The lesson of the destruction that emerged from Versailles after World War I by an aggrieved Germany and Japan was well learned – in both theory and practice.

“The UN’s ability to really run the world has always remained largely an illusion.”

a new cycle, in which there is little scope for a monopoly position of a narrow group of countries, will have no need for the traditional institutions of international governance at all.

was based not on formal status, but on unique capabilities of power.

o maintain its centrality in international politics.

A ‘Middle Corridor’ that Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkey signed up for this year is an example. “The regional desire is now there to make it work,” he said. “It is already happening.”

“The US needs India more while facing the DragonBear [a reference to the deepening China-Russia coalition] than India needs Washington while facing China in the Indo-Pacific,”

“emerging economies are finally breaking the hegemony of financing structures created by developed countries,”

“Both politically and economically, the stars have finally aligned for the INSTC,”

India’s imports from Russia grew by nearly 272 percent — crossing $5bn in just two months — compared with the same period in 2021.

All of this makes it “extremely important for Russia to develop new supply chains and enhance others,”

India, too, has largely focused on expanding trade with the West, China and Southeast Asia over the past two decades. Western sanctions on Iran further complicated the prospect of investing in the INSTC.

“Most of Russia’s supply chains are built to cater to Europe,”

reduces travel time from 40-60 days to 25-30 days, and cuts costs by 30 percent.

nd by 2030, the INSTC corridor is expected to have the capacity to transport up to nearly 25 million tonnes of freight each year — 75 percent of the total container traffic between Eurasia, South Asia and the Gulf.

the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) — a 7,200-kilometre (4,474-mile) network of railroads, highways and maritime routes that connects Russia and India through Iran — has been little more than a pipe dream.

CrowdTangle

his revolutionary spirit clashing with his Fabian instincts for gradual, non-violent change.

“poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”.

“the relentless enemy of all irresponsible authority, especially the irresponsible authority which derives from wealth and exploitation”,

Can a human do it? If they can, okay, maybe AI is a great way to take that task off a human’s plate to free them up for other magical things.

I’ve learned we really need to get into our customers’ heads and express the solution to the problem in terms that they will relate to

to find and use data sets to solve problems

Can a human do it? Most of the time AI can’t do anything that humans can’t do.

What problem you’re trying to solve — that’s the first question you need to answer. Am I trying to prioritize people’s time? Am I trying to automate something new?

Data sets like these are a key source of truth from which to develop an AI-based project.

What concrete problems can I solve with it?

What data do we have?

conversions

classifications.

numeric prediction

We get a lot of mileage out of “yes” or “no” questions.

aligns with their intuition.

nto the things that people use every day

Ministerial Declaration on eGovernment

Declaration on European Digital Rights and Principles

The European Space Programme bolsters the EU Space policy

16thEuropean Union -African Union Summit:

JAPAN-EU DIGITAL PARTNERSHIP

JOINT COMMUNICATION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL

Is the new nuclear ban approach going to make a strong contribution to eliminating nuclear weapons, or will it further polarise the “nuclear haves” and “nuclear have-nots”?

After all, France and Germany will obviously have more open discussions about nuclear policy than China or Russia.

A world where Swiss neighbours who help provide regional stability are weakened by nuclear disarmament, but their rivals are not, isn’t in Switzerland’s interests.

a treaty banning nuclear weapons without support from nuclear-armed states may conflict with existing – but greatly stalled – disarmament commitments under the NPT.

Many TPNW proponents justifiably critique the NPT for its lack of fairness in dividing the world into “nuclear haves” and “nuclear have-nots”.

The nuclear-armed states – China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – and the vast majority of their allied countries protected by “nuclear umbrella” pledges haven’t participated in any of the talks. Most of these countries claimed they would never join and that the treaty wouldn’t eliminate a single bomb or missile.

o work on nuclear disarmament with states inside and outside the treaty

the cautious Swiss position may allow the country to build bridges between TPNW proponents and nuclear-armed states while sorting through its own concerns about the treaty.

the cautious Swiss position may allow the country to build bridges between TPNW proponents and nuclear-armed states while sorting through its own concerns about the treaty.

having Science Diplomats in the member states with the sole objective of providing knowledge support to advance the importance of the strategic use of Science Diplomacy

that the Continent does not have fragmented STI foreign policies

a national Science Diplomacy strategy

an annual Science Diplomacy Summit

by building the institutional and human capacity of its practice and principles.

support local content development, build collaborations, enhance suitable policies that are evidence-based, give opportunity

Most African scientists work in isolated manners with a poor environment that supports partnership and collaboration.

South Africa which tends to have a better framework of Science Diplomacy on the Continent is using the concept to rebuild international relations after the apartheid and to develop its science.

Alden, C. (2007) China in Africa.

on the Chinese agenda in Africa: as a development partner, a neo-colonizer, or as an economic competito

n annual Science Diplomacy Summit

vidence-based STI strategies that promote local content rather than STI plans that are largely products of political assumptions

non-transparent collaboration and partnership in high-tech and emerging technologies due to competition in a fast-changing technological world.

leveraging well-formulated STI foreign policies and informed-bilateral agreements in managing public health

the AU Division of Science and Technology in collaboration with the ministers of science, foreign affairs and other relevant STI stakeholders from the member states such as national academies of science, science granting councils, research institutions, the diasporas and the organized private sector

the raw forms of diamonds, gold, and tantalum from the Republic of Congo

Some examples of neo-colonial science have also been discussed in public health elsewhere

The outcome of such research is usually only tried or implemented on the Continent.

o have research on the Continent led by African institutions

Neo-colonial science by the most industrialised upon the least developed countries in peer-reviewed publishing. Scientometrics, 56(3), 329-343.

where scientists or researchers from the Global South have marginal inputs in research projects carried out in developing nations by the Global North

“Afro-Science Diplomacy”

ndeed, globalization has been significantly driven by Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI)

An Afro-Science Diplomacy could act as a gatekeeper for African institutions’ sovereignty in reshaping imperial foreign policies.

as a global governance tool with the capacity to help Africa redefine history by adopting an Afro-Science Diplomacy strategy in addressing its domestic and global challenges.

The number ofactive developers working on Web3 code nearly doubled in 2021, toroughly 18,000 — not huge, considering global numbers, but notablenonetheless. Perhaps most significantly, Web3 projects have becomepart of the zeitgeist, and the buzz is undeniable.

So-called “stablecoins,”whose value is pegged to the dollar, the euro, or some other externalreference, have been pitched as upgrades to the global financial system.

“In short, we engineer the system to mathematicallyenforce our prior assumptions, since no government or organization canreasonably be trusted.”

Blockchains are “write only,”which means you can add data to them but can’t delete it.

On a “proof of stake” chain, which are newerbut increasingly common, processing transactions simply requires thatthe verifiers with a stake in the chain agree that a transaction islegit — a process that’s significantly more efficient

Web3 is an extension of cryptocurrency, usingblockchain in new ways to new ends

Worried about privacy? Encrypted wallets protectyour online identity. About censorship? A decentralized database storeseverything immutably and transparently, preventing moderators fromswooping in to delete offending content. Centralization? You get a realvote on decisions made by the networks you spend time on. More thanthat, you get a stake that’s worth something — you’re not a product,you’re an owner. This is the vision of the read/write/own web.

Web2 also created new ways for regular people to make money,such as through the sharing economy and the sometimes lucrative jobof being an influencer

The Web2 era has also been one of centralization.

the pull of centralization and theproliferation of new intermediaries is already undermining the utopianpitch for a decentralized web

While it’s undeniable that energy, money, and talent are surginginto Web3 projects, remaking the web is a major undertaking.

a blockchain-based web could shatter the monopolieson who controls information, who makes money, and even hownetworks and corporations work.

decentralized finance,”

“decentralized autonomous organizations,”operate like headless corporations: They raise and spend money, but alldecisions are voted on by members and executed by encoded rules.

nonfungible tokens.

The underlying technology,blockchain, is what’s called a “distributed ledger” — a database hostedby a network of computers instead of a single server — that offers usersan immutable and transparent way to store information.

What was first acuriosity and then a speculative niche has become big business

data justice approach is one that centres on equity, recognition and representation of plural interests, and the creation and preservation of public goods as its principal goals.

Support for Zoom Apps in Webinars 

Support for translated captions

Quicker enablement of gesture recognition 

Persistent Gallery view after pinning 

View profile cards in during meetings 

Whiteboard features

Downloaded transcript records will include the speaker’s name, as well as timestamps, when saved locally.

ITP Jul 2022

Help a Reporter Out

to find sites that link to your competitors, but not to you (yet)

Resource Link Building

that journalists would use and link to from their articles.

“Most visited websites” has a US search volume of 4.4k and a global search volume of 11.9k.

ou’ll need to create assets that publications want to link to.

We need to put reason and strategy back in the saddle. And we need to do so with urgency.

sustained focus

in the era of China not rising but risen.

not by the latest Twitter feed, but by deep policy grip.

Building strong relations with emerging nations such as Indonesia is critical.

near shoring, reshoring and even friend shoring

A common approach to regulation would help.

The US-EU Trade and Technology Council could be made into an effective piece of collective policymaking machinery.

They admire the Western system more than we realise.

Meanwhile the West and the international institutions it controls have been bureaucratic, unimaginative and often politically intrusive without being politically effective.

increase defence spending and maintain military superiority.

between “realpolitik” foreign policy – basically unprincipled, and “values-driven” foreign policy – that pursued by the decent people.

The transatlantic partnership between Europe and America is at the crux.

Pursued with coordination, commitment and competence.

We need to be open to the possibility China changes. But strong enough to withstand it if it doesn't.

should not seek comprehensive “decoupling” or shut down lines of interaction or cooperation.

“strength plus engagement”

China will compete not just for power but against our system, our way of governing and living.

Sometimes out of interests. Sometimes out of dislike of the West. Sometimes because leaders share the propensity for the undemocratic model. Sometimes the nations will be pulled only part of the way.

the first time in modern history that the East can be on equal terms with the West.

virtually impossible to think Taiwan will return voluntarily, hence the fear that China will use force rather than persuasion.

It has an ancient civilisation, one of the pre-eminent cultures, and a people increasingly well-educated and prosperous.

the end of Western political and economic dominance.

the biggest geopolitical change of this century will come from China not Russia.

alled “Western policy”.

our belief in big-nation rationality.

what it means in respect of China.

a pivot point

to raising living standards; the only way to improve services whilst reducing costs, for example in health care; the only answer to climate change if we want to maintain development at the same time as cutting emissions.

all about harnessing the technology revolution.

Western democracy needs a new project.

The challenge of democracy is efficacy.

about delivery

domestic politics appear dysfunctional; and to the outside world, foreign policy looks unpredictable.

“too much; too little; too weird; too weak”.

placing as much emphasis on cultural as economic issues;

rampant populism.

There was no realistic alternative, but the policy distorted our economies, rewarding those with assets, penalising those without and was combined with austerity, cutting services upon which the poorest in society depended.

inflection point

Ukraine, he assessed, has held on to a number of qualitative edges, but these have shrunk. And Ukraine remains heavily outgunned.

patterns of behaviour emerge.

Causal Exploration, or CausX

darpa, one of the American defence department’s research agencies, hopes to do this by using natural-language processing to comb through the texts of hundreds of thousands of reports from think-tanks, commercial media and the department itself, looking for correlations human readers would probably miss.

Advanced Joint Effectiveness Model (ajem).

Pioneer,

Real pilots from democracies are assumed to be more creative that those from authoritarian regimes that discourage personal initiative.

to approximate mental and cultural factors

brawler, a simulator of aerial combat produced by ManTech, a defence firm in Herndon,

probabilistic

deterministic

is currently developing or upgrading roughly 100 predictive models, small and large.

requires users to estimate 30 values

it gets seven out of ten forecasts broadly right.

the Major Combat Operations Statistical Model,

When fed information about Russia’s initial push to seize Kyiv and subjugate Ukraine, which began on February 24th, the model predicted, on a scale of one to seven, “operational success” scores for the attacker and defender, respectively, of two and five.

the business of trying to forecast the outcomes of conflicts is going into overdrive

Che Guevara, liberation theology and Sub-Comandante Marcos

The problem with this search for Utopia is that it coexists with generally poor government.

It guarantees everyone the right, among other things, to “neurodiversity”, to “the free development” of “the personality, identity and life projects” and to “leisure, rest and the enjoyment of free time”.

natural paradise peopled by Rousseau’s “noble savage” and a blank slate on which any project could be inscribed.

This was nourished by myths of El Dorado and the Amazons; by tales of the prodigious civilisations of ancient Mexico and the Incas;

to adhere to the UN Framework of responsible state behaviour in cyberspace in order to ensure international peace, security and stability.

the “broken record technique,”

Asking permission in this way doesn’t make you appear weak, rather it shows you’re thoughtful and considerate of others.

You can use phrases like:

it can provide you with an air of authority, since the meeting organizer is deferring to you for your point-of-view.

in advance of the video meeting, review the agenda and let the organizer know where you’d like to contribute.

To avoid coming off as disruptive, signal your desire to contribute by:

over half of their working hours in meetings,

put a lot of pressure on herself to make a “high value” contribution, which often held her back from speaking at all. Heidi was also exceedingly courteous. She never wanted to be perceived as pushy or rude.

45 percent of women said it’s difficult to speak up in virtual meetings and one in five said they’ve felt ignored or overlooked by colleagues during video calls.

11.

the Joint Declaration by the EU and Indo-Pacific countries

he Eastern Partnership’s EU4Digital Initiative

the Secretary General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation

Joint Declaration

Today at the Digital Assembly in Sofia, Bulgaria

Roadmap for Digital Cooperation