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192. Resilience in the Face of the Coronavirus Pandemic
- Author:
- David Steven and Alex Evans
- Publication Date:
- 05-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- World Politics Review
- Abstract:
- Just months after reports emerged of a novel coronavirus spreading in central China, our world, and all of our individual worlds, have been transformed by what has become a terrifying pandemic. Governments around the globe are taking unprecedented steps to restrict movement and limit social contact among their populations to contain the virus’s spread. Growing numbers of the world’s inhabitants are now living in either voluntary or imposed isolation, or preparing to. The articles collected here look at what governments, other global actors and individuals must do to survive the crisis and navigate the new world beyond it.
- Topic:
- Health, Public Health, Coronavirus, Pandemic, and Resilience
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
193. The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Strategic Stability and Nuclear Risk, Volume III, South Asian Perspectives
- Author:
- Peter Topychkanov, Sanatan Kulshrestha, Yanitra Kumaraguru, Malinda Meegoda, Kritika Roy, Saima Aman Sial, Dmitry Stefanovich, and Maaike Verbruggen
- Publication Date:
- 04-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
- Abstract:
- This edited volume is the third in a series of three. The series forms part of a SIPRI project that explores regional perspectives and trends related to the impact that recent advances in artificial intelligence could have on nuclear weapons and doctrines, as well as on strategic stability and nuclear risk. This volume assembles the perspectives of eight experts on South Asia on why and how machine learning and autonomy may become the focus of an arms race among nuclear-armed states. It further explores how the adoption of these technologies may have an impact on their calculation of strategic stability and nuclear risk at the regional and transregional levels.
- Topic:
- Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Power, Cybersecurity, Political stability, Disarmament, and Artificial Intelligence
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan, Russia, South Asia, India, East Asia, and Global Focus
194. Towards Greater Nuclear Restraint: Raising the Threshold for Nuclear Weapon Use
- Author:
- Tytti Erästö
- Publication Date:
- 05-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
- Abstract:
- This report focuses on the risks that a lack of nuclear restraint pose for international security. On the one hand, the problem has to do with uncertainty regarding the first use of nuclear weapons, which has increased in recent years as a result of technological developments, political tensions, and the deadlock in nuclear arms control. On the other hand, there is a longer-term trend of a lowering nuclear threshold in response to WMD proliferation threats by non-nuclear weapon states. After identifying some of the most problematic aspects of the current nuclear policies of the five nuclear weapon states (NWS), the report makes the case for greater restraint, including recommendations for reducing doctrinal ambiguity and more credible assurances that the threshold for nuclear weapon use remains high. The report also seeks to provide conceptual tools for a broad international dialogue on nuclear doctrines, based on a recent agreement by the NWS to pursue such dialogue in the 1968 Treaty on the NonProliferation of Nuclear Weapons (Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT) context.
- Topic:
- Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, and Disarmament
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
195. Catalyzing Consensus around Global Commitments
- Author:
- Rebeccah L. Heinrichs
- Publication Date:
- 11-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Hudson Institute
- Abstract:
- An international consensus to meet contemporary challenges will develop primarily around defending against shared threats. If the United States is to turn this consensus into collaboration to strengthen security, it must stake out a clear vision of its primary threats and missions. As has become evident over the last few years, doing so will necessarily require adaptations to ally dynamics and disruptions to some international organizations, treaties, and agreements. These changes should not reflexively cause concern that the United States is “withdrawing from the world stage” or has “abandoned its leadership role”; rather, these disruptions are necessary to recalibrate international efforts to rise to contemporary challenges. As part of the US initiative to build consensus, Washington should be especially sensitive to and supportive of those allied and partner efforts already underway that align with US security priorities. It should seek to maximize their effectiveness, in turn providing an incentive for other nations to do the same.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, International Organization, and Alliance
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus and United States of America
196. Democracy by Design: An Affirmative Response to the Illiberal Use of Technology for 2021
- Author:
- Kara Frederick
- Publication Date:
- 12-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
- Abstract:
- Aglobal contest between democracies and autocracies is raging on the digital front. Technology stands to alter the balance between free, open societies and closed, repressive regimes. Nation states in direct competition with the United States seek to project global influence by shaping an existing digital order to their will. Impulses toward illiberal use of technology at home threaten to curtail individual liberties, constrict opportunity, and erode a truly open society. Democracies do not yet have a model for how to confront this. In the United States, a roadmap for a solution must start with the fundamental question: How should U.S. technology companies, with the help of the U.S. government, respond to the illiberal use of technology by authoritarian actors abroad? This report contends with this question by identifying concrete actions and threat-mitigating strategies that contain the input of government, the tech sector, civil society, and academia. It provides starting points to address the systemic risk inherent in dealing with authoritarian regimes and also examines cost imposition on those complicit in tech-enabled human rights abuses. Yet a strategy aimed only at staunching the illiberal use of technology will fail in the long term. Instead, the U.S. government and tech companies alike must recruit democratic allies to purvey an affirmative agenda that promotes digital freedom across the globe. This report proposes an agenda that stresses privacy leadership by the United States and its technology companies. It identifies areas of collaboration for U.S. allies and democratic partners, like digital trade, foreign law enforcement requests for data, and technical standards. This report’s affirmative agenda also contains an imperative for U.S. tech companies to build commercial norms toward digital freedom and incentivize transparency within their own ranks. For digital freedom to prevail over authoritarian uses of technology, democracies must present something better. Together, they must establish an alternative model for the use of technology globally. These recommendations build that democratic case, starting with the United States.
- Topic:
- Human Rights, Science and Technology, Authoritarianism, and Democracy
- Political Geography:
- North America, Global Focus, and United States of America
197. Toward a More Proliferated World? The Geopolitical Forces that Will Shape the Spread of Nuclear Weapons
- Author:
- Eric M. Brewer, Ilan Goldenberg, Joseph Rodgers, Maxwell Simon, and Kaleigh Thomas
- Publication Date:
- 09-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
- Abstract:
- The United States and the international community have been relatively successful at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, but there are new reasons to question whether this track record will last into the future. Working with partners, the United States has steadily built a framework of disincentives and barriers to prevent proliferation. These include: 1) international treaties and agreements that have erected legal, political, and normative barriers to the bomb; 2) U.S. security commitments to allies that dampen their own perceived need for nuclear weapons; and, 3) a set of tough penalties (e.g., sanctions) for those who get caught trying to build the bomb. In other words, the barriers to entry to the nuclear club are high, and those countries that want the ultimate weapon need to be willing to accept significant risks. This helps explain why, although many countries have explored or pursued nuclear weapons, only nine states have them today. But several trends are eroding the foundation on which this formidable set of barriers rests. These trends are rooted in, and being shaped by, changes to the nature and structure of the international system: namely, the decline of U.S. influence and its gradual withdrawal from the international order that it helped create and lead for more than 70 years, and the concurrent rise of a more competitive security environment, particularly among great powers. These trends (detailed below) will have three broad implications for proliferation and U.S. policy. First, they stand to increase pressures on countries to seek nuclear weapons or related capabilities as a hedge. Second, they will almost certainly challenge the U.S. ability to effectively wield the traditional “carrots and sticks” of nonproliferation and counterproliferation policy and dilute the effectiveness of those tools. Finally, they could increasingly pit U.S. nonproliferation goals against other policy objectives, forcing harder tradeoffs.
- Topic:
- Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Geopolitics, Nonproliferation, and Post Cold War
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus and United States of America
198. Rebooting Congressional Cybersecurity Oversight
- Author:
- Carrie Cordero and David Thaw
- Publication Date:
- 01-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
- Abstract:
- Cybersecurity oversight is due for a reboot. This paper explores the need for refreshed congressional oversight of cybersecurity. After laying out why cybersecurity oversight presents special challenges, this paper suggests that the disparate nature of the cybersecurity policymaking legal framework is mismatched to the nature of the cybersecurity problem, resulting in difficulty legislating in this space. It then provides two key recommendations to guide a congressional cybersecurity oversight reboot. Cybersecurity is a broad challenge spanning many disciplines and industries. This paper argues that the current “patchwork” legal framework is ill suited to address cybersecurity questions either for legislative oversight or effective policymaking. The paper provides an overview of the nature and scope of the cybersecurity problem, with a focus on how the complexity of the field affects congressional oversight activities. Congress has been conducting a substantial amount of oversight in this area in recent years. Those efforts, however, have not yet resulted in legislative actions that have demonstrably improved national cybersecurity. This paper seeks to aid the effort to craft legal authorities that deal with an increasingly complex set of cyberthreats. This short exposition provides a path to rebooting Congress’ approach to cybersecurity oversight in a way that would allow these issues to be addressed more comprehensively.
- Topic:
- Security, Science and Technology, and Cybersecurity
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
199. The Terrorist Lists: An Examination of the U.S. Government’s Counterterrorism Designations Efforts
- Author:
- Seth Loertscher, Daniel Milton, Bryan C. Price, and Cynthia Loertscher
- Publication Date:
- 09-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- After the attacks of September 2001, the U.S. government grappled with ways to apply all aspects of its national power against the terrorist groups it found itself combating militarily. On the diplomatic and financial fronts, much of this increased effort revolved around the sanctioning and designating of terrorist groups and individual terrorist actors, resulting in a drastic increase of the number of individuals and groups which were branded with the term “terrorist.” Yet despite the application of these tools for almost 20 years, or longer in some cases, little work has been done to understand the impact of these programs. This report examines two sanctioning efforts the U.S. government has employed against terrorist actors: the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list and the designation of individuals as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs) under the authority granted by Executive Order 13224. Although the specific purposes of each of these programs differ from one another, ultimately both represent a non-kinetic approach to counterterrorism that relies on the application of diplomatic and/or financial statecraft. The examination of each of these programs in this report has two general goals. The first is to provide an overview of the program and descriptive statistics regarding its implementation. The second is to provide some form of assessment regarding the impact that these programs have on terrorist groups and individuals. In accomplishing these two goals, the authors relied exclusively on open-source information collected by researchers at the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). This report attempts to provide a deeper understanding of the impacts of these tools, in addition to highlighting some of the structural limitations and gaps in the application of counterterrorism sanctions.
- Topic:
- Terrorism, Counter-terrorism, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, Hamas, and Abu Sayyaf
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Middle East, Global Focus, and United States of America
200. Small Groups, Big Weapons: The Nexus of Emerging Technologies and Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism
- Author:
- Stephen Hummel and F. John Burpo
- Publication Date:
- 04-2020
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- Historically, only nation-states have had the capacity and resources to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) due to the significant capital, infrastructure, and intellectual capacity required to develop and maintain a WMD program. In recent years, however, this paradigm has been shifting, particularly for non-state actors. The commercialization of emerging technologies is reducing the financial, intellectual, and material barriers required for WMD development and employment. This report surveys three emerging technologies—synthetic biology, additive manufacturing (commonly known as 3D printing), and unmanned aerial systems—and examines the nexus of each with nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons agent proliferation. It examines how non-state actors might use these emerging technologies to overcome traditional barriers against the development and employment of WMD. This product, a joint collaboration of the Combating Terrorism Center and the Department of Chemistry and Life Science at West Point, is a timely primer for policymakers, scientists, and security specialists concerned with the impact of emerging technologies on WMD development and terrorists’ capabilities broadly.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Weapons, and Innovation
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus