Make Sense of the world
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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...
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...
Dark times loom for the US economy in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s latest threat on August 1 to levy 10% tariffs on some $300 billion of imports from China. In response, China allowed the yuan to weaken against the dollar and thereby cushion the impact for Chinese exporters. In...
Imagine that your government could identify you and track your movements digitally, solely based on your physical appearance and perceived ethnicity or race. This is not the stuff of dystopian science fiction, but is happening now due to the widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools....
People around the world, including Americans, have argued that the world can get along without US leadership. Today, they may want to scan the global landscape. While acute crises and violent conflict may not seem imminent at the moment, the view isn’t a hopeful one. For Americans, naively...
On our first meeting, via video link, Be Scofield was somewhere on the East Coast of the United States. She wouldn’t say where exactly, but it was rural and peaceful. Her wood cabin, where she lay on a bed munching blue corn chips from a bag, was dimly lit. The scarf that’s always wrapped...
