Writing for The Hill, Prof. Caitlin Talmadge and Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institute make the case that America’s aims for the war in Ukraine should not be “strategic defeat” of Russia. “The goals, rather, should be stability in Europe and the sustainability of a strong Ukraine, both of which are best served by ending the war sooner rather than later,” they write.
Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson write for Project Syndicate about how to structure U.S. international trade policies so that they benefit American workers and global stability. “Two new principles can form the basis of U.S. policy. First, international trade should be structured in a way to encourage a stable world order,” they write. “Second, appealing to abstract 'gains of trade' is no longer enough. American workers need to see the benefits. Any trade arrangement that significantly undermines the quality and quantity of middle-class American jobs is bad for the country and its people, and will likely incite a political backlash.”
Prof. M. Taylor Fravel speaks with NPR reporter Emily Feng about a new Pentagon report highlighting China’s accelerated efforts to develop a nuclear arsenal. “It’s a complete transformation of China's approach to nuclear weapon,” says Fravel. “[The information found in the report] confirms “the rapid modernization foreshadowed several years ago is on track.”
Prof. Simon Johnson and Prof. Catherine Wolfram write for The Washington Post about how to prevent petrostates from benefitting from war. “We need to break the cycle of petrostates benefitting from fomenting violence,” write Johnson and Wolfram. “And when we punish one petrostate, we need to be careful not to reward another.”
Prof. Simon Johnson and Prof. Catherine Wolfram write for The Los Angeles Times about the impact of high oil prices on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Russia is earning fistfuls of money from its oil sales, and using the revenues to buy tanks, pay soldiers and keep the war out of the minds of ordinary Russian citizens,” explain Johnson and Wolfram. “High oil prices enable Putin to test Western democracies’ resolve, and the dysfunction on Capitol Hill plays into his hands. That makes maintaining the oil price cap, with added protections, all the more important for reducing Putin’s ability to continue fighting.”
Writing for Foreign Affairs, Prof. M. Taylor Fravel examines the suggestion that China’s economic downturn could lead to war. “Chinese leaders have rarely, if ever, started a conflict purely as a diversion, even during moments of domestic crisis,” writes Fravel. “When the Chinese economy falters, the danger is not diversionary war. It is that China’s leaders will feel weak and become more sensitive to external challenges, potentially lashing out to show strength and deter other countries from taking advantage of their insecurity.”
In an article for Foreign Policy, Prof. Malick W. Ghachem writes about the current political situation in Haiti and the type of international support the country actually needs. “Haiti needs genuine reconstruction, and these strategies can help the country find its financial footing as it seeks to rebuild its political institutions,” says Ghachem. “A concerted international campaign to support Haiti’s financial sovereignty is the real intervention that Haiti needs—and possibly the only one.”
Writing for The Los Angeles Times, Prof. Simon Johnson and Oleg Ustenko, economic advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, emphasize that “the governments of poorer countries need to demand that Ukrainian grain be allowed to flow freely. The Black Sea corridor must be reopened and kept open as a top priority for all parties working to defeat Putin.”
A new study co-authored by MIT scientists finds that the Department of Justice’s China Initiative may have caused researchers of Chinese descent to leave the U.S. for China, reports Ryan Quinn for Inside Higher Ed. The study authors found that researchers of Chinese descent had “general feelings of fear and anxiety that lead them to consider leaving the United States and/or stop applying for federal grants. If the situation is not corrected, American science will likely suffer the loss of scientific talent to China and other countries.”
Neil Thompson, director of the FutureTech research project at MIT CSAIL and a principal investigator MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, speaks with Politico reporter Mohar Chatterjee about generative AI, the pace of computer progress and the need for the U.S. to invest more in developing the future of computing. “We need to make sure we have good secure factories that can produce cutting-edge semiconductors,” says Thompson. “The CHIPS Act covers that. And people are starting to invest in some of these post-CMOS technologies — but it just needs to be much more. These are incredibly important technologies.”
Writing for Science, the MIT China Strategy Group explores how U.S. universities can manage the pressures posed by rising geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China, outlining the approach they developed to “help MIT advance knowledge and the needs of the United States and the world -- without damaging U.S. interests in national security or the economy, without endangering human rights, and in ways consistent with the core values of our institution.”
Principal Research Scientist Eric Heginbotham writes for Newsweek that in simulations of a possible invasion of Taiwan, he and his colleagues found that “China would lose—so long as the United States continues to invest in maintaining deterrence and chooses to intervene directly and vigorously.” Heginbotham adds: “The United States should ensure that the political relationship with China remains positive in those areas that do not directly compromise America's position and — consistent with U.S. policy for half a century—that avoid promoting de jure independence for Taiwan.”
Prof. M. Taylor Fravel speaks with Bloomberg News reporter Iain Marlow about the U.S. - China relationship. “I do not expect U.S. - China relations to improve,” said Fravel. “The only question is how much further they will deteriorate and if the relationship will shift from one of competition to one of hostile confrontation.”
At MIT’s AI Policy Forum Summit, which was focused on exploring the challenges facing the implementation of AI technologies across a variety of sectors, SEC Chair Gary Gensler and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Dean Daniel Huttenlocher discussed the impact of AI on the world of finance. “If someone is relying on open-AI, that's a concentrated risk and a lot of fintech companies can build on top of it,” Gensler said. “Then you have a node that's every bit as systemically relevant as maybe a stock exchange."