The Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance (GTG) examines how emerging technologies—including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and smart devices—are redefining power, economies, and policies worldwide. Our research addresses the complex challenges these advances pose for international security, and how governments, businesses, and individuals adapt to shifting landscapes of risk and opportunity.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping economies, security, and governance worldwide, raising urgent questions about how to distribute its benefits equitably while managing risks. GTG examines how democracies can leverage AI innovation to advance shared prosperity and security, with particular attention to infrastructure requirements, Global South perspectives, and mechanisms for international cooperation.
Related projects:
AI for Peace
This research initiative investigates how the United States and its allies and partners can leverage their comparative advantages in AI innovation to equitably distribute the benefits of AI while incentivizing trustworthy deployment. The research focuses on three key areas:
Infrastructural requirements for deploying AI at scale for countries at all levels of economic development and multilateral, multi-stakeholder mechanisms for meeting those requirements.
Global South perspectives on promising use cases for AI and governance approaches for facilitating AI deployment while managing risks.
Prospects and options for international collaborations to address cross-border security, environmental, and other externalities.
The Future of Decision-Making Project (FODM) is a multi-year, interdisciplinary research initiative examining how emerging technologies—particularly artificial intelligence and advanced decision-support systems—are reshaping human decision-making in high-stakes domains such as national security, defense, and crisis management. Rather than focusing solely on technological capability, the project centers on the human dimension: how judgment, responsibility, and accountability evolve as machines increasingly inform, shape, or constrain human choices. The project brings together scholars and practitioners from academia, government, and industry to develop empirically grounded, policy-relevant insights into the future of human-machine decision systems.
GEOPOLITICS OF TECHNOLOGY
Emerging technologies are becoming central to great power competition and regional security dynamics. GTG examines how technological advantages translate into geopolitical leverage, how U.S. strategy can balance competition with innovation and alliance partnerships, and how technology is reshaping power dynamics across critical regions like East Asia.
GTG's annual conference and ongoing research initiative brings together leading regional experts, policymakers, and industry leaders to examine how technological developments are reshaping geopolitical dynamics across East Asia. The research focuses on critical technology supply chains—particularly semiconductors—regional responses to U.S.-China competition, and opportunities for multilateral cooperation on technology governance.
CHINA & DIGITAL COMPETITION
China's rapid digital development and distinct governance approaches have profound implications for global markets, security, and technology standards. GTG analyzes Chinese technology policy and corporate strategies through original-language sources, providing insights into how China's digital trajectory shapes international competition and governance debates.
The DigiChina project, led by Graham Webster, enhances understanding of China's digital policy developments through translating and analyzing Chinese-language sources. Since 2017, DigiChina has published translations of primary sources, contextual explanation, and analysis on China’s technology policy landscape, covering topics including the Cybersecurity Law regime, data governance, artificial intelligence, and China’s official push for greater technological independence.
CYBERSECURITY & INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
Effective governance of technology challenges requires sustained dialogue and cooperation across borders. GTG facilitates Track II exchanges with international partners, building relationships and shared understanding that can lay groundwork for broader policy cooperation on cybersecurity and technology governance issues.
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Millions of Americans may have asked themselves these questions, or versions of them—especially in the wake of horrific mass shootings like those in Buffalo and Uvalde. Record-breaking spikes in gun sales over the last two years, alongside surveys indicating that self-protection continues to be the dominant reason for buying guns, underscore a widely-held belief that a gun in the home has security benefits.
A new study from my research team, recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, shows no such benefits. We found the opposite: people living in homes with guns face substantially higher risks of being fatally assaulted.
Topic
This systematic review and meta-analysis summarizes existing evidence to establish whether vision impairment, ocular morbidity and their treatment are associated with depression and anxiety in children.
Clinical Relevance
Understanding and quantifying these associations support early detection and management of mental health symptoms in children with vision impairment and ocular morbidity. Additionally, this review provides evidence in favour of insurance coverage for timely strabismus surgery.
Methods
We searched nine electronic databases from inception to February 18, 2021, including observational and interventional studies assessing whether vision impairment and/or ocular morbidity and their treatment are associated with depression and/or anxiety in children. We used narrative synthesis and meta-analysis with the residual maximum likelihood method. A protocol was registered and published on The International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO, CRD42021233323).
Results
Among 28,992 studies, 28,956 (99.9%) were excluded as duplicates or unrelated content. Among 36 remaining studies, 21 (58.3%) were observational studies concerning vision impairment, eight (22.2%) were observational studies concerning strabismus, and seven (19.4%) were interventional studies. Vision-impaired children experienced significantly higher scores of depression (Standard Mean Difference [SMD] 0.57, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) 0.26-0.89, 11 studies) and anxiety (SMD 0.61, 95% CI 0.40-0.821, 14 studies) than normally-sighted children. In particular, myopic children experienced higher scores of depression (SMD 0.59, 95% CI 0.36-0.81, six studies) than normally-sighted children. Strabismus surgery significantly improved symptoms of depression (SMD: 0.59 95% CI 0.12-1.06, three studies) and anxiety (SMD: 0.69 95% CI 0.24-1.14, four studies) in children.
Discussion
Among children, vision impairment is associated with greater symptoms of depression and anxiety. Surgical treatment of strabismus improved these symptoms. Further randomized controlled trials exploring the impact of public health measures for myopia correction on mental health in children are needed. Scaling up access to strabismus surgery could improve the mental health of affected children.
Key policy takeaways from Francis Fukuyama on why Ukraine will win; Jean Oi on U.S.-China climate cooperation; Rose Gottemoeller on nuclear arms control in Europe; Michael McFaul on sanctions and Russia; Larry Diamond on ranked-choice voting; and Renee DiResta on hate speech on social media.
This article examines the consequences of the opium concession system in the Dutch East Indies—a nineteenth-century institution through which the Dutch would auction the monopolistic right to sell opium in a given locality.
Is operating overnight associated with worse outcomes for surgical procedures performed by the attending surgeon the subsequent day? In this cross-sectional study of 498,234 daytime operations performed by 1,131 surgeons at 20 US institutions, there was no significant association between operating the previous night and the incidence of in-hospital death or major complications (sepsis, pneumonia, myocardial infarction, thromboembolic event, or stroke) for daytime operations performed the subsequent day. After adjusting for confounders, the incidence of death or major complications was 5.89% among daytime operations when the attending surgeon operated the night before compared with 5.87% among daytime operations when the attending surgeon did not. These findings suggest that operating overnight does not appear to be associated with worse outcomes when the attending surgeon continues to operate the next day.
A study examining the BRI through the lens of the obsolescing bargain to evaluate the practices of China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and policy banks in mitigating political risk.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health,
May 16, 2022
The objectives of this paper were to examine the risk of depression and depressive symptoms among Han and minority children and adolescents in rural China, the links between academic performance and depressive symptoms, and the prevalence of these links among specific subgroups. A total of 8392 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students at 105 sample rural schools in eight low-income counties and districts in a prefectural-level city in Southwestern China were randomly selected using a three-step sampling strategy. A total of 51% of the sample were female (SD = 0.50), and the age range was 7 to 19 years (mean = 11.35 years; SD = 1.05). Using the Patient Health Questionnaire 8-item depression scale, the prevalence of depressive symptoms in the sample was assessed, while data on students’ academic performance (standardized math test) and demographic characteristics were also collected. Our results show that the rates of major depression were 19% for Han students, 18% for Tibetan students, and 22% for Yi students; the rates of severe depression were 2% for Han and Tibetan students, and 3% for Yi students. Yi students were at significantly higher risks for major and severe depression than Han students. We conducted multivariate regression and heterogeneous analyses. Academic performance was negatively and significantly correlated to depressive symptoms. Across the whole sample, students with lower math scores, minority students, boys, younger students, and students with migrant parents were most vulnerable to depressive symptoms. The heterogeneous analysis suggests that among poor-performing students, subgroups at higher risk for depression include boys, non-boarding students, and students whose mothers had graduated from high school or above. These findings indicate a need to improve mental health outcomes of rural Han and minority primary school students, targeting academic performance for possible intervention.
A team of experts led by Rose Gottemoeller has produced a new report for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies on non-strategic nuclear warhead policies in Europe, particularly in light of Russia's changing status in the global nuclear community.
United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law,
May 5, 2022
On May 4th, in front of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, Nate Persily, James B. McClatchy Professor Of Law and codirector of the Stanford Cyber Poicy Center called upon the Subcomittee to enact legislation to ensure data relevant to contemporary social problems is unlocked, so researchers can study how big these problems are and seek to solve them.
Academic achievement in middle schools in rural China remains poor for many students. This study examines whether programmes and interventions can improve academic achievement by reviewing rigorous experimental evaluations of nine programmes (11 interventions) on 47,480 rural middle school students in China. The results find none of the interventions improved academic achievement. Moreover, we find no evidence for heterogeneous treatment effects by student gender, age or previous academic achievement. These results may be due in part to the academically-demanding nature of the middle school curriculum, which is applied universally to students with varying levels of cognitive ability.
Key policy takeaways from Larry Diamond on the future of democracy; Rose Gottemoeller on the West, Russia and nukes; Kathryn Stoner on Putin and Kremlin tensions; Michael McFaul on the West and Putin’s threats; Francis Fukuyama on illiberalism on the left and right; Renée DiResta on LinkedIn and deepfakes; and Michelle Mello on COVID misinformation.
