A succession of social upheavals over the last decade has radically realigned political power throughout the world. As a result of these tectonic shifts, what had once been on the furthest fringes of the right has now moved toward the center while the left has been pushed to the margins....
The TED website describes Kishore Mahbubani, a career diplomat from Singapore, as someone who “re-envisions global power dynamics through the lens of rising Asian economies.” This description is not just apt for Mahbubani but also for his new book, “Has the West Lost It?” The title may...
Led by young people, climate strikers blocked traffic on two mornings at the end of last month in Washington, DC. On the first day, protesters chained themselves to a boat three blocks from the White House, and 32 activists were arrested. On the second day, activists targeted the Environmental...
With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the potential to integrate technology into the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is reaching new heights. According to Klaus Schwab, Founder of the World Economic Forum, 4IR is “blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and...
In recent weeks, Indonesia has been in the headlines due to forest fires. Having spread throughout the country in Southeast Asia, the regions of Jambi, South Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi have been severely affected while Riau Province has been the worst hit. According to the National...
Radical-right radicalization has quickly moved from being a fringe domestic phenomenon to a mainstream global movement. The radical right, albeit always internationally connected and aligned across individual states, has over the last decade moved to increasingly intertangled structures, not only...
Over time, empires and nation-states have erected walls to protect their people and limit their interaction with the “outside world.” Now, walls are not only built in stone, but also in the digital world. For instance, while the Chinese were long shielded by the Great Wall, today they are...
Something didn’t quite add up.This past weekend, protestors were rallying outside the American embassy in Hong Kong. They were waving American flags. They were singing "The Star-Spangled Banner." One 24-year-old protester wore a red "Make America Great Again" hat. Some signs at the...
Around 20 years into the new millennium, everything about our lives and surroundings is changing at an incredible pace. The ways we work, play, study, communicate, spend and earn are rapidly evolving to bear little resemblance to how we’ve lived through most of modern times, let alone history....
At the end of August, two prestigious names in the technology and business world graced the stage of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. The Chinese television station that broadcast the debate between Jack Ma, (CEO of Alibaba) and hyperreal hero Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla,...
President Xi Jinping, the modern-day emperor of China, clearly has a deep sense of history. On September 8, 2013, he gave a speech at Nazarbayev University in Almaty at the invitation of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Xi quoted a Chinese saying — “ near neighbor is better...