As the November 2020 presidential election approaches, it is worth imagining how a foreign adversary might attempt to intervene in the domestic political process.
Russia seemed a country on the rise globally, with President Vladimir Putin well on his way to lengthening his time in power. But he faces serious headwinds with COVID 19, the virus’s economic impact in Russia, and the collapse of oil prices that are driving the Russian economy into recession. Steven Pifer discusses Putin’s future and the prospects for US-Russian relations.
Delaying Doomsday
Debak Das, Scott Sagan and Rupal Mehta discuss Mehta's new book, Delaying Doomsday: The Politics of Nuclear Rerversal, with James Goldgeier, Co-Director of Bridging the Gap.
![[left: image] Oriana Skylar Mastro, [right: text] Congratulations, Oriana Skylar Mastro, Recipient of the 2020 America in the World Consortium Prize for 'Best Policy Article' from Duke University, Johns Hopkins SAIS, and Texas University at Austin](https://fsi9-prod.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/styles/328x223_x2/public/hero/awc_prize_hero1_0.png?h=c4d9845d&itok=6Z6Q24Wr)
Mastro, who begins her role as FSI Center Fellow on August 1, has won the AWC Best Policy Article on U.S. Foreign Policy and Grand Strategy award for her insights on how China leverages ambiguity to gain global influence and what the United States can do to counter the PRC’s ambitions.
Dr. David Relman, infectious diseases expert and microbiologist at Stanford Medicine, discusses the Oxford vaccine candidate and just how deadly COVID-19 can be.
The CDC called on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to develop a set of national, evidence-based guidelines for public health emergency preparedness and response. The recommendations are in.
Mastro, whose appointment as a Center Fellow at Shorenstein APARC begins on August 1, considers the worsening relations between the world’s two largest economies, analyzes Chinese maritime ambitions, and talks about her military career and new research projects.
The archival record makes clear that killing large numbers of civilians was the primary purpose of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The attack would be illegal today for violating three major requirements of the Geneva Conventions: the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution.
During the periods when it sought international autonomy, Brazil has found in China an attractive partner in criticizing the liberal international order fostered by the United States in the wake of World War II.
We've seen this movie before [on Ukraine]
Volodymyr Zelensky swept to victory in Ukraine’s spring 2019 presidential election because he promised renewed reform and a real fight against corruption.
Today, the reality looks quite different.
Profile of a CISAC Fellow: Jason Reinhardt, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories
The Science of Trinity
Siegfried Hecker, former director of both Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Center for International Cooperation and Security, reflects on the meaning of the Trinity nuclear weapons test and its implications for national security today.
A new study reveals particles that were released from nuclear plants damaged in the devastating 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami contained small amounts of radioactive plutonium.
An anthropologist explores the network of citizen monitoring capabilities that developed after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011 for what they might teach all of us about such strategies for the covonavirus pandemic.
Starlink is a space-based internet service provider that seeks to provide high-speed (40 mbps upload, 100 mbps download ), near-global coverage of the populated world by 2021—bringing this service to locations where access previously has been unreliable, expensive or completely unavailable.
President Donald Trump’s chief arms control envoy last week acknowledged the possibility that the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) could be extended, but he added, “only under select circumstances.” He then put down conditions that, if adhered to, will ensure the Trump administration does not extend the treaty.
President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government in Ukraine face two fundamental challenges: ending the conflict with Russia and implementing domestic reform. Overcoming these challenges appeared hard enough at the start of 2020. COVID-19 is only making that more difficult.
CISAC senior fellows Stephen Luby, professor of medicine, and Paul N. Edwards, director of the Program in Science, Technology and Society, teach plausible scenarios that could result in human extinction within the next 100 years. Suddenly, the danger feels less hypothetical.
Important pandemic lessons from cybersecurity would have saved the U.S. economic and medical heartbreak had those lessons been heeded earlier.
US presidents tend to set maximalist objectives without necessarily providing the resourcing or laying the necessary diplomatic foundations to achieve such goals.