Mona (CSGM) which is a center of regional thought and expertise with respect to climate change science for small islands and the wider Caribbean. He is a coordinating lead author for Chapter 3 of the Special Report on 1.5 Degrees of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Taylor has also received the Silver Musgrave Medal for Science from the Institute of Jamaica and is the 2019 ANSA Caribbean Laureate for Excellence in Science. For more, please go to C2G's website. 

A new space boom is underway. Commercial activity is multiplying, and new state actors are developing space programs. Subsequently, ethical concerns are emerging regarding the responsibilities of these actors and how to adapt space governance policies to protect space security. Brian Weeden, a space sustainability expert from Secure World Foundation, joins Amelia Mae Wolf to give listeners an understanding of these ethical challenges. For more from Wolf on space sustainability, check out her recent article for the Tony Blair Institute. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

As competing factions in Sudan wage war for the fourth week since tensions erupted, civilian suffering intensifies. What does the escalating conflict mean for the country, the region, and the world? Christopher Tounsel, associate professor of history and interim director of the African Studies Program at the University of Washington, joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev to map the strategic importance of Sudan to global trade and security. What is at stake if U.S.-led talks to broker peace fail? How has the Sudanese diaspora in the U.S. and around the world changed the face of the conflict? Can a civilian led democratic movement come to power in Sudan? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this episode, host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . regulation from another angle. The basis of most regulation and criminal justice is the concept that instilling fear of consequences, such as fines, sanctions, and jail is the best way to deter future misbehavior in companies and individuals. Her guest this week Chris Hodges OBE, emeritus professor of justice systems at the University of Oxford and a legal scientist and former regulator, explores the extensive research which shows that in reality this is not true and why it often does the opposite, increasing the chances of further bad conduct. He explains that our better understanding of human nature shows that the learning is more important than the sanction and how an approach called “outcome-based cooperative regulation” holds much promise for a more effective way to achieve the purposes of regulation with better outcomes for individuals, companies, and society. For more, please go to carengiecouncil.org. 

Microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Until recently, the United States was the #1 superpower, but its edge is slipping due to competition from Taiwan, Korea, Europe, and, above all, China. In Chip War, economic historian Chris Miller explains how America’s advantage in the chip market led to economic and military superiority, and what it could mean if China catches up. In this virtual book talk, Miller and Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev discuss the current state of politics, economics, and technology, and the vital role played by chips. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this episode, host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . democracy from another angle. For most people, democracy means elections, then governing, and then four years later, you do it again. Claudia Chwalisz, founder and CEO of DemocracyNext, has different ideas. Her vision is for a democracy that is a lot more “democratic,” where you as a citizen have a real say in how your country is run, and might even do away with elections and politicians altogether. Chwalisz previously established and led the OECD's work on innovative citizen participation, and co-authored the organization’s flagship report "Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave," documenting over 600 examples of how citizens have shaped decision-making. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

As electric vehicles become more common, policymakers will have a new set of ethical dilemmas to confront, says Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev in this Ethics Article. Questions about pollution and geopolitics remain and the economic benefits are unclear and uneven. To read this article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

The global energy crisis, greener energy, and the expansion of renewables (and those high electric bills) are many of the reasons electricity grids are making headlines. Research firm BloombergNEF estimates that demand for electricity will increase by 60 percent by 2050. What does this mean for policymakers and market influencers? Chiara Lo Prete, associate professor at the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to explain our cross-border electric grid connections and the need to re-frame global geopolitical risks with these grids in mind. How can we create robust electricity foreign policy? Can we move forward with a global energy grid? What is China's role in driving change? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this episode, host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . the way we think about ourselves from another angle. She talks with Jon Alexander, founder of the New Citizenship Project and author of the inspiring book Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us, one of McKinsey's top five recommended books of 2022 alongside those of Bill Gates, Francis Fukuyama, Adam Grant, and Henry Kissinger. Alexander explores changes in the way we see ourselves, how we see one another, how the organizations and institutions that structure our society see us, and how we behave as a result. He also shows how the shift from people as subjects to consumers and now to citizens changes what we believe is possible. What are the implications for individuals and societies when we make the shift from being seen as passive consumers of products to empowered citizens? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

For our final Women's History Month podcast, The Doorstep launches a special live event series traveling across the country over the next year. In collaboration with Marymount Manhattan College and their Social Justice Academy: Great Migrations, co-host Tatiana Serafin speaks with Sana Mustafa, CEO of Asylum Access, about the need to re-frame our discussion about forcibly displaced persons starting with understanding how language shapes rights. In 2022, over 100 million people suffered displacement with greatly divergent access to rights and resources. What more can we do to build intersectional alliances and bring refugees into decision-making? How can we counter decades of structural bias and bring more accountability to states and NGOs? What can we do at a local level local to increase the pace of change? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Climate tipping points are points of no return, beyond which the Earth's systems would reorganize beyond the capacity of socioeconomic and ecological systems to adapt, warns the OECD's Jo Tyndall, in a new C2GTalk. Policymakers need to do more to address these risks now, including through support for carbon dioxide removal technologies, accounting for both opportunities and challenges. While solar radiation modification is not currently feasible, more research is needed. Jo Tyndall is director of the Environment Directorate at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) where she oversees the implementation of the Directorate’s program of work, covering a broad range of environmental issues, including: green growth, climate change, biodiversity, quality of ecosystems, eco-innovation, circular economy, and resource productivity. Click here for more C2GTalk podcasts.

In the second conversation of our Women's History Month podcast series, Kristina Lunz, co-CEO and co-founder of the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss the need for a new mindset in foreign policy decision-making that advances global gender equality. To date, 11 countries have adopted a feminist foreign policy to challenge legacy power hierarchies and gendered institutions, with Germany leading the way. What can other states, including the U.S., learn from their example? What challenges remain to global acceptance of a new way of framing foreign policy debates? How can civil society alliances promote new narratives that close the global gender gap? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this first episode, host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . our freedom to think from another angle. We might feel that what goes on in our heads remains in our heads, but international human rights lawyer Susie Alegre explores the surprising ways that our innermost thoughts are being exposed and manipulated through the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI). She explains how what is often seen as the most fundamental human right, our freedom of thought, is being eroded; what this means in practice, and what we can do to protect what goes on in our minds. Alegre is the author of an award-winning book, Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate Our Minds. You can read her article "Freedom of Thought is a Human Right" in Wired's "World in 2023" issue or browse her extensive broadcasting and writing on this subject on her website.

In this new Carnegie Council podcast series, Hilary Sutcliffe, a member of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality (AIEI) Board of Advisors, explores fresh perspectives from some of today's most innovative thinkers who challenge the foundational understanding of some familiar concepts—such as human nature, democracy, capitalism, innovation, regulation—and bring them to you . . . from another angle. In this introduction to the podcast, Sutcliffe, along with AIEI co-directors Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach, discuss the series and its aspiration to challenge our basic assumptions and open up new possibilities and different ways of responding to the pressing issues or our age. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

For Women's History Month, The Doorstep is highlighting steps being taken for greater global gender equality—a proposition that United Nations Secretary General António Guterres recently stated is "300 years away." What can societies do to increase the pace of change? The first lady of Iceland, author and entrepreneur Eliza Reid, joins co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to speak about Iceland's successes in attaining equality for all women and what cultural and policy frameworks can be exported to other countries in order to promote gender equality. What does "infrastructure for families" (ascribed to Senator Elizabeth Warren) mean on the ground? What challenges are most pressing? How can the media be a better "window on the world"?

Now is the moment to extend human rights to encompass cognitive rights proposes Duke Law School's Professor Nita A. Farahany in her just-published book The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Clearly in the Age of Neurotechnologies. She introduces the vast array of devices already deployed that can sample various forms of brain activity. In her book and in this far-reaching Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast with Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach, Farahany outlines how even limited cognitive information collected by neurotechnologies can be combined with other data to enhance self-understanding or manipulate your attitudes or state of mind. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

New thinking is needed to ensure high-quality nature-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) offers genuine and long-lasting benefits to the climate and biodiversity, says Amy Luers, global director for sustainability science at Microsoft Corporation during a C2GTalk. Large-scale removal through CDR technologies lies further ahead, although most of the basic technologies already likely exist. While Luers is not in favor of pursuing solar radiation modification, she says "I am very much in favor of enhancing our understanding of the risks and opportunities it presents, the governance challenges, and how decisions are made around this." For more, please go to C2G's website.

At the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in December, President Joe Biden signaled that "Africa's success is the world's success" and promised visits by his senior leadership, including most recently First Lady Jill Biden, who traveled to Namibia and Kenya on a five-day trip. With 1.4 billion people, 43 percent living in urban centers, and a median age of 19, Africa is host to rising investment, growing private wealth and innovative tech and service sectors. The New School’s Sean Jacobs, founder and editor of Africa is a Country, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to break down what is happening on the ground and the importance of the U.S. re-engaging Africa as the role of BRICS is re-imagined over the next decade. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In the last few years, democracies around the world have experienced dangerous brushes with authoritarianism. Countries such as the U.S., Brazil, and Sri Lanka saw their institutions bend but not break under the weight of illiberal forces. This virtual panel builds upon a special roundtable of essays on healing and reimagining liberal constitutional democracy published in the most recent issue of Ethics & International Affairs, the quarterly journal of Carnegie Council. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Building on a recent article from Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach, Chatham House's Kate Jones says in this Ethics Article that human rights need to be central to a reset of technology and artificial intelligence governance. To read this full article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Alex S. Vindman, former director for European affairs at the National Security Council, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to assess how the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war has affected U.S. global and domestic priorities. Will President Biden's historic visit to Ukraine's capital and meeting with President Zelenskyy further strengthen the Western alliance and consolidate U.S. policy towards Ukraine? What more can Ukraine expect from its allies? And in the end, what does victory for Ukraine—and the U.S.—look like? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

With India now at helm of the G20 and a summit set for New Delhi in September, the South Asian nation is stepping up its star power on the international stage. Harvard Business School's Prof. Tarun Khanna, also director of Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, speaks with Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin about why the world needs to recognize this Indian moment—and how this time it will stick. Khanna also explores American's doorstep connection to India and why this will continue to be a source of strength in the U.S.-India relationship. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Now that HIMAR and Patriot missiles as well as Leopard and Abrams tanks are on the way to Ukraine, NATO unity is at a high point, says Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal in this Ethics Article. But amid this historic and heroic resolve, and Russia's catastrophic war of aggression, something is missing—a concurrent offensive of diplomacy. To read the article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this AIEI podcast Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach and Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen are joined by Ambassador Amandeep Singh Gill, UN Secretary-General Guterres' envoy on technology. During this engrossing conversation, they cover some of the most critical political, security, technical and ethical issues in the current, global discourse on technology governance and the need for new normative frameworks to mitigate against harmful technological applications and secure what the UN refers to as "Digital Commons." Gill also shares his unique insights from a long career as a multilateral diplomat and leader in digital governance and arms control. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Research on solar radiation modification is needed, especially in the Global South, to understand whether it could be an option for reducing climate risk, says University of São Paulo's Professor Paulo Artaxo during a C2GTalk. The planet is currently headed for 3°C global warming, yet the world is still not doing enough to phase out fossil fuels and net zero goals look extremely difficult to achieve. Paulo Artaxo is a professor at the Institute of Physics at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He is a member of the IPCC, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC), the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), and he is vice president of the Academy of Sciences of the State of São Paulo (ACIESP). For more, please go to C2G's website.

What does it mean precisely when German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock says that the Euro-Atlantic community finds itself at "war” with Russia in Ukraine. In this Ethics Article, Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev discusses the technicalities of the West sending aid to Ukraine, the ever-growing risk of escalation, and the oddities of a conflict where all sides are economically connected. To read the article, go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Leading up to the one-year anniversary of Russia's second invasion of Ukraine, Rachel Ziemba, head of Ziemba Insights and adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, returns to The Doorstep to discuss how the balance of power has shifted across the globe with co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin. How has Russia managed to work sanctions to its advantage and grow its economy in 2022 according to the recent data from the IMF? Which countries are emerging as strategic partners with new supply routes? And if we can't we quit Russia, what does that mean for ending the war in Ukraine? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

How can we ensure that the technologies currently being developed are used for the common good, rather than for the benefit of a select few? In this Ethics Article, Senior Fellows Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach write that for effective technology governance to truly materialize, a systemic reset directed at improving the human condition is required. To read the article, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

C2G is pleased to announce the launch of its first youth C2GDiscuss, which explores youth perspectives on solar radiation modification (SRM) and its governance in the face of the increasing likelihood that global warming temporarily exceeds (overshoots) the 1.5-2C Paris Agreement limits. Moderated by C2G’s Executive Director Janos Pasztor, a diverse all-youth panel of speakers discuss their perspectives about the risk of overshooting 1.5-2C or even higher levels of global warming and whether they think young people are aware of SRM and the governance challenges it raises. Speakers included: Ineza Grace, global coordinator of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition and CEO of The Green Protector; Lydia Dai, student in environmental sciences at University College London, Adaptation Working Group facilitator of YOUNGO and regional youth focal point of the United International Federation of Youth (UN1FY); and, John Ferguson, U.S. 2023 Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China For more, please go to c2g2.net. 

From racialized notions of subjecthood and civilization in the 18th century to the neoconservatism, neoliberalism, and unilateralism of the 21st century, ideology drives American foreign policy in ways seen and unseen. In Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations, edited by Ohio State’s Professor Christopher McKnight Nichols, contributors trace the ongoing struggle over competing visions of American democracy. In this virtual event, Professor Nichols speaks with Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev for a about the ideological landscape of international relations in the United States, from the American Revolution to the war in Ukraine. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Judah Grunstein, editor-in-chief of World Politics Review, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin for his annual review of global power shifts. The past 12 months saw economies rapidly pivoting to new markets and technologies as a result of the the Russia-Ukraine War, the protracted shutdown of China and its zero-COVID policy, and other supply chain disruptions. How will this trajectory re-balance power between the Global North and Global South in 2023? Will competition for governance models lead to new ways of managing societies? Can the U.S. effectively engage with the world or will it fall behind? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this far-reaching Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Weill Cornell's Dr. Joseph Fins discusses with Senior Fellow Wendell Wallach the hype and realities surrounding contemporary neuroscience and neuroethics. He shares insights from his own seminal research on patients who may be mistakenly presumed to be in a vegetative state when they are actually in a minimally conscious state. Indeed, technology may be used to provide these patients with a way to communicate and a modicum of agency. For more, plesae go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Welcome to the first edition of Ethics Articles. Each week, listeners will have the opportunity to hear an audio version of selected articles from Carnegie Council's team of experts. Today, Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal shares his latest column in which he identifies five key trends that will impact ethics and international affairs in 2023. To access a free version of this article and more content from Carnegie Council, please visit carnegiecouncil.org. 

Although pundits and politicians pay close attention to measures like GDP or unemployment, almost no one tracks citizens' wellbeing. Gallup CEO Jon Clifton discusses this "blind spot" in his new book and in this virtual event with Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev. How did it lead to events like the Arab Spring uprisings or the election of Donald Trump? How can leaders close this important information gap and begin to incorporate wellbeing and happiness indicators? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

All Things Have Standing is a course in human psychology and the ethics of artificial intelligence and environmental law inspired by a powerful idea from the audio drama Spark Hunter—that all things have ethical standing. All Things Have Standing is presented by Carnegie Council in collaboration with Fighter Steel Education. Inspired by a futuristic story of a highly advanced AI experiencing existential crisis, All Things Have Standing explores, with leading scholars, AI and environmental ethics, the psychology and philosophy which underlie them, and the extraordinary challenges they raise for the global community. The first three parts, entitled "Our Stories," "Others’ Stories," and "Earth's Stories," were published over the last few weeks. The final part, “Future Stories,” is all available today in seven sections on this podcast. After an introduction from Professor Sheldon Solomon, scholar Wendell Wallach and Professor Shannon Vallor lead an exploration of the ethics of creating, deploying, and living with artificial general intelligence or AGI—machines with human level cognition and emotional intelligence, or better. Wallach is also Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow at Carnegie Council, where he co-directs the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative (AIEI). To watch the videos connected to this podcast, please go to Carnegie Council's YouTube channel.   For more information on All Things Have Standing and to listen to the Spark Hunter audio drama please visit FighterSteel.com. 

In 2021 the Saami Council effectively stopped Harvard University's Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), which aimed to examine the behavior of stratospheric aerosols which could potentially be used to reflect back a portion of incoming sunlight to reduce global warming. In a C2GTalk, Åsa Larsson Blind, vice-president of the Saami Council, explains why she was in opposition, and underlines the importance of including indigenous people in climate governance. Åsa Larsson Blind has been a member of the Saami Council since 2008 and was elected president in the period 2017-2019. She was the first woman elected chair of the National Sámi Association in Sweden 2019-2021, where she also was a board member in 2007-2011. Larsson Blind has been a member of the board of the Indigenous Peoples Secretariat under the Arctic Council and has many years of experience working in Sámi organizations, She lives in Övre Soppero in the Swedish part of Sápmi, is part of a reindeer herding family and holds an MSc in human resources management and development. For more, please go to C2G's website.

All Things Have Standing is a course in human psychology and the ethics of artificial intelligence and environmental law inspired by a powerful idea from the audio drama Spark Hunter—that all things have ethical standing. All Things Have Standing is presented by Carnegie Council in collaboration with Fighter Steel Education. Inspired by a futuristic story of a highly advanced AI experiencing existential crisis, All Things Have Standing explores, with leading scholars, AI and environmental ethics, the psychology and philosophy which underlie them, and the extraordinary challenges they raise for the global community. The first two parts, entitled “Our Stories” and “Others’ Stories,” were published in November. The third part, “Earth’s Stories,” is all available today in eight sections on this podcast. After a recap of the previous podcast from Professor Sheldon Solomon, scholar and activist Dianne Dillon-Ridgley and legal respondent Kathy Robb discuss the care of our Earth and what that moral and legal landscape looks like. To watch the videos connected to this podcast, please go to Carnegie Council's YouTube channel.   For more information on All Things Have Standing and to listen to the Spark Hunter audio drama please visit FighterSteel.com. 

In the final episode of the AI for Information Accessibility podcast, host Ayushi Khemka talks to Dr. Eleni Stroulia and Dr. Martha White, both professors in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta. Stroulia is also the director of the university's AI4Society Signature Area, while White is the PI of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. They discussed the issues around AI, IA and gender, exploring both the pedagogical and industrial contexts, shedding light on how to situate gender equity as a guiding principle in AI and the different ways in which gender comes up in a computing science classroom. The conversation concluded with a discussion on the representation problem in AI and allied fields, while holding space for women's experiences in tech at large. The AI4IA podcast series is in association with the Artificial Intelligence for Information Accessibility 2022 Conference, which took place on September 28 to commemorate the International Day for Universal Access to Information. The AI4IA Conference and the podcast series are also being hosted in collaboration with AI4Society and the Kule Institute for Advanced Studies, both at the University of Alberta; the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy at the Observer Research Foundation in India; and the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica. To access conference presentations, use this link.

Throughout the 20th century, European leaders from Stalin to Mussolini, from Gorbachev to Thatcher, and more, have shifted global narratives by sheer force of will. In Personality and Power, British historian Ian Kershaw attempts to understand these rulers and their outsized effect on history. In this virtual event, Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev speak with Kershaw on the lasting influence of these "builders and destroyers." How do today's leaders—Zelenksyy, Trump, Putin, Xi, etc.—compare? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

All Things Have Standing is a course in human psychology and the ethics of artificial intelligence and environmental law inspired by a powerful idea from the audio drama Spark Hunter—that all things have ethical standing. All Things Have Standing is presented by Carnegie Council in collaboration with Fighter Steel Education. Inspired by a futuristic story of a highly advanced AI experiencing existential crisis, All Things Have Standing explores, with leading scholars, AI and environmental ethics, the psychology and philosophy which underlie them, and the extraordinary challenges they raise for the global community. The first part, entitled our “Our Stories,” was published on this podcast feed last week. The second part of this course, “Others’ Stories,” is all available today in six sections on this podcast. Drawing on the work of classical and modern philosophers and inspired by Professor Silvia Benso and the Spark Hunter drama, Professor Chris DiBona presents a fresh way of looking at the people and things around us.  To watch the videos connected to this podcast, please go to Carnegie Council's YouTube channel.   For more information on All Things Have Standing and to listen to the Spark Hunter audio drama please visit FighterSteel.com. 

The fragmentation of international environmental governance creates challenges for states looking to create governance for solar radiation modification (SRM), says Dr. Marcos Regis da Silva, executive director of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) during a C2GTalk. Policymakers in the Americas welcomed a recent IAI meeting which provided more information about SRM, and the state of its governance, to help them take decisions about the best way forward. As IAI's executive director, Regis da Silva is responsible for the provision of strategic advice to high-level policymakers on issues related to global change and their socio-economic impacts. He also provides advice on linkages between the IAI’s scientific agenda and global governance environmental frameworks, especially the Sustainable Development Goals. Previously Regis da Silva held the post of chief, knowledge management and outreach services with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). For more, please go to C2G's website.

In a crossover collaboration with the national security and foreign policy podcast Rational Security, co-hosts Scott R. Anderson and Alan Z. Rozenshtein, both Lawfare senior editors, join Doorstep co-hosts, Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to assess the policy implications of the 2022 midterm elections. With over $16 billion spent on both federal and state races, millions more Americans going to the polls, and ballots still being counted, how are the Democrats and Republicans lining up to promote their respective agendas? Will President Biden be in pole position in upcoming G20 summit and beyond? Or will Republican priorities take over the conversation? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

All Things Have Standing is a course in human psychology and the ethics of artificial intelligence and environmental law inspired by a powerful idea from the audio drama Spark Hunter—that all things have ethical standing. All Things Have Standing is presented by Carnegie Council in collaboration with Fighter Steel Education. Inspired by a futuristic story of a highly advanced AI experiencing existential crisis, All Things Have Standing explores, with leading scholars, AI and environmental ethics, the psychology and philosophy which underlie them, and the extraordinary challenges they raise for the global community. This first part, all available on this podcast in six sections, is entitled “Our Stories.” Professor Sheldon Solomon presents a study of our journey as humans, touching on psychology, self-awareness, the animal world, storytelling, and much more. To watch the videos connected to this podcast, please go to Carnegie Council's YouTube channel.  For more information on All Things Have Standing and to listen to the Spark Hunter audio drama please visit FighterSteel.com.

With less than a week to Election Day, Layla Zaidane, president and CEO of the Millennial Action Project, joins Doorstep co-hosts, Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin for a preview of changes ahead as young leaders step up to run for office and come out to vote. With a 57 percent increase in the number of Millennial candidates compared to 2020 (about one out of six Congressional candidates nationwide are Millennials) and expectations of higher voter turnout for those 40 and younger, seismic changes are brewing. Are we entering a post-partisan world? Will 2022 be the year that changed not only the U.S. but also the world? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this episode of the AI & Information Accessibility podcast, host Ayushi Khemka discusses issues around AI, law, and social justice with Isabela Ferrari, a federal judge in Brazil, and Dr. Kobi Leins, a member of the AIEI Board of Advisors. They talk about data security, digital access and cyber resilience, specifically in the contexts of Brazil and Australia, while touching upon what interested them to enter the field of AI in the first place. Ferrari and Leins also address the (im)possibilities of having accountable and equitable AI. The AI4IA podcast series is in association with the Artificial Intelligence for Information Accessibility 2022 Conference, which took place on September 28 to commemorate the International Day for Universal Access to Information. The AI4IA Conference and the podcast series are also being hosted in collaboration with AI4Society and the Kule Institute for Advanced Studies, both at the University of Alberta; the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy at the Observer Research Foundation in India; and the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica. To access conference presentations, use this link.

The world needs to look at every option to stop dangerous climate change, but some potential approaches—like solar radiation modification—are undeveloped and could bring significant risks and unintended consequences, says Per Heggenes, CEO of the IKEA Foundation during a C2GTalk. That is why it is important to support broad-based discussions now, involving every part of society, in order to prepare for the tough governance challenges ahead. Per Heggenes is the CEO of IKEA Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Stichting INGKA Foundation, the owner of the Swedish home furnishings company IKEA. Since becoming CEO in 2009, he has presided over the Foundation’s evolution into a global, independent, strategic philanthropy focused on fighting climate change and improving livelihood opportunities for the poor. He serves on numerous advisory boards for humanitarian and development organizations and has taken a special interest in helping reform the way the global community works to embrace the rights of refugees and migrants. In 2019, Heggenes was appointed by the UN secretary general to join the High Level Panel on Internal Displacement with the goal of developing durable solutions to protracted internal displacement. For more, please go to C2G's website.

Almost a year ago, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act was signed into law by President Biden in response to consumer demands for more oversight of what we buy, how it is made and under what conditions. This one effort to bring more transparency to the murky world of global supply chains is now being overshadowed by companies' efforts to limit cargo data. The Associated Press' Joshua Goodman joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss his latest reporting on the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee and recommendations that will hinder efforts to hold companies accountable in foreign supply chains. Will consumers keep up the pressure or will midterm election concerns overtake transparency efforts? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this special Global Ethics Day event, Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal speaks with Michael Schur, creator of the hit TV show The Good Place and author of How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question. They discussed how each of us can use ethics to improve our daily lives, the power of humor as a force for good, and how collective ethical action can help address the global challenges that impact us all. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this C2GTalk, host Mark Turner talks speaks with Federal University of Rio de Janeiro's Dr. Roberto Schaeffer about carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification in the context of the IPCC pathways, with the goal of achieving the Paris Agreement. Dr. Roberto Schaeffer is a full professor of energy economics at the Energy Planning Programme, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with some 150 master's and doctoral theses supervised so far. Schaeffer holds a Ph.D. in energy management and policy from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also worked as a visiting professor and lecturer on different occasions. Schaeffer has collaborated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 1998, with the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) as a lead author of different UNEP Gap Reports since 2013, and as a lead author of different UNEP Production Gap Reports since 2019. For more, please go to C2G.net.

Carnegie New Leader Geoff Schaefer takes an unscripted look at how to navigate the field of AI ethics with Joahna Kuiper. From her earliest days in theater, to her current work studying AI's impact on society at Cambridge University, Joahna provides unique insight into the different skills and perspectives the field needs and how to apply them. If you're looking to get started in AI ethics and responsible AI, this episode is for you. Along the way, the conversation goes deep into a number of case studies and conundrums we must all grapple with. Joahna Kuiper originally entered the workforce in the realm of social work. In her circuitous path to what has become a decades-long career in technology, she explored psychology, graphic design, theater, and a few other subjects along the way, always adding new ways of seeing and thinking. Joahna has held a variety of leadership roles at technology companies, from enterprise business architect, to VP of IT, to XaaS product owner, to Industry Strategist. In fall 2022, she will add to that academic focus by beginning a research degree in “AI Ethics & Society” at Cambridge University in conjunction with the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. For more on Carnegie New Leaders, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this episode of the AI for Information Accessibility podcast, host Ayushi Khemka talks to Emad Mousavi and Paolo Verdini, both Ph.D. students at the University of Alberta, about the ethics and philosophy behind AI. They speak about the Ethics Bot, a project they co-run, and discuss questions of accountability and equity through and in AI. The AI4IA podcast series is in association with the Artificial Intelligence for Information Accessibility 2022 Conference, which took place on September 28 to commemorate the International Day for Universal Access to Information. The AI4IA Conference and the podcast series are also being hosted in collaboration with AI4Society and the Kule Institute for Advanced Studies, both at the University of Alberta; the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy at the Observer Research Foundation in India; and the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica. To access conference presentations, use this link.  For more on this episode, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

With one tweet about the outlines of a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, the world's richest man Elon Musk elicited a derisive response from Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, waves of accolades from Russian government sites, and tons of international press with scholars debating the merits of his proposal. Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin ask Puck's Teddy Schleifer if this is a new billionaire model of international relations or a one-time global phenomenon. How are monied interests shaping foreign policy ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November? And where is dark money flowing? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

From climate change to an ever-shifting global order, the list of challenges faced by the next generation of leaders and policymakers is long. This panel brings together contributors from the Carnegie Council’s journal Ethics & International Affairs to explore how ethics can be used in the classroom to engage students and empower them to tackle the critical global issues of our time. Panelists will draw on their roles as professors of ethics, international relations, and philosophy to discuss how they help their students to understand ethics not just as an abstract concept but as a practical tool that can improve daily lives. This talk features University of Washington's Michael Blake, University of Oxford's Yuna Han, and SUNY New Paltz's Ş. İlgü Özler, moderated by University of Utah's Brent Steele. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

The application of AI in the health sector has been touted as a gamechanger for diagnostics, disease prevention, precision medicine, and more. But it hasn't always lived up to its promise, its transformational potential undermined by a mixture of common business hurdles and the human body's idiosyncrasies. Yet, the promise of AI-driven healthcare is still alive. In this episode, Carnegie New Leader Geoff Schaefer explores these past challenges and future promises with Jessica Lamb and Liz Grennan of McKinsey. Liz Grennan is an expert associate partner in McKinsey Digital. She advises clients on a wide variety of risk, strategy and ethics issues related to data, AI/ML and technology. Previously at McKinsey, Grennan built and led the McKinsey Digital legal and risk teams globally. Jessica Lamb is a partner in McKinsey’s healthcare and public sector practice. Since joining in 2008, she has served clients across the healthcare industry, including payors, providers, and health care services. Lamb’s work has primarily been targeted at creating health care value and fleveraging analytics to improve performance and outcomes. For. more on the Carnegie New Leaders prorgram, please go to: https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/initiatives-issues/carnegie-new-leaders

Countries need to set aside their differences, recognize their interdependence, and negotiate as equals to tackle the climate crisis, says Sunita Narain, the director general of India's Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) during a C2GTalk. Nature-based solutions can play an important role, but they need much simpler accounting rules, and should be deployed in a way that benefits local communities. Sunita Narain is the director general of the CSE and editor of the magazine Down To Earth. She plays an active role in policy formulation on issues of environment and development in India and globally. She has worked extensively on climate change, with a particular interest in advocating for an ambitious and equitable global agreement. Narain's work on air pollution, water and waste management as well as industrial pollution has led to an understanding of the need for affordable and sustainable solutions in countries like India where the challenge is to ensure inclusive and sustainable growth. She was a member of the Indian Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change and has been awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honor. In 2005, the CSE, under her leadership, was also awarded the Stockholm Water Prize. In 2016, Time magazine selected Narain as one of the most influential people in the world. She received “The Order of the Polar Star” award from the Swedish Government in 2017 and CSE was awarded the prestigious Indira Gandhi Prize for peace, disarmament and development for 2018. Narain continues to serve on national and international committees on environment including One Health Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance set up by WHO/OIE/FAO. For more, please go to C2G's website.

In this Global Ethics Review podcast, Liubov Tsybulska, a hybrid warfare expert and advisor to the government of Ukraine, discusses Russian disinformation efforts and how the conflict has changed on the cyber front over the last eight years. Tsybulska and host Alex Woodson also touch on how Ukraine's social media strategy is designed to engage with Western allies, the role of the United Nations, and the brutality of the Russian military. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this episode of the AI for Information Accessibility podcast, host Ayushi Khemka discusses the deep history behind artificial intelligence with László Z. Karvalics, founding director of the BME-UNESCO Information Society and Trend Research Institute. Their conversation touches on the Google/AI sentience debate, information preservation, social media, and the concept of “intelligence augmentation.” The AI4IA podcast series is in association with the Artificial Intelligence for Information Accessibility 2022 Conference on September 28, which will commemorate the International Day for Universal Access to Information. The AI4IA Conference and the podcast series are also being hosted in collaboration with AI4Society and the Kule Institute for Advanced Studies, both at the University of Alberta; the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy at the Observer Research Foundation in India; and the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica. To register for the conference, click here.

In two years, two-thirds of the world's population may face water shortages that will lead to crises of epic proportions from water refugees to potential armed conflicts over water supply. Yet the global water crisis does not typically get regular press attention. IHE Delft Institute for Water Education's Dr. Susanne Schmeier speaks with Doorstep co-hosts, Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin about how we can frame water crises discussions and begin to work on solutions. What trade-offs must be made? Can the United States and United Nations, whose annual meetings begin in New York City next week, do more? How will next year's UN Water Conference set a new agenda? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this introduction to the new AI for Information Accessibility podcast, host Ayushi Khemka discusses the goals of Artificial Intelligence for Information Accessibility 2022 Conference with Cordel Green, UNESCO's Information for All Programme (IFAP) Working Group on Information Accessibility chair. "We can and must insist on AI development, deployment, and access that is respectful of our human rights and protects the most vulnerable," says Green. "Artificial intelligence must be used to preserve our democratic and cultural traditions and not work against them." The AI4IA podcast series is in association with the Artificial Intelligence for Information Accessibility 2022 Conference on September 28, which will commemorate the International Day for Universal Access to Information. The AI4IA Conference and the podcast series are also being hosted in collaboration with AI4Society and the Kule Institute for Advanced Studies, both at the University of Alberta; the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy at the Observer Research Foundation in India; and the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica. To register for the conference, click here.

What will it take to stop Russia’s President Vladimir Putin? Few have seen his wrath as closely as American-born British financier Bill Browder, who was the largest foreign investor in Russia until investigations led by his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky exposed massive corruption and misconduct by Russian officials leading all the way to Putin. After Magnitsky's murder in a Moscow jail, Browder continued to advocate for justice, becoming Putin's next target, a story he tells in his latest book Freezing Order and in this Book Talk with Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Carnegie New Leader Geoff Schaefer leads a lively conversation with Reid Blackman about his new book Ethical Machines: Your Concise Guide to Totally Unbiased, Transparent, and Respectful AI. Blackman cuts through the common jargon to deliver a clear and tangible approach to AI ethics. The conversation covers everything from "ethical nightmares" to the myth that ethical facts don't–and can't–exist. This episode is full of tips and tricks on how to think about the core ethical challenges in AI.  Reid Blackman is the founder and CEO of Virtue, an AI ethical risk consultancy, and volunteer chief ethics officer for the non-profit Government Blockchain Association. His work, which includes providing guidance to the likes of AWS, US Bank, Citibank, the FBI, NASA, and the World Economic Forum, has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal and Forbes.

In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen is joined by Asia Society Policy Institute's Elina Noor for a talk on how we frame discussions on AI ethics and governance matters. They also speak about the importance of the social justice aspect of technology and the digital landscape in Southeast Asia. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Might the world we live in be a simulation? Are the virtual environments being created real or illusions? What are the prospects for creating artificial consciousness? New York University's David Chalmers and Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach discuss Reality+, Chalmers' latest book, which probes the vast array of philosophical and ethical challenges posed by virtual reality and enhanced reality.

How could the world change if the dynamism of India's rise is connected to the wealth and resources of the Gulf states and the technological powerhouse of Israel? Could a new Indo-Abrahamic corridor that connects South Asia with the Middle East and East Africa through to the Mediterranean be a major game-changer for the world of the 21st century? Middle East Institute's Mohammed Soliman joins The Doorstep this week to discuss all of this and more. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

The return of great power rivalry—whether U.S. versus Russia or U.S. versus China—has recreated the sense that nuclear war is possible. But what is the actual threat versus perceived threat and how can we manage our collective anxiety? Brandeis University's Professor Gary Samore, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss how nuclear deterrence fosters restraint and caution, and the hope that a protracted Russia-Ukraine war will not tip the scales. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In the midst of declining domestic approval ratings and skyrocketing inflation, President Biden heads to the Middle East to re-imagine U.S. regional relationships and counter China's and Russia's growing influence.  NYU's SPS Center for Global Affairs Assistant Dean Carolyn Kissane returns to speak with Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin about the trade-offs Biden must make in energy, climate, and human rights discussions. How will Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and 'countries to watch' Israel and UAE affect U.S. policy in the short and long-term? Will this trip be a win or loss for Biden? For more "Doorstep" podcasts, visit carnegiecouncil.org.

In a candid conversation, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, talks with Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal about her role in the UN, the importance of "kindness" in diplomacy, diversity in the Foreign Service, and much more. How do China and the U.S. work together at the UN? How has diplomacy changed under President Biden? And how can the UN stay relevant in 2022? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this Global Ethics Review podcast, Senior Fellow Arthur Holland Michel discusses facial recognition systems, loitering munitions, and drones in the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and analyzes their use on the battlefield and in the larger narrative of the conflict. As Russia's tactics become increasingly brutal while utilizing more traditional weapons, what effects are these technologies really having on the war? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

As the fifth month of Russia's invasion of Ukraine begins, Atlantic Council's Melinda Haring returns to speak with Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin about on-the-ground realities in Ukraine and how the West needs to manage Putin's long war game. What more is needed from leaders attending G7 and NATO meetings this week? And how can "compassion fatigue" be countered to help Ukraine meet the challenges of the second phase of a more brutal war? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

For decades, American nonprofits and philanthropies worked with Chinese citizens and the Chinese Communist Party. But over the last several years especially, the space for foreign NGOs to operate in China has increasingly shrunk due to COVID restrictions, paranoia about Western influence, and an American public suspicious of Beijing. Should nonprofits and philanthropies continue to engage with a China ruled by an increasingly hostile Party? Freedom House's Michael Abramowitz and Strategy Risks' Isaac Stone Fish discuss this question and much more in this podcast.  For more, please go to carengiecouncil.org. 

In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach is joined by Angela Kane, a chair of the United Nations University Governing Council, to discuss how AI is likely to upend geopolitics. Kane, a former UN under-secretary-general, also shares some of her concerns about the role of the UN and the many ways AI could undermine international peace and security. Without proper guardrails, the development and deployment of AI systems could accelerate the pace of armed conflict and risk loosening control over the means of war. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Inflation and a bear market are dominating headlines. Efforts to curb costs and boost markets, like the Ocean Shipping Reform Act—which President Biden is set to sign—should help. Logistics analyst Peter Sand returns to speak with Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin about what else can be done in the the face of unexpected obstacles to global trade like China's slide back into lockdowns and a fourth month of war in Ukraine. What trade-offs will U.S. consumers have to make in the short and long-term? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Countries in the Arab region are seeking substitutes to oil so they can diversify their economies and mitigate the impact of fossil fuels production. “They realize that the emissions that are coming up from the production of oil are not acceptable and they have a moral obligation and responsibility at the global level to reduce their emissions,” says UNESCWA's Rola Dashti during a  C2GTalk. The war in Ukraine has increased energy prices impacting livelihoods globally. In the Arab region this has resulted in billions of dollars of gross domestic product losses. Now we see why energy security is so important at the global level and why climate finance is crucial to support developing countries in their green transition. Rola Dashti, executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA), is a leading Kuwaiti economist and long-time champion of women’s rights, gender equality, and democratic reform, before moving to ESCWA in 2019. For more, please go to C2G's website.

More research and better governance is needed to help developing countries make decisions about solar radiation modification (SRM), says Thelma Krug, vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), during a C2GTalk. SRM has come into focus due to a likely overshoot of the 1.5C warming goal, which would bring increasing risks to people and natural ecosystems, and—depending on the length and extent of overshoot—potentially irreversible impacts. Thelma Krug is a former researcher at the Earth Observation Coordination at the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil, under the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication (MCTIC). She was elected vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the Sixth Cycle of Panel (October 2015 – October 2022), after having been co-chair of the IPCC Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories from 2002 until 2015. For more, go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Ahead of NATO's Madrid summit in June, The Washington Institute's Dr. Soner Cagaptay joins Doorstep co-hosts, Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's strategy to reset relations with the West and get what he needs out of potential NATO enlargement. With Turkey's inflation skyrocketing and Gen Z voters threatening to unseat him in next year's nationwide elections, President Erdogan is betting that demanding concessions from Sweden and Finland and staying friendly with Russia may not only strengthen Turkey's national security but also score him points at home. Will this also win him friends in Washington, DC? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In a fascinating Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen speaks with Kobi Leins about her new book New War Technologies and International Law: The Legal Limits to Weaponising Nanomaterials. How can scientists and policymakers work together to make responsible choices about the use of “nanoscale” materials? What are the implications of this emerging technology for the environment, international security, and current arms control regimes? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

As Russia's war in Ukraine deepens and China’s influence continues to grow, many observers say that the United States is entering an era of “great-power competition” with these two rivals. But, as Eurasia Group's Ali Wyne discusses with Doorstep co-hosts Nikolas Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin, this kind of framework could leave the U.S. defensive and reactive, and hinder efforts to renew itself, both at home and abroad. Can America seize its "great-power opportunity"? For more, please go to carnegieouncil.org. 

In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach sits down with Emory University's Professor Paul Root Wolpe for a thought-provoking conversation about the truth of ethical decision-making, the challenge of regulating new technologies whose impact is uncertain, the intrinsically fragmenting nature of social media and AI, and the dilemmas of neuroscience and neuromarketing.   For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Much has been said about the inability of tech and AI developers to grapple with ethical theory and inherent tension. Similarly, philosophers are often criticized by AI engineers for not understanding the technology. Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach, senior fellows and co-chairs of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative, sit down with University of Pittsburgh’sProfessor Colin Allen for a fascinating conversation. Wallach and Allen wrote Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong together more than a decade ago, and this conversation also features an assessment of how we have progressed in building AI systems capable of making moral decisions.    For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the global financial backlash was swift and unprecedented: Dozens of financial institutions cut off their exposure to the Russian market for reasons that were at least partially ethical. These moves against Russia have led many to wonder if China—which is far more integrated into the global economy—could and should be the next target. In this podcast, Isaac Stone Fish and finance expert Perth Tolle discuss these issues and more. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Ahead of a May 6 international conference in Lithuania on steps to create a tribunal to hold Russia accountable for alleged war crimes and genocide in Ukraine, NYU Law’s Professor Ryan Goodman, co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss the issues and challenges of prosecuting Putin and his top brass. With American public sentiment at an all-time high to see justice done, will this be a defining moment for the Biden/Harris administration on the global stage? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

The debate around solar radiation modification has broadened in recent years, but there has not yet been significant progress on international mechanisms to govern it, says Economist senior editor Oliver Morton in this C2GTalk. He adds: "I don't want a world with solar geoengineering come what may, but I also don't want future generations to look back and say, 'I wish they’d thought about this just a bit more thoroughly.'" Oliver Morton previously worked at Nature  and  Wired  and contributed to a range of other publications, including The New York Times and Science.  He is the author of Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination and the Birth of a World; Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet; The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World; and The Moon: A History for the Future. Asteroid 10716 Olivermorton is named in his honor. This interview was recorded on February 10, 2022 and will be available with interpretation into  中文,  Español,  and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website. 

The global pandemic and investments in mRNA COVID vaccines have accelerated worldwide interest in the field of synthetic biology—a field that unifies chemistry, biology, computer science, and engineering for the purpose of writing better biological code. In this podcast, Genesis Machine co-author Amy Webb and Senior Fellows Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin explore how these developments are leading to a new industrial revolution. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen talks with Dr. Ricardo Chavarriaga about the promise and peril of brain-machine interfaces and cognitive neural prosthetics. What are the ethical considerations and governance challenges in using computational tools to create models or enhance our brains? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Since the Russian invasion began in late February, millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes. In this Global Ethics Review podcast, Senior Fellow Michael Doyle discusses what this means on the ground in Eastern Europe, what governments are and should be doing to help, and how this refugee stream is different from ones that came before. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Global war, inflation, and a COVID-19 resurgence--the Biden/Harris team has been put on defense for first two quarters of 2022. Policies are reactive, promises made a year ago tabled. This week, "Doorstep" co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin reflect on what has happened to the vaunted Biden/Harris "foreign policy for the middle class" and how midterm elections will up-end the narratives the administration expected to put in place. Where do we go from here? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

The advent of the age of data is a formidable accelerator of history. As society faces a crisis of politics compounded by the emergence of powerful virtual communities competing with territorial communities, are we on the cusp of an earthquake in the history of humanity? In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kapsersen is joined by Professor Jean-Marie Guéhenno for a thought-provoking conversation about his new book The First XXI Century: From Globalization to Fragmentation. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Every time a new technology that collects, stores, and analyzes our data is released to the world or permitted a new role, we are promised that it will work as intended and won't cause undue harm. But writer, professor, and speaker Dr. Chris Gilliard has found that this is rarely how these stories actually end. In this discussion with Senior Fellow Arthur Holland Michel, Dr. Gilliard explains why the arc of surveillance technology and novel "artificial intelligence" bends toward failures that disproportionately hurt society’s most vulnerable groups, what this means for our notions of "responsible tech" and "AI ethics," and what we can do about it moving forward. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

A leader asking his second in command to keep him in power. A parliament dissolved. A Supreme Court deciding the fate of a nation. Echoes of the January 6 political crisis in the U.S. are reverberating in the current standoff in Pakistan, where "ousted" Prime Minister Imran Khan is blaming the U.S. for conspiring to remove him from power. Atlantic Council's Uzair Younus joins Senior Fellows Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to explain a pivotal moment of change in Pakistan and how this may impact autocrats around the world. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen and Katherine Milligan, director the Collective Change Lab, explore what we can learn from the social impact and entrepreneurship movement to govern the potential impact of AI systems. What is systems change and collective sense-making? And why is it relevant to reenvisioning ethics in the information age?  For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this riveting and wide-ranging conversation, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen is joined by HKUST's Professor Pascale Fung to discuss the symbiotic relationship between science fiction and innovation and the importance of re-envisioning ethics in AI research. We may be able to code machines to seem and act more like humans, says Professor Fung, however the ability to question our own existence to understand who we are, are fundamentally human features and cannot be easily or even responsibly encoded. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

From Super Bowl cryptocurrency advertising to Save the Children accepting bitcoin donations, the crypto conversation is now mainstream. Over $100 million so far has been raised via crypto donations to Ukraine's war effort both from official government wallets and individual NFTs.  Will this revolutionize war funding, enable oligarchs to avoid sanctions, or pave the way for broader acceptance of a digital currencies around the world? NYU Stern’s Professor David Yermack returns to discuss these issues and the future of crypto with Carnegie Council Senior Fellows Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

How do tech, AI, and global norms intersect to generate political, legal, and ethical dilemmas? In this virtual event, Carnegie New Leader Josephine Jackson leads a discussion with four experts on the future of warfare, and how changing norms shape strategic challenges and tactical decision-making for national security leaders. This podcast features:  Philip M. Breedlove - General (ret.), U.S. Air Force Anthony F. Lang, Jr. – Professor, School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews Mary Ellen O’Connell – Professor, University of Notre Dame  Arun Seraphin – Deputy Director, Emerging Technologies Institute, National Defense Industrial Association For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

It is important to see proposed solar radiation modification experiments in a wider social context, says Sheila Jasanoff, the Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School, during a C2GTalk interview. People want to know who is doing the experiment, and what their intentions are—and it is important for scientists and engineers to recognize and address these concerns, and for governance to be built around that. Sheila Jasanoff is a leading expert on the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies, and her work offers fascinating insights into how society navigates emerging technologies, and how decision-makers assess evidence and expertise—which is extremely relevant to our governance conversations. She is the author or editor of more than 15 books, including The Ethics of Invention and Can Science Make Sense of Life; has held distinguished appointments at leading universities around the world; and served on the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website. 

Hollywood has long been part of the United States' soft power arsenal. Now, that soft power is threatened by the larger geostrategic competition between the U.S. and China—and China appears to be winning. In Red Carpet, Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel explores how and why Hollywood has become obsessed with China and what that means for the People's Republic as it exports its national agenda around the world. In this virtual event, Schwarzel joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev for a discussion on how the film industry can offer an essential new perspective on the power struggle of this century. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this wide-ranging talk, U.S. defense expert Elbridge Colby discusses the changing nature of American power with Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal. As the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, Colby details the threats and challenges that the United States faces, most notably from Asia, and how it can adapt its geopolitical and military capabilities to meet its goals. How can the U.S. counter China's rising power and its pursuit of regional hegemony? Does Russia's invasion of Ukraine change how America pursues its policies? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Over the last two decades, solar radiation modification has gone from an intellectual experiment to something people are seriously considering, says pioneering climate scientist Ken Caldeira during a C2GTalk. The world needs to understand what would happen if somebody felt the need to cool the Earth rapidly, and that requires the ability for scientists to do more research. "There is a case to limit knowledge acquisition if it would lead to imminent harm," says Caldeira, but this is not the case for solar radiation modification experiments. Ken Caldeira is senior staff scientist (emeritus) with Carnegie Institution for Science, and world famous for his work on the global carbon cycle and climate change. He was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report and a co-author of the 2010 US National Academy America’s Climate Choices report. Caldeira also participated in the UK Royal Society’s geoengineering panel in 2009. He is also senior scientist at Breakthrough Energy, which supports innovation to reach zero carbon emissions. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

As we enter week three of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Nahal Toosi, senior foreign affairs correspondent for Politico, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to evaluate the ways in which the U.S. is already confronting Russia—economic warfare, information warfare—and how this is impacting other areas of foreign policy. Is the Biden/Harris administration nimble enough to take on multiple global crises or "black swan" events? Are Washington, DC technocrats stuck in a 1980s time machine? What can we expect from the National Security Strategy due to come out sometime this quarter? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Atlantic Council's Ukraine expert Melinda Haring joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss where we are one week after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a large-scale invasion into Ukraine. What are the key takeaways after a week of intense fighting? Can the U.S. and Western allies do more to stop Putin's advance? How will the war re-shape U.S. domestic politics as midterm season begins? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Russia's invasion of Ukraine raises several ethical questions: Why did diplomacy fail? What does the invasion mean for the principle of sovereignty? How does history inform the present and suggest the future? Are sanctions an appropriate and effective response, and what principles should guide their implementation? Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal and Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev discuss the ramifications of Putin's decision and the ethical principles at stake in the current crisis. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Dr. Francesca Rossi, the AI Ethics Global Leader for IBM, joins Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen for a riveting Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast. Rossi speaks about her ethics-focused role at a multinational company and the importance of lateral expertise and multidisciplinarity in addressing ethical considerations and tensions in AI research. How can we insert human values into AI systems? Can AI transform and strengthen human decision-making? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In the 1950s, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev bemoaned that the United States wouldn’t even sell buttons to the Soviet Union. "Buttons can hold up a soldier’s trousers," he groused. Today, China is far more entangled with the United States than the Soviet Union was, and the relationship trades in far more than buttons. In a new series of dialogues, Carnegie Council is exploring the question: How should American institutions engage with China? The first event of the series examines the ethical questions that media outlets and journalists must grapple with when reporting on China. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this episode of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen speaks with Dr. Jürgen Stock, secretary general of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). In an engaging conversation, they discuss his professional journey towards leading the world police body, what keeps him up at night, and the critical role of global police work in keeping societies safe, especially as those seeking to evade justice increasingly hide behind screens, and operate via bits and bytes, as well as on the dark net. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.  

With 2022 U.S. midterm elections looming, George Mason University's Colin Dueck comes back to speak with Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin about the opportunities and challenges the Biden/Harris administration is facing on the global stage. What lessons has the U.S. learned from its failed Afghanistan pullout? Can Biden bridge foreign policy divisions that cut across party lines? Will he be able to do this in time to thwart the Russia-China "no limits" strategic partnership? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen sits down with Caltech's Professor Anima Anandkumar, also director of machine learning research at NVIDIA, for a captivating conversation. They discuss the "Trinity of AI" (data, algorithms, and infrastructure), Anandkumar's work on tensor algorithms, and the state of AI research, including the critical importance of diversity in the field. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world's wealthiest added a whopping $3.9 trillion to their pockets while as many as 500 million people descended into poverty. This trend continues a trajectory of decades of wealth accumulation by the 1 percent. In this podcast, New York Times correspondent Peter Goodman, author of Davos Man, talks with Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev about the global billionaire class and their visible and invisible impacts on nearly every aspect of modern society. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this episode of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen and Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal sit down with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation's Stelios Vassilakis for an engaging conversation about how to preserve and empower public space ethics. What we can we learn from the Athenian agora to guide the means and methods of governing AI? For more, including a full transcript, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Current international responses to climate change continue to place the world on a trajectory beyond 1.5°C global warming, with impacts posing severe risks to natural and human systems. Discussions on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) globally has grown since the publication of the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5°C, which reaffirms that large-scale CDR is required in all of its pathways to limit global warming to 1.5°C, with limited or no overshoot to achieve net-zero mid-century and global net negative emissions thereafter, until the end of the century. By removing between 100 to 1000 billion tonnes of CO2 depending on the speed of emissions reduction in respective pathways. CDR methods vary and include the use of nature-based approaches, such as afforestation and enhancing wetlands, or engineering-based approaches to directly capture carbon dioxide. At scale, they all present potential benefits and risks of negative side-effects and pose significant governance challenges as many governance gaps exist. Most CDR approaches are currently theoretical and far from being ready to deploy at the speed or scale necessary to prevent overshooting the Paris Agreement temperature goal of 1.5–2°C. Discussions around CDR governance, in particular on and around nature-based approaches to CDR as well as direct air carbon capture and storage, have more recently gained growing interest in light of the wave of net-zero commitments or pledges by governments, companies and other actors over the last two years. However, important knowledge gaps persist around the role CDR could play in achieving net negative emissions after net-zero to deliver the Paris Agreement's goal. This C2GDiscuss features three global experts sharing their views on the role that CDR could play to achieve net negative after net zero. Some of the topics explored in this discussion are: what needs to be done now to have CDR functioning by the time we need it; how can CDR's full potential be realized as a climate response while making sure that the co-benefits are maximized, and trade-offs minimized in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); what role could the public and private sector play to scale up the required CDR and is there a role for other non-state actors. Understanding these issues is crucial and urgent for meaningful societal deliberations and decisions today. Jan Minx is head of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change working group Applied Sustainability Science. James Mwangi is the executive director of the Dalberg Group, and a partner with Dalberg Advisors. Shuchi Talati is chief of staff for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) at the U.S. Department of Energy. Janos Pasztor (moderator) is executive director of C2G and a senior fellow at Carnegie Council. This discussion was recorded on September 8, 2021, and is available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For more, please go to C2G's website. 

A decade after hacktivists like the Anonymous collective gained notoriety for cyberattacks on U.S. government agencies and multinationals and were later tamped down by arrests, a second wave of hacktivists is rising. Joseph Marks, cybersecurity reporter at The Washington Post, speaks with Doorstep co-host Tatiana Serafin about the differences and overlap between hacktivism, cyberwarfare, and ransomware and how these tools are being deployed in the Russia/Ukraine conflict and beyond. For more, go to carnegiecouncil.org.

The oceans and climate change are inextricably connected. On the one hand, the oceans are faced with significant threats posed by climate change through acidification, loss of oxygen, and warming; on the other hand, the oceans play a critical role in regulating the climate system, acting as a major heat and carbon sink, and have been increasingly regarded as a source of solutions to climate change. A range of additional ocean-based climate-altering approaches are being explored to limit climate impacts. For example, introducing additional nutrients to enhance photosynthesis of plankton to remove CO2 from the ocean surface and transport it to the deep ocean; cultivating large-scale seaweed to capture carbon through photosynthesis for sequestration; and brightening marine clouds through spraying sea water to deliver cooling locally. However, all these approaches may present potential benefits and risks. What do the ocean protection community and the climate protection community say about these approaches? Is there a panacea for addressing the major environmental and socio-political challenges that these approaches pose? How can their risks and benefits be weighed up against the expected impacts of climate change? In this C2GDiscuss, three experts share their views on these approaches.  Stefanos Fotiou is director in the Office of Sustainable Development Goals in the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. At the time of this recording, he was the director of the Environment and Development Division in the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP). Kristina M. Gjerde is is senior high seas advisor to IUCN’s Global Marine and Polar Programme (GMPP) and adjunct professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, where she teaches international marine law. Joyashree Roy is the inaugural Bangabandhu Chair Professor at Asian Institute of Technology (AIT). Janos Pasztor (moderator) is executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G). This interview was recorded on June 1, 2021, and is also available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For more, please go to C2G's website. 

Over the past year, America has imported more oil from Russia and goods from China to address domestic inflation and supply chain issues. Abroad, the U.S. is threatening sanctions against Russia and keeping diplomats from attending the Beijing Olympics. Center for a New American Security's Rachel Ziemba joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss the tensions between U.S. domestic and foreign policy goals and how an impending global growth crisis may upend the Biden/Harris administration's "foreign policy for the middle class." For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Last October, millions of leaked documents known as the Pandora Papers exposed the shadowy financial structures global power players from politicians to billionaires use to hide money, move markets, and transform countries. Author Casey Michel delves deep into the underbelly of this global scheming in American Kleptocracy. In this virtual event, Michel and Doorstep co-hosts Nikolas Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin discuss corruption in the United States and its effects around the world. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is required in all pathways to keep global warming under 1.5°C.  A range of approaches to CDR are under consideration, including technological or biological approaches, with the latter being increasingly referred to as "nature-based solutions." Afforestation and reforestation, together with other nature-based approaches to CDR, have been gaining international attraction because of their huge potential to remove carbon from atmosphere but also due to the other prospective environmental and social benefits they could bring. However, there are concerns raised around "moral hazard," competition for resources, permanence of sequestration, and other potential risks of deployment of large-scale afforestation and reforestation, which pose governance challenges. How do we address these challenges and make decisions that maximize synergies and co-benefits and minimize tradeoffs? What can we learn from previous large-scale afforestation and reforestation initiatives? To explore these questions, C2G brought together a diverse group of policy, intergovernmental, independent research organization, NGO, and academic experts for a "C2GDiscuss" podcast on July 20, 2020. Featuring: Li Fang, chief representative, World Resources Institute Beijing Representative Office, China Martin Frick, deputy to the special envoy, UN Food Systems Summit 2021 Thelma Krug, senior researcher (retired) at National Institute for Space Research, Brazil and vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Kelsey Perlman (speaking on behalf of CAN International), forest and climate campaigner, Fern Artur Runge-Metzger, director for climate strategy, governance, and emissions from non-trading sectors, DG CLIMA, European Commission Janos Pasztor, executive director, C2G (Moderator) For more, please go to C2G's website. 

Are we reaching for the wrong metaphors and narratives in our eagerness to govern AI? In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen is joined by Google Research’s Blaise Aguera y Arcas. In a talk that spans from Gutenberg to federated learning models to what we can learn from nuclear research, they discuss what we need to be mindful of when discussing and engaging with future applications of machine intelligence.  For more on this podcast, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.  For more on the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative (AIEI), please go to carnegieaie.org.

In response to climate change risks, scientists are considering the viability of developing and deploying marine cloud brightening (MCB), which seeks to whiten clouds over the ocean to reflect solar radiation back into space in order to achieve cooling. MCB is still largely theoretical, but if ever deployed at scale, could create large and potentially long-term risks and governance challenges. The recent first outdoor MCB experiment conducted by Australian scientists went largely unnoticed by the general public and has generated some interesting but limited debate. In this C2GDiscuss, the panelists explore:  How to situate MCB in the global challenges of response to climate risks context?  What is the latest research and debate about MCB as well as the governance implications of potential deployment?  What could we learn from the recent MCB outdoor experiment in Australia to move forward the governance of solar radiation modification research? The C2GDiscuss features:  Kerryn Brent, lecturer at the University of Adelaide and member of the Australian Forum for Climate Intervention Governance; Silvia Ribeiro, Latin America Director, ETC Group; Phillip Williamson, Honorary Reader, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia Paul Rouse, Science Advisor, C2G (Moderator) For more, please go to C2G's website.

C2GDiscuss is a series of moderated in-depth conversations between diverse experts on some of the governance challenges of climate-altering approaches. In this podcast, Mark Turner, communications consultant at C2G, interviews Janos Pasztor, C2G's executive director, about how how these discussions encourage an engaging conversation about some of the toughest questions faced by decision-makers on climate change, now and in the future. C2GDisccuss and C2GTalk are posted on Monday on Carnegie Council's podcast channels.  For more, please go to C2G's website. 

Judah Grunstein, editor-in-chief of World Politics Review, returns to The Doorstep to discuss 2022 trends in U.S. global engagement with co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin. Where is the Biden/Harris team succeeding on the world stage? Where are they missing opportunities? Is the American public ready to participate in shaping new narratives for how the U.S. shows up in the world? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

When author Eliot Peper first heard about solar geoengineering, or solar radiation modification, he knew he had to write a novel. "There are so many different angles on this kind of a problem. It raises so many questions that impact every area of our lives," he told C2GTalk. Speculative fiction, says Peper, can spark people's curiosity and inspire them to become engaged. "If it makes other people look more deeply and pay more attention, to me that's a huge win." Eliot Peper is the author of nine novels, including Veil, Cumulus, Bandwidth, and Neon Fever Dream. He also publishes a blog, and sends a monthly newsletter. He is on Twitter, @eliotpeper. Peper’s most recent novel, Veil, is a speculative thriller about diplomats, hackers, spies, scientists, and billionaires racing to control our climate future. Janos Pastor, C2G’s executive director, calls Veil "the tale we need to confront climate change. Peper deftly explores one of the most controversial ideas on the climate agenda—solar geoengineering—and its geopolitical quandaries—raising tough questions and showing why we require new forms of governance to answer them." This interview was recorded on  December 14, 2021 and will be available with interpretation into 中文,  Español, and Français. For an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

In this episode of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Wendell Wallach sits down with Professor Shannon Vallor to discuss how to reenvision ethics and empower it to deal with AI, emerging technologies, and new power dynamics in the information age. For more on this talk, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. For more on the Carnegie Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative, please go to carnegieaie.org.

Equity, justice, and transparency are needed to enable meaningful conversations around the the debate on solar radiation modification, because Africa has to be very careful about climate-altering technologies, especially when we do not understand their consequences, says Vera Songwe, executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) during a C2GTalk interview. Africa can only sustainably and justly have the conversation on carbon emissions if it sees that this road leads to a more prosperous life, better livelihoods, and that this road will help the continent meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Vera Songwe is the United Nations under-secretary-general and the ninth serving executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). As executive secretary focusing on "ideas for a prosperous Africa," her organizational reforms have brought to the fore critical issues of macroeconomic stability; development finance, growth and private sector; poverty and inequality; the digital transformation and data; and trade and competitiveness. She is acknowledged for her long-standing track record of providing policy advice on development and her wealth of experience in delivering development results for Africa. A strong advocate of the private sector, Songwe launched a business forum debate at ECA and created, for the first time, a private sector division with a number of significant initiatives. Before joining the ECA, Songwe held a number of leading roles at the World Bank and International Finance Corporation (IFC). Songwe serves as a non-resident senior Ffllow at the Brookings Institution. She is also a member of the African Union institutional reform team under the direction of the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, and an advisory board member of the African Leadership Network and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. This interview was recorded on October 19, 2021 and is available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

The Biden/Harris team had big plans for re-engaging the U.S. with the world after four years of retrenchment under Trump. But the continuing pandemic, runaway inflation, and rising populism have upended the new administration's 2021 goals. Mo Elleithee, executive director of Georgetown's Institute of Politics and Public Service, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss what the Biden/Harris team gets right and how messaging can be improved ahead of 2022 mid-term elections to engage a disconnected electorate. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In the last 20 years, the U.S. and its allies significantly expanded their military and security infrastructures. But as America pivots from the War on Terror, new areas of focus have begun to take center stage, including the militarization of space and rising tensions with China. Is there a better way to meet our basic security responsibilities without militarizing across society? Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal discusses these issues with security experts Elliot Ackerman, Neta C. Crawford, and Ned Dobos. This special event was inspired by the Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine book symposium recently published in the Fall 2021 issue of Carnegie Council's Ethics & International Affairs journal. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

A global and regional discussion is needed to learn about and create governance for climate-altering approaches like solar radiation modification, says Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), during a  C2GTalk interview. The UN's regional commissions, including ECLAC, can play an important role in bringing together a diverse range of actors in this discussion, including public and private experts in environment, energy, finance, economy, and planning. At the end of this C2GTalk, Bárcena said “And someday we will have to pay tribute to Maurice Strong . . . I think of him quite a lot.  I believe that he was really anticipating so many of these things. So hopefully someday we and C2G can do something about it”. On behalf of  Bárcena and Janos  Pasztor this C2GTalk is dedicated to the memory of Maurice Strong. Alicia Bárcena  assumed  office  as  the  executive  secretary  of  the  Economic  Commission  for  Latin  America  and  the  Caribbean (ECLAC) on July 1, 2008. She had previously served as the under-secretary-general for management at United Nations Headquarters in New York, chef de cabinet, and deputy chef de cabinet to the former secretary-general, Kofi Annan. This interview was recorded on August 6, 2021 and is available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

Emerging technologies with global impact are creating new ungoverned spaces at a rapid pace. In this critical moment, frameworks and approaches to govern these technologies, particularly in the international sphere, are often unclear or altogether nonexistent. In this podcast, the leaders of Carnegie Council's Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G) and the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative (AIEI) discuss the ways they are working to educate and activate communities around these critical governance issues. For full transcript, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, new questions have arisen in regards to the ethics of global vaccine distribution. In a continuation of a series started over the summer, University of Pennsylvania's Ezekiel Emanuel returns to discuss boosters and vaccine hesitancy and how that affects vaccine distribution around the world. Plus, he shares his thoughts on Biden administration policies concerning the travel ban due to the Omicron variant, domestic mandates, testing, and masking. For more on these issues, read "On the Ethics of Vaccine Nationalism: The Case for the Fair Priority for Residents Framework," co-authored by Dr. Emanuel and published by Carnegie Council's Ethics & International journal and Cambridge University Press.  For a full transcript of this talk, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Understanding that we face a planetary emergency can help countries and citizens around the world overcome our many interlocking crises, says Sandrine Dixson-Declève, co-president of the Club of Rome during a C2GTalk interview. Bringing international, national and local leaders into inclusive, people-focused governance processes can help our emergence into a new type of civilization. Technology has a role to play—if governed properly—but cannot be relied upon to "save" us. In particular, climate-altering approaches like solar radiation modification (SRM) or large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) need governance in order to manage risks. Science and stories are needed to help citizens understand potential futures, and to find a way forward for people, planet and prosperity. Sandrine Dixson-Declève is currently the co-president of the Club of Rome and divides her time between lecturing, facilitating change in business, and policy models and advisory work. She holds several advisory positions for the European Commission and the United Nations. She sits on the boards of organizations such as BMW, EDP, UCB, Climate KIC, UCL-Bartlett School of Environment, and the IEEP. Dixson-Declève is also a senior associate and faculty member of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), ambassador, for the Energy Transition Commission (ETC) and WEALL. She co-founded the Women Enablers Change Agent Network (WECAN) and has been recognized by GreenBiz as one of the 30 most influential women across the globe driving change in the low carbon economy and promoting green business. This interview was recorded on June 29, 2021 and is available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

One of the fastest growing—and underreported—subjects in international relations is the rise of private armies. Dr. Sean McFate, Atlantic Council senior fellow and former private military contractor, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss his book The New Rules of War and how our current paradigm of warfare is obsolete. With cyberweapons, disinformation, and mercenaries presenting new threats, how can America shore up its defenses and rethink the trillions of dollars spent on defense? Is the risk of inaction creating a new "Middle Ages"? For more on this subject, don't miss Carnegie Council's panel on December 14 at 3pm ET,  "Is Militarization Essential for Security in 2022 and Beyond?" And, for more on this podcast, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

It is important to reflect internationally on climate-altering approaches such as Solar Radiation Modification, in case the world is not capable of meeting the mitigation challenge, says Marc Vanheukelen the European External Action Service’s ambassador at large for climate diplomacy during a C2GTalk interview. But these approaches should not become an “alibi for inaction. International governance will be needed, but strategically it is best not to move too quickly, but rather first familiarize smaller groups with these ideas, at the expert level, and then to start moving these ideas gradually up the policy ladder as discussions gain traction. Marc Vanheukelen is "hors classe" adviser and ambassador at large for climate diplomacy at the EU’s External Action Service. From 2015 till 2019 he was the EU ambassador to the World Trade Organisation in Geneva. Prior to his ambassadorial posting, Vanheukelen was director in DG TRADE (European Commission) responsible for sustainable development, economic partnership agreements, and agri-food and fisheries, preceded by his role as head of cabinet for former EU Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht. He has also served as head of cabinet to the former Belgian minister for foreign affairs. This interview was recorded on May 25, 2021, and is available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

Context matters and without clarity on the impacts that climate-altering approaches will have from different perspectives, it will be difficult to deal with the ethical and governance dimensions, said Youba Sokona during a C2GTalk interview. He highlights the need for research that not only considers the global level, but seeks to understand the national and local levels where people’s lives are impacted. Sokona has over 40 years of experience addressing energy, environment, and sustainable development in Africa and has been at the heart of numerous national and continental initiatives. Professor Sokona was elected vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in October 2015. Prior to this, he was co-chair of the IPCC Working Group III on the mitigation of climate change for the Fifth Assessment Report after serving as a lead author since 1990. In addition to these achievements, Professor Sokona has a proven track record of organizational leadership and management, for example, as inaugural coordinator of the African Climate Policy Center and as executive secretary of the Sahara and Sahel Observatory. This interview was recorded on February 24, 2021, and is available with interpretation into 中 文, Español, and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.  

Almost half of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are associated with the energy used to produce, process, transport, and dispose of the food we eat and the goods we use—multiply this around the world. Waste, from food to plastics, not only affects climate change but also affects people's lives in ways that we don't always consider. Saumya Roy brings these issues to life in her book Castaway Mountain. In this podcast, Roy and Carnegie Council Senior Fellows Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev discuss how Mumbai's forgotten community reflects the massive problem of waste around the world.  For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Will AI systems transform the future battlefield so dramatically that it will render existing paradigms and doctrines obsolete, feeding new intense security dilemmas? In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen is joined by Kenneth Payne, a King’s College London reader and the author of I, Warbot: The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict, to discuss the impact of AI systems on military affairs, the nature and character of war and warfare, strategic culture, and geopolitical affairs. Fore more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Finding harmony between man and nature is essential as we tackle the climate crisis, said Professor Pan Jiahua in an interview with C2GTalk. In this episode, he explores the concept of ecological civilization, and how carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification approaches aimed at altering the climate might be considered in this framework. Pan Jiahua is professor of economics and director at the Institute of Ecocivilization Studies at Beijing University of Technology. He was elected in 2018 as member of the academic board of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In 2020, he was appointed by the UN secretary-general as one of the 15 members of the Independent Group of Scientists for drafting the Global Sustainable Development Report 2023. Professor Pan is also editor-in-chief of the Chinese Journal of Urban & Environmental Studies, and a member of the China National Expert Panel on Climate Change and the National Foreign Policy Advisory Group, and advisor to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. He has edited and authored over 300 papers, articles and books in English and Chinese, and was lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group III 3rd, 4th, and 5th Assessment Reports on Mitigation. This interview was recorded on February 25, 2021, and is available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

By 2030, Africa is projected to be home to 60 percent of the world's working-age population. Columbia Journalism School's Professor Howard W. French, author of the recently published Born in Blackness, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to explain how this will impact global economies, climate change politics, and U.S.-China relations. French also calls for a reckoning with history that recognizes the importance of Africa in the global conversation. For more on U.S. foreign policy in Africa, check out last year's Doorstep talk with Charles A. Ray,  chair of the Africa Program at Foreign Policy Research Institute and former U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe and Cambodia. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Many countries in the ECE region are embracing carbon neutrality recognized as the first milestone towards sustainable energy, with leaders like Canada, Denmark, France, and the United Kingdom, says Olga Algayerova during a C2GTalk interview. She calls for countries to recommit to the future: "We are really running out of time and urgent action is needed." She highlights that UNECE provides a platform for technology-neutral dialogue and are keen to work with C2G to help countries get better informed about new emerging technologies that could play an important role in fighting climate change in the future. Olga Algayerova is the executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Algayerova took office on June 1, 2017. She previously served as permanent representative of Slovakia to the International Organizations in Vienna, Austria (since 2012). She was previously president of the Millennium Development Goals of Slovakia (2010-2012); secretary of state, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2006-2010) and export director at Zentiva International (2004-2006). The 56 countries of the UNECE region span from North America to Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

In this episode of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen sits down with Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist, author, and entrepreneur, to discuss the need for an open and healthy scientific discourse on AI. What we can learn from particle physics and CERN to create an international AI mission to make sure this technology becomes a responsible and ethical public good? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Governance is the key element in any climate-altering approaches being proposed, particularly from the point of view of climate vulnerable nations, says Professor Saleemul Huq in an interview with C2GTalk. His greatest concern is that decisions that have repercussions for the most vulnerable will be taken without them having a chance to take part in the discussion, so it is extremely important that climate vulnerable nations have a say when decisions are taken regarding climate-altering approaches, including carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification. Professor Saleemul Huq is the director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) and chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum Expert Advisory Group. Huq is an expert on the links between climate change and sustainable development, particularly from the perspective of developing countries. He leads the annual Gobeshona Global Conference, which brings together scholars, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners from around the world to discuss climate change. Huq was the lead author of the chapter on adaptation and sustainable development in the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and was the lead author of the chapter on adaptation and mitigation in the Fourth Assessment Report. His current focus is on supporting the engagement of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This interview was recorded on March 1, 2021, and is also available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

It's election season in the U.S. and around the world. Wilson Center's Francisco de Santibañes joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss the rise in popular conservatism across Latin America and how new evangelical-church-supported, anti-establishment leaders are changing the conversation and winning elections in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. De Santibañes connects the dots of right-wing movements around the globe sparked by Donald Trump's election to the U.S. presidency in 2016. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Governance is a key element in ensuring that nature-based approaches to addressing the climate crisis support ecological functions, are sustainable, and produce co-benefits, says Manuel Pulgar-Vidal during a C2GTalk interview. Ultimately, he stressed, any intervention—whether nature- or technology-based—can only be considered if it is based on a strong commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Manuel Pulgar-Vidal is the leader of the climate and energy practice of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International. He was formerly the minister of state for environment in Peru and president of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 20th Conference of the Parties (COP20). A lawyer with over 27 years of experience in the field of environmental law and policy, he founded the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law, one of the most recognized organizations of environmental law in the region. In his role as minister of state for environment in Peru, he was responsible for proposing and defining Peru's environmental policies, including those covering biodiversity and climate change. He was also in charge of implementing the country's environmental legislation and its enforcement policies. This interview was recorded on November 17, 2020, and is also available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website. 

Whether it's rigging elections in Hong Kong, arresting activists in Venezuela, restricting voting access in the U.S., silencing the opposition in Belarus, or censorship in Burma, there can be no doubt that democracy is under assault. For Global Ethics Day, Carnegie Council hosted a panel featuring activists fighting on the frontlines to uphold and strengthen democracy. What can individual citizens do to support democracy? What's the role of international organizations? For more, go to carnegiecouncil.org.

As the U.S. chief negotiator of the New START treaty, Rose Gottemoeller's new book is an invaluable insider's account of the negotiations between the U.S. and Russian delegations in Geneva in 2009 and 2010 and the crucial discussions between President Barack Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev. In this fascinating talk with Senior Fellows Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev, Gottemoeller reflects on her career, the importance of arms control, and what it was like being the first female deputy secretary general of NATO. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Addressing the global challenge of governing climate-altering approaches through multilateralism is not just possible but necessary, says Ambassador Franz Perrez during a C2GTalk interview. In the end, he says, it is in everyone's best interest to build a common understanding of the potential risks, opportunities, and challenges linked to climate-altering approaches.  Ambassador Franz Perrez is the head of the International Affairs Division at the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). In this capacity, he is also the Swiss ambassador for the environment and represents Switzerland at all important international negotiations in the area of the environment. This interview was recorded on November 13, 2020, and is also available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

Ahead of the United Nations COP26 Climate Change Summit, Parag Khanna joins "Doorstep" co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to speak about his new book MOVE: The Forces Uprooting Us, and the impact of climate migration on the future "map of humanity." As climate migrants become the greatest percentage of people seeking new opportunities in new places, Khanna discusses the rise of regional self-sufficiency and how governments can become better stewards of natural resources. For more, including a transcript of this talk, please go to carnegiecouncil.org

"What does it mean for us to think about these border regions beyond the questions of international security?" asks Suchhitra Vijayan, the author of the new book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. In this podcast, Vijayan discusses with host Alex Woodson her 9,000-mile journey through India's borderlands, which formed the basis of the book, and she discusses the violent and continuing history of the 1947 partition, the stark differences and similarities along South Asia's various borders, and what "citizenship" mean in India in 2021 and throughout the world. For more, including a transcript of this talk, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Young people may not yet have a seat at the decision-making table, but they are influential stakeholders with the power to steer the direction of the climate discourse, said Marie-Claire Graf during a C2GTalk interview. As they work towards getting that seat, they are building capacity, learning and awareness on a range of issues, including the governance of climate-altering approaches. Marie-Claire Graf is one of the Global Focal Points of YOUNGO, the Children and Youth constituency to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. She is a Swiss youth advocate for sustainable development and climate action, and the president of the Swiss Associations of Student Organizations for Sustainability, and vice president at Swiss Youth for Climate. Marie-Claire is a Climate Reality Leader, and co-founder of a crowdsourcing platform startup for aggregated science-based and citizen-science data called C’Square. This interview was recorded on 15 December 2020, and is also available with interpretation into 中文, Español and Français. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website.

In this episode of the Artificial Intelligence and Equality Initiative podcast, Senior Fellows Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach are joined by former U.S. Navy pilot Mary “Missy” Cummings, a professor at Duke University, director of the school’s Humans and Autonomy Lab, and a world leading researcher in human-autonomous system collaboration and robotics. The conversation touches upon the maturity of current AI systems applications and key conundrums in AI research to make sure humans are not a design afterthought.   

In this episode of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative podcast, Senior Fellows Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach are joined by Mona Sloane, senior research scientist and adjunct professor at New York University, and Rumman Chowdhury, Twitter's director of machine learning ethics, transparency and accountability, to discuss their recent online resource aiprocurement.org. The conversation addresses key tension points and narratives impacting how AI systems are procured and embedded in the public sector.

Five years since the Paris Agreement came to fruition, Paul Watkinson talks to C2GTalk to provide some personal reactions, drawing on his long experience of climate action, about what comes next. How and when do we start thinking about the large-scale carbon dioxide removal that may be needed to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to well below 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels? What multilateral approaches might the world need to govern solar radiation modification? Paul Watkinson has more than 20 years of experience in multilateral negotiations and action on climate and sustainable development issues. He served for many years as chief negotiator of France on international climate change issues. In particular, he was a member of the steering committee of COP21, heading the climate negotiating team and contributing to the development of the Paris Agreement. He was chair of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for 2018 and 2019 and a member of the bureau of the COP for those two years. As such, he worked closely with the other presiding officers to put together the package of decisions adopted in Katowice in December 2018 that constitute the rulebook of the Paris Agreement as well as other decisions and conclusions to implement the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol. He worked closely with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to ensure that the best available science could be used by parties in their work under the UNFCCC and also ensure a closer cooperation in multilateral work to tackle climate change and biodiversity. From 2009 until 2013 he was one of the lead negotiators of the European Union in the multilateral climate negotiations. For more, including an edited transcript, please go to C2G's website. This interview was recorded on November 17, 2020, and is available with interpretation into 中文, Español and Français.

Island peoples may well consider climate-altering approaches, like carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification, because of the existential threat posed by climate change, said Ambassador Elizabeth Thompson during a C2GTalk interview. One of the main challenges, in her view, is how to ensure that the most vulnerable will have a seat at the table when these approaches are considered. Ambassador Elizabeth Thompson is the permanent representative of Barbados to the United Nations. She has worked in development policy for nearly 25 years. She served as an elected member of Parliament from 1994 to 2008, and at various times as minister of energy and environment, housing and lands, physical development and planning, and health. Thompson served as assistant secretary-general of the United Nations as one of two executive coordinators at the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, and engaged in a number of advisory roles within the UN system, including on the transition from the MDGs to the SDGs, in the Office of the UN Secretary General, UNDP, the President of the General Assembly and on the Secretary General’s global energy initiative, Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL). This interview was recorded on November 24, 2020. For more, including an edited transcript, please visit C2G's website.  This interview was recorded on November 24, 2020, and is also available with interpretation into 中文, Español and Français.

The world faces a planetary emergency that requires considering all possible options to tackle it, said Johan Rockström, in a C2GTalk interview. Speaking just before the Climate Ambition Summit in December 2020, he said this was a critical moment to put the world on an irreversible path towards decarbonization, to ensure that any consideration of additional approaches—such as solar radiation modification—would not undermine that essential work. Johan Rockström is director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Professor in Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam. Rockström is an internationally recognized scientist for his work on global sustainability issues. He spearheaded the internationally renowned team of scientists that developed the planetary boundaries framework, which are argued to be fundamental in maintaining a "safe operating space for humanity." Aside from his research helping to guide policy, he acts as an advisor to several governments and business networks, and at noteworthy international meetings, such as the United Nations General Assemblies, World Economic Forums, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conferences (UNFCCC). For more, including an edited transcript, please visit C2G's website. This interview was recorded on December 3, 2020, and is also available with interpretation into 中文, Español and Français.

The 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly ended this week in New York with little fanfare. Yet important global discussions took place in both in-person and virtual meetings. Seton Hall University's School of Diplomacy and International Relations' Dr. Catherine Tinker joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss what the media missed and how the UN still plays an important role as the "People's House" bringing nations together to solve and be accountable for transnational problems like climate change, migration, and COVID-19.

What can we learn about China's ambitions from studying how its diplomats operate? In his new book "China’s Civilian Army," Bloomberg's Peter Martin draws on memoirs and first-hand reporting in Beijing, to share the untold story of China’s "wolf warriors," its highly disciplined diplomats who have a combative approach to asserting Chinese interests. Martin joins Senior Fellows Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev for a fascinating conversation on China's diplomatic army.

Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative’s C2GTalk is a series of one-on-one interviews with influential practitioners and thought leaders, exploring the governance challenges raised by emerging approaches to alter the climate. Discussions touch on a range of ethical, cultural, economic, and political issues, whilst staying grounded in the practical and personal experiences of our guests.  In this introduction to the series, Mark Turner, host of C2GTalk, and Janos Pasztor, executive director of C2G and senior fellow at Carnegie Council, define some climate-altering technologies and discuss the work of C2G. What is carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification? How is C2G catalyzing conversations about the governance of these technologies? Check Carnegie Council’s podcast channel every Monday for a new C2GTalk.  For more, visit C2G's website.

Politicé's Emmanuala Douyon and Brooklyn College's Jean Eddy Saint Paul join "Doorstep" co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss lessons learned from Haiti's interconnected history with the U.S. and how these ideas could help the country out of its current political crisis. As the region's first Black republic and with a growing population of U.S. citizens living there, what does Haiti's future look like? How can the U.S. more effectively engage its near neighbors in the Caribbean? 

In the 20 years since the 9/11 attacks, national security decisions have tested the values of American democracy. This panel, hosted by Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal, examines lessons learned from the past two decades of conflict and the role that ethical action must play in helping to provide security while adhering to democratic principles. National security experts N. W. Collins, Sean McFate, and General Joseph Votel share their thoughts on these critical issues.

One year after the global protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, where are we in terms of racial justice? In this podcast, University of Chicago's Adom Getachew looks back on the Carnegie Council/Open Society University Network "Protests in Perspective" series and discusses some early impressions of the Biden administration and details the status of protest movements around the world. Where has progress been made? How can we continue to move these conversations and actions forward?

Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin are joined by Paul Saunders, president of the Energy Innovation Reform Project, to evaluate Vice President Kamala Harris' recent trip to Singapore and Vietnam and enumerate moves by the U.S. to engage partners in Southeast Asia. What are U.S. regional priorities and how are they related to doorstep issues? How will China and Russia respond to U.S. assertiveness? Join our discussion and send comments to @DoorstepPodcast on Twitter or email us at thedoorstep@cceia.org.  

Ali M Latifi, Kabul based journalist for Al Jazeera English and Said Sabir Ibrahimi, non-resident fellow with NYU's Center on International Cooperation join Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan today and the expectations for the country's future. Will the promises of a Taliban 2.0 in 2021 differ from the 1990s? Can the country recover economically to meet the needs of a new younger generation? What is the responsibility of the international community? The Doorstep gets behind the scenes of the current media reporting.

BIMCO shipping analyst Peter Sand joins Carnegie Council Senior Fellows Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss how the effects of the pandemic on shipping--container shortages, port congestion, demand outstripping supply (from ketchup to semiconductors)--are creating an opportunity for world leaders to re-embrace globalization. Can the Infrastructure Bill proposed by President Biden promote U.S. competitiveness in global trade or will geopolitics and China get in the way?

In this episode of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen is joined by Thunderbird School of Global Management's Nicholas Davis and University of Virginia's Renée Cummings to discuss the impact of AI-based technologies on justice, the rule of law, and law enforcement operations.

In the third podcast in a series on the COVID-19 pandemic and the ethics of global vaccine distribution, FLASCO's Dr. Florencia Luna details the situation in Latin America and the difficulties faced by middle income countries. What can COVAX and vaccine-rich nations do differently in the face of this continuing public health crisis? How can all nations make sure the world is better prepared for the next pandemic?

The U.S.-India relationship is a central part of the Biden-Harris administration focus on the Indo-Pacific region. Ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's trip to Delhi next week, Carnegie Council Senior Fellows Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin discuss India's role in the QUAD, vaccine diplomacy, growing bilateral economic ties, and the youth revolution with Dhruva Jaishankar, executive director of Observer Research Foundation America.

In today’s interconnected global village, Iran remains a mystery to much of the rest of the world―especially to those living in the United States and the West. In "The Heartbeat of Iran," Tara Kangarlou takes us on a journey into everyday life in Iran, where we meet the diverse people who make up the country’s delicate socio-cultural, political, and religious mosaic. Kangarlou discusses all this and more with Senior Fellows Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev.

In the second podcast in a series on the COVID-19 pandemic and the the ethics of global vaccine distribution, University of Pennsylvania's Ezekiel Emanuel discusses the positives and negatives of the vaccination campaigns led by the Biden administration and COVAX. With many nations still facing public health emergencies, how can the U.S. effectively and ethically use the vaccine as soft power? What about the Chinese and Russian efforts? How have the pharmaceutical companies approached this effort?

What is China up to in the Middle East? How is its massive Belt and Road infrastructure project affecting U.S. foreign policy and American citizens? Asha Castleberry-Hernandez, senior advisor in the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, discusses all of this, plus vaccine diplomacy, energy, and human rights, as she shares some of the Biden administration's thinking on these major issues with "Doorstep" co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nick Gvosdev.

In the latest Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative (AIEI) webinar, Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen speaks with Arizona State's Gary Marchant and Carlos Ignacio Gutierrez about their work on characterizing soft law programs for the governance of AI. Soft law is defined as any program that sets substantive expectations, but is not directly enforceable by government. What is the role of these programs in managing applications and methods of AI?

As we enter the summer of 2021, some nations are seeing vaccination rates of around 50 percent, effectively ending the imminent threat of COVID-19; others are still facing public health emergencies. In this first podcast in a series on global vaccine distribution, Oxford's Professor Cécile Fabre discusses the ethical underpinnings of some of the policy choices designed to handle this inequity. What are the moral responsibilities of vaccine-rich countries to the rest of the world?

ThinkTech is an independent nonprofit association, started by and for students, young technologists, and professionals working to shape the impact of artificial intelligence and other digital technologies on individuals and society. Under the slogan "Think before you code," it serves as a platform to create guidance for the responsible development of technology. In this podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen speaks with ThinkTech's Lukas D. Pöhler, Eva Charlotte Mayer, and Agnes Gierulski about their projects.  

Artificial intelligence (AI) will affect the socio-economic development of nations across the globe. Caribbean countries are particularly susceptible because they tend to be labor intensive economies and are therefore at risk of significant economic and social disruption from automation and artificial intelligence. Three experts in this space--Cordel Green, Stacey Russell, and Erica Simmons--discuss these issues and much more.

Cryptocurrencies are dominating headlines with El Salvador recently announcing Bitcoin as the country's legal tender and Biden and Putin discussing ransomware and crypto at their Geneva meeting this week. NYU Stern’s Professor David Yermack joins Carnegie Council Senior Fellows Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss how an experimental digital currency may change the definition of the nation-state over the next decade. Will we be citizens of the country of Google or Amazon?

What is grand strategy? What differentiates it from normal strategic thought? What, in other words, makes it "grand"? In answering these questions, most scholars have focused on diplomacy and warfare, but the most thorough interpretations consider the bases of peace and security--including gender, race, the environment, and a wide range of cultural, social, political, and economic issues. Oregon State's Christopher McKnight Nichols, editor of "Rethinking American Grand Strategy," joins Senior Fellows Nikolas Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss these issues and much more.

The post-World War II liberal order faces unprecedented upheaval as countries and their leaders retreat from globalism, embrace nationalism, and attack democratic norms. Whether it’s Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orbán in Hungary, or Modi in India—illiberalism is on the rise. Carnegie Council President Joel H. Rosenthal hosts a virtual panel to assess the current threats against democracy; discuss steps to support a revival of democratic values globally; and finally, examine the question: Is democracy an ethical standard?

Advocating for press freedom around the globe has long been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy. The Trump administration changed the rules, but what can Biden do to restore the public's faith in the press? "Doorstep" co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin speak with Stephen J. Adler, board chair of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Carlos Martínez de la Serna, program director for Committee to Protect Journalists.

How is the new global digital economy taking form? What are the trade-offs? Who are the stakeholders? How do we build “participatory intelligence”? In this wide-ranging AI & Equality Initiative podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen speaks with Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach about the history of computational and human ethics and their synergies and conflicts, the growing impact of AI on society, how to make sure that this technology works for everyone, and much more. Wendell Wallach has occupied a unique role in the evolution of AI ethics and shares creative insights on how we ought to tackle the challenges brought to the fore by the bio/digital revolution.

Sanctions are becoming an increasingly important part of the Biden administration's foreign policy toolkit. Carnegie Council Senior Fellows Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin discuss their impact and effectiveness, looking at the latest moves vis-à-vis Russia, China, Iran, and more with Center for a New American Security's Rachel Ziemba.

Susan Sloan is the author of "A Seat at the Table: Women, Diplomacy, and Lessons for the World." With organizations facing challenges of the pandemic, diversifying the workforce, and the spread of fast-paced technology, Sloan discusses why gender diversified leadership, at all levels, redefines how we solve critical problems. How can women be more involved in diplomacy? What skills and knowledge do they bring to the table?

Jonathan Cristol, author of "The United States and the Taliban before and after 9/11," discusses ethics and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in the latest in a series of talks with host Alex Woodson. Is President Biden making the correct choice? What does it mean for the U.S. to end the Afghanistan War "honorably"? What are the prospects for women's rights after the withdrawal?

Nahal Toosi, foreign policy and national security writer at Politico, returns to speak with Carnegie Council Senior Fellows Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin about how Biden is merging foreign and domestic policy, making sometimes surprising allies and partners (e.g. Modi's India), and rushing to do it all before mid-term campaigning gets in full swing.

How can we make migration more ethical? Columbia University's Professor Michael Doyle, also a senior fellow at Carnegie Council, discusses the Model International Mobility Convention (MIMC), which is focused on creating "a better set of rules for the movement of people across borders." Doyle and host Alex Woodson also touch on the Biden administration and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected migration across the world. 

Dr. Martin Smith from Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss the health of our oceans and the impacts of climate change on our food supply. For more information on Carnegie Council's work on oceans and its Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative see: https://www.c2g2.net/marine/.

In recent years, the discussion on "AI ethics" has succeeded in mainstreaming key principles to limit the risks that would otherwise arise from the unrestricted and unconsidered use of artificial intelligence, particularly with regards to privacy, safety, and equality. But it may have overlooked a much more fundamental and uncomfortable question: what are the limits of "AI ethics"? Experts Meredith Broussard, Karen Hao, and Safiya Umoja Noble join Senior Fellow Arthur Holland Michel to discuss this question and more.

Don't miss Session 2 of the International Congress for the Governance of Artificial Intelligence (ICGAI) online speaker series! This event focused on "Meaningful Inclusivity in Governing the AI Revolution." The session includes insights from high-level experts and decision-makers on the key stakeholders in achieving effective AI governance, the necessity of meaningful inclusivity, and how we can stimulate cooperation as we navigate the challenges posed by emerging technologies.

U.S. democracy is at a dangerous inflection point. As America emerges from the January 6th assault on the Capitol, society faces a critical question: Can democracy bounce back or are Americans facing an undemocratic future? Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal and Yale's Jason Stanley discuss how to undo the damage done to U.S. institutions and the rise of nationalism around the world, from India to Brazil to Hungary.

As the world still struggles to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, Senior Fellow Alexander Görlach discusses his book "Homo Empathicus," the role of empathy in politics, and China and human rights. How can the Biden administration get American democracy back on the right track? How should democracies respond to China and author autocratic nations?

"Washington Post" defense and space reporter Christian Davenport joins "Doorstep" co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to talk about commercialization and democratization in space. How will billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson make space a part of day-to-day life? What are governments like China and India prepared to do to make sure they stay in the space game?

Artificial intelligence is impacting and will impact Africa as profoundly as any continent on Earth. While some African nations struggle with limited access to the Internet, others are leaping into the digital economy with Smart Cities. Access for all, digital literacy, and capacity-building remain as challenges. How through AI and ethics can prospects for all of Africa be improved?

U.S.-China competition is one of the defining stories of this era, but it has stopped short of violence, for now. In the novel "2034," Admiral James Stavridis, former NATO supreme allied commander, and Elliot Ackerman, a best-selling author and former Marine, imagine a naval clash between the two nations in the South China Sea in the next decade--and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagration. In this talk with "Doorstep" co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev, Stavridis and Ackerman will discuss a dark yet possible future that we must do all we can to avoid.

This is the kick-off event for the International Congress for the Governance of Artificial Intelligence (ICGAI) online speaker series. This first event is focused on "Catalyzing Cooperation: Working Together Across AI Governance Initiatives." Topics include insights from high-level experts and decision-makers on what comprehensive and trustworthy governance looks like, as well as providing an overview of the Global Governance Network for AI (GGN-AI) proposal.

The Biden-Harris administration made a host of foreign policy promises for their first 100 days in office. Leading the list was linking foreign and domestic policy concerns. George Mason University's Colin Dueck joins "Doorstep" co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to review what has and has not happened in the first two months of the new administration. On which issues can Republicans and Democrats agree? Which will continue to create divisions? 

In this new podcast series, we'll be connecting Carnegie Council's work and current events with our senior fellows, senior staff, and friends of our organization. In this episode, we look back on one year of COVID-19 and its effect on international relations, with clips of events from Spring 2020 and interviews with Nikolas Gvosdev and Joel Rosenthal. After a disastrous response, is the U.S. still considered a leader among its allies? How has the Biden administration fared in its first months?

In this new podcast series, we'll be connecting Carnegie Council's work and current events with our senior fellows, senior staff, and friends of our organization. In this episode, we look back on one year of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on international relations, with clips of events from Spring 2020 and interviews with Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev and Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal. Has the pandemic increased cooperation or competition? What's the status of China after this past year?

Energy expert Dr. Carolyn Kissane joins "The Doorstep" co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss the new diplomacy of climate statecraft. How are environmental concerns reshaping U.S. interests from trade to national security to relations with China? The groundswell of activist, political, and corporate voices on climate justice is growing exponentially. Who will be the winners and losers in this new world order?

Aubrey Cox Ottenstein, executive director of Young Professionals in Foreign Policy (YPFP), joins co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nick Gvosdev to discuss how a new cadre of young voices are rising in government and what that means for U.S. domestic and foreign policy. With climate change, COVID-19, and social justice as the most pressing issues, how can Gen Z and Millennials work with older generations and turn "protest into policy"?

In 2015, Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University, applied to become a sworn, armed reserve police officer with the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department. In this talk with Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal, Brooks gives an inside look at policing in a big city from her view as an academic and journalist who is "fascinated by the relationship between law and violence." What would a truly transformative approach to policing look like? 

Ali Wyne, senior analyst at Eurasia Group, joins “Doorstep” co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to assess if the Biden/Harris administration is delivering on its promises of restoring U.S. global engagement and making U.S. foreign policy work for the middle class. Is the current leadership team too much like Obama 1.0? Or can Biden/Harris appointees pivot U.S. policy to address new economic, technological, and geopolitical demands of a world that spent the past four years without American leadership?

In his long career as a journalist covering the Cold War and its aftermath, best-selling author Robert D. Kaplan often crossed paths with Bob Gersony. A high school dropout later awarded a Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam, Gersony conducted on-the-ground research for the U.S. government in virtually every war and natural-disaster zone in the world. In conversation with Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal, Kaplan discusses the powerful example that Gersony set of how American diplomacy should be conducted.

The pandemic has made us all shockingly aware of the way that a highly infectious disease exposes the moral frailties of our social systems. In this virtual event moderated by Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach, leading ethicists and historians discuss their work, how it has been affected by the pandemic, and what lessons we may take away from this global crisis.

Howard University’s Professor Tia Tyree joins “Doorstep” hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nick Gvosdev to discuss social media and youth activism in 2021 and beyond. The digital native generation is taking its online activism offline more swiftly and easily than ever with TikTok as the platform of choice. What responsibilities do tech giants and governments have to support this mobilization? How will global societies be reshaped as Gen Z takes power?

Many shifts in the right vs. wrong pendulum are affected by advances in technology. In his new book "Right/Wrong," Juan Enriquez reflects on the evolution of ethics in a technological age. How will accelerating technology challenge and flip your ideas of right and wrong? What are we doing today that will be considered abhorrent tomorrow because of tech change?

A few days remain until the Biden/Harris administration comes to Washington. Will the Trump administration's 11th hour power moves hamper the new team? Or can Biden/Harris realize their "Middle Class Foreign Policy" agenda? This week, Doorstep co-Hosts Nikolas Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin speak with the Atlantic Council's Ash Jain about opportunities for new alliances like the D10 and a way to make the government more responsive to the day-to-day concerns of its citizens.

Doorstep co-hosts Nikolas Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin discuss how global leaders are responding to this week's assault on Congress during a normally quiet presidential certification ceremony, and what the Biden/Harris administration must do as the transition process continues. Are strong global financial markets and Gen Z activism a way forward or a bubble waiting to burst?

In this AI & Equality Initiative podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen speaks with three researchers working with the University of Melbourne's Centre for AI and Digital Ethics about bias in data and algorithms. How can these types of biases have adverse effects on health and employment? What are some legal and ethical tools that can be used to confront these challenges?

Judah Grunstein, editor-in-chief of World Politics Review, joins hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nick Gvosdev to discuss the latest U.S. Global Engagement report and preview the Biden administration's foreign policy strategies for 2021 and beyond. Plus, they analyze the prospects for U.S.-China cooperation and make predictions for the new year, focusing on Gen Z and changing nature of the global Internet.

In recent years, the global discussion on "AI ethics" has succeeded in mainstreaming key principles to limit the risks that would otherwise arise from the unrestricted and unconsidered use of artificial intelligence, particularly with regards to privacy, safety, and equality. But it may have overlooked a much more fundamental and uncomfortable question: What are the limits of "AI ethics"? This panel discussion, hosted by Senior Fellow Arthur Holland Michel, looks at this question and much more.

In the first AI & Equality Iniatitive (AIEI) podcast, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, director of the Telecommunications Development Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union, joins AIEI Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen to speak about her career in telecommunications and her dedication to using connectivity as a tool to promote equality and fairness, particularly with respect to women and girls across the world. What does this approach look like in practice? How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted her work?

As the race for COVID–19 vaccines enters its next stage, we are faced with broad ethical challenges, along with specific questions of principle and practice. How should countries and the global community plan for distribution and allocation? What can and should be done to bolster trust in the vaccines? Public health experts Ruth Faden, Nicole Hassoun, Clive Meanwell, and Reed Tuckson discuss these questions and much more in this webinar moderated by Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.

In this week's Doorstep, hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev are joined by Charles A. Ray, current chair of the Foreign Policy Research Institute's African Program and former U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe. They discuss a Biden-Harris reset of U.S. foreign policy and narratives towards the diverse and dynamic nations of Africa, and opportunities for American companies to invest in tech and consumer markets, especially the growing youth populations across the region.

In the fourth and final installment of "The United Nations at 75: Looking Back to Looking Forward," host Margaret P. Karns speaks with Bertrand Ramcharan, former acting high commissioner for human rights. In this candid talk, Ramcharan discusses why he thinks the "UN human rights system is in crisis" and details the complicated role of the high commissioner. Plus, ahead of the 72nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he explains why it is "the rallying document of our civilization."

What will a Biden administration mean for Latin America? In this week's Doorstep, hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev are joined by the Wilson Center's Cynthia Arnson to speak about how events unfolding in Latin American will affect U.S. demographics and politics in 2021 and beyond. With climate change as a centerpiece of his foreign policy agenda, how will Biden approach Brazil? How will his polices differ from Trump when it comes to Venezuela, Cuba, and Central America? How are youth movements in Latin America influencing and inspiring protests happening across the U.S.?

Civil disobedience is a storied political tradition. Can it empower today's activists? How should we understand the connection between protest and democracy? Citing movements from the recent past and using empirical data, Harvard Kennedy School's Professor Chenoweth and The New School's Professor Woodly address the relationship between forms of resistance and successful progressive reform and detail how the Movement for Black Lives is putting these ideas into practice around the world.

Following up on the AI & Equality Initiative's first webinar on artificial intelligence and the future of work, Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach and Dr. Christina J. Colclough, founder of The Why Not Lab, build on that discussion with a conversation about the future of the worker. How can new technology be used to empower workers? What are some progressive strategies and policies that can help to reach this goal?

In the third episode of "The United Nations at 75: Looking Back to Look Forward," host Margaret P. Karns and Noeleen Heyzer, former executive director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, discuss the role of women in the UN over the years. Heyzer speaks about the Beijing Women's Conference; Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security; and the prospects for increasing gender equality in the UN system in the decades to come.

As America waits for counts to come in from the last handful of swing states and the Trump campaign files lawsuits, leaders around the world are anxiously watching. What do rivals like China and Russia expect? What do allies hope for from a potential Biden presidency? In this episode of the "The Doorstep," U.S. Naval War College's Professor Tom Nichols joins the hosts to discuss the election from a historical and international perspective and the ways that Gen Z can be more influential in foreign affairs.

On this week's Doorstep, hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev are joined by NYU's Professor Mohamad Bazzi, an expert on the Middle East. The discussion focuses on America's role in the Middle East, including a look at the recently released Senate Foreign Relations Committee report on how the Trump doctrine has affected national security, and The New York Times' Caliphate controversy. 

In the second episode of this podcast series marking the 75th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, host Margaret Karns, professor emerita at the University of Dayton, speaks with University of Massachusetts Boston's Dr. Maria Ivanova about the UN's efforts on climate change, focusing on the role of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as an anchor institution on these issues. What are the UN's biggest successes when it comes to the environment?

Can artificial intelligence (AI) be deployed in ways that enhance equality, or will these systems exacerbate existing structural inequalities and create new ones? In this webinar McKinsey Global Institute's James Manyika and Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Wendell Wallach delve into questions concerning the ethical implications of AI, the present and future of work in the United States and Europe, and the evolution of the social contract.

Polling data suggests that the American public is not in favor of isolationism, but wants to adjust the terms of U.S. engagement. In this webinar, the Atlantic Council's Ash Jain and Senior Fellows Nikolas Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin assess the “democratic community” approach. Will deepening cooperation with an alliance of democracies be the way forward?

In the second episode of The Doorstep hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev discuss the counterintelligence aspect of President Trump's health crisis, the main street USA reverberations of the seemingly far away conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, the vice presidential debate and American leadership, and what lessons the U.S. can learn from Europe's refugee crisis. Nahal Toosi, foreign affairs correspondent for Politico, joins the hosts for this episode to discuss what foreign policy might look like in 2021 and beyond.

In the first episode of this new podcast series marking the 75th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, host Margaret Karns, professor emerita at the University of Dayton, speaks with David M. Malone, rector of United Nations University, about the Security Council, the Sustainable Development Goals, peacekeeping, and more. How can the UN continue to evolve along with the changing nature of international relations?

In this "Protests in Perspective" webinar, moderated by Williams University's Professor Neil Roberts, South African government official Michael Canham and University of Chicago's Professor Adom Getachew discuss the 2020 protests in an international and historical context. What can the Movement for Black Lives learn from the anti-apartheid movement? What makes the African American struggle so resonant with minorities and oppressed people around the world?

Foreign policy may not be in the headlines when it comes to Biden vs. Trump, but U.S-China competition and questions about America's role in the world are deeply tied in to "front-page" topics like the pandemic, the economy, and political ideology. In a talk moderated by Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev, the Atlantic Council's Ali Wyne discusses how "great power competition" is shaping the 2020 election.

Hosted by award-winning professor of journalism Tatiana Serafin, with international relations scholar and Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev, The Doorstep is an innovative international news podcast that invites listeners to recognize that all global news is local in a borderless Internet. The first podcast features a review of under the radar news like the leaked FinCEN files and the second wave of COVID-19 hitting Europe and how these impact American citizens; a look ahead at what to expect from the from the first presidential debate next week; and a discussion of the China-U.S. frenemy relationship and how that might impact U.S. consumers, especially TikTok and WeChat users.

The aftershocks of World War II did not end with German capitulation in May 1945. Millions were displaced, including concentration camp survivors, POWs, slave laborers, political prisoners, and Nazi collaborators. Many eventually returned home, but "the lost million" did not. Author David Nasaw and Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal discuss this forgotten chapter in history and its relevance to today.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Christopher Hill, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, among other nations, and Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev discuss U.S.-Asian relations in the context of the 2020 election. How concerned should Americans be about China's aggressive foreign policy? What's the effect on allies like Japan and South Korea? How can diplomacy help to defuse some of the rising tensions?

The racial justice protests have been a huge story for local, national, and international media outlets throughout the summer of 2020. But as public opinion has shifted on issues like systemic racism and police brutality, how has the media reacted? What's the global view of these protests? University of Minnesota's Professor Danielle K. Kilgo answers these questions and more in this "Protests in Perspective" podcast.

Professor Derek Reveron, chair of the U.S. Naval War College's National Security Affairs Department, discusses how subnational and transnational forces--namely, the COVID-19 pandemic--intersect with national security in this conversation with Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev. What are the implications for how politicians and policymakers conceptualize American foreign and defense policy in the 2020s? How should the U.S. reconsider the ways it looks at national security?

How have conversations in the immigration rights community shifted since this round of Black Lives Matters protests started? In this new environment, what are some tangible policy changes a more progressive administration could enact in the United States? Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan offers a nuanced perspective on the many connections between immigration and systemic racism in the United States.

Molly O'Toole, immigration and security reporter at the "Los Angeles Times," discusses Trump's "Remain in Mexico" asylum policy and its many ethical and legal issues. What's the status of challenges against this policy? How has it been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic? Plus, she draws some connections between the George Floyd protests against policy brutality and the issues that migrants face at the border.

Due to COVID-19, significant restrictions have been placed on freedoms to move about in many nations. Philosopher Christian Barry explores how the costs of these lockdowns can be weighed in a morally plausible way against the costs arising from increased spread of the virus. Many issues come back to a central question: Under what circumstances can some people be expected, even compelled, to bear costs for the sake of others?

A new report finds that over the next 50 years, 1 to 3 billion people could be living outside the climate niche that has "served humanity well over the past 6,000 years." Tim Kohler and Marten Scheffer, co-authors of "Future of the climate niche," discuss what was surprised them in this research, what it means historically when huge populations move, and why there's reason to be hopeful about humanity's future.

The last decade has witnessed a vibrant public discussion about how to safely, ethically, and legally integrate complex artificial intelligence (AI) into modern life, particularly in the sphere of security, says Senior Fellow Arthur Holland Michel. How do we learn to trust AI systems that we don't understand? What are the implications of this new technology as many nations confront a combination of mass protests and the pandemic?

What do Americans think about the role the United States should be playing in the world? How do they conceive of the different trade-offs between domestic and international affairs, among competing options and sets of interests and values? The Chicago Council on Global Affairs' Dina Smeltz and Eurasia Group Foundation's Mark Hannah share the results of surveys from their organizations in this conversation with Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev.

How has the pandemic changed U.S-China relations? How has it altered China's relationship with other nations and its geopolitical positioning? George Washington University's Amitai Etzioni and Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev discuss these questions and more as they break down "great power competition" in the era of COVID-19.

The rapid development of emerging technologies like AI signaled a new inflection point in human history, accompanied by calls for agile international governance. With the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic however, there is a new focal point in the call for ethical governance. Senior Fellow Wendell Wallach discusses his work on these issues in this interactive webinar with Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal.

Countries like Syria and Libya are facing a "double" emergency right now, says the International Rescue Committee's Kelly Razzouk, as these states are having to deal with ongoing conflict, along with the COVID-19 outbreak. How has the IRC been responding to these situations? What more can the UN Security Council do?

What is "great power populism" and what does it mean during the pandemic? Are we heading towards another global conflict? And are there any leaders who can inspire the "international community" during a crisis? ADA University's Damjan Krnjević Mišković and Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev share their thoughts on the causes and characteristics of the ongoing "nervous breakdown" in the international system.

In this fascinating conversation with Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal, historian Ted Widmer looks back on 13 pivotal days in Abraham Lincoln's life in 1861--the basis for his new book "Lincoln on the Verge." How would American and world history be different without Lincoln's ethical leadership? And as the U.S. struggles through the COVID-19 pandemic, what can the Civil War era teach us about political divisiveness in 2020?

The implementation of contact tracing and the collection of health data may be necessary for life to return to "normal" in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, but is there any way to make sure these practices don't turn into "tools of oppression"? Mona Sloane, fellow at NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge, discusses her concerns about the "normalization" of these technologies and the effect that these strategies could have on vulnerable communities.

Much like efforts to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, combatting climate change requires cooperation on a global scale. And yet the history of international climate negotiations shows just how difficult that can be. What, if anything, can we learn from the global response to the pandemic that might aid us in governing new, climate-altering technologies? Cynthia Scharf, senior strategy director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, shares her thoughts.

What unique ethical challenges does COVID-19 present to journalists? How might a lack of trust in media and government affect the public's response to the COVID-19 crisis? Mei Fong, director of communications and strategy at The Center for Public Integrity, and Daniel Lippman, "Politico" White House reporter, discuss these issues and much more.

How should we think about privacy and government surveillance during the COVID-19 pandemic? Johns Hopkins' Jeffrey Kahn and ETH Zurich's Effy Vayena discuss health data and government surveillance, focusing on contract tracing apps in Europe and immunity certificates in the United States, with Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal in this virtual webinar.

As U.S. states and European nations contemplate how to end the COVID-19 quarantine, Senior Fellow Arthur Holland Michel discusses all aspects of surveillance and ethics. From ongoing issues in Baltimore to technologies focused on location data to the future of privacy and government regulation in a post-pandemic world, Michel and host Alex Woodson look at the current "Cambrian explosion" in surveillance technology.

If global interconnections begin to fray in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, what happens to the ethical underpinnings of international relations? Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev and Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal discuss this important question and much more as solidarity begins to weaken among European Union and NATO states.

In this wide-ranging talk, Future of Privacy Forum's Brenda Leong discusses the commercial uses of facial recognition technology, concerns about privacy and bias, how it's being utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic, and some tough questions about government surveillance. What's the future of facial recognition? How can we use this technology ethically? 

Jameson Spivack, policy associate at Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, discusses some of the most pressing policy issues when it comes to facial recognition technology in the United States and the ongoing pandemic. Why is Maryland's system so invasive? What are other states and cities doing? And, when it comes to surveillance and COVID-19, where's the line between privacy and security?

Despite being close to the initial epicenter of the virus, Taiwan was able to contain its COVID-19 outbreak earlier in 2020. Audrey Tang, Taiwan's digital minister, explains how her office helped in this effort by fighting disinformation with some innovative ideas. What can countries like the U.S. or Italy learn from Taiwan in the battle against this pandemic?

With the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting all aspects of daily life around the world, what will be the effect on international relations? Will it increase cooperation among nations, or will it lead to more conflict and competition? Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev and host Alex Woodson discuss these scenarios and also touch on how the virus has affected the Democratic primary, in which Joe Biden now has a commanding lead.

On February 29, the United States and the Taliban reached an agreement that could potentially end the longest-running war in American history. Jonathan Cristol, author of "The United States and the Taliban before and after 9/11," discusses the specifics of the deal, the role of the Afghan government, women's rights, and how this all fits into the worldview of the Trump administration.

Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev looks at the foreign policy discussions after Super Tuesday, with only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders left with realistic chances at the Democratic nomination. When it comes to the U.S. role in the world, what are the big differences between these two candidates? Is Biden's "restorationist" agenda risky? And looking ahead to a post-Trump future, how have relationships changed between the U.S. and its allies?

Are there norms when it comes to cybersecurity? How should governments regulate this emerging domain? What's the role of the private sector? SIPA's Jason Healey discusses all this and more with cybersecurity analyst Alicia Fawcett. Plus, he explains some of the risks associated with cyberattacks and why, so far, they haven't escalated into anything "kinetic."

UC Berkley's Professor Stuart J. Russell discusses the near- and far-future of artificial intelligence, including self-driving cars, killer robots, governance, and why he's worried that AI might destroy the world. How can scientists reconfigure AI systems so that humans will always be in control? How can we govern this emerging technology across borders? What can be done if autonomous weapons are deployed in 2020?

With record-breaking winter warmth in Europe, catastrophic fires in Australia, and deadly flooding in Indonesia, we are deep into a climate crisis. In this wide-ranging talk, Janos Paztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G), talks about his organization's work on the governance of emerging technologies that intentionally seek to change the Earth's climate system, including carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification.

Peter Asaro, co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, has a simple solution for stopping the future proliferation of killer robots, or lethal autonomous weapons: "Ban them." What are the ethical and logistical risks of this technology? How would it change the nature of warfare? And with the U.S. and other nations currently developing killer robots, what is the state of governance?

With the (incomplete) results of the Iowa Caucus putting the spotlight on Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders, what do we know about their foreign policy platforms? How do they differentiate themselves from Joe Biden? Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev shares his thoughts and touches on voters' possible perception of Sanders as a "socialist" and how climate change could become an issue in this election.

How much do morals matter for U.S. presidents when it comes to international affairs? What are the ethics of "America First" or the 2003 invasion of Iraq? Joseph Nye, former dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, works through each presidency from FDR to Trump and scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions of their intentions, the means they used, and the consequences of their decisions.

At the end of World War I, colonial powers carved up the Ottoman Empire and the reverberations are still being felt today. Historian Ted Widmer discusses the circumstances that led to this fateful episode and why Woodrow Wilson wasn't able to extend his principle of "self-determination" to the Middle East. How should we think about the Trump-Netanyahu peace plan in the context of what happened in Palestine in 1919?

Do soldiers fighting for a "just cause" have more rights than soldiers fighting on the other side? In this interview following up on an "Ethics & International Affairs" article, Stanford's Professor Scott D. Sagan discusses the results of a study he conducted with Dartmouth's Professor Benjamin A. Valentino on how Americans think about this profound question.

How can investigators utilize new technology like facial recognition software while respecting the rights of suspects and the general public? What are the consequences of government overreaction to terrorist threats? Tom Parker, author of "Avoiding the Terrorist Trap," discusses privacy, surveillance, and more in the context of counterterrorism.

In the fourth podcast in Carnegie Council's gene editing podcast series, Dalhousie University's Professor Françoise Baylis, author of "Altered Inheritance," explains what "slow science" and "broad societal consensus" mean when it comes to this technology. She also details why public empowerment is vital for ethical gene editing and wonders if some of these procedures will stay in the realm of science fiction.

What does "good ethics" means when it comes to gene editing? What types of conversations should we be having about this technology? Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, shares his thoughts on these topics and more, including moral and human enhancement, and why he called Dr. He Jiankui's experiment "monstrous."

How can algorithms be made more "ethical"? How can we design AI to protect against racial and gender biases when it comes to loan applications or policing? UPenn's Professor Michael Kearns, co-author of "The Ethical Algorithm," and Geoff Shaefer, who works on AI issues at Booz Allen Hamilton, discuss these issues and much more.

Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute for Bioethics, discusses the many governance issues connected to gene editing. Plus, he gives a first-hand account of an historic conference in Hong Kong last year in which Dr. He Jiankui shared his research on the birth of the world's first germline genetically engineered babies. What's the future of the governance of this emerging technology?

In the first in a series of podcasts on gene editing, Columbia's Dr. Robert Klitzman provides an overview of the technology, ethical and governance issues, and where it could all go in the near future. Plus he explains why the birth of genetically engineered twins in China last year was a "seismic" event. How could gene editing lead to more inequality? What could be some of unintended consequences?

In 1919, a young Army officer named Dwight Eisenhower, along with a "Mad Max"-style military convoy, set out on a cross-country road trip to examine the nascent state of America's roads. Penn State Altoona's Professor Brian C. Black explains how this trip influenced Eisenhower's decisions decades later, both as general and president, and laid the groundwork for the rise of petroleum-based engines and the interstate highway system.

How can artificial intelligence improve food security, medicine, and infrastructure in Arctic communities? What are some logistical, ethical, and governance challenges? Western Michigan's Professor Fritz Allhoff details the future of technology in this extreme environment, which is being made more accessible because of climate change. Plus he shares his thoughts on some open philosophical questions surrounding AI.

National security expert Asha Castleberry-Hernandez discusses what "ISIS 2.0" means and how the terrorist group has used social media to recruit and spread its message. How has its strategy changed since the death of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? What can the U.S. military, Congress, and executive branch do better to fight the group online?

In conversation with intelligence analyst Amelia M. Wolf, Major General Nina M. Armagno of the U.S. Air Force discusses her role as director of Space Programs in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Acquisition at the Department of Defense. How has space acquisition shifted as threats have evolved? What would a future U.S. Space Force look like?

From financing mechanisms to labor policy to the rise of the suburbs, General Motors had a huge effect on the development of the United States in the 20th century. In this wide-ranging talk with historian Ted Widmer, Detroit-based journalist Anna Clark explains how 1919 was a turning point for the automobile manufacturer and why 2019 could be another pivotal year.

Political scientist Daniela Segovia, currently an Eisenhower Fellow, discusses the importance of empathy when working on and thinking about migration policy in Latin America. She also touches on her own story as a Venezuelan migrant living in Mexico. What should governments and international organizations be doing? How can concerned citizens help?

The massacre in rural Elaine, Arkansas was one of the most violent episodes of 1919's Red Summer of racist confrontations, but it also remains one of the least-known. In this talk with historian Ted Widmer, Penn State's Professor Nan Woodruff explains the causes and how it fits in to the post-World War I context. Why are people still reluctant to speak about this massacre? How should we remember this dark chapter in American history?

Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Jean-Marie Guéhenno, former head of United Nations peacekeeping operations, discusses the tensions between the individual and the collective in a world filled with political tension, pervasive surveillance, and fear of risk. What is the role of the UN in this environment? How can we avoid the violent upheavals that marked other transitional phases in humanity?

How can established powers manage the peaceful rise of new great powers? Bard's Michelle Murray offers a new answer to this perennial question, arguing that power transitions are principally social phenomena whereby rising powers struggle to obtain recognition as world powers. How can this framework help us to understand the economic and military rivalry between United States and China?

Generation Z makes up over 30 percent of the world's population and this group of people, most under the age of 20, are already having an extraordinary effect on society, culture, and politics. Tatiana Serafin, journalism professor at Marymount Manhattan College, breaks down the power of this generation, focusing on climate change activism. How can they turn their energy into concrete action?

"In our foreign policy, for at least half a century, we have been spectacularly blind to the power of tribal politics," says Amy Chua, author of "Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations." What does this mean in 2019? How can Americans move past tribalism? Don't miss this conversation with Chua and Bard College's Walter Russell Mead, moderated by Bard's Roger Berkowitz.

Heather M. Roff, senior research analyst at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, thinks some researchers are having the wrong conversations about AI. Instead of wondering whether AI will ever be a moral agent, we should be focused on how to program the technology to be "morally safe, right, correct, justifiable." What are some practical uses for AI today? How can it be used responsibly in the military realm?

University of Washington's Professor Stephen Gardiner discusses the ethics of climate change from intergenerational, political, and personal perspectives. Should individuals feel bad for using plastic straws or eating meat? What should the UN and its member states do? And how can older generations make up for "a massive failure in leadership" that has led, in part, to the current crisis?

Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G), gives an update on his team's work after a busy week in New York. In the wake of troubling IPCC reports on climate change's effect on the oceans and land use, what more can the UN do? What are the challenges of nature-based solutions? And how should we handle climate change fatigue, individually and on a societal level?

University of Hawaii's Professor Maxine Burkett discusses climate change from a legal perspective in this timely conversation. What are some strategies that island nations like Kiribati can pursue? How can we work to protect climate migrants? And, as the UN General Assembly meets in New York, what should international organizations be doing?

Can new developments in solar technology put the United States on track to produce 50 percent of its energy with renewables by 2030? What global citizen actions need to be undertaken to help reach this goal? Eban Goodstein, director of Bard Center for Environmental Policy, answers these questions and more in this hopeful and informative talk.

Despite progress over the last year, Donald Trump effectively ended the latest round of U.S.-Taliban negotiations with a tweet earlier this month. Will talks continue in a more understated way? Does this change anything on the ground in Afghanistan? And what is the Taliban doing in Moscow? Jonathan Cristol, author of "The United States and the Taliban before and after 9/11," discusses all this and more.

During the "Red Summer" of 1919 dozens of race riots flared up across the U.S., but the anti-African American violence in Chicago stood out because of scale and social and political significance. University of Chicago's Professor Adam Green details the causes, the tragic events, and the aftermath in this riveting discussion. How did the riot affect the city's development for decades to come? How does it tie into questions about democracy and the end of World War I?

Ahead of the Climate Strike rallies on September 20, Bard College's Brian Mateo discusses the Climate Reality Project, founded by Vice President Al Gore, and how it has informed his work regarding environmental activism and education. Why has Greta Thunberg's Climate Strike been so successful? How can protests turn into concrete policies?

In this timely talk, SIPA's Professor Michael Doyle details the Model International Mobility Convention, a "hypothetical ideal convention" developed to define a "comprehensive and coherent" set of regulations for the movement of people across borders. Why was it so important to account for tourists alongside refugees and migrant workers? How does this document represent a "realistic utopia"?

Chennai, one of India's largest cities, is facing an ongoing water crisis due to drought and mismanagement. Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan explains how it got to this point and gives some important background on the city and the state of Tamil Nadu. Is climate change to blame? How does it connect to Indian politics and culture? And, beyond water trucks and desalination, how can Chennai solve this existential problem?

As the 2020 election begins to come into focus, Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev details the foreign policy cleavages in the Democratic Party. Plus, referencing Nahal Toosi's recent article in "Politico," he discusses the worries that many in Europe have about a Trump reelection or a progressive candidate who also questions the status quo. What's the view from abroad on this turbulent time in American politics?

What role should ethics play in the U.S.-China trade war? Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev looks at these economic tensions in the context of the Uyghur detention and the Hong Kong protests, different theories on integrating China into the world economy, and what it could mean to "lose" in this conflict. Is there a breaking point in terms of China's human rights policies? What's the view in Africa and Europe?

Mathias Risse, director of Harvard Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, discusses the many connections between artificial intelligence and human rights. From practical applications in the criminal justice system to unanswered philosophical questions about the nature of consciousness, how should we talk about the ethics of this ever-changing technology?

Catherine Stihler, CEO of Open Knowledge Foundation, talks about how she is working toward an "open world where all non-personal information is free for everyone to use, build on, and share." As a former member of European Parliament, she also details the role that governments can play. What would a "fair, free, and open future" look like? What effect is today's divisive political atmosphere having on this goal?

When the United States launched a massive cyberattack against Iran last month, it heralded "a new age of Internet warfare," says cybersecurity expert Arun Vishwanath. How could cyber-based conflicts change the nature of the Internet? Why is the U.S. especially vulnerable to these threats? And what would a "digital Geneva Convention" look like?

Is China becoming an immigrant society? Why do foreigners move to the country? What can we learn by studying Shanghai's international community? James Farrer, a professor at Tokyo's Sophia University, has interviewed over 400 migrants to China looking to answer these questions. He and Senior Fellow Devin Stewart discuss immigration's impact on Chinese culture and whether foreigners can ever really fit in.

Hamilton College's Maurice Isserman and historian Ted Widmer discuss American socialism in the early 1900s and the influence of Eugene Debs, a politician and trade unionist who received nearly a million votes for president in 1912. How did this movement influence Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement? What's the difference between Debs and Democratic Socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

Historian Ted Widmer tells the fascinating story of the United States Census, from its pre-Declaration of Independence origins up to the citizenship question controversy of the 2020 edition. As the Civil War, westward expansion, and new technology changed America, how did it change the Census? And with the Trump administration politicizing the count, what are the stakes for all U.S. residents and future versions?

King's College's Giulio Pugliese and Senior Fellow Devin Stewart discuss the political climate in Italy, with the Northern League and the Five Star Movement representing various types of dissatisfaction with the status quo, and China's increasing interest in the nation via its Belt and Road Initiative. What could Italy get out of this relationship? What kinds of concerns do Italians have about Xi Jinping's China?

Washington State's Matthew Avery Sutton tells the story of a Minneapolis pastor named William Belly Riley and the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the post-World War I years. From concerns about FDR and the New Deal to the Trump administration's anti-Obamacare rhetoric--and a consistently "apocalyptic worldview"--Sutton and historian Ted Widmer trace the influence of this movement over the past century.

"Eyes in the Sky" provides an authoritative account of how the Pentagon developed Gorgon Stare, a god-like surveillance system that is already patrolling American skies. When fused with big-data analysis techniques, this network can be used to watch everything simultaneously, and perhaps even predict attacks before they happen. Does Gorgon Stare have the potential to become the most nightmarishly powerful surveillance system every built?

Larry Diamond's core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on U.S. global leadership. If the U.S. does not reclaim its traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian trend could become a tsunami that could provide an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the 21st century into a dark time of surging authoritarianism.

Will Joe Biden's "restorationist" foreign policy resonate with voters? What would a "progressive" approach to international relations look like for Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders? What role will foreign policy play in the 2020 Election? Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev looks at these questions and more as he and host Alex Woodson discuss a crowded 2020 Democratic primary field. 

In the latest "Crack-Up" podcast, China expert Jeffrey Wasserstrom discusses the rich history of Chinese student protests. From the May Fourth movement in 1919 to Tiananmen Square in 1989 to today's mass demonstrations in Hong Kong, what are the threads that tie these moments together? Don't miss this fascinating talk, which also touches on Woodrow Wilson, the Russian Revolution, and a young Mao Zedong.

The original idea of the Internet was for it to be a "free speech nirvana," but in 2019, the reality is quite different. Authoritarians spread disinformation and extremists incite hatred, often on the huge, U.S.-based platforms, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. David Kaye, UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion & expression, details the different approaches to these issues in Europe and the United States and looks for solutions in this informed and important talk.

Following up on his talk with RAND analyst Ali Wyne on great-power competition, Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev gives an update on U.S.-Russian relations, touching on the war in Eastern Ukraine, the crisis in Venezuela, and election interference. He also previews the upcoming G-20 Summit in Japan, with Trump possibly hampered by his domestic controversies and talk of impeachment. 

Looking ahead to the 2020 election and the role that foreign policy will play on the campaign trail, Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev talks with RAND Corporation's Ali Wyne about the dominant international relations narrative in Trump-era Washington: "great-power competition." With Russia and China as the main competitors, how should we differentiate between the two nations? What is the U.S. actually competing for? And what would "victory" look like?

Christina Madden, now a director at Criterion Institute, discusses her work on Myanmar's massive electrification project in 2013-2014. With less than one-third of the population connected to the grid after a decades-long military dictatorship, what were the complications in getting millions in Myanmar connected? What were the political and cross-border issues, specifically when it came to cooperating with China?

Just back from China, Sinologist (and fluent Mandarin speaker) Joshua Eisenman discusses the pervasive camera surveillance and facial recognition systems there; the omnipresent power of "the security state;" the effect of the U.S.-China trade war on everyday life and future business; and the expansion of the original Belt and Road project, a term than is now applied to almost any project anywhere in the world.

What is the current state of the academic-policy gap and why should we care? What progress has been made in bridging this gap? What more can be done? Notre Dame's Michael Desch, founding director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, and George Washington's Henry Farrell, an editor and writer at the "Washington Post"-affiliated "Monkey Cage" blog, engage in a thoughtful debate on the relevance of political science. 

Don't miss this podcast! Turkish novelist and journalist Ece Temelkuran details how a country goes from "democracy to dictatorship." She touches on humor, shame, "post-truth," women's rights, and much more, as she talks Erdoğan, Trump, & populism throughout Europe.

Washington DC-based journalist Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian speaks with Senior Fellow Devin Stewart about a new article she authored in "The Atlantic" with Senior Fellow Zach Dorfman that traces China's influence campaigns today back to techniques used during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They discuss that article's origins, its findings, and what they mean for public opinion on China.

National security expert and U.S. Army veteran Asha Castleberry breaks down the rising tensions with Iran and John Bolton's influence at the White House. She and host Alex Woodson also discuss the pluses and minuses of having former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan in charge at the Department of Defense and she gives advice on how to figure out who or what to believe in this chaotic political environment.

China is radically expanding its strategy to wield influence in the domestic politics of other countries. This information campaign is designed partly to bolster China's power but also to undermine the space for rights and democracy in other states, and to potentially support pro-China authoritarian leaders. Don't miss this in-depth discussion that details how this is happening worldwide, what it means for the future, and what we can do about it.

There is skepticism about the core values of American policy from both sides of the aisle, says Ash Jain of the Atlantic Council, and the international order is under siege as never before. With so much at stake, the Atlantic Council has launched an initiative aimed at adapting and revitalizing the rules-based democratic order and rebuilding bipartisan support among policymakers and the broader public, starting with a Declaration of Principles. In this important discussion Jain explains the initiative's objectives and grapples with the audience's questions on how to move forward.

Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev discusses the generational divide in U.S. politics in the context of foreign policy and the environment. What are the international implications of initiatives like the Green New Deal? What would an "America First" environmental policy look like? And what happens if the U.S. continues to take a backseat on this issue?

In his eloquent defense of liberalism, Adam Gopnik goes back to its origins and argues that rather than emphasizing the role of the individual, "two principles, the principle of community and the principle of compromise," are at the core of the liberal project. Indeed, these are the essential elements of humane, pluralist societies; and in an age of autocracy, our very lives may depend on their continued existence.

Nava Nuraniyah, an analyst at the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) in Jakarta, Indonesia, speaks with Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Devin Stewart about the recent general election in Indonesia, social media and religious extremism in Southeast Asia, and the future direction of the region's politics.

Historian Ted Widmer and Michael Posner, an NYU Stern professor and former U.S. State Department official, discuss local politics, journalism, and money in elections in the age of ubiquitous Internet connectivity. How can high school students get involved in democracy? What are some ideas to save the media industry? How can--or should--the government regulate the social media giants? Don't miss this wide-ranging talk.

Christian Barry, professor of philosophy at Australian National University, shares his perspective on the political climate, journalism, and polarization in the United States. What responsibility do citizens and elected officials have in the face of a corrupt administration? How can you speak to people on the other side of charged and emotional issues?

Princeton's Gyan Prakash tells the tragic story of the Amritsar Massacre in 1919, in which a British general ordered his soldiers to shoot at thousands of unarmed civilians, and its galvanizing effect on the Indian independence movement. Was this violence an "exceptional" moment in Britain's colonial history? And how did it change Gandhi's thinking in relation to his strategies to resist colonialism?

Just weeks after an armistice halted the most devastating conflict in generations, the victors of the Great War set out to negotiate the terms of the peace--and to rewrite the rules of international relations. A century later, we live in a world shaped by the Treaty of Versailles. In this fascinating discussion, a panel of distinguished historians delve into the complex situation on the ground at the time and the Treaty's legacy today, from Europe and the U.S. to Asia and the Middle East.

Marcus Mietzner of Australian National University speaks with Senior Fellow Devin Stewart about the results of the general election last month in Indonesia, one that has been called "the most complicated single-day ballots in global history." Mietzner explains the various forces shaping Indonesian politics today and in the future, including demographics, Islam, identity, and societal polarization.

Senior Fellow Reed Bonadonna, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel, discusses the role of ethics in the transition to civilian life. With presidents Eisenhower and Grant as the ideal examples, he also details the attributes that veterans can bring to the political realm. Are the current group of veteran politicians better-positioned to work across the aisle? And what's changed in the White House now that three generals have left high-profile posts in the Trump administration?

The crucible of America's presidency has forged some of the very best and very worst leaders in our national history, along with many in between. From Abraham Lincoln's political savvy and rhetorical gifts to James Buchanan's indecisiveness, "The Presidents" teaches much about what makes a great leader--and what does not. What lessons can we learn from America's past presidents? Can these lessons help us choose the next one wisely? C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb shares his answers in this timely talk.

Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan discusses the ongoing Indian election through the complicated lens of citizenship and explains the vast power of political organizing and social media in the "world's largest democracy." What's at stake if Prime Minister Narendra Modi (the frontrunner) wins reelection? How have he and the BJP been able to push Hindu nationalism? What does voter disenfranchisement look like in India?

A lot of the talk about the Mueller Report has focused on its political and legal implications, but how will it affect U.S. foreign policy? Adelphi College's Jonathan Cristol discusses the reactions of allies and adversaries to Trump's passivity in the face of massive Russian interference in the U.S. election and congressional inaction and public apathy concerning presidential corruption. Plus, he details recent U.S. policy moves on Iran and the significance of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg's speech to U.S. Congress.

From the French Revolution to the Arab Spring to #MeToo, how does social change happen? In a book that was 25 years in the making, Cass Sunstein unpacks this puzzle by exploring the interplay of three decisive factors. Don't miss this insightful talk. It may change how you view the world.

Central European University's President Michael Ignatieff is a human rights scholar, an educator, a former politician, and, as he tells us, the son of a refugee. He discusses what he calls "the ordinary virtues," such as patience and tolerance; the status of human rights today and the dilemmas of migration; the essential critera for true democracy; and the ideal curriculum. His advice to students: Learn to think for yourself.

On the 44th anniversary of the Khmer Rouge entering Phnom Penh, the Brennan Center's Andrew Boyle discusses his work helping to prosecute the perpetrators the of genocide and other crimes against humanity in 1970s Cambodia. Boyle details the cases, the defendants, and the controversies surrounding the tribunal. Why did justice take so long? How did Cambodians react to the trials? And why is this genocide conviction so significant?

Criterion Institute's Christina Madden discusses her think tank's strategy of demystifying finance for non-profit and grassroots organizations and using these global systems to create transformative social change. Madden discusses specific examples, involving the Dakota Access pipeline and the rights of women in the workplace. How is the #MeToo Movement similar to the fight against climate change?

In this episode of the Crack-Up series on 1919, Andrew Roberts, author of "Churchill: Walking with Destiny," examines how Churchill dealt with the complicated problems facing Great Britain at the end of World War I, including how to treat the Germans in defeat, his changing views on Russia--but always in pursuit of British national interests--his stance on a homeland for the Jews, and his determination to hold on to British India.

We've been through information and technology revolutions before, going back to Gutenberg, says former chairman of the FCC Tom Wheeler. Now it's our turn to be at a terminus of history and the rules that worked for industrial capitalism are probably no longer adequate for Internet capitalism. So our task is not to flee but to stand up, recognize the challenge, and deal with it.

As part of Carnegie Council's Information Warfare podcast series, Devin Stewart interviews Joshua Kurlantzick about his recent project on Chinese media and influence campaigns and techniques in East Asia. Kurlantzick connects his project, which will become a book, to his previous books "Charm Offensive" and "Democracy in Retreat." He concludes by assessing China's overall impact on Asian politics and the fate of democracy worldwide.

With millions of Venezuelans fleeing the Maduro regime, what are the effects on Latin America and the Caribbean? What could or should the United States do? Is it helpful to compare this situation to the Syrian refugee crisis? Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan discusses immigration policies and asylum law in the context of Venezuela's economic collapse.

In this wide-ranging talk, Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Alexander Görlach discusses the importance of empathy in liberal democracies, the shocking Uyghur detention in China, and how AI is affecting all facets of society. What does liberalism look like in 2019? How will technology change democracy and religion?

"Climate, cyber, then mass gun violence, sometimes motivated by terrorist ideology--and the ideology can most frequently be tied to far-right-wing extremism, sometimes tied to no ideology at all, sometimes tied to pathology. Those three things I think are the real risks that the Department of Homeland Security really should be focused on. In contrast, what is not a real risk is the conditions of the Southwest border."

For about 18 months after World War I there was what historian Erez Manela calls the "Wilsonian moment"--a brief period when President Woodrow Wilson led people around the world to believe that he would champion a new world order of self-determination and rights for small nations. How did this actually play out, particularly in the case of Egypt, which was a British Protectorate at the time?

To celebrate the record number of women elected into Congress, the 63rd session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN, and Women's History Month, Carnegie Council partnered with UN Women of New York for a panel with U.S. Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke, NYC Council Member Helen Rosenthal, and Assemblywoman Nily Rozic of New York's 25th District. Opening remarks from Mary Luke of UN Women of NY, moderated by Erin Vilardi of VoteRunLead.

A week after the horrific terrorist attack on two New Zealand mosques, Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan discusses immigration policies and xenophobia in Australia and the United States and how they reverberate throughout the world. How should we respond to hateful rhetoric from politicians? What are some ways to make immigration and asylum work more efficiently and ethically?

In this in-depth conversation, Oxford Internet Institute researcher Nick Monaco reviews the history of computational propaganda (online disinformation),which goes back almost two decades and includes countries ranging from Mexico to South Korea. His topics include Russia's IRA (Internet Research Agency), the role of China's Huawei, and a recent case study on Taiwan, where "digital democracy meets automated autocracy."

"Nobody fights conventionally except for us anymore, yet we're sinking a big bulk, perhaps the majority of our defense dollars, into preparing for another conventional war, which is the very definition of insanity," declares national security strategist and former paratrooper Sean McFate. The U.S. needs to recognize that we're living in an age of "durable disorder"--a time of persistent, smoldering conflicts--and the old rules no longer apply.

Could the shared historical memory of March 1 ever be a source of unity between North Koreans and South Koreans? In this fascinating episode of The Crack-Up series that explores how 1919 shaped the modern world, Professor Kyung Moon Hwang discusses the complex birth of Korean nationhood and explains how both North and South Korea owe their origins and their national history narratives to the events swirling around March 1, 1919.

As the debates about the Southern border continue, the Brennan Center's Andrew Boyle details the 1976 law behind Trump's February 15 emergency declaration. As he tells it, the National Emergencies Act was put in place, in the wake of Watergate, to constrain presidential power. What are the current and coming legal challenges to Trump's declaration? And how can this law be reformed to avoid future stalemates?

After working in China for six years on many stories unfavorable to the Chinese government, in 2018 journalist Megha Rajagopalan's visa was not renewed, forcing her to leave China abruptly. Why? She's still not sure and says that the government uses ambiguity very deliberately, causing Chinese and foreigners alike to self-censor, as they don't know where the lines are. How does this affect the flow of information and Chinese society as a whole?

Wendell Wallach, consultant, ethicist, and scholar at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, discusses some of the current issues in artificial intelligence (AI), including his push for international governance of the technology. He and host Alex Woodson also speak about Trump's recent executive order, universal basic income, and some of the ethical issues in China concerning AI, including the Social Credit System.

"We're all really proud of our system. It's the world's oldest democracy, and we've always had to fight to make it real," says Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice. "But in the last 10-20 years and especially recently we've seen challenges to the right to vote and challenges to the role of big money in politics. That means we have to fight for democracy all over again." What can young people do to help get our democracy back?

Are we headed for a U.S.-China tech Cold War and what should we do about it? "There's no way we're ever going to beat China on scale," says Adam Segal, author of "The Hacked World Order." "They're just always going to spend more than we are, so that means you have to cooperate with the Europeans and others on scientific discovery and invention." Segal discusses who is currently winning the information war, Huawei, China's future, and more.

Adelphi University's Jonathan Cristol discusses the Trump administration's decision to step away from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and its possible effects on international arms control. Why is this a positive development for Putin and Russia? Are other treaties and alliances in danger?

Does preventive war really work? "In the vast majority of cases historically, what we see is the country that thought it was saving itself from a greater danger in the future actually creates this greater danger because you generate a level of hostility, a deepening rivalry, and a desire for revenge that comes back to haunt them," says Scott Silverstone. His advice: Hesitate. Before taking action, think through this "preventive war paradox."

Why has there been a sudden interest in Thucydides, especially in the U.S.? Johanna Hanink discusses her new book of translations and introductions to key speeches from his "History of the Peloponnesian War," and the importance of the classics in general. "The book is of special interest to us here at Carnegie for its focus on ethics, democracy, and world affairs, all of which seem to be under stress these days," says Joel Rosenthal.

Jazz historian David Sager describes the beginnings of jazz and its enthusiastic reception in France during World War I. He tells the amazing and tragic story of African American musician James Reese Europe, a leader in the creation and acceptance of jazz, who didn't live long enough to see what a difference he made to music and to race relations.

Jonathan Cristol, author of "The United States and Taliban before and after 9/11," discusses the status of the latest talks between the U.S. government and the Taliban, in an effort to end the decades-long war in Afghanistan. Are women's rights being addressed? Are neighboring countries' interests being taken into account? And can we trust the Trump administration in this tense geopolitical environment?

U.S.-Taiwan relations have long been an ingenious balancing act of "strategic ambiguity." What does the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act entail and why is it important, not only to Taiwan, but to U.S.-China relations and indeed security across Asia? Legendary China expert Jerome Cohen unpacks the history of Taiwan since 1895, its current situation and legal status, and what this could mean for Asia and the United States.

"There are areas where China lags behind other countries in its power, areas where it's catching up, and areas where China really has leapfrogged some other countries, including the United States, and is pulling ahead," says Bonnie Glaser of CSIS. Certainly, China is investing heavily in promoting a favorable narrative about China around the world, a strategy increasingly being referred to as "political influence operations."

Quinnipiac's Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox discusses her work researching the conception of human rights in a community in rural India. She tells the story of Chaya Kakade, a woman who went on a hunger strike after the Indian government proposed a tax on sanitary napkins, and has since built her own production center in Latur. How does Kakade understand human rights? How can Westerners move beyond a legalistic view of the concept?

"The rise of China is not the biggest story in the world," says Parag Khanna. "The Asianization of Asia, the return of Asia, the rise of the Asian system, is the biggest story in the world." This new Asian system, where business, technology, globalization, and geopolitics are intertwined, stretches from Japan to Saudi Arabia, from Australia to Russia, and Indonesia to Turkey, linking 5 billion people.

How is China influencing democracies such as Taiwan, Korea, and the United States? "I think there are three areas that you can look at," says Asia security analyst Rachael Burton. "The first is narrative dominance, which I would call a form of cognitive warfare. Beijing has been able to set the terms of debate . . . and once you're asking the questions, then you're able to drive intellectuals or policymakers to a certain answer."

In this episode of The Crack-Up series, which explores how 1919 shaped the modern world, film historian David Bordwell discusses two big changes in the American film industry in 1919: the revolt of film stars against the powerful studio system, and Paramount's response, which was to try and control the "product" from creation to point of consumption. He goes on to look at how these creative and commercial tensions still play out today.

Ambassador Sidi Omar, UN representative for Frente POLISARIO, a liberation movement aiming to secure the independence of Western Sahara, discusses the decades-long dispute in Northwest Africa. With negotiations ongoing between Frente POLISARIO and Morocco at the UN, could there be a resolution? How do Europe and the Trump administration fit in?

The Supreme Court's 1919 decision in "Schenck v. United States" is one of the most important free speech cases in American history. Because of it we have an elaborate set of free speech laws and norms, but the context is always shifting. In this fascinating talk Bollinger and Stone explore how our understanding of the First Amendment has been transformed over time, and how it may change in the future to cope with social media and other challenges.

As founder and executive director of The Polis Project, a research and journalism organization, Suchitra Vijayan is helping to document a concerning trend of identity-based violence in India. She discusses her organization's work on this issue, the violence's connection to a rise in nationalism in India since Prime Minister Modi came to power, and some imperfect parallels with the contentious political climate in the United States.

In the third podcast in The Crack-Up series, which looks at how 1919 shaped the modern world, Ted Widmer discusses the story of the Irish Declaration of Independence with fellow historian Christopher Pastore. Although the declaration was signed in 1919, Ireland's quest for self-determination would last for decades. How did America influence these developments? What did the Irish leaders think about nationalism so soon after World War I?

Discussions around cybersecurity often focus on the security and sovereignty of states, not individuals, says Professor Ronald Deibert, director of University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. If you start from a "human-centric perspective," it could lead to policies focusing on peace, prosperity, and human rights. How can we work toward this approach?

Quinnipiac University's Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox speaks about her 2018 campaign for state representative in Connecticut, which she lost by a slim margin. After months of speaking to her fellow citizens and absorbing their differing viewpoints on the campaign trail, she discusses the importance of ethics and political engagement and how we can remain civil in this divisive time.

China's economy has grown exponentially over the last four decades, but George Magnus, former chief economist at UBS, sees four traps that could derail its continued ascent: rising debt, the struggle to keep its currency stable, aging demographics, and the challenges of changing from a low-income economy to a complex middle-income one. Will Xi Jinping be open to reform? What could be the effects of lingering U.S.-China trade tensions?

In the second podcast in The Crack-Up series, which looks at how 1919 shaped the modern world, historian Ted Widmer talks to Harvard's Professor Lisa McGirr about Prohibition's roots in anti-immigrant sentiment and its enforcement, in some cases, by the Ku Klux Klan. Plus, they discuss the Eighteenth Amendment's connections to World War I and the rise of the modern American state.

Historian Ted Widmer discusses his new Carnegie Council podcast series "The Crack-Up" and how 1919 has shaped the modern world. He and host Alex Woodson speak about parallels to 2019, Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations, Babe Ruth, the early days of Hollywood, and populism in Europe in the aftermath of World War I. Don't miss a new "Crack-Up" tomorrow with Harvard historian Lisa McGirr on prohibition and the American state.

If populism is a reaction to a globalism that is viewed as unresponsive to the needs of citizens, can populism sustain any version of globalization? Eurasia Group's Ian Bremmer and Tom Nichols of the U. S. Naval War College discuss and debate this important question and much more.

The wide array of global issues--more than 90 percent of them--that Eurasia Group follows are now headed in the wrong direction in 2019. Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer break down those risks--from U.S.-China relations and cyberwar to European populism and American institutions--and their ethical implications with Carnegie Council's Devin Stewart for their eleventh annual discussion of the year's coming top risks.

From the U.S. operation against Iran's nuclear enrichment plant, to Chinese theft of personal data, North Korea's financially motivated attacks on American companies, or Russia's interference in the 2016 election, cyberweapons have become the weapon of choice for democracies, dictators, and terrorists. "New York Times" national security correspondent David Sanger explains how and why cyberattacks are now the number one security threat.

Now based in California, Mark Payumo previously served as a Philippine Army Special Forces officer. Reflecting on his recent Carnegie Council site visit to Manila to investigate climate change and the role of the defense establishment, he concludes that securitizing climate change--i.e. having the military involved, both in adaptation and mitigation--is a decided advantage for the community.

National security expert and U.S. Army veteran Asha Castleberry makes sense of a busy and seemingly chaotic time for the Department of Defense in the wake of Secretary Mattis' departure. What should we think about Trump's plans in Syria and Afghanistan? How is the U.S. planning to counter China in Africa? And has John Bolton actually been a moderating influence?

This podcast is part of "The Crack-Up," a special series about the events of 1919, a year that in many ways shaped the 20th century and the modern world. In this episode, host Ted Widmer speaks with fellow historian Patty O'Toole about her "New York Times" article on Teddy Roosevelt, who died 100 years ago this week. Why was health care reform so important to him? What did he think about nationalism? How would TR fit in with the modern GOP?

Gold leaf tattoos that would act as a screen for our devices, chips implanted in our brains--these are some of the worrying technologies under development with no thought of the consequences to our minds and bodies, says crisis management expert Ian Mitroff. He blames the "technological mindset" that believes that technology will solve every problem. We need technologists, but we also need ethicists and we need to have crisis plans in place.

Waleed Alhariri, U.S. director of the Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies, discusses major developments in the Yemen conflict, which remains the world's worst humanitarian crisis. With renewed momentum at the UN and in U.S. Congress, an increased international focus on the war after the Jamal Khashoggi murder, and a fragile ceasefire in Hudaydah, Yemen's biggest port, Alhariri is "carefully optimistic" that conditions could improve in the coming months.

Elana Beiser of the Committee to Protect Journalists discusses the latest CPJ report, which finds that for the third year in a row, 251 or more journalists are jailed around the world, suggesting the authoritarian approach to critical news coverage is more than a temporary spike. Also for the third year running, Turkey, China, and Egypt were responsible for about half of those imprisoned, with Turkey remaining the world's worst jailer.

Pacific Delegates Austin McKinney and Chetan Pedada both have military backgrounds and technology expertise. They discuss ways in which machine-learning and military cooperation could help the Philippines cope with climate change and natural disasters and also reflect on the human impact that climate change is already having on these islands and how Filipinos are working together to respond.

Yoko Okura of Mercy Corps discusses her recent visit to Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, the site of a camp for 1 million Rohingya refugees. She learned every day, that 700 tons of trees--four football fields--are being cut down for firewood and construction, bringing an increased risk of landslides and floods. She also reflects on her visit to Manila with Carnegie Council and the advantages of traveling with a group from different disciplines.

There are few, if any, who understand the Korean Peninsula situation better than Ambassador Hill. He served as U.S. ambassador to South Korea and assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, and was head of the U.S. delegation to the 2005 six-party talks aimed at resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis. In this wise and witty talk he explains where we are today, how we got here, and where we're likely to go in the future.

Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev and host Alex Woodson discuss the state of foreign policy after the midterm elections. How can newcomers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have a tangible effect in Washington? Will Democrats be able to unite behind a platform? Plus, they look ahead to 2020 and speak about Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Nikki Haley and how American values will play into the future of international relations.

"You saw the Russians start to pay attention to social media, in particular after Obama's election, because the way that he was elected was new to them. They always watch our elections very closely. So you see them toying around in this whole space of the sphere of information, the use of information as a tool of political warfare, developing new tools." Molly McKew delves into Russian disinformation campaigns in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Artificial Intelligence's potential for doing good and creating benefits is almost boundless, but equally there is a potential for doing great harm. This panel discusses the findings of a comprehensive three-year project at The Hastings Center, which encompassed safety procedures, engineering approaches, and legal and ethical oversight.

Historian and Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Ted Widmer looks back to the end of the First World War, and the upheaval that followed it in Europe and the U.S., and forward to a new stage in the Trump presidency. Plus, he and host Alex Woodson discuss ways to improve American democracy and what can be learned from the legacy of President George H. W. Bush.

"Were we a business, were we a mission, were we a public service, or were we a profit center?" Alan Rusbridger, former editor-in-chief of "The Guardian," grapples with the questions facing all newspapers in this new age where people "communicate horizontally" rather than via the old, vertical "tablet of stone model." He explains how "The Guardian" has not only survived but prospered and has surprisingly positive things to say about new media.

Education for Employment's Mariel Davis discusses some of the many issues surrounding women's employment in the Middle East and North Africa, focusing on the story of a young Palestinian working in the hospitality industry. Plus, she details the struggles of working--and trying to work--in war-torn Yemen.

"The analogy that is at the heart of this book is about a jungle and a garden," says Robert Kagan. "In order to have a garden and sustain a garden, you've got to be constantly gardening. For me at least, that is a good analogy for this liberal world order, which itself is an unnatural creation which natural forces are always working to undermine." Human nature has not fundamentally changed, and this peaceful period is an aberration.

The Rohingya are seen as fundamentally 'other,' says Prasse-Freeman. "Hence, even if they have formal citizenship, they wouldn't really be accepted as citizens, as full members of the polity." Could Aung San Suu Kyi have done more to prevent the persecution? How important was the hate speech on Facebook? How can the situation be resolved? Don't miss this informative and troubling conversation.

The right to benefit from scientific progress was enshrined in the United Nations' 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, explains University of Copenhagen's Professor Helle Porsdam. Unfortunately, many people, including scientists and policymakers, don't know much about it. How was the right to science developed? What are examples? And, with an anti-science administration in the White House today, what are the contentious issues?

Professor Saiph Savage is an activist scholar and technology expert who is using large-scale data to study the sophisticated ways in which trolls target certain groups and bombard them with misinformation--for example U.S. Latinos were targeted in the 2018 midterm elections as were Mexicans in their 2018 presidential election. But her message is one of hope. In Mexico, citizens eventually saw through misinformation campaigns and others can too.

Trump has a love-hate relationship with the press, which he calls "the enemy of the people" when it crosses him, knowing nothing of the origins of the phrase, says Marvin Kalb. Yet the pillars of democracy are the sanctity of the court and the freedom of the press. "I think that President Trump—not wittingly, unwittingly—is moving this nation away from our common understanding of democracy toward something that edges toward authoritarianism."

Can violent societies get better? Rachel Kleinfeld discusses her latest book, "A Savage Order: How the World's Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security." Her conclusion is ultimately optimistic: Though it's never easy, real democracy (not autocracy in disguise) and a vibrant middle class can provide a path out of violence.

When most Americans think about the Taliban, their minds go to Osama bin Laden, terrorism, and the endless war in Afghanistan. But as Jonathan Cristol writes in his book, "The United States and Taliban before and after 9/11," there is much more to the story as both sides met countless times in the 1990s, with the Taliban eager to have good relations with America. What was the bigger stumbling block for the U.S.: women's rights or al-Qaeda? What are the lessons for today?

In this illuminating conversation, China scholar Joshua Eisenman discusses his two latest books: "Red China's Green Revolution," which overturns the conventional wisdom (both in China and abroad) that Chairman Mao's commune system was a failure; and a co-edited volume "China Steps Out," which explains why for China (unlike the United States), developing regions are a cornerstone of its foreign policy.

As activists, politicians, and environmentalists come to terms with a dire report on global warming from the UN's IPCC, Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative (C2G2), remains focused on the governance of the potential use of climate change "mitigation" technologies. What do these discussions look like in China? What do smaller countries think? And how challenging is it that climate change remains a political divisive issue in the U.S.?

In this interview with the Council's John Krzyzaniak, James Pattison (University of Manchester, UK), discusses his book, "The Alternatives to War." Taking what he calls a "pragmatic approach," Pattison outlines seven sets of alternatives, including economic sanctions and positive incentives. His goal is to offer policymakers a moral map of the main alternatives to war, thinking through the considerations for each one.

Henry Kissinger is smart, charming, and a great writer, says historian Robert Brigham. But when it came to Vietnam, his arrogance and deceit made a bad situation worse. Kissinger altered the logbooks for military bombings and misled the president on the content of the secret talks in Paris. "He was a theorist who stuck to theorist dreams, and it cost the country dearly." What are the lessons for today's administration?

The Middle East and North Africa has a huge youth and young adult population--65 percent of the people in the region are under 30--but unfortunately unemployment among this group remains high. Education for Employment's Mariel Davis details how the organization is working to change this. She also discusses the challenges facing refugees, with a focus on Jordan.

"Much has been said and written about the long and difficult road that led us to the Agreement in April of 1998. Many have deservedly received credit for their roles, but the real heroes of the Agreement were the people and the political leaders of Northern Ireland," declares Senator George Mitchell, who played a leading role in the Belfast Good Friday Agreement. Don't miss this moving and very personal speech.

We live in a time when liberal democracy is on the defensive, not only in the U.S. but around the world. Yet these speakers, whose roots reflect the political spectrum, are optimistic that having a fresh discussion on moral values and basic principles such as freedom of speech, a free press, and the rule of law can help bring democracy back to health. Don't miss this valuable discussion.

Malka Older has spent time as an aid worker in Darfur, Indonesia, and Japan, as was discussed in last week's podcast, but she also has another role: science fiction novelist. Her latest book, "State Tectonics," is the third in a series that explores the concepts of "micro-democracy" and a "global information management bureacracy" in the near future. How have separatists from East Timor to Catalonia influenced Older's novels?

Why has nationalism suddenly returned with a vengeance around the world? Why are nationalists so angry about free trade and immigration? Why has globalization become a dirty word? In this insightful talk, John B. Judis has some answers to these questions--and prescriptions for the United States.

Former Senior Fellow Malka Older, a novelist and aid worker, details the ethical and logistical sides of disaster response, drawing on her experiences in Sri Lanka, Fukushima, and Darfur. Why are "rich" countries sometimes less prepared to handle earthquakes and hurricanes? How is disaster response different in the United States? And with Hurricane Michael affecting millions this week, what are some practical ways to help?

"Is it still fair to say there are continuities in foreign policy two years into the Trump administration? I'm going to say yes, and I'll offer some evidence," declares Derek S. Reveron of the U.S. Naval War College and Harvard Kennedy School. Don't miss this expert analysis of America's role in the world.

Tom Mahnken and Toshi Yoshihara of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) discuss China and Russia's "authoritarian political warfare." "Not only do they use these influence campaigns, they use economic coercion, occasionally they use a military force, they use non-military instruments of power," says Yoshihara. "And it's the combination of these tools that I think make Russian and Chinese strategy so potent."

Acclaimed journalist Ahmed Rashid discusses Pakistan's new populist prime minister, Imran Khan, whom he considers woefully unprepared. He also examines Pakistan's debt-ridden economy and Pakistan's complex relationships with China, India, the U.S., Afghanistan, and the Taliban. "I think the key thing to understand is the need to follow Afghanistan," he says. "Whatever happens in Pakistan will depend on what happens in Afghanistan."

Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan explains the troubling situation in Northeast India near the border with Bangladesh, where millions of citizens could end up stateless. With denaturalization increasing exponentially under the Trump administration, what are the parallels with what's happening in the United States? Is this all due to the rise of ethnonationalism in both countries?

According to a recent Amnesty International Report, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region are the targets of surveillance, arbitrary detention, and forced indoctrination by the Chinese government. Up to 1 million Uyghurs have been detained, says Amnesty's Francisco Bencosme. There are parallels with the Rohingya crisis, yet there has been far less international outcry.

Are there ever justifiable reasons for issuing threats to achieve foreign policy objectives? In particular, are President Trump's threats against Iran justified? Don't miss this rare opportunity to get the Iranian perspective with this stimulating discussion between Drs. Reichberg and Syse of the Peace Research Insitute Oslo (PRIO) and H.E. Gholamali Khoshroo, permanent representative of Iran to the United Nations.

From the world's largest meth trade in Myanmar to "Pyongyang's dancing queens," "neon jihad," and much more, Bangkok-based author Patrick Winn takes us on a tour of the underbelly of Southeast Asia. The region's criminal underworld is valued at $100 billion and in the next decade it's going to hit $375 billion, bigger than many of these country's GDPs, he says. These stories need to be told.

Cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees discusses the future of humanity on Earth and beyond, foreseeing a time when space pioneers may use gene splicing and AI to adapt to living on Mars, thus becoming "post-human." What concerns him most? "My worry, particularly about bio and cyber, is that whatever can be done will be done somewhere by someone. That is a scary prospect and is going to be a big challenge to governance, in my opinion."

As the Trump administration cuts refugee resettlement in the U.S. to its lowest number in decades, this population in other nations has exploded in recent years. Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan details what this looks like for one refugee in Utica, New York and the challenges that countries like Uganda and Turkey are facing.

Has a gap opened up between the U.S. national security community and the general public over foreign policy? If so, why? How can we close it? Moderated by Nikolas Gvosdev, this panel with foreign policy experts Asha Castleberry and Ali Wyne is part of a larger effort by Carnegie Council's U.S. Global Engagement Program to examine drivers in U.S. politics pushing the United States to disengage from international affairs.

This fascinating conversation begins with a discussion of the critical importance of Southeast Asia, including the rise of China and its ambitions in the region. Then Professor Weiss focuses on Malaysia and the return of the formidable 93-year old Mahathir as prime minister. Next, Professor Menchik discusses the complex situation in Indonesia--a country with 17,000 islands and 300-plus ethnic groups--and the upcoming elections there.

Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev and host Alex Woodson discuss what U.S. foreign policy could look like if Democrats take Congress in November and/or the White House in 2020. What do Bernie Sanders' views on international affairs have in common with "America First"? Is there space for a more centrist policy? And after the 2016 election, is the U.S. still able to effectively promote democracy abroad?

Korea expert Geoffrey Cain talks about his forthcoming book, "The Republic of Samsung," which reveals how the Samsung dynasty (father and son) are beyond the law and are treated as cult figures by their employees--rather like the leaders of North Korea. He also discusses the prospects for peace on the Korean peninsula--is Trump helping or hurting?--and the strange and sensational story behind the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye.

The rise of global populism is the greatest threat to global democracy, and it's mainly driven not by economics, but by people's demand for public recognition of their identities, says political scientist Francis Fukuyama. "We want other people to affirm our worth, and that has to be a political act." How is this playing out in the U.S., Europe, and Asia? What practical steps can we take to counteract it?

There are three major technological developments that are transforming the way we live, says Jamie Susskind: increasingly capable systems, increasingly integrated technology, and increasingly quantified society. With these we are moving into the "digital lifeworld," which is basically a different stage of human existence. What will these momentous changes mean for the future of politics and society--i.e. how we order our collective lives?

Responding to excerpts from U.S. Naval War College's Professor Tom Nichols and best-selling author and economist Dambisa Moyo--and the hostile anti-expert tone of the Trump era--Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal discusses how he approaches his area of expertise, international relations. How did we end up here? And is there reason for optimism when looking at younger generations?

"There is a significant counterintelligence threat on the West Coast of the U.S., and it differs in meaningful ways from what is commonly perceived of as counterintelligence work and targets on the East Coast," says Senior Fellow Zach Dorfman. He discusses shocking examples of Chinese espionage in particular, such as technology theft and spying on local politicians. The Chinese also exert pressure on diaspora communities to become more pro-PRC.

Who are behind the fake news and political disinformation campaigns that plague the Philippines? "They're not exactly who you think," says Jonathan Corpus Ong, co-author of a recent study on this. The most important players are not the notorious bloggers and social media influencers as you might expect. "The people who are the chief architects of network disinformation are people in the ad and public relations (PR) industry."

Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev looks at the reasons for the growing favorability ratings towards Putin's Russia among a certain segment of the American population. Is this a function of Trump's personal affection for the Russian president? Or, as has been seen in France and other European nations, are there deeper cultural and political connections?

"Disinformation, fake news, online propaganda is a problem that has gotten attention all over the world, and we're seeing very divergent responses," says Schiffrin, author of "Bridging the Gap: Rebuilding Citizen Trust in Media." "I think the U.S. is going to do what it always does, which is look for free-market solutions and try lots of small-scale initiatives, and Europe is going to do what it tends to do, which is have more regulation."

Historian Andie Tucher takes us through 400 years of fake news in America, starting with a fake story published in 1690. But today, she says, given the the speed, anonymity, and reach of the Internet it's a lot easier to get away with faking news in dangerous ways--and harder to push back, especially given the president's attitude that the press is the enemy of the people.

Responding to an excerpt from a talk by Brookings Institution's William Galston, Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan and host Alex Woodson discuss immigration from a few different angles, including in the contexts of economics and English language competence. Plus, they look at the under-reported issues facing undocumented Asian immigrants in the United States.

The Chinese Communist Party's main goals for influence operations in the U.S are "to make sure that the U.S. does not stand in China's way in terms of its global, foreign policy, and economic goals, and second, to silence or marginalize critics," says Allen-Ebrahimian, a security reporter for "The Daily Beast." Who are the principal targets? Elites, Chinese-American communities, Chinese students in U.S. universities, and American academics.

"I see Russia as conducting more smash-and-grab type influence operations. China is in it for the longer term," says author and former U.S. government intelligence analyst Darren Tromblay. China is pursuing multiple campaigns, including efforts to infiltrate politics or pressure politicians on specific issues, leveraging business deals to support Beijing's objectives, and carrying out numerous academic and cultural initiatives.

Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Alexander Görlach and host Alex Woodson speak about identity politics in the United States and Europe from their different perspectives. They also discuss how religion and the recent Mexican election fits in to these narratives.

Jeffrey Mankoff and Olga Oliker of CSIS host a podcast called "Russian Roulette" on all things Russian (and Eurasian), from food and wine to politics. What is the Russian perspective on U.S.-Russia relations and what are the goals of Russia's covert influence operations in the U.S.? Do they all originate with Putin or are some of them bottom-up? Are the Russians happy with Trump's performance as president? Find out in this lively podcast.

The term "fake news" is a little too tame, says Ann Ravel of the MapLight Digital Deception Project. Actually, this is foreign and domestic political propaganda aimed at undermining U.S. institutions and democracy. Maplight also tracks the enormous, pervasive problem of "dark money"--contributions by undisclosed donors to influence U.S. campaigns. Yet Ravel is optimistic that once Americans understand what's happening, it can be stopped.

From the unprecedented Trump-Kim meeting, to what some call a treasonous press conference in Finland, to growing tensions between America and its closest allies, as well as its adversaries, this has been a historic summer for international affairs. RAND Corporation's Ali Wyne unpacks these developments and looks at a potentially busy September for North Korea and the continuing schism between Trump and his top foreign policy advisers.

What's the "anaconda in the chandelier" in China that looms over foreign scholars, journalists, and Chinese citizens expressing their opinions? Find out in this podcast with political scientist and China scholar Andrew Nathan of Columbia University.

"Post-truth doesn't mean that no one cares about truth, it doesn't mean that there isn't any such thing as truth, it just means that there's a critical mass of people who no longer think that they have to form their beliefs based on what's true," says philosopher Lee McIntyre. This is not new; it probably goes back to Galileo and science denial. But today post-truth is more virulent than ever, from Trump to Brexit. What can we do about it?

Boise State University's Jack Marr discusses how China's approach to the world has changed, from keeping a low profile to "a great push outward." Last year there were over 360,000 Chinese students in the U.S. These students are a great resource, says Marr, and we should welcome them and engage with them. "You don't want [them] just to come, study for a while, and then leave. I think that's not in the United States' best long-term interest."

The world's worst humanitarian crisis is ongoing in Yemen, as the Saudi-led coalition, with the support of the U.S., continues its brutal campaign against the entrenched Houthi rebels. Waleed Alhariri, U.S. director of the Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies, details the military stalemate centered on a Red Sea port, the debate about America's role, and the prospects for peace, with a UN-led conference in Geneva scheduled for early September.

Japan and China, while in a "tactical détente," are engaged in an information battle for foreign hearts and minds over the South China Sea and also Japan's past, says Pugliese of King's College, London. The "China dream" is the doppelganger of the "China nightmare"--the brutal Japanese invasion of China. "To a certain extent, Xi Jinping will need to cater to the China nightmare for foreign and internal consumption as he pushes for the China dream."

China and Taiwan have been trying to influence each other ever since 1949, often through very subversive means, says the Global Taiwan Institute's Russell Hsiao, so Taiwan can provide useful lessons on dealing with CCP operations. Of course all governments try to influence foreign publics. What's concerning are "corrupt, coercive, and covert" activities, such as recent cases where China has directly interfered in Taiwan's political process.

Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal and host Alex Woodson discuss the ethical failures of the first 18 months of Trump's presidency, but also why they both see hope for the future. In the face of the daily assault on basic values, where can Americans look for leadership?

What's the difference between "influence" and "interference" when it comes to China's propaganda operations? How are these efforts structured? War on the Rocks contributing editor Peter Mattis breaks it down in this fascinating conversation. Plus, he warns against "McCarthyism" in regards to Chinese-American relations.

"In both political debates and academic debates on migration the question of class is often missed," says London School of Economics' Lea Ypi. "When we reduce migration to a problem of open-versus-closed borders, of accepting or under what terms we accept or exclude migrants, we forget that borders are and have always been and will continue to be, at least under the current regimes, open for some people and closed for other people."

The July 16 summit and press conference in Helsinki brought the words "treason" and "blackmail" into mainstream conversations about the Trump White House and put an unwanted spotlight back on Ambassador Michael McFaul and other Americans with Russian connections. But the most lasting effects of this meeting could be on America's alliances. Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev looks beyond the emotional and personal aspects of the Trump-Russia story and details why a small Balkan nation has become a test for American foreign policy.

Columbia Journalism School's Mark Hansen, along with his students and "New York Times" journalists, conducted deep, firsthand research into Twitter, buying followers and charting networks, but he was left with even more questions. What does "trending" really mean? How does someone become an influencer, and how is influence wielded? Plus, Hansen describes his innovative art installations, one of which is currently on display at the "New York Times" building in Manhattan.

Today's discussions about immigrants and refugees are focused on the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy on the U.S.-Mexico border and the "migration crisis" in the Mediterranean. Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Kavitha Rajagopalan explores the history of these debates, what it means to be undocumented in Europe versus the United States, and why many still view immigration through the prisms of terrorism and crime.

"I think it's important to contrast what China is doing with what Russia is doing," says Asia Society's Isaac Stone Fish. "Russia influence operations and Russia influence is much more about sowing chaos, it's about destabilization, it's about making America weaker. China is much more about making China stronger. The United States is a vector and a way for China to become stronger." Elon Musk, Alibaba, and China's internal power structures are also discussed in this wide-ranging talk.

As China's middle class grows, Hollywood is making films with this audience in mind, says the Wilson Center's Robert Daly, previously a producer for the Chinese version of "Sesame Street." How is this different from filmmaking in the World War II and Cold War eras? And why did the Chinese government have a problem with Cookie Monster and Grover?

In this new podcast series, we'll be connecting current events to Carnegie Council resources through conversations with our Senior Fellows. This week, Devin Stewart discusses how his essay defending the Singapore Summit holds up a month later. Plus, he and host Alex Woodson speak about Mike Pompeo's strange and unproductive trip to Pyongyang, what a "peace regime" could look like, and the prospects for a unified Korean Peninsula.

As part of our new Information Warfare podcast series, University of Connecticut historian Alexis Dudden looks at the propaganda efforts coming out of Northeast Asia, with a focus on China's Confucius Institutes at American universities. Is China trying to spread its communist ideology through these centers or just teach its language to college students? Are the U.S. and Japan "guilty" of similar efforts?

Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev looks at some basic questions Trump is asking about the post-Cold War alliance structures. Referencing a recent panel with George Mason's Colin Dueck and International Institute for Strategic Studies' Kori Schake, should Germany and other NATO allies spend more on defense? And what exactly are we defending when we say the "liberal international order"?

What are the challenges that will have the most impact on India's future? Award-winning author Mira Kamdar puts climate change and environmental degradion at the top of the list, including rising sea levels and scarcity of resources. Next is the problem of poverty and unemployment--India has to generate nearly a million new jobs a month for young people joining the workforce. Kamdar also discusses the rise of Hindu nationalism and much more.

As Viktor Orbán continues to enact illiberal policies in Hungary, some, including Harvard's Yascha Mounk, have called for the state to be expelled from the European Union. Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev puts this idea in a geopolitical and historical context and discusses what it could mean for the future of the EU. Is it possible to have an alliance of nations without shared values?

The Vietnam War ended over 40 years ago, but the U.S. and Vietnam are still coming to terms with the legacy of the toxic herbicide Agent Orange. Yet there is some good news: The cleanup is continuing and the U.S. Congress is committed. Bailey, who led Agent Orange programs at the Ford Foundation and the Aspen Institute, shares the inspiring story of the cooperation between former enemies, across multiple U.S. presidential administrations.

On the Global Ethics Forum series finale, best-selling author Robert Kaplan discusses China's global ambitions in an increasingly connected world. In this excerpt Kaplan discusses some of the underreported aspects of China's Belt and Road Initiative. Thanks for watching!

It's important to understand that Russia and France have had a centuries-long relationship which is mostly positive, say French scholars Marlene Laruelle and Jean-Yves Camus. Today there are layers of close economic and cultural ties, as well as common geopolitical interests, and the French extreme right and Russia share many of the same conservative values. Thus the remarkable strength of Russian influence in France is not surprising.

Thomas Weiss, a leading expert on the history and politics of the United Nations, gives incontrovertible evidence of the UN's achievements, such as the eradication of smallpox, but also details where the organization has fallen short. This is a critical time for all multilateral organizations and treaties, he stresses, as Trump has no regard for international cooperation.

In the wake of the countless Western media takes on Trump-Kim, Senior Fellow Devin Stewart defends the Singapore summit and the president's negotiating style and U.S. Air Force veteran Phil Caruso gives an inside perspective of what a freeze of military drills means. Did Trump give up too much? What are the next steps? And most importantly, are South Korea and Japan safer today than they were one week, six months, or a year ago?

Next time on Global Ethics Forum Yale Law School’s Amy Chua details the effects of tribalism and group identity on American society. In this excerpt Chua discusses why the United States, after the 2016 election, is acting more like a developing country than one of the richest nations in history.

There is a huge divide in the way Americans assess U.S. foreign policy. Take for example, the June G7 meeting, which ended in a clash between Trump and some of America's closest allies: Some say it was a disaster; others say Trump did the right thing. Where do we go from here to restore trust in expertise and government? Don't miss this fascinating conversation with two leading commentators, Colin Dueck and Kori Schake.

Why is democracy under siege around the world? Economist Dambisa Moyo cites a host of reasons, such as short-term thinking, low voter turnout, the huge sums spent on lobbying, and growing economic challenges. To fix these problems, she has 10 proposals for countries to choose from. They include compulsory voting and paying politicians more in order to stop corruption while also forcing them to be accountable for their policies.

Nadine Strossen gives a rousing, detailed, and convincing defense of free speech as it is laid out in the First Amendment. "American law really is nuanced and makes a great deal of common sense," she says and while censorship of 'hate speech' in other countries is certainly well-intended, in practice the laws have proven to do more harm than good.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang makes the case for universal basic income in the United States. In this excerpt Yang tells journalist Stephanie Sy how he would pay for $1,000 a month for every American adult.

There is a global surge in "golden visas" for the super-rich, who often have "no connection to the country other than a wire transfer, the ability to press a button, and pass a significant sum of money across borders," says Ayelet Shachar. Countries offering these include the U.S., the UK, and Malta. Yet in the U.S. the "dreamers," who grew up in America, are being denied citizenship. Do we really believe these visas are fair?

"Mexico is very present in our daily lives, sometimes even in ways we don't realize," says Andrew Selee. Did you know, for example, that some of America's most famous baked goods, such as Sara Lee, are owned by a Mexican company and made in Pennsylvania? From manufacturing and trade to film, food, and sports, plus the large number of Americans with Mexican heritage, the economies and cultures of Mexico and the U.S. are woven tightly together.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Georgetown’s Melanne Verveer discusses the connections between women’s issues, politics, human rights, and economics. In this excerpt Verveer tells journalist Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson about her role in the Obama administration.

How can you ensure that ethics are a core component, not only of an international affairs education, but of graduates' performance once they go out in the field? In this event for students and alumni of the Elliott School of International Affairs, the School's Dean Brigety and Professors Nolan and Kojm, along with Carnegie Council President Rosenthal, discuss the thorny issues of ethics, leadership, and practice in international relations.

Rome-based journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau tells the horrifying story of the thousands of Nigerian women and girls duped into being trafficked to Italy, where they are forced to become sex slaves, drug mules, or weapons smugglers. How can this be stopped? The Nigerian government turns a blind eye, Libya, the transit point, is a failed state, and Italy is overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of migrants--plus prostitution is legal there.

Muhammad Musa is executive director of BRAC, which is working with the one million Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh. He describes the problems there, including growing tensions with the host community and the threat of the coming monsoon season, which may bring floods and landslides. He looks forward to the day when the Rohingya can go home to Myanmar, but this can only occur with the help of the international community.

In this panel Adrian Basora makes a strong case for democracy as not only promoting American values but also serving U.S. interests, while Maia Otarashvili gives a frightening overview of the rise of "illiberal values" (Viktor Orbán's phrase) in the Eurasia region. Basora and Otarashvili are co-editors of "Does Democracy Matter? The United States and Global Democracy Support" and Nikolas Gvosdev is one of the contributors.

The popular memory of WWI today was basically engineered through propaganda and censorship during the war itself, says Charles Sorrie. Those involved in any war need convincing reasons why they are fighting. "There needs to be almost some sort of slogan. The one that was developed at that time, that America was fighting mostly for democracy or for freedom, is one that is still used today in popular history and in popular culture."

We are already living with climate change; and although countries have pledged to limit global warming to 2 °C, success seems highly unlikely. This panel explores how to advance ethical leadership on climate justice globally, nationally, and locally in the years ahead. Topics include the Paris Agreement and commitments going forward, geoengineering governance, the problems in California, and the creative ways the Seychelles are coping.

Every capitalist economy struggles with how to come to terms with greed, says John Paul Rollert, an expert on the intellectual history of capitalism. He describes how our perspective has changed from the Christian view of greed as an unalloyed sin, to the 18th century idea that it could bring positive benefits, to the unabashed "Greed is good" ethos in the movie "Wall Street." Where do we stand now? How can we rehabilitate capitalism?

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, University of Maryland Baltimore County's Professor Kate Brown details the ethical, social, and health costs of nuclear power since World War II. In this excerpt Brown, author of "Plutopia," and journalist Stephanie Sy discuss the little-known Cold War era nuclear production plants in the Soviet Union and Washington State.

"Unknown to the rest of America, we had one regiment of Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico which was totally integrated. The rest of the military was segregated, and the Puerto Rican regiment was integrated." Military historian Richard Millett discusses some surprising and neglected aspects of the Hispanic experience in World War I, along with the war's impact on the United States' relationship with its Latin American allies.

As Obama's adviser on Russian affairs, Michael McFaul helped craft the United States' policy known as "reset" that fostered new and unprecedented collaboration between the two countries. Then, as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012-2014, he had a front-row seat when this fleeting moment crumbled with Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency. "It's tragic," he says. "How is it that we have come back to something close to the Cold War?"

"I'm not making an argument that Maoism is coming back; we're very far away from that. But the crucial thing to recognize is just what we had known as characterizing the reform era is going away, and China is shifting into a more personalized authoritarian regime and one which is more closed with respect to outside influence. For me, I think when you see those things happening it makes you worried about what's the next norm that starts to break."

Over six years, Julie Chernov Hwang conducted over 100 interviews with current and former leaders and followers of radical Islamist groups in Indonesia to find out why some terrorists finally quit. What did she learn? The key is life skills training, family and community support, and personal development, she says. "If you are going to focus on deradicalization, focus it narrowly on use of violence. Don't try to overhaul someone's worldview."

"What happens when a predator drone has as much as autonomy as a self-driving car, moving to something that is able to do all of the combat functions all by itself, that it can go out, find the enemy, and attack the enemy without asking for permission?" asks military and technology expert Paul Scharre. The technology's not there yet, but it will be very soon, raising a host of ethical, legal, military, and security challenges.

In the 1930s during the run-up to WWII, many argued that arms manufacturers and bankers--"merchants of death"--had conspired to manipulate the U.S. into entering WWI. What is or should be the role of the profit motive in preparing for war? "This is a debate that is no less important now," says MIT's Christopher Capozzola, "but we are not having it, and we are not including all the people in that debate who need to be participating in it."

Unlike Trump, Duterte came to the presidency with a history in public service and he knew how to run a government, says John Gershman. "I would relate him in some ways more to the anti-democratic populist movements of Eastern Europe: authoritarian, a very heavy morality dimension to his vision of nationalism, with a focus on things like drugs, and with a healthy dose of misogyny in his rhetoric."

Are we witnessing a new era of cosmopolitan justice or are the old principles of victors' justice still in play? Economic and political theorist Daniele Archibugi discusses his new book, "Crime and Global Justice," which examines the history of global criminal justice and presents five case studies: Augusto Pinochet, Slobodan Milošević, Radovan Karadžić, Saddam Hussein, and Omar al-Basheer.

Professor Qin Gao, director of Columbia's China Center for Social Policy, explains the workings of the Chinese "Dibao" (limited income guarantee) system. "Dibao is doing relatively better than many other similar programs in developing countries," says Gao, yet it has limitations and some negative aspects. She also discusses Xi Jinping's ambitious goal to eradicate poverty by 2020, and the benefits of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) system.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, "Atlantic" contributing editor Gregg Easterbrook looks beyond the headlines and makes the case for optimism in an age of fear. In this excerpt, Easterbrook shares some positive statistics about the global food supply and economics in the United States.

Growing up in Apartheid-era South Africa, Robert Bank cared about social injustice from an early age. Today he travels the world for AJWS, working with local activists on a range of issues such as women's rights in India and LGBT rights in Uganda. "My job—very much like a conductor of an orchestra in some way—is to ensure that every instrument has its beautiful voice heard and that this melody is given the opportunity to really soar."

What are the qualities and conditions that enable people to become successful peacemakers? At a time when peace seems elusive and conflict endemic, Bruce Jentleson makes a forceful and inspiring case for the continued relevance of statesmanship and diplomacy and provides practical guidance to 21st-century leaders seeking lessons from some of history's most accomplished negotiators, activists, and trailblazers.

"What you stopped seeing after World War I was great power conflict involving chemical weapons, and what you started seeing was asymmetric conflicts or regional conflicts that involved chemical weapons. That actually disturbed me even more because what I started realizing was that as time went on the weaker you were, the more likely that another state would use chemical weapons against you or your people."

"The failure of globalism [an ideology of bringing people closer together] is very different than the failure of globalization," says Ian Bremmer. "I don't think globalization has failed. It has led to a lot more wealth. It has taken a lot of people out of poverty." But in many Western countries the losers have not been taken care of, so the backlash is hardly surprising. What about the Chinese approach? Is it more successful?

"What distinguished Addams from other peace advocates was her strong emphasis on the crucial role of marginalized people, such as women, immigrants, and workers, in the peacemaking process," says Seiko Mimaki. Her views are highly relevant today, when people see themselves as abandoned by global elites. Unlike that of Woodrow Wilson, her vision of cosmopolitanism "pursued freedom and opportunity for everyone, not just for a privileged few."

Harvard's Yascha Mounk argues that liberalism and democracy are coming apart, creating new forms of illiberal democracy (democracy without rights) and undemocratic liberalism (rights without democracy). Populist leaders are flourishing; indeed, Hungary is on the verge of descending into dictatorship, with shamefully little criticism from the Europe or the U.S. What are the causes of this phenomenon? What can we do about it?

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Nexus Institute founder Rob Riemen delivers a stark warning about the rise of fascism in the United States and Europe. In this excerpt, Riemen discusses the features of fascism in the 21st century and why it needs to be called out.

Although it has been written about for centuries, post-traumatic stress was not officially recognized as a medical condition until the 1980s. However World War I "was really a turning point in terms of acknowledging and starting to identify and treat what we call today post-traumatic stress," says Tanisha Fazal of the University of Minnesota, whose project on treating PTS will make the connection between World War I and current times.

Are there such things as timeless principles of grand strategy? If so, are they always the same across epochs and cultures? What can we learn from reading the classics, such as Thucydides, Sun Tzu, and Clausewitz? "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing," according to Isaiah Berlin. Which type makes better strategists, or do you need to be a bit of both? John Lewis Gaddis has some wise and thoughtful answers.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Institute for Policy Studies’ Chuck Collins discusses extreme inequality in America. In this excerpt, Collins tells journalist Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson what the one percent needs to do to build a more equitable society.

"World War I was the beginning of what we now consider to be one of the cornerstones of the ways in which we engage in war," says Major Caruso. "At that time air power was relatively new, it was a nascent technology, but now most countries have some form of air force. There are recent conflicts that have been fought almost entirely via air power." He goes on to discuss the evolution of international humanitarian law with respect to air power.

With rich and varied coral reefs, Indonesia and the Philippines are critically important for marine biodiversity, says Brett Jenks of Rare, a conservation organization. Overfishing could result in millions losing their livelihoods and leads to degradation of coastal habitats, making them less resilient to climate change. But there is hope. In marine reserves started as pilot projects, fish populations are increasing by as much as 390 percent.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, the UN's Philip Alston discusses poverty in the United States and the dark side of American exceptionalism. In this excerpt, Alston tells journalist Stephanie Sy about a shocking example of extreme poverty in Alabama and why it persists in 21st century America.

China experts Cunningham and Wasserstrom start by talking about the small, mainly campus-based #MeToo campaign in China--to avoid internet censorship young people often use emojis of a rice bowl and a rabbit, which sound the same as "me too" in Chinese, but now the censors have figured that out--and go on to consider more general issues of censorship, repression, and the ups and downs of gender equality in China.

The revelations about the misuse of Facebook data have started a pushback against the top five big tech companies: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. How do approaches to privacy and data use differ in the U.S., Europe, and China? What kind of transparency should we demand? How will AI affect workers? All this and more in a lively and informative discussion with author and "Financial Times" columnist Rana Foroohar.

Katherine Akey is researching "gueules cassées," soldiers who suffered facially disfiguring injuries on WWI battlefields, focusing on those who were treated at the American Hospital in Paris. Though many of their stories have been lost, haunting photographs of these servicemen remain. Akey's research will delve into complicated questions about caring for the wounded, the ethics of war photography, and how Americans learn about World War I.

Populist leader President Duterte has killed thousands in his "war on drugs," idolizes Putin, and openly uses fake news and excessive nationalism to consolidate his power. And it's working: he has an 82 percent popularity rating right now. What happened to the nation's liberal democratic heritage? Author and historian Lisandro Claudio discusses the situation and how he is using Youtube videos, articles, and a new book to fight back.

"Indonesian civil societies and academics are very good at collecting cases of discrimination," says Sandra Hamid, author of "Normalizing Intolerance." "But what we don't have is the ethnography of the everyday life of discrimination, things that are not necessarily discrimination with a capital D; this is like your daily experience." Today we see myriad examples of the gradual normalization of belittling and isolating non-Muslims.

Some unpleasant truths for liberals, from William Galston: The rise of anti-pluralist populist movements is caused by a combination of economic factors and migration; we need to take these concerns seriously, instead of feeling morally superior. In the U.S., this will require reintegrating our economy so that small towns and rural areas thrive again; breaking through government gridlock; and purging the "poison" of our immigration policies.

Are there differences in political, social, and economic attitudes among Indonesians--and Indonesian Muslims in particular--based on their levels of religious piety? Intriguingly, Tom Pepinsky and his fellow researchers found that the answer is no; piety is not the deciding factor. Pepinsky also examines Indonesia's approach toward minority rights, which he defines as tolerance for group rights but not for individual rights.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy discusses China’s complicated relationship with environmentalism. In this excerpt, Economy tells Stephanie Sy how Chinese leadership’s approach toward climate change has evolved in the last few decades.

Today we can accurately measure happiness and we know much more about its causes, says Professor Layard. It turns out that getting richer is often not enough for real happiness. So now, instead of just looking at GDP, many policymakers around the world are focusing on how to raise the level of people's satisfaction with their lives, including their mental and physical health, for example.

Automation is causing the greatest shift in human history and will put millions of Americans out of work, says entrepreneur and 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang. His solution? Put human values before GDP and provide a universal basic income of $1,000 a month, funded by a 10 percent value-added tax (VAT). This is not a government program, he argues, but a dividend given to we, the people, who are the owners of this country.

Europe is going through deep structural changes, says Andrew Michta of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. He argues that it may become "a "Europe of clusters," where countries even within the EU will align themselves differently depending on their economic or security interests. In any case, these shifts are largely driven by internal factors such as the migration crisis, not by U.S. policy towards Europe.

If you wish to understand the depth and breadth of the geographical, historical, technological, and political forces that are shaping our world, there is no better guide than Robert Kaplan. Using Marco Polo's journey as "a geographical framing device for Eurasia today," he examines China's ambitious One Belt One Road project, dissecting China's imperial dream and its multiple, under-reported objectives.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, International Rescue Committee president David Miliband discusses the moral tragedy of the refugee crisis and what the West needs to do. In this excerpt, Miliband brings up the moral, strategic, and historic reasons for caring about the world’s 65 million refugees.

Professional diplomats are made not born, says Nicholas Kralev of the Washington International Diplomatic Academy. It's not enough to be a people person: training is needed in specific skills. Sadly, many Americans don't realize how diplomats' successes or failures can affect their own security and prosperity. Even U.S. presidents often don't appreciate the Foreign Service. And under Trump, State Department professionals are leaving in droves.

"Despite the vibrancy of civil society, political and economic power continues to be in the hands of very few people in the Philippines. In fact, there are statistics that would say that if you want to make one important policy decision, you only have to talk to about 40 people because that is where power is concentrated." Joy Aceron, of G-Watch talks politics, press freedom, and civil society in this info-packed podcast.

Before Nuremberg--indeed, long before the end of the war--there was the United Nations War Crimes Commission, a little-known agency which assisted national governments in putting on trial thousands of Axis war criminals in Europe and Asia. Why do we know so little about it? "With the onset of the Cold War and the repression of civil rights in America, this whole Commission was shut down," says Dan Plesch. Learn more about this buried history.

Anthropologist Sopranzetti's new book discusses the surprising role of motorcycle taxi drivers in a recent coup in Thailand, and their important place in everyday Thai life. In this fascinating interview, he also looks at the bigger picture: "there is a larger trend in East Asia of a certain Chinese model of authoritarianism that is not outside the rule of law, but in fact uses the rule of law to govern through other methods."

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, British philosopher A. C. Grayling discusses the crisis of democracy in the U.S. and UK and how we can fix it. In this excerpt, Grayling talks about some unfortunate traditions in British politics that are especially corrosive to the system of representative democracy.

We have made tremendous progress, but there's still a long way to go, says Melanne Verveer, head of Georgetown's Institute for Women, Peace and Security and former ambassador-at-large for global women's issues. She looks forward to the day when "women's issues" are no longer seen as marginal, but as a mainstream component of peace and prosperity.

"The United States today is starting to display destructive political dynamics much more typically associated with developing countries: ethno-nationalist movements, the erosion of trust in our institutions and electoral outcomes, and above all, the transformation of democracy into an engine of zero-sum political tribalism."

The maximum penalty for blasphemy in Pakistan is death, and public protest is not allowed. Indonesia is nowhere near as bad as this--yet. "Indonesia is now going down the Pakistan route," says Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch. "There are more and more political manipulations using the blasphemy law, and there are more and more discriminatory regulations against minorities in Indonesia."

Rich and poor, we're all dependent on the global financial system and it can be a force for good, says human rights law professor David Kinley, but the incentive structures within banking encourage people to behave unethically. In other words, "finance does not attract cheats, it creates them." How can we change this? We have to start with education, says Kinley.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Climate Museum founder Miranda Massie discusses the need for all Americans to take an interest in the environment. In this excerpt, Massie tells journalist Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson how her previous career prepared her for environmental activism and alerted her to the social costs of global warming.

Can tyranny happen here? asks historian Timothy Snyder. His chilling answer is, "it can happen, it happens to people like us, and it is happening now." How can we fight back? Snyder offers 20 lessons; the first is the most important, as if we fail in this one it will be too late for the others: "Don't obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given." Have the courage to take a stand--easy to say, but difficult to do.

Satyagraha, one of Gandhi's most influential teachings, stresses "passive resistance" in the face of injustice. Qunnipiac's Gadkar-Wilcox saw a powerful example of this in regards to a debate in India over sanitary napkins and she also sees it as Florida high school students push legislators for stricter gun control. Why is this tactic or "disposition" so effective?

Today, many feel paralyzed by the constant stream of bad news. Yet as Gregg Easterbrook shows, statistics on crime, poverty, and longevity prove that things are actually getting better, both in the United States and most of the world. So why do we see the world in such a negative light? Is it a coincidence that this trend started in 2004, the same year that Facebook was created?

What are the real facts about fake news? Brendan Nyhan is co-author of an important new study on fake news consumption during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. He discovered that a staggering one in four Americans visited a fake news site in the month before the election. But what was the actual agenda for most of these sites and what effect did they have on voters? His findings may surprise you.

In this fascinating conversation, Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, describes how virtual reality (VR) can be used as a force for good. By immersing people in experiences they wouldn't otherwise have, such as the disastrous effects of climate change or the struggles of refugees, they can be galvanized to tackle problems that previously seemed remote and abstract.

Are Americans too deferential to the armed forces, becoming increasingly willing to "outsource" judgement to the military? Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev talks with Dr. Kori Schake of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, co-author with James Mattis of "Warriors and Citizens: American Views of Our Military."

No more euphemisms and denials, says Rob Riemen in this frightening and inspiring talk. Call it by its name: fascism. Neither technology, nor economic growth, nor political activism can fix this, he continues. We must create a new counterculture that replaces kitsch and conformism with truth, empathy, beauty, and justice.

In his third book on slavery, which took 16 years of research, Siddharth Kara calculates that there are roughly 31 million slaves worldwide, at least half of them in South Asia. We need to apply much more resources and compassion to end "this horrible indignity."

There are few countries in the world that are more misrepresented in the West than Iran. By exploring the imperial rivalries that played out there, the dynastic changes and revolutions, the population explosion, the role of religion, and Iran's relations with other nations in the Middle East, Abbas Amanat provides a context that helps us to demystify present-day Iran, one of the most powerful nations in the Middle East.

Former ambassador to Burma Derek Mitchell examines the complex situation there, including the roots of the ongoing Rohingya crisis and China's influence there. Aung San Suu Kyi is not providing the necessary leadership, he says--despite her constraints she should be speaking out about the Rohingya and about free speech, for example. Nevertheless, she has been given too much flak, and this has become counterproductive.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Steven Cook discusses the violent aftermath of the Arab Spring. In this excerpt, Cook describes how and why Washington got its response wrong to revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, with a special focus on Libya.

"'Likes' don't count," was the rallying cry that first brought people to the Maidan. In this remarkable conversation, Marci Shore explores what it means "to experience revolution in your own skin": the human transformation, blurring of time, and destroying of boundaries during this "extraordinary coming together of men, of women, of young people, of old people, of Jews, of Armenians, of Russian speakers, of Ukrainian speakers."

Chuck Collins grew up in a wealthy family and gave away his fortune at the age of 26, yet he realizes that he still has advantages accrued over generations. The current level of inequality is bad for society as a whole, he declares. "It is not in anyone's interest to keep moving toward a sort of economic and racial apartheid." But it doesn't have to be this way. It can be reversed.

Probably the most dangerous geopolitical environment in decades-China, AI, Trump, end of Pax Americana--yes, it's very bad. But all these challenges energize political scientist Ian Bremmer to do his best work! Don't miss this great talk.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Marlene Laruelle explains the rise of far right political parties throughout Europe. In this excerpt, Laruelle and journalist Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson discuss the issues of immigration and refugee flows as it relates to societal problems in Western Europe.

Asha Castleberry, Fordham professor and U.S. Army veteran, describes her "mixed reaction" to Trump's National Security Strategy--touching on China and Russia, cybersecurity, and climate change--and what effect it will actually have on the military's operations. Plus, she details an increasingly complicated Middle East, with the Saudi crown prince on a warpath and a dangerous transitional period in Syria and Iraq after major victories against ISIS.

The UN's Philip Alston traveled across the U.S. recently and found appalling conditions, from homelessness in California to open sewage in rural Alabama. He discusses the political choices that allow this to continue and proposes solutions.

Over two years after the release of a report on sexual exploitation and abuse by international peacekeeping forces in the Central African Republic, chaired by Marie Deschamps, has anything changed? Not much, says Deschamps in this shocking interview. The report's recommendations have not been implemented and there is still a "climate of impunity" for abusers, even though the first allegations against UN forces date back to the 1980s.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Harvard's Graham Allison discusses why he thinks the United States and China could be on track for war. In this excerpt, Allison describes why China is in a position to challenge America as the world's preeminent superpower.

"I would say most of the people I have talked to outside of government, including some people in Congress, have been a little taken aback," says Julie Smith, senior fellow at Center for a New American Security. "A lot of people have been left scratching their heads because a lot of what appears in the strategy has actually been contradicted by the president himself in one or another of his tweet storms."

"I would say that the principle of humanity, and humanity in war even, is a global ethic. We can trace it through human history," says ICRC's Hugo Slim. Don't miss this in-depth discussion about the work of the Red Cross and its core humanitarian ethics as laid out in the Geneva Convention: humanity and compassion; the principal of a clear distinction between combatants and noncombatants; and proportionality in the weapons and the force used.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, former Republican congressman Bob Inglis discusses how he went from climate change denier to activist and a conservative approach to environmentalism. In this excerpt, Inglis explains to journalist Stephanie Sy how climate change became politicized and deniers took root in the Republican Party.

Did you know that Tunisia started championing women's rights in the eighth century, and is still far ahead of most Arab and Muslim-majority countries? Indeed Tunisia's trajectory on many fronts has been radically more progressive than that of other Arab nations. So while it it may serve as an inspiration, its unique history probably makes its success impossible to duplicate, says Safwan Masri.

Although today's hot topic is nuclear proliferation, let's not forget that wars like Syria are being fought with conventional ones, such as aircraft and artillery. Jonathan Caverley has an intriguing and practical proposal to slow down the spread of these deadly weapons.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Stony Brook professor Jonathan Sanders discusses the media and propaganda in Russia, from Soviet times to Putin. In this excerpt, Sanders, former CBS News Moscow correspondent, describes to journalist Randall Pinkston the surprising state of Russian media in 2017.

In some ways Europe is more fragmented than at any time in the last three decades, says Drozdiak. There's a north/south split between wealthy creditor nations and deeply indebted ones; an east/west divide, as Poland and Hungary revert to nationalism; pressures of regional separatism; Brexit; and the migrant crisis. Then there's Trump, who sees Europe as a burden and economic rival. 2018 could be a pivotal year. What will happen?

Did you know that 122 countries have adopted a treaty to ban nuclear weapons? The organization behind this movement is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). In this spirited and informative discussion, Ray Acheson and Beatrice Fihn of ICAN take apart the nuclear deterrence myth, expecially in the case of North Korea, and the belief that nukes are "special" and therefore exempt from the ban on targeting civilians.

Today there are 65 million people who have fled their homes because of conflict or persecution, says the International Rescue Committee's David Miliband. These are refugees not economic migrants, and half of them are children. It's a long-term crisis that will last our lifetimes. Why should we care? And what can we do about it, both at a policy level and as individuals?

Despite defeats like Mosul and Raqqa, ISIS and other extremist groups are thriving, says Ullah. For them, the most important battlefield is not the physical one but the information one, and there they are winning. They are nimble, moving from open-source platforms to encrypted ones and are not afraid to fail, getting instant feedback on what propaganda works best. We need a much more concerted effort--a "Manhattan project"--to combat this.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Columbia’s Mark Lilla discusses his controversial book “The Once and Future Liberal” and how America can move forward in the Trump era. In this excerpt, Lilla explains the dire consequences of liberals playing identity politics, as he calls it, in the face of a dangerous and regressive Republican agenda and electoral strategy.

Hofstra University's Jess Holzer is focused on improving public health at the community level. But she teaches that good intentions alone are not enough to build an inclusive and succesful project. What are the tangible benefits of showing respect as a medical reseacher? And what's the connection between bioethics and biking on Long Island?

In a wide-ranging conversation, Emmy award-winning Vice News producer Josh Davis takes Devin Stewart behind the scenes of his in-depth documentaries, from the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville to daily life in North Korea.

What has led to the rise of far-right parties across Europe and how have they evolved over time? Is immigration really the main issue, or is there a more complex set of problems that vary from nation to nation? What are the ideological and practical connections between the far right and Russia? Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Marlene Laruelle is an expert on Europe, Russia, Eurasia, and Europe's far right. Don't miss her analysis.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Sam Kass details his time as President Obama’s White House chef and senior policy advisor for nutrition and the links between climate change and how and what we eat. In this excerpt, Kass and journalist Roxana Saberi discuss an uncertain future for food policy in the United States under Trump.

Francis Wade, author of "The Enemy Within," a new book on the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, explains the historical background to the persecution of the Muslim Rohingya minority and gives a first-hand account of the terrible situation now. Has democracy been good for Burma? Will some Rohingya refugees become Islamic extremists?

There is disturbing evidence that China is weaponizing North Korea, and it's time that Washington started asking Beijing some pointed questions, says Gordon Chang. The fact is, the United States has overwhelming leverage over China--we just don't use it enough--and China has overwhelming leverage over North Korea. "These two points lead to one conclusion, and that is, we can, without the use of force, disarm North Korea."

How does climate change play into Xi Jinping's larger strategy for China's economy and its role on the global stage? Xi has a vision for addressing climate change and pollution; but how is it implemented in practice, especially in the hinterlands far from the rich coastal provinces? Elizabeth Economy is an expert on Chinese domestic and foreign policy, especially related to environmental matters. She explores these questions and more.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Columbia's David Phillips discusses how Erdoğan's Turkey has turned from an important U.S. ally to a rogue regime. In this excerpt, Phillips asks pointed questions about the July 2016 coup, which led to Erdoğan cracking down and consolidating his power.

Duterte is part of an arc of populism in emerging market democracies such as Turkey and India, says author Haydarian, but unlike populist movements in developed economies, its main supporters are the rising middle class. This newly prosperous group demands better living conditions and is increasingly attracted to strongmen leaders like Duterte, "who promise overnight solutions to very complicated 21st-century problems."

Thucydides is not saying that the inevitable frictions between a rising power and a ruling one will always lead to war, says Allison. The danger is when "third-party actions become provocations to which one or the other feels obliged to react, to which the other primary actor feels obliged to respond, which then leads to a cascade, often dragging people where they do not want to go." Think North Korea.

Chernobyl is considered the greatest nuclear disaster of all time. But over decades America's Hanford plant and Russia's Mayak plant each issued almost four times the amount of radiation as Chernobyl. Historian Kate Brown explains that in the closed atomic cities serving these plutonium plants, "residents gave up their civil and biological rights for consumer rights." How does today's America mirror these segregated plutopias?

Representative democracy in the UK has been corrupted by the three B's, says Grayling: blackmail, bullying, and bribery. There are similar problems in the United States. To make things worse, covert persuasion tactics via social media are rampant. Yet we can still make representative democracy work, he says. We need transparency, breaking of the grip of the party machine, and control of the amount of money spent on elections.

Half a decade after Arabs across the Middle East poured into the streets to demand change, hopes for democracy have disappeared in a maelstrom of violence and renewed state repression. How did things go so wrong so quickly across a wide range of regimes? What role can and should the United States play? Don't miss this conversation with Steven Cook, an expert on Arab and Turkish politics as well as U.S.-Middle East policy.

Hurricane Sandy was the catalyst that impelled Miranda Massie to quit her job as a civil rights lawyer and found the Climate Museum. "I think that climate change is THE equality and THE civil rights issue of the 21st century," she says. Why open this museum in New York and what does it hope to accomplish? Find out more in this interview that covers not only the multi-faceted impacts of climate change, but also what we can do about it.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Microsoft Research’s danah boyd discusses the ethical and political implications of big data and artificial intelligence. In this excerpt, boyd explains to journalist Stephanie Sy some of the disturbing issues that arise when machine learning and algorithms are used in the criminal justice system.

"Though most of the literature you will read on the future of war certainly talks about war as between regular armies, as proper fights, now with drones or with autonomous vehicles or robots or whatever, or even painless--cyber and so on--yet actually the reality of war is as it has always been: it is vicious, and it is nasty, and it kills the wrong people, and it does so in considerable numbers."

Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal and Senior Fellow Devin Stewart discuss the challenges to liberalism, in the United States and on the international stage, and explain today's debates through a historical context. Have too many forgotten why and how the liberal order was put in place? Can liberals find solidarity in the face of adversity?

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Earth Institute executive director Steven Cohen offers hope for a sustainable future. In this excerpt, Cohen tells journalist Stephanie Sy that despite Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement, the momentum is on the side of America's businesses, states, cities, and civil society.

How can we engage with Muslims around the world without really understanding what they believe? On studying the Qur'an, religious scholar Garry Wills found that many of our perceptions of Islam are false or distorted. Most surprisingly, Islam is a very inclusive religion, more so than Judaism or Christianity. What's more, the Qur'an gives women more property rights than early Christian women had. Don't miss this important talk.

Republican politician Bob Inglis used to think that climate change was nonsense; but his son--and science--changed his mind. Today he advocates letting market forces do their work. "The thing to do is to make it apparent in the marketplace what the costs of energy are, and eliminate all the subsidies, and have a level playing field and a strong competition. If you do that, we can fix climate change. That is what needs to be done."

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis discusses the history and geopolitics of the world’s oceans. In this excerpt, Stavridis discusses the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and its military and economic significance to the United States.

How much of a threat is fake news to the average citizen? What is Google doing to counteract its spread? Learn more with this conversation with Daniel Sieberg, co-founder of Google News Lab. Launched about three years ago, the News Lab is a small team of Google employees who collaborate with journalists and entrepreneurs around the world to use technology to strengthen digital storytelling and produce more in-depth reporting.

The liberal order was never truly a global order, and we're not entering a multipolar era either, says Amitav Acharya. It's more accurate to call it a decentered, "multiplex" world, one where there are multiple consequential actors and complex global interdependence. Such a world is an unprecedented phenomenon and globalization will surely change. But it won't necessarily be a period of instability.