PolicyCast

It takes a lot to impress Professor Graham Allison when it comes to geopolitics. He is, after all, the Cold Warrior’s Cold Warrior—as one of America’s most influential defense policy analysts and advisors, he was twice awarded the Defense Department’s highest civilian honor for his work on nuclear disarmament with Russia. He’s a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, former director of the Council on Foreign Relations, a founding member of the Trilateral Commission, and a renowned political scientist who has served as dean of the Kennedy School and head of the school’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Yet even Allison says he marvels at the rapid transformation of China, the world's rising economic, technological, and military superpower, and he says it’s well past time for the United States and the rest of the world to hear some hard truths about China’s power and potential dominance of world affairs during the 21st Century.To explain how China has not only caught up with, but in numerous cases surpassed, the United States, Allison and a group of colleagues are writing a series of five research papers on the key areas of economics, technological advancement, military power, diplomatic influence, and ideology. The third paper, on China’s extraordinary rise as an economic superpower, states that while some may be tempted to still see China as a developing country, the truth is that it has been adding the equivalent of the entire economy of India to its GDP every four years and that the number of people in the Chinese middle class—some 400 million—now far outnumber the entire population of the United States.Meanwhile, China is either catching up or leading in foundational technologies of the 21st century like AI, quantum computing, and green tech, while recent war games predict that China’s modernized, expanded military would likely win a military conflict over Taiwan. Graham Allison talks about China’s rise and what could be the next great superpower rivalry—but also about the possibilities for a new paradigm for the US-China relationship that goes beyond Cold War thinking.About the Guest:Graham Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University where he has taught for five decades.  Allison is a leading analyst of national security with special interests in nuclear weapons, Russia, China, and decision-making.  Allison was the “Founding Dean” of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and until 2017, served as Director of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. As Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Clinton Administration, Dr. Allison received the Defense Department's highest civilian award, the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, for "reshaping relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to reduce the former Soviet nuclear arsenal." This resulted in the safe return of more than 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons from the former Soviet republics and the complete elimination of more than 4,000 strategic nuclear warheads previously targeted at the United States and left in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus when the Soviet Union disappeared.Professor Allison is the author of numerous books, including: “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” (2017), “Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States and the World” (2013), “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe” (2004) and “Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971).As "Founding Dean" of the modern Kennedy School, under his leadership, from 1977 to 1989, a small, undefined program grew twenty-fold to become a major professional school of public policy and government.Professor Allison was the organizer of the Commission on America's National Interests (1996 and 2000), a founding member of the Trilateral Commission, a Director of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was educated at Davidson College; Harvard College (B.A., magna cum laude, in History); Oxford University (B.A. and M.A., First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics); and Harvard University (Ph.D. in Political Science).PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph RanalliPolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

The Nobel Committee has awarded its 2021 Peace Prize to Maria Ressa for being a fearless defender of independent journalism and freedom of expression in the Philippines, and particularly for her work exposing the human rights abuses of authoritarian President Rodrigo Duterte. But the prize is also a de facto acknowledgement that Ressa has become something of a one-woman personification of the struggles, perils, and promise of journalism in the age of social media. A longtime investigative reporter and bureau chief for CNN, she began thinking about how social networks could be used for both good and evil while covering terrorism and seeing how it was used to drive both radicalism and build movements for positive change. She originally founded Rappler, her Manila-based online news organization, as a Facebook page, but now she says that one-time Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg’s dominance as a worldwide distributor of news has become a boon to repressive regimes and a threat to democracy worldwide. Rappler’s mission statement is to speak truth to power and build communities of action for a better world—but for Ressa, speaking truth to power has come at a high personal cost. She has been subjected to harassment, criminal and civil legal action, and even arrest, even as she has refused to back off even an inch. When we spoke for this interview, Ressa was just finishing a visiting fellowship at the Kennedy School, where she was affiliated with both the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy and the Center for Public Leadership. About our Guest:Maria Ressa has been a journalist in Asia for 35 years and co-founded Rappler, the top digital only news site that is leading the fight for press freedom in the Philippines. For her courage and work on disinformation, Ressa was named Time Magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year, was among its 100 Most Influential People of 2019, and has also been named one of Time’s Most Influential Women of the Century. She was also part of BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women of 2019 and Prospect magazine’s world’s top 50 thinkers. In 2020, she received the Journalist of the Year award, the John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award, the Most Resilient Journalist Award, the Tucholsky Prize, the Truth to Power Award, and the Four Freedoms Award.Before founding Rappler, Maria focused on investigating terrorism in Southeast Asia. She opened and ran CNN’s Manila Bureau for nearly a decade before opening the network’s Jakarta Bureau, which she ran from 1995 to 2005. She wrote Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia and From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism.PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph RanalliPolicyCast is edited by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes. Natalie Montaner is our webmaster and social media strategist. Our designers are Lydia Rosenberg and Delane Meadows.For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Barely a news cycle goes by these days without someone in public office saying ‘We can’t afford that,’ while at the same time defending their favorite budget priorities and tossing around mind-numbingly large cost figures in the billions and trillions of dollars. Those debates can seem very cynical, and of course Oscar Wilde famously defined a cynic as a person who knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing. But Harvard Kennedy School Senior Lecturer Linda Bilmes says things are even worse than that—not only are we not having discussions based on value, our understanding of what projects and policies actually cost is fundamentally flawed. A former CFO of the US Commerce Department and an internationally known expert in public budgeting and finance, Professor Bilmes has made it her mission to change the conversation about cost in the public sphere, and she’s helped identify the true costs of everything from America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to our National Parks to the automobile economy in Massachusetts. She joins us to talk about her efforts to improve both the discussions and the decisions that are made about public money.About our guest:Linda J. Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, is a leading expert on budgetary and public financial issues. Her research focuses on budgeting and public administration in the public, private and non-profit sectors. She is interested in how resources are allocated, particularly defense budgets, costs of war, veterans, sub-national budgeting and public lands. She is a full-time Harvard faculty member, teaching budgeting, cost accounting and public finance, and teaching workshops for newly-elected Mayors and Members of Congress. Since 2005, she has led the Greater Boston Applied Field Lab, an advanced academic program in which teams of student volunteers assist local communities in public finance and operations. She also leads field projects for the Bloomberg Cities program. Dr. Bilmes served as the Senate-confirmed  Assistant Secretary and Chief Financial Officer of the U.S. Department of Commerce under President Bill Clinton.  She currently serves as the sole United States member of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA), and as Vice-chair of Economists for Peace and Security. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University. She was a member of the National Parks Second Century Commission and served on the U.S. National Parks Service Advisory Board for eight years. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. She holds a BA and MBA from Harvard University and a D.Phil from Oxford University.PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph RanalliPolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Leaders from around the globe are meeting in Scotland today for the COP26 summit, talking about ways to speed up efforts to fight global warming. Yet even the optimists in Glasgow admit that the scientific consensus is that it’s already too late to cut emissions fast enough to avoid a dangerous rise in the earth’s temperature by 2 degrees Celsius, which is expected to lead to severe droughts, blistering heat waves, deadly flooding, and rising seas.Despite these dire predictions, there has been one potential weapon in humanity’s anti-warming arsenal that, in terms of practical research, has been a taboo subject: solar geoengineering. Now Professor David Keith says it’s time for that to change. Keith is an award-winning physicist who holds professorships at both Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Working at the intersection of physics and policy, Keith is a pioneer in the field, which involves making man-made changes to the atmosphere that would cool the planet by either preventing some of the sun’s energy from getting through, or making it easier for heat already in the atmosphere to escape.Critics have had a tough time wrapping their heads around solar geoengineering. They call it the stuff of science fiction, say it could be used as an excuse not to further cut emissions, and even suggest that governments might someday use it as a weapon. But Keith says that it’s now time to explore it as one of major strategies to fight warming, which include cutting emissions, capturing the carbon that’s already in the atmosphere, and helping people and societies adapt to the effects already being felt. One of his primary arguments for starting serious research on solar geoengineering is inequality. After all, he says, planetary warming doesn’t play fair. It is mostly people in the world’s poorest countries who will suffer the worst harm from a warming climate, yet they are the least responsible for it in terms of per capita emissions. And amid all the recent talk of climate adaptation, there is comparatively little mention that it is much easier for a rich country in a colder latitude to adapt than it is for a developing one in a hotter region.Keith is also known for his work on carbon capture and founded a company working on technology to pull carbon from the air — although he says that is at best a long-term strategy that could take decades to have any beneficial effect.About the “Systems Failure” series:To kick off the fall 2021 season, we’re launching a mini-series of episodes built around a theme we’re calling “Systems Failure.” Our conversations will focus on how the economic, technological, and other systems that play a vital role in determining how we live our lives can not only treat individuals and groups of people unequally, but can also exacerbate inequality more generally in society. We’ll also talk about strategies to change those systems to make them more equitable.About our guest:David Keith has worked near the interface between climate science, energy technology, and public policy for twenty five years. He took first prize in Canada's national physics prize exam, won MIT's prize for excellence in experimental physics, and was one of TIME magazine's Heroes of the Environment. Best known for work on solar geoengineering, David’s analytical work has ranged from the climatic impacts of large-scale wind power to an early critique of the prospects for hydrogen fuel. David is Professor of Applied Physics in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Public Policy in the Harvard Kennedy School. He spends about a third of his time in Calgary, Canada where he helps lead Carbon Engineering, a company developing technology to capture CO2 from ambient air.PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph RanalliPolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Jason Furman recently testified before the House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth and called growing inequality the fundamental challenge for the U.S. economy. He says that slow income growth, coupled with growing disparities in how the overall economic pie is divided, have contributed to inequality that is now pervasive by race, ethnicity, gender, income, and education. That inequality hurts everyone, he says, limiting growth and depriving society of productive contributors to the economy. About our guest: Jason Furman is the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy jointly at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He served for eight years as a top economic adviser to President Obama, including as the 28th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from August 2013 to January 2017, acting as both President Obama’s chief economist and a member of the cabinet. Furman has conducted research in a wide range of areas, including fiscal policy, tax policy, health economics, Social Security, technology policy, and domestic and international macroeconomics. He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University. PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph RanalliPolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Latanya Sweeney is a pioneer in the fields of algorithmic fairness and data privacy and the founding director of the new Public Interest Tech Lab at Harvard University. The former chief technology officer for the US Trade Commission, she’s been awarded 3 patents and her work is cited in two key US privacy regulations, including the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). She was also the first black woman to earn a PhD in Computer Science from MIT, and she says her experiences being the only woman of color in white male-dominated classrooms and labs may have contributed to her uncanny ability to spot racial and gender bias, privacy vulnerabilities, and other key flaws in data and technology systems.About the “Systems Failure” Series: To kick off the fall 2021 season, we’re launching a mini-series of episodes built around a theme we’re calling “Systems Failure.” Our conversations will focus on how economic, technological, and other types of systems that play a huge role in determining how we live our lives can not only treat individuals and groups of people unequally, but can also exacerbate inequality more generally in society. We’ll also talk about strategies to change those systems to make them more equitable.PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph RanalliPolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School Professor Arthur Brooks studies happiness: Where it comes from, how to achieve it, and how it affects our lives, our decision-making, and the world around us. But how do we define happiness? Is it how we feel? Is it an approach to life? And how much control over it do we really have? What percentage of our happiness comes from, say, our environment, or from genetics? Can government make us happier? Should it? In a time of stress and division when the world is seemingly desperate for more happiness, Brooks joins host Ralph Ranalli to explore some of those questions.About our guest:Arthur Brooks is the William Henry Bloomberg Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and a Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School. Brooks is also the former president of the American Enterprise Institute and a former member of the City Orchestra of Barcelona. He is the author of 11 books, including “Love Your Enemies” (2019), “The Conservative Heart” (2015), and “The Road to Freedom” (2012). He is a columnist for The Atlantic, and host of the podcast The Art of Happiness with Arthur Brooks.PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph RanalliPolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

The Chinese Communist Party rules a country that is already an economic superpower and is poised to become a military and geopolitical one as the 21st Century unfolds. But Harvard Kennedy School Professor Tony Saich says the party’s 100th birthday next month is also a time to remember the party’s struggles and humble beginnings. From it’s early days as Soviet-supported client and its existential struggles with the Chinese Nationalists; to the tragic excesses of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; to its economic transformation and growing middle class, the party has made disastrous errors as well as successes. But through it all, Saich says, the party has shown a remarkable ability to survive, adapt, and maintain control of 1.4 billion people. That’s why understanding China’s politics is crucial for the future of everything from the world economy to the climate crisis to international human rights. Professor Saich, the director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, has written a new book due out next month called “From Rebel to Ruler: One Hundred Years of the Chinese Communist Party.” He talks to host Ralph Ranalli about the party’s past and why understanding it is important for the future.About our guest:Professor Anthony Saich is the Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Daewoo Professor of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Ralph Ranalli, Senior Staff Writer and Producer at the HKS Office of Communications and Public Affairs.PolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Associate Dean for Communications and Public Affairs Thoko Moyo.Our guest for this episode, Sheila Jasanoff, is the Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School and the founder and director of the Program on  Science, Technology and Society.PolicyCast is produced and engineered by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes.For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Associate Dean for Communications and Public Affairs Thoko Moyo.PolicyCast is produced and engineered by Ralph Ranalli and co-produced by Susan Hughes.For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.