Science, Technology, and Public Policy

After viewing the movie Oppenheimer, Matthew Bunn, John P. Holdren, Mariana Budjeryn, Matthew J. Parent, and Calder Walton, and Sylvia Mishra offer their thoughts on its relevance to the world today. 

This brief examines the national challenges related to deploying and scaling infrastructure to transport CO₂ from capture sites to storage or utilization sites at a scale consistent with achieving net-zero by 2050.

AI is shaping up to be part of surveillance capitalism, warn Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders.

The Arctic region faces unique risks and challenges as a result of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the actions taken to respond to it. Research offers an important opportunity to understand the region’s unique conditions and characteristics for pandemic management. This article contributes to this knowledge building effort by surveying the literature that explicitly focuses on COVID-19 in the Arctic between 2020 and 2022. The authors analyze this emerging body of work with a focus on identifying overarching trends and map the themes and topics considered in this literature with a focus on highlighting topics that are prominent and those that are conspicuously underrepresented.

Gabrielle Armstrong-Scott and Jim Waldo argue that machine learning tools and a better definition of "terrorist and extremist content" could help make the Web a safer place.

A future where A.I.s interpret, apply, and enforce most laws at societal scale like this will exponentially magnify problems around fairness, transparency, and freedom, warn Jonathon W. Penney and Bruce Schneier.

By looking beyond solely Iran’s security motivations, this paper by Sahar Nowrouzzadeh seeks to inform more holistic negotiation strategies that can potentially influence Iran’s nuclear decision-making in a manner more favorable to U.S. interests.

Michael Lipkin interviews Project on Managing the Atom Associate Nicole Grajewski on why Iran may not benefit much from its new membership of Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

This policy brief reviews the key differences in how Asian states are approaching the Arctic through a survey of their strategic documents, public statements, and diplomatic and commercial activities.

In May 2023, the Arctic Initiative held a closed-door workshop for climate scientists, regional experts, Indigenous and youth leaders, and national security officials from six Arctic states, with the goal of identifying the most plausible scenarios and pathways for how geopolitics linked to climate change in the Arctic might evolve and actionable steps that the U.S. government might consider taking today to manage emerging risks. Eyck Fremann summarizes his key takeaways from the event.