Paradoxically, no economy can build the architecture of AI sovereignty alone. Coalitions of countries must work together to regulate the sector, design and operate the rails, open the model layer, and universalize the agent interface, thereby embedding contestability and interoperability into every …
Democrats and Republicans alike are more focused on giving themselves an electoral advantage through redistricting than on appealing to voters, because both parties lack a credible vision for middle- and working-class Americans. Without an attractive program, all that is left are tactics.
As November’s midterm elections approach, US President Donald Trump must stop pushing for a weaker dollar, which will exacerbate the affordability pressures many Americans face and harm the country’s fiscal position. Fortunately, there are several policy instruments that could help the administratio…
China’s political and intellectual elites increasingly see the country’s economic transformation as evidence that state-led development has succeeded where liberal capitalism has failed. Yet structural problems, including overcapacity and persistent inequality, suggest that triumphalism may be prema…
With industrial policy back in fashion worldwide, the question is not whether governments should intervene (they already do), but how they should proceed when they do not know in advance what will work. The answer lies in directed improvisation: creating the conditions for experimentation where it c…
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion four years ago, Ukraine has become the world’s most consequential defense laboratory, trialing innovations that can strengthen European resilience. But the country has also demonstrated that national security depends as much on cultural identity as on military stre…
Some claim that the threats Europe is facing, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, can create the momentum toward political union that the euro crisis and then the pandemic failed to generate. Right or wrong, one thing is clear: a functional defense union requires political union, and NATO…
Too many governments around the world are responding to affordability concerns by treating the symptoms rather than the underlying causes. Negotiating marginal price reductions with retailers might create the appearance of responsiveness, but the results will inevitably disappoint.
Why do gender wage gaps and other disparities persist despite converging education levels and mounting evidence that the public opposes such forms of inequality? The problem lies less in outdated beliefs and biases than in entrenched structural constraints to women's economic advancement.
Although the liberal international order was always hierarchical, it was defensible because it allowed for restraint, negotiation, and benefits extending beyond the inner circle. As that internal moderating project fails, all that will remain is the old hierarchy and whatever resentments it engender…
While American and international news coverage of AI tends to focus on a handful of Silicon Valley labs, China's more pragmatic approach to leveraging the technology could ultimately be the bigger story. What the Chinese leadership sees in the technology is nothing less than a master key for its eco…
Notwithstanding recent setbacks for illiberal, populist, and authoritarian leaders in some countries, good-governance groups and experts on democratic decline continue to document a disturbing global trend toward “autocratization.” What remains to be seen is whether enough voters will wake up to the…
Far from two sides of the same coin, free-market capitalism and democracy are fundamentally incompatible. The only way to restore US democracy is to transform the system, so that it compensates innovators but limits their market power, while ensuring that the benefits of economic progress are more e…
Of the delegates who assembled in Philadelphia in 1776 for the Second Continental Congress, only Thomas Jefferson possessed the skill, knowledge, and linguistic gifts to make the Declaration of Independence an immortal text. He was the self-appointed conscience of America, and sensational imagery wa…
Although Hyman Minsky’s version of John Maynard Keynes’s economics had a minimal impact on the mainstream during his own lifetime and in the years following, its central insights remain as relevant as ever. Both men understood that economic theory cannot get away with ignoring the fact of uncertaint…
The Declaration of Independence continues to challenge countries, including the US and India, to measure themselves against the ideals they profess. But in a century marked by rising inequality, an authoritarian resurgence, and the emergence of new forms of domination, measuring up will become only …
Decades of misguided economic policymaking have left China in a demographic hole that it seems incapable of climbing out of. As the “world’s factory,” the country is churning out everything except the people whom it will need to sustain its economic development and social stability over the long ter…
The principle of non-discrimination between trading partners has underpinned international commerce for eight decades. Now, the same principle must guide European lawmakers as they decide whether to ratify the trade agreement reached last year between European Commission President Ursula von der Ley…
America’s war on Iran is widely considered an illegal act of aggression in clear violation of the United Nations Charter. But assessing whether the war's planners should face prosecution raises difficult questions, largely owing to ongoing uncertainties about the meaning and scope of criminal aggres…
While 55% of Americans say their financial situation is deteriorating, the wealth of the top 1% is reaching record highs. Against this backdrop, defending billionaires from “oppressive” taxation is politically convenient nonsense.
The Beijing summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping showed that competition between the United States and China need not become a zero-sum struggle for supremacy. Even as the two countries vie for technological leadership, complete economic decoupling is neither feasible nor desirable.
President Donald Trump has dropped his $10 billion suit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns in exchange for a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate Americans who claim persecution by the previous administration. The point is no longer to conceal cor…
Although Donald Trump's recent statements about Taiwan seemed like a gift to Chinese President Xi Jinping, such rhetoric no longer tells us as much as it once did. The durability of US-Taiwan relations now rests less on individual leaders than on institutional ties and economic integration, and both…
Although generative AI tools have improved rapidly and now outperform humans across many tasks, the market's current euphoria may not be justified. With AI firms increasingly resorting to debt financing, it is worth pausing to consider all the things that could go wrong.
The growing fusion of economics, security, and technology has altered the nature of 21st-century interdependence, and Canada has responded by being more intentional. Rather than automatically serving as an extension of US-centered systems, it is creating more options across a wider network of relati…
The United Arab Emirates’ decision to leave OPEC is the clearest expression yet of its desire to break from the Saudi-led regional order. The result could be a more fragmented Middle East marked by intensifying rivalries among Gulf powers, widening proxy conflicts, and chronic instability.
For centuries, the Mercator map has distorted Africa’s size, shaping perceptions of the continent's strategic significance and economic prospects. Adopting more accurate map projections is neither technically complex nor prohibitively expensive, yet the symbolic and material consequences could be pr…
Military and economic coercion usually costs the coercer as well as the target. But by threatening undersea cables beneath the Strait of Hormuz, Iran may have found a way to impose heavy costs on the US government and private sector while generating revenue for itself—at least in the short term.
There are five big policy-related problems holding back the UK economy. Any politician who tackles them in earnest would benefit from a bond- and equity-market rally, a construction boom, higher business and consumer confidence, and the political dividends that come with broad-based gains to voters'…
The COVID-19 pandemic and the wars in Ukraine and Iran have reframed the issue of sustainability, which is now as much about sovereignty and economic security as it is about planetary health. Countries and companies that fail to recognize this have everything to lose in the coming years.
Today’s global imbalances are driven primarily by domestic saving-investment dynamics and the interaction between geopolitical rivalry, technological competition, and capital flows. Only by taking coordinated action to manage the associated risks can the world prevent today’s tensions from erupting …
The rest of the world continues to shunt Africa to the periphery, regarding it mainly as a source of raw materials. But as more advanced economies face structural problems, the continent’s unmatched demographic momentum and enormous industrialization potential imply that it will play a central role …
Confident in the belief that there is nothing their respective militaries cannot do, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump led their countries into wars that failed virtually from the start. Now, they are looking to each other for help getting out of the messes they made, but neither holds winning cards.
The Iran war has revealed how deeply material interests are embedded in strategic calculations, concentrating rewards among powerful insiders while leaving society to absorb the costs. As long as chaos remains politically and economically rewarding, such conflicts will remain difficult to contain.
If Donald Trump and Xi Jinping's Beijing summit produces a sustained Sino-American trade truce and a path to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, that will give the world economy something it has lacked for the past year and half: a reduction in tail risks. In a year when so much has gone wrong, that is …
Judging by most of the media coverage of the global AI "race," the United States and China are the two dominant players, and every other country and organization is at risk of being left behind. The reality is far more complex—and not nearly as bleak.
The United States needs AI governance that protects workers without stifling innovation; tax strategies that actually address inequality; and innovation policies that do not kill the goose that lays the golden egg. If there is one place where these demands will be met, it is the Golden State.
Under Xi Jinping, China is moving steadily away from the pragmatic authoritarianism of the reform era toward the restoration of Mao-style totalitarianism. Two recent books argue that Xi's political ascent was no historical accident, but a structural feature of China’s political system.
Governments and financial institutions urgently need to align on restoring and maintaining the planet's life-support system. By harnessing recent advances in science, monitoring technologies, and data availability, we can finally start treating water like the shared, transnational asset that it is.