Today, Tyler Cowen explains how he sees AI impacting education and the future of work; Rose Gottemoeller calls on atomic scientists to help the major nuclear powers arrive at meaningful compromises on nuclear testing policy issues; and Michael McFaul argues that the United States should seize opportunities to partner with Ukraine on military drone technology.
Artificial Intelligence and Economics
Economist, podcaster, and columnist Tyler Cowen is bullish on the integration of AI into higher education. He’s also not worried about its effects on the future workplace. On this week’s episode of EconTalk, Cowen speaks with Visiting Fellow Russ Roberts about the reasons behind his optimism and argues that college classes should devote significant time to learning how to use AI. The duo discuss the future of writing (and thinking) in an academic context, and Cowen's solution to concerns about cheating. Cowen also shares how he personally has adapted to AI, and whether he thinks there’s value to a college education designed not to ensure mastery of a subject but instead to help students become the kind of people they want to be. Watch or listen here.
Arms Control
“February 2026 saw the end of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as New START, the last nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia,” writes Research Fellow Rose Gottemoeller at Science. What does this mean for the future of nuclear arms control? She argues that this moment calls for “scientists from all three nuclear powers [China, Russia, and the US] to collaborate on a solution.” Gottemoeller recounts how, in the 1950s, atomic physicists from the US and USSR “stepped forward to lay the groundwork for eventual nuclear agreements in the 1960s and 1970s.” Encouraging a replay of this history, Gottemoeller says today’s nuclear scientists can help the major nuclear powers find a compromise on “the key issue of what level of activity is permitted under the nuclear testing moratorium.” Read more here.
Security and Defense
In a post at his Substack, Senior Fellow Michael McFaul examines how Ukraine’s innovations in drone warfare can help the United States and its democratic allies adapt to the future of warfare. “Ukrainian companies have emerged as world leaders in drone production and innovation,” McFaul writes, noting that “tragic daily testing of their products” has granted Ukrainian drone makers a singular technical perspective. McFaul argues that partnering with Ukraine on drone production would enhance deterrence with China and Russia, while ensuring the US stays at the forefront of unmanned military technology. McFaul points interested readers toward his latest book, Autocrats vs. Democrats, for more on this topic. Read more here.
Revitalizing American Institutions
Writing at his weekly column for RealClearPolitics, Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz discusses “Listless Liberalism,” a recent essay by Becca Rothfeld, a nonfiction book critic at The Washington Post. Though claiming to defend a “vibrant liberalism,” Berkowitz says, Rothfeld “sides with the postliberal right and progressive-postmodern left against classical liberalism.” Berkowitz emphasizes the role of cultural and curricular changes in America’s humanities departments in recounting how the academy has failed to sustain liberalism. “Our colleges’ and universities’ educational malpractice has deprived the nation of writers willing and able to enlist the imagination in defending political and economic freedom from the utopian broadsides of the postliberal right and postmodern-progressive left,” he concludes. Read more here.
Determining America’s Role in the World
Visiting Fellow Matt Turpin uses the introduction to his weekly China Articles newsletter to examine the situation the United States finds itself in with respect to its allies, its adversaries, and the current international order. Per Turpin, the “fundamental dilemma” the country faces is: “If US allies can only be persuaded to support initiatives that maintain the status quo and the status quo is no longer tenable, then should the United States act alone?” Turpin argues that we are witnessing a full-fledged “Second Cold War . . . characterized by multiple hot conflicts and the weaponization of interdependence.” Current “conflicts in Europe, in the Persian Gulf, the actions in Venezuela, the breakdown of a global trading system, these are all symptoms of this new cold war.” Turpin says a new world order will eventually arise, but for now, nations are scrambling to deal with the costs of shifting away from the post–World War II international system. Read more here.
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