Carnegie Council Audio Podcast

It is important to see proposed solar radiation modification experiments in a wider social context, says Sheila Jasanoff, the Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School, during a C2GTalk interview. People want to know who is doing the experiment, and what their intentions are—and it is important for scientists and engineers to recognize and address these concerns, and for governance to be built around that. Sheila Jasanoff is a leading expert on the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies, and her work offers fascinating insights into how society navigates emerging technologies, and how decision-makers assess evidence and expertise—which is extremely relevant to our governance conversations. She is the author or editor of more than 15 books, including The Ethics of Invention and Can Science Make Sense of Life; has held distinguished appointments at leading universities around the world; and served on the board of the Amer

Hollywood has long been part of the United States' soft power arsenal. Now, that soft power is threatened by the larger geostrategic competition between the U.S. and China—and China appears to be winning. In Red Carpet, Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel explores how and why Hollywood has become obsessed with China and what that means for the People's Republic as it exports its national agenda around the world. In this virtual event, Schwarzel joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev for a discussion on how the film industry can offer an essential new perspective on the power struggle of this century. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this wide-ranging talk, U.S. defense expert Elbridge Colby discusses the changing nature of American power with Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal. As the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, Colby details the threats and challenges that the United States faces, most notably from Asia, and how it can adapt its geopolitical and military capabilities to meet its goals. How can the U.S. counter China's rising power and its pursuit of regional hegemony? Does Russia's invasion of Ukraine change how America pursues its policies? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Over the last two decades, solar radiation modification has gone from an intellectual experiment to something people are seriously considering, says pioneering climate scientist Ken Caldeira during a C2GTalk. The world needs to understand what would happen if somebody felt the need to cool the Earth rapidly, and that requires the ability for scientists to do more research. "There is a case to limit knowledge acquisition if it would lead to imminent harm," says Caldeira, but this is not the case for solar radiation modification experiments. Ken Caldeira is senior staff scientist (emeritus) with Carnegie Institution for Science, and world famous for his work on the global carbon cycle and climate change. He was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report and a co-author of the 2010 US National Academy America’s Climate Choices report. Caldeira also participated in the UK Royal Society’s geoengineering panel in 2009. He is also senior scientist at Breakthrough Energy

As we enter week three of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Nahal Toosi, senior foreign affairs correspondent for Politico, joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to evaluate the ways in which the U.S. is already confronting Russia—economic warfare, information warfare—and how this is impacting other areas of foreign policy. Is the Biden/Harris administration nimble enough to take on multiple global crises or "black swan" events? Are Washington, DC technocrats stuck in a 1980s time machine? What can we expect from the National Security Strategy due to come out sometime this quarter? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Atlantic Council's Ukraine expert Melinda Haring joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss where we are one week after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a large-scale invasion into Ukraine. What are the key takeaways after a week of intense fighting? Can the U.S. and Western allies do more to stop Putin's advance? How will the war re-shape U.S. domestic politics as midterm season begins? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Russia's invasion of Ukraine raises several ethical questions: Why did diplomacy fail? What does the invasion mean for the principle of sovereignty? How does history inform the present and suggest the future? Are sanctions an appropriate and effective response, and what principles should guide their implementation? Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal and Senior Fellow Nikolas Gvosdev discuss the ramifications of Putin's decision and the ethical principles at stake in the current crisis. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Dr. Francesca Rossi, the AI Ethics Global Leader for IBM, joins Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen for a riveting Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast. Rossi speaks about her ethics-focused role at a multinational company and the importance of lateral expertise and multidisciplinarity in addressing ethical considerations and tensions in AI research. How can we insert human values into AI systems? Can AI transform and strengthen human decision-making? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In the 1950s, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev bemoaned that the United States wouldn’t even sell buttons to the Soviet Union. "Buttons can hold up a soldier’s trousers," he groused. Today, China is far more entangled with the United States than the Soviet Union was, and the relationship trades in far more than buttons. In a new series of dialogues, Carnegie Council is exploring the question: How should American institutions engage with China? The first event of the series examines the ethical questions that media outlets and journalists must grapple with when reporting on China. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this episode of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen speaks with Dr. Jürgen Stock, secretary general of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). In an engaging conversation, they discuss his professional journey towards leading the world police body, what keeps him up at night, and the critical role of global police work in keeping societies safe, especially as those seeking to evade justice increasingly hide behind screens, and operate via bits and bytes, as well as on the dark net. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.  

With 2022 U.S. midterm elections looming, George Mason University's Colin Dueck comes back to speak with Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin about the opportunities and challenges the Biden/Harris administration is facing on the global stage. What lessons has the U.S. learned from its failed Afghanistan pullout? Can Biden bridge foreign policy divisions that cut across party lines? Will he be able to do this in time to thwart the Russia-China "no limits" strategic partnership? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen sits down with Caltech's Professor Amina Anandkumar, also director of machine learning research at NVIDIA, for a captivating conversation. They discuss "Trinity of AI" (data, algorithms, and infrastructure), Anandkumar's work on tensor algorithms building better capabilities using multidimensional processing of neural networks, and the critical importance of diversity in AI research. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world's wealthiest added a whopping $3.9 trillion to their pockets while as many as 500 million people descended into poverty. This trend continues a trajectory of decades of wealth accumulation by the 1 percent. In this podcast, New York Times correspondent Peter Goodman, author of Davos Man, talks with Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev about the global billionaire class and their visible and invisible impacts on nearly every aspect of modern society. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

In this episode of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen and Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal sit down with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation's Stelios Vassilakis for an engaging conversation about how to preserve and empower public space ethics. What we can we learn from the Athenian agora to guide the means and methods of governing AI? For more, including a full transcript, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Current international responses to climate change continue to place the world on a trajectory beyond 1.5°C global warming, with impacts posing severe risks to natural and human systems. Discussions on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) globally has grown since the publication of the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5°C, which reaffirms that large-scale CDR is required in all of its pathways to limit global warming to 1.5°C, with limited or no overshoot to achieve net-zero mid-century and global net negative emissions thereafter, until the end of the century. By removing between 100 to 1000 billion tonnes of CO2 depending on the speed of emissions reduction in respective pathways. CDR methods vary and include the use of nature-based approaches, such as afforestation and enhancing wetlands, or engineering-based approaches to directly capture carbon dioxide. At scale, they all present potential benefits and risks of negative side-effects and pose significant governance challenges as many governance gaps exis

A decade after hacktivists like the Anonymous collective gained notoriety for cyberattacks on U.S. government agencies and multinationals and were later tamped down by arrests, a second wave of hacktivists is rising. Joseph Marks, cybersecurity reporter at The Washington Post, speaks with Doorstep co-host Tatiana Serafin about the differences and overlap between hacktivism, cyberwarfare, and ransomware and how these tools are being deployed in the Russia/Ukraine conflict and beyond. For more, go to carnegiecouncil.org.

The oceans and climate change are inextricably connected. On the one hand, the oceans are faced with significant threats posed by climate change through acidification, loss of oxygen, and warming; on the other hand, the oceans play a critical role in regulating the climate system, acting as a major heat and carbon sink, and have been increasingly regarded as a source of solutions to climate change. A range of additional ocean-based climate-altering approaches are being explored to limit climate impacts. For example, introducing additional nutrients to enhance photosynthesis of plankton to remove CO2 from the ocean surface and transport it to the deep ocean; cultivating large-scale seaweed to capture carbon through photosynthesis for sequestration; and brightening marine clouds through spraying sea water to deliver cooling locally. However, all these approaches may present potential benefits and risks. What do the ocean protection community and the climate protection community say about these approaches? Is th

Over the past year, America has imported more oil from Russia and goods from China to address domestic inflation and supply chain issues. Abroad, the U.S. is threatening sanctions against Russia and keeping diplomats from attending the Beijing Olympics. Center for a New American Security's Rachel Ziemba joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss the tensions between U.S. domestic and foreign policy goals and how an impending global growth crisis may upend the Biden/Harris administration's "foreign policy for the middle class." For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

Last October, millions of leaked documents known as the Pandora Papers exposed the shadowy financial structures global power players from politicians to billionaires use to hide money, move markets, and transform countries. Author Casey Michel delves deep into the underbelly of this global scheming in American Kleptocracy. In this virtual event, Michel and Doorstep co-hosts Nikolas Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin discuss corruption in the United States and its effects around the world. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is required in all pathways to keep global warming under 1.5°C.  A range of approaches to CDR are under consideration, including technological or biological approaches, with the latter being increasingly referred to as "nature-based solutions." Afforestation and reforestation, together with other nature-based approaches to CDR, have been gaining international attraction because of their huge potential to remove carbon from atmosphere but also due to the other prospective environmental and social benefits they could bring. However, there are concerns raised around "moral hazard," competition for resources, permanence of sequestration, and other potential risks of deployment of large-scale afforestation and reforestation, which pose governance challenges. How do we address these challenges and make decisions that maximize synergies and co-benefits and minimize tradeoffs? What can we learn from previous la