Artificial Intelligence promises to transform Public Defenders in Brazil, as seen throughout our fieldwork trip in Rio de Janeiro. Our team spent the week discussing the integration of AI in legal practices with defenders from 13 states and experts from Instituto de Tecnologia e Sociedade (ITS Rio) and COPPE / UFRJ. We focused on developing AI tools tailored to reduce administrative burdens, enabling defenders to concentrate on advocacy. With nearly 80% of Brazilians entitled to free legal aid, AI can automate routine tasks like document categorization and grammatical corrections.

Significant challenges relate to privacy and potential biases in algorithms, underscoring the need for collaborative governance to ethically implement these solutions. Thus, a unified technological strategy is crucial. We hope that through our work, we can create a collaborative governance framework that will facilitate the development of digital and AI tools, ultimately helping citizens at large. We appreciated the opportunity to learn from incredibly dedicated professionals who are excited to find new ways to jointly develop tools.

We met with government agencies, legislators, military and national security officials, private sector actors, and civil society figures within Taiwan's vibrant ecosystem for countering Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI). On the ground, the team found that China’s FIMI operations are evolving and increasingly subtle and complex. As generative AI empowers malign actors, our team assessed that the battle against sophisticated, state-sponsored influence campaigns requires a more integrated and strategic approach that spans legal, technological, and societal responses.

During their time in Ghana, Skylar and Maya met with various stakeholders in the Ghanaian transportation field, including government agencies, ride-share apps, freight businesses, academics, and paratransit operators. Presently, paratransit operators, known locally as "tro tros," dominate the public transportation space and with a variety of meetings with their union officials and drivers in terminals around Accra they were able to learn about the nature of the tro tro business and their relationships — and lack thereof — with the government.

In D.C., Rosie met with development organizations and transport officials and attended the World Bank’s Transforming Transportation Conference and their paratransit and finance roundtable. Collectively, they learned about the issues facing the transport industry primarily related to problems surrounding bankability, infrastructure and vehicle financing, and lack of government collaboration with stakeholders. Insights from the trip spurred their team away from conventional physical interventions and toward solutions that will bridge stakeholder gaps and improve transport governance and policy implementation.

Our team had the opportunity to go to Mongolia and Washington DC where we conducted over twenty structured interviews with a variety of stakeholders. We spoke with people including local and central government officials, officials of international organizations, representatives from mining and cashmere industries, community organizations, academic researchers, herder households, NGOs and Mongolian politicians. Though we knew the practice of nomadic herding is core to Mongolia’s national identity, we didn’t fully realize just how integrated this practice, and the problem of grassland degradation, are in the economy, society and politics of Mongolia.

In the run-up to Mongolia’s election in June, this issue was especially top of mind to those we interviewed. Everyone we spoke with had some form of direct connection with herding, mostly through their own families. Our interviews, as well as being in Ulaanbaatar and the surrounding provinces, helped us to deepen our understanding of the context in which possible interventions operate. Most especially we observed all the extensive work that is being done to tackle grassland degradation and that institutionalizing and supporting these existing approaches could help tackle this issue.

While on the ground, our team met with members from Chinese student organizations and professional associations to gather primary evidence on the online harms they face. We also met with Tom Udall, the U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand, his team, and university faculty to brainstorm solutions to tackle this problem. We learned about the prevalent use of “super-apps” beyond WeChat in crowdsourcing solutions and support, and were able to better grasp the complexities of the relationships between public safety organizations and the focus demographic. In retrospect, it was insightful to hear from actors across the public, private, and civic sectors about the prevalence of online harms and how invested major stakeholders are in finding common solutions through a joint, holistic approach.

Our team met with private sector mini grid developers, government officials from the public utilities commission and energy ministry, and rural communities benefiting from mini grid electrification. While we saw first-hand the significant impact that solar mini grids can have on communities living in energy poverty, we also developed a deeper understanding of the macroeconomic, market, and policy conditions preventing the industry from reaching its full potential of providing energy access to millions of Sierra Leoneans. Moving forward, we will explore innovative climate finance solutions and leverage our policy experience to develop feasible recommendations specific to the local environment.

During our travels around Taiwan and our many meetings, we were surprised with the lack of consensus among local decision-makers regarding which potential solution pathways were likely to yield the most timely and effective results. These discrepancies often reflected the presence of information asymmetries and divergent institutional interests across stakeholders—both of which run counter to Taiwan’s most urgent strategic priorities. Revising existing bureaucratic authorities and facilitating the spread of technical expertise would enable—and enrich—investment in future resilience.

While we anticipated that structural inefficiencies would impede change to some degree, our onsite interviews gave us a clearer picture of where policy interventions will likely have the most positive effect for Taiwan's defense. With the insights from our fieldwork, we intend to spend the remainder of the quarter exploring new leads, delving into theory of change, and designing a set of meaningful policy recommendations.

the Taiwanese cables to the Matsu Islands have been cut 27 times, most recently in spring 2023. Our final report and presentation will analyze Taiwan’s current emergency management and resiliency plans, identify areas of improvement, and present solutions to fix these gaps. All of us care deeply about democracy and the rule of law, and the security of Taiwan against PRC aggression is central in the fight for those ideals. Our hope is that this work helps in some small way to improve the security of Taiwan and its people.

need resources to be aware of online risks and the best measures to protect themselves. Netsafe has yet to find the most effective way to appeal to this demographic group.

We aim to understand the demographic's most frequently used online platforms, the most common types of online harms, cultural factors, and relevant stakeholders.

disinformation operations with near impunity. We’re particularly interested in how the development of new tools and tactics – like commercial firms’ use of paid influencers, or generative AI – will aid in further obscuring attribution and scaling operations. Our policy recommendations will address how governments, international organizations, and platforms can tackle this issue.

tools. Our research focuses on how the different state PDOs in Brazil can collaborate and share AI tools to help reduce their demand and better serve their clients. The goal is for AI to be a "shared public infrastructure" that multiple PDOs can use to serve their clients.

integrating solutions available at scale for the public. We aim to recommend policy interventions which reflect local demand, ensuring sustainable, efficient, and accessible transportation solutions for the community.

government interventions, local control of stock numbers, or strong market incentives, herds exceed the grassland carrying capacity in pockets that are becoming increasingly degraded. This threatens nomadic pastoralism, a traditional way of life. With such complex and interlinked drivers to this problem, it has been challenging to isolate the causes we should focus on. We have been working with our partners at The Asia Foundation who are in the early stages of piloting a solution.

these interventions have not led to a widespread growth in mini-grid development, as the industry continues to struggle. We hope to further explore the market and regulatory landscape and learn how sub-interventions including cross-subsidization, de-risking investment, demand creation, and other innovative and locally-based solutions may help improve the industry’s viability and aid in increasing access to affordable, renewable energy in Sierra Leone.

This week we launched the long-awaited 17th year of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law's Draper Hills Summer Fellowship Program. Founded in 2005 with generous support from Bill and Phyllis Draper and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills, Draper Hills is an executive training program for world leaders striving to promote democracy. For the next two weeks, Fellows will participate in workshops led by an interdisciplinary team of faculty to study new theories and approaches to democratic development.

Fellows in the class of 2021 were selected from among thousands of applicants for their ground-breaking work to defend democracy. These 34 leaders drawn from 30 countries around the world are pioneering new approaches and models to advance social and political change in some of the most challenging global contexts. Representing business, government, and the nonprofit sector, our fellows are working on the frontlines of democratic change to combat the global rise of authoritarianism and populism. In countries moving towards democracy, our fellows are working to institutionalize new systems and practices to support democratic transitions.

An Unconventional Year

Traditionally, Fellows would travel from their home countries to the U.S. and spend three weeks on campus at Stanford learning together. However, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the program is currently taking place virtually for the first time (for the same reasons, the program did not run in 2020). The shift to online programming posed a number of logistical obstacles – from what time to run virtual sessions when participants span over a dozen time zones, to how to foster the sense of belonging and personal connections that occur more naturally with in-person settings.

To begin addressing the latter, Fellows were sent welcome packages to build excitement and foster community both within the program and Stanford. Upon receiving hers, Aisha Yesufu of Nigeria shared "I am so excited at the different people I'll be meeting from all over the world, and also learning from different people, lecturers, professors... It's going to be quite interesting and, for me, that is what I am most looking forward to," along with the video below:

"One of the most important things I have ever been involved with."

Opening against the backdrop of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the importance of the Draper Hills program and the need to promote democratic change is now more evident than ever.

The inaugural session for the 2021 cohort began with Francis Fukuyama introducing the fellows to several of the esteemed faculty they will be learning from over the next two weeks, including Larry Diamond, Erik Jensen, and Michael McFaul. McFaul shared that not only did he found the program, but "it is one of the most important things I have ever been involved with." Jensen later added that "participating in this program is one of the great pleasures I have every year."

More to Come

Throughout the next two weeks, our Draper Hills Fellows will examine the political development, democratic transitions, and the relationship of law to economic development, public administration, administrative law, transitional justice, food security, and global health policy, among others. The group is eager to learn, and we look forward to seeing the many great things the training they receive here will enable them to do in their home countries and beyond.

(Updated Nov. 7, 2014)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Nov. 4 that the death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has risen to above 4,960 and that an estimated 8,168 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, have contracted the virus since March. It is the largest and most severe outbreak of the Ebola virus since it was first detected four decades ago. All but nine of the deaths were in those three countries; eight were in Nigeria and one patient died in the United States.

The CDC in October proclaimed that in the worst-case scenario, Sierra Leone and Liberia could have 1.4 million cases by Jan. 20, 2015, if the disease keeps spreading without immediate and immense intervention to contain the virus.

Two American aid workers infected with Ebola while working in West Africa were transported to a containment unit at Emory University in Atlanta for treatment, raising public fears about international spread of the highly virulent virus that has no known cure. The two were released from the hospital after being the first humans to receive an experimental Ebola drug called ZMapp. Another man who recently helped an Ebola victim in Liberia traveled to Texas and died in a Dallas hospital. Two of the nurses who treated him caught the virus as well, but have been released from the hospital. Some states have struggled with the moral 

We ask CISAC biosecurity experts David Relman and Megan Palmer to answer several questions about Ebola and the public health concerns and policy implications. Relman is the co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation who has served on several federal committees investigating biosecurity matters. He is the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in the Departments of Medicine and of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine, and Past-President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Palmer is the William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at CISAC and a Researcher at the UC Berkeley Center for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), and served as Deputy Director of Policy & Practices for the Multi-University NSF Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC).

The two of them have answered the questions together.

What is Ebola and how dangerous is it compared to other diseases?

Ebola is an acute viral infectious disease, often associated with severe hemorrhagic fever. While initial symptoms are flu-like, they can rapidly progress, and include vomiting, reduced ability to regulate immune responses and other physiological processes, sometimes leading to internal and external bleeding. The disease has an incubation period that can last up to 21 days, but patients typically become ill four to nine days after infection, and die about seven to ten days later. Fatality rates for the current Ebola outbreak are nearing 60% (according to the CDC), while past outbreaks in the Republic of Congo have seen rates as high as 90%. This outbreak to date has resulted in nearly 1,000 deaths, more than any previous Ebola outbreak.

Ebola virus is believed to reside in animals such as fruit bats where it does not cause disease, but is then transmitted to and among humans and other primates, in whom disease typically does occur. The route by which the virus crosses between species remains largely unknown. People become infectious once they become symptomatic. Ebola is transmitted via blood or bodily fluid, but can persist outside the body for a couple days. Infection can occur through unprotected contact with the sick, but also when contaminated equipment such as needles cut through healthcare workers’ protective gear, and also through contact with infected individuals postmortem.

David Relman Photo Credit: Rod Searcey

Ebola’s horrific symptoms provoke public fear, and it becomes easy to lose perspective on the relative spread and toll of this outbreak. Ebola is relatively difficult to transmit. This means the latest Ebola outbreak is still small in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of people killed each year via more easily transmitted airborne influenza strains and other diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. It’s important that we not lose sight of more chronic, but less headline-grabbing diseases that will be pervasive, insidious long-standing challenges for Africa and elsewhere.

Is there a vaccine or cure?

There is no vaccine for Ebola and no tried-and-true cure. Health workers can only give supportive care to patients and try to stop the spread to new victims.

Several experimental therapies for Ebola are under development. One receiving attention is ZMapp, a mix of antibodies produced by mice exposed to the virus that have been adapted to improve their human compatibility. Limited tests in primates show early promise, but the drug had not been tried on humans -- until now. Two Americans transported back to the U.S. from West Africa received the experimental therapy. While the two seem to be improving, it isn’t clear that ZMapp was responsible; another issue is that ZMapp and other potential therapies have not been cleared by the FDA for wider use in humans.

The process for approval, and who gets priority access to such drugs, are complex policy issues. The WHO will be convening leaders and medical ethicists next week to discuss how to develop and distribute experimental therapies. This is not a simple task; many factors need to be taken into consideration and balanced with limited information to guide decisions.

Successful or not, and despite any approval, it’s still uncertain whether enough of such drugs could even be produced quickly enough to respond to this particular outbreak, and if not - whether they’d be effective in a future outbreak.

You can listen to Relman in this KQED Public Radio talk show.

Relman joins other experts in a Stanford panel on Ebola

Why has this Ebola outbreak involved so many more people, and spread to a wider geographic area,  than previous outbreaks?

This is an evolving investigation and many potential contributing factors are being examined by scientists racing to collect information that can help them get ahead of the outbreak.

One factor is population density. This latest outbreak spread early into denser population areas within Liberia and Sierra Leone, rather than remain confined to isolated villages, as in earlier outbreaks in Central Africa. With a greater number of people being exposed within a smaller geographic area, the likelihood of transmission increases. Of particular concern is the prospect that the virus might take hold in Lagos, Nigeria, where a handful of cases have been recently identified. If this were to spread in Lagos, Africa’s most populous city, the death toll would likely increase dramatically.   

Another factor is the ability of affected regions to mount an effective public health response. This outbreak is occurring in three of the poorest African countries: Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. Civil wars have likely contributed to degradation of an already relatively poor public health infrastructure. This is also the first Ebola outbreak in the region, and the inexperience of local authorities can delay responses and fuel fearful community responses, undermining the ability to deal with the outbreak early when it’s more easily contained.

Cultural practices around the care of the sick and the dead can also fuel progression of an outbreak. In some parts of Western Africa, washing deceased relatives is commonplace. Customs like these increase the likelihood of the infection spreading through proximity between infected individuals and their family members

Image

What can be done to curtail the outbreak?

Isolation and quarantine are key to fighting the spread of Ebola. Isolation involves removing infected individuals from the general population to prevent the spread of disease. Quarantine, however, involves removing uninfected or potentially infected individuals from the general population to limit the spread of disease.

Thus far, the strategy to fight Ebola is dependent on isolating infected patients. Unsurprisingly, isolation efforts have proven hard to enforce. Some families, faced with the prospect of being confined to their homes, have denied the existence of Ebola in their localities, or refuted doctors who claim that one of their family members is sick. This is not unique to Africa; Americans had violent reactions to quarantine during the spread of smallpox. Some regions are now taking more extreme measures: Sierra Leone has deployed its army to enforce isolation at clinics and infected families’ homes, but this also risks civil unrest.

These tensions underscore the necessity of improved education and enforcement mechanisms within public health strategies. Response measures involve fundamental tradeoffs between liberty and safety. Because negotiations occur through complex local, national and international processes, one of the biggest risks is that decisions don’t keep pace with disease spread.

It’s important that we not lose sight of more chronic, but less headline-grabbing diseases that will be pervasive, insidious long-standing challenges for Africa and elsewhere."

How likely is it that the disease will spread into and within the United States?

Currently, airports in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea are screening all outbound passengers for Ebola symptoms such as fever. This includes asking passengers to complete healthcare questionnaires. However, it is difficult to reliably know who has been infected until they are symptomatic. Individuals could theoretically board a plane before they show symptoms, but develop them upon landing in the United States or elsewhere. This makes containing Ebola difficult, but not impossible.

If the virus were to enter the United States, it would be easier to contain and harder to spread. This virus does not transmit that easily to other humans, especially in settings with good infection control and isolation.

As viruses spread, the chances of genetic variation increase. Yet despite all the concerns from the current outbreak, Ebola is relatively bad at spreading in comparison to respiratory viral diseases such as influenza or measles. The likelihood of a pandemic Ebola virus in the near future seems slim as long as it cannot be transmitted via air.  While it’s possible that the Ebola virus could evolve, there is little evidence to suggest major genetic adaptations at this time.

What are some broader lessons about the dynamics and ecology of emerging infectious diseases that can help prevent or respond to outbreaks now and in the future?

These latest outbreaks remind us that potential pathogens are circulating, replicating and evolving in the environment all the time, and human action can have an immense impact on the emergence and spread of infectious disease.

We are starting to see common factors that may be contributing to the frequency and severity of outbreaks. Increasing human intrusion into zoonotic disease reservoir habitats and natural ecosystems, increasing imbalance and instability at the human-animal-vector interface, and more human population displacement all are likely to increase the chance of outbreaks like Ebola.

Megan Palmer Photo Credit: Rod Searcey

The epicenter of this latest outbreak was Guéckédou, a village near the Guinean Forest Region. The forest there has been routinely exploited, logged, and neglected over the years, leading to an abysmal ecological status quo. This, in combination with the influx of refugees from conflicts in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Cote d’Ivoire, has compounded the ecological issues in the area, potentially facilitating the spread of Ebola. There seems to be a strong relationship between ecological health and the spread of disease, and this latest outbreak is no exception.

While forensic analyses are ongoing, unregulated food and animal trade in general is also a key factor in the spread of infectious diseases across large geographic regions. Some studies suggest that trade of primates, including great apes, and other animals such as bats, may be responsible for transit of this Ebola strain from Central to Western Africa.

What are some of the other political and security implications of the outbreak and response?

Disease outbreaks can catalyze longer-term political and security issues in addition to more acute tensions.

There are complex international politics involved in emergency response and preparedness. Disease outbreaks often occur in poor regions, and demand help from more wealthy regions. The nature of the response reflects many factors - technical, social, political, legal and economic. Leaders often lack the expertise to take all these factors into account. It is an ongoing challenge to adapt our governance processes to be more reliable and move from damage control to planning. Organizations like the World Health Organization can provide guidance, but more resources and expertise are needed to get ahead of future disasters.

When help is provided, there is often mistrust of non-local workers, who can even be seen as sources of the disease. At a political level, distrust has been fueled by disguising political missions as health interventions, as was the case with the effort that led to the locating of Osama Bin Laden.

There are other security implications of this latest epidemic. This outbreak has led to a dramatic increase in the availability of Ebola virus in unsecured locations across West Africa, as well as to a growing number of labs across the world studying the disease. The immediate need to study the disease and develop beneficial interventions needs to be coupled to considerations of safety and security. From a safety standpoint, a rise in the handling of Ebola samples risks accidental transmission. From a security standpoint, those who wish to cause harm with this virus could acquire it from bodies, graves and other natural sources in the affected region. Both of these risks demand attention and efforts at mitigation.

Fourteen Stanford researchers addressing global poverty through a range of academic disciplines are receiving a total of $4.6 million in awards from the university-wide Global Development and Poverty (GDP) initiative.

Their projects, which are the first to be funded by the GDP, deal with challenges of health, violence, economics, governance and education in the developing world.

“GDP seeks to transform scholarly activity and dialogue at Stanford around the topic of global poverty, so that the university may have a greater impact on poverty alleviation in developing economies,” said GDP faculty co-chair Jesper B. Sørensen. “By focusing on placing a small number of big bets, GDP encourages researchers to think big, and to move beyond the conventional way of doing things. We are thrilled by the inaugural set of awardees, as they demonstrate the creative, inter-disciplinary approaches that will make Stanford a leader in this area.”

The GDP initiative is part of the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (SEED) and is administered in partnership with Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). The GDP is co-chaired by Sørensen, the faculty director for SEED and the Robert A. and Elizabeth R. Jeffe Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business; and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, senior fellow and director of FSI and the Stanley Morrison Professor at Stanford Law School.

SEED, which seeks to alleviate poverty by stimulating the creation of economic opportunities through innovation, entrepreneurship and the growth of businesses, was established in 2011 through a generous gift from Robert King, MBA '60, and his wife, Dorothy.

Through complementary areas of focus, GDP funding and other SEED research initiatives will stimulate research, novel interdisciplinary collaborations and solutions to problems of global poverty and development. GDP research aims to pursue answers to crucial questions that are essential to an understanding of how to reduce global poverty and promote economic development. That includes governance and the rule of law, education, health, and food security – all of which are essential for entrepreneurship to thrive. By contrast, other SEED research focuses on innovation, entrepreneurship, and the growth of businesses in developing economies.

Since 2012, SEED’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Developing Economies Award program also has doled out 22 awards and seven PhD fellowships to help support and scale businesses in developing economies. Among the $1 million in funded projects were studies of how to improve the livelihoods of small-holder cacao farmers throughout the tropics; how to identify startups with high job- and wealth-creating potential in Chile; how political accountability affects the ability to attract investment in Sierra Leone; and how managerial practices affect trade entrepreneurship in China.

First GDP Awards

The first 14 GDP award recipients are professors of economics, political science, law, medicine, pediatrics, education and biology, and senior fellows from FSI, the Woods Institute, and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR).

“Each of these projects cuts across disciplines, reflects innovative thinking, and has the potential to generate crucial knowledge about how to improve the lives of the poor around the world,” Cuéllar said. “These projects, along with a variety of workshops engaging the university and external stakeholders, will help us strengthen Stanford’s long-term capacity to address issues of global poverty through research, education and outreach.”

Among the award recipients is Pascaline Dupas, an associate professor of economics and senior fellow at SIEPR. Dupas, along with faculty from the Center for Health Policy and Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, will launch the Stanford Economic Development Research Initiative using GDP funds.  This initiative will focus on collecting high-quality institutional and individual-level data on economic activity in a number of developing countries over the long term, and making these data available to scholars around the world.

Beatriz Magaloni, an associate professor of political science and senior fellow at FSI, is receiving an award to lead a team focused on criminal violence and its effects on the poor in developing economies, and the practical solutions for increasing security in those regions.

Douglas K. Owens, a professor of medicine and FSI senior fellow, was awarded an award to help him lead a team that will develop models to estimate how alternative resource allocations for health interventions among the poor will influence health and economic outcomes.

Stephen Haber, a professor of political science and history and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, received an award to bring together Stanford researchers interested in examining the long-term institutional constraints on economic development. Their goal will be to provide policymakers with a framework for determining the conditions under which particular innovations are likely to have positive payoffs, and the conditions under which resources will likely be wasted.

Other projects will address the educational impacts of solar lighting systems in poor communities; identifying interventions to improve the profits and safety among poor, smallholder pig farmers in Bangladesh and China; the role of law and institutions in economic development and poverty reduction; and how to rethink worldwide refugee problems. Awards are also being provided to researchers focused on microfinance, online education and teacher training.

The project proposals were reviewed by an interdisciplinary faculty advisory council chaired by Cuéllar and Sørensen. 

“We were very encouraged by the impressive number of project proposals from a wide range of areas and are looking forward to introducing several new capacity and community-building activities in the fall,” Sørensen said.. “This wide range of research initiatives will form a vibrant nucleus for Stanford’s growing community of scholars of global development and poverty.”