SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
February 15, 2013
"North Korea's Third Nuclear Test: Plutonium or Highly Enriched Uranium?"
Op-Ed, Power & Policy Blog
By Hui Zhang, Senior Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom
"North Korea has only a small supply of plutonium—material that it had stopped producing by 2008—and had more recently demonstrated an operational capability to enrich uranium, which would support a much larger arsenal of weapons given North Korea's huge deposits of natural uranium.... However, the seismic signals are useless in this regard. The question is, then, can the off-site environmental sampling analysis distinguish a plutonium explosion from a HEU explosion?"
February 15, 2013
"Africa's Economic Growth Prospects"
Op-Ed, Technology+Policy | Innovation@Work
By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
"The rise in technocratic leadership in Africa is directly related to the emphasis that the continent is placing on economic transformation. But more important, there is growing preference for blending democratic change with managerial competence in running public affairs. This suggests a different type of governance system that combines western party politics and eastern technocracy. It would appear from these nascent trends that Africa is starting to shape its economic future by borrowing ideas from around the world and adapting them to local needs."
January 2013
Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age
Book
By Susan P. Crawford, Former Faculty Affiliate, Information and Communications Technology and Public Policy Project, January–December 2012
This important book by leading telecommunications policy expert Susan Crawford explores why Americans are now paying much more but getting much less when it comes to high-speed Internet access. Using the 2011 merger between Comcast and NBC Universal as a lens, Crawford examines how we have created the biggest monopoly since the breakup of Standard Oil a century ago. In the clearest terms, this book explores how telecommunications monopolies have affected the daily lives of consumers and America's global economic standing.
February 11, 2013
"The Information Revolution Gets Political"
Op-Ed, The Australian
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"Beneath the Arab political revolutions lies a deeper and longer process of radical change that is sometimes called the information revolution. We cannot yet fully grasp its implications, but it is fundamentally transforming the nature of power in the twenty-first century, in which all states exist in an environment that even the most powerful authorities cannot control as they did in the past."
February 8, 2013
"Forging New Diplomatic Bonds Through Science and Technology"
Op-Ed, Technology+Policy | Innovation@Work
By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
"Slovenia and Kenya are inventing a form of science and technology diplomacy that is based on commitment to taking on global challenges irrespective of size and level of development. The cooperation points to a new future in which science and technology will increasingly become the bond that ties nations together in new diplomatic arrangements."
February 7, 2013
"A Global Cyber-crisis in Waiting"
Op-Ed, Washington Post
By Richard Clarke, Faculty Affiliate, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Like-minded nations should also agree that governments should not steal data from private corporations and then give that information to competing companies, as the government of China has been doing on a massive scale. The victims of Chinese economic espionage should seek to establish clear guidelines and penalties within the World Trade Organization system or, if China blocks that, victim states should seek to develop countermeasures and sanctions outside of that structure."
January 2013
"Treaty Design and Duration: Effects on R&D, Participation, and Compliance"
Policy Brief
By Bard Harstad
Climate policy is complicated. For a treaty to be beneficial, one must think through carefully how it will work, once it is implemented. Crucial questions include the following: How should an international treaty be designed? Should one negotiate commitments for a five-year period, or for much longer? Assuming that the treaty specifies aggregate or country-specific emission caps, what should these caps be and how should they change over time? How should the agreement be updated once policymakers, scholars, and the public learn more about the severity of the climate-change problem, or about the effects of the policy? Can the treaty be designed to encourage investments in "green" abatement technology or renewable energy sources? Finally, how can one motivate countries to participate and comply with such an agreement?
February 4, 2013
"Engineers Square up to Meet Grand Challenges"
Op-Ed, Times
By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
"We the undersigned will be among more than 400 engineers, scientists, industrialists and thought-leaders from around the world who will meet for this summit in March, with the goal of realising our technological dreams and using what we learn to improve global sustainability, resilience, health, education, economic growth and overall quality of life. The summit will be disruptive, forward-looking and internationally collaborative. It starts with the premise that the most valuable global commodity today is not oil, gold or grain: it is ideas."
January 2013
"The Fate of an Engineered Planet"
Journal Article, Scientific American, issue 1, volume 308
By David Keith, Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and Andy Parker, Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program
Solar engineering and other exceptionally ambitious new technologies to deal with the reality of rising global temperatures come riddled with uncertainties. To illustrate how complex the problem is and what kind of challenges lie ahead, here are three contrasting, and somewhat fantastical, scenarios.
Winter 2013
"RIP: The Basic/Applied Research Dichotomy"
Journal Article, Issues in Science and Technology, issue 2, volume XXIX
By Venkatesh "Venky" Narayanamurti, Benjamin Peirce Professor of Technology and Public Policy; Professor of Physics, Harvard; Director, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program; Co-Principal Investigator, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group, Tolu Odumosu, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program and Lee Vinsel
"This mini-history reveals how knowledge grows through a richly interwoven system of scientific and technological research in which there is no clear hierarchy of importance and no straightforward linear trajectory. Accepting this reality has profound implications for the design of research institutions, the allocation of resources, and the national policies that guide research. This in turn can open the door to game-changing discoveries and inventions and put the nation on the path to a more sustainable science and technology ecosystem."
