The Weekly Leaf
This week, the U.S. and Iran renewed air strikes, Russia barraged Ukraine with missiles, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake killed at least 34 people in Japan, and President Trump met with President Zelenskyy and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House.
Read more below.
The Weekly Leaf will be on hiatus for August.
This Week’s Content Highlights
Features from Aspen Strategy Group Members
Condoleezza Rice interviewed by Fortune: “Inside the Mind of Kevin Warsh”
Nicholas Burns announced as a keynote panelist for the Association for Supply Chain Management CHAINge 2026 Conference
Anja Manuel for The Wire China: “China’s New Technology Trap”
Kay Bailey Hutchison interviewed by Will DuPree for KXAN News: “Former Senator Speaks on UT Tower Shooting”
William Burns awarded the 2026 AFSA Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy Award
Mark Esper interviewed by Mike Emanuel for Fox News: “Iran is ‘NOT READY TO MAKE A DEAL’”
Michael Froman interviewed Chris McGuire for the Council on Foreign Relations: “The Latest in U.S.-China AI Competition”
Jane Harman interviewed by Joe Mathieu and Kailey Leinz for Bloomberg: “U.S.-Iran War Has Made Every Middle East Country a Target”
Meghan O’Sullivan interviewed by David Gura for Bloomberg: “‘Poised for More Escalation’ in Strait of Hormuz”
David Petraeus and Clara Kaluderovic (RLP ‘26) for The Wall Street Journal: “Ukraine Is Redefining Modern Warfare”
Penny Pritzker and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson interviewed Affirm founder and CEO Max Levchin for Semafor’s The CEO Signal podcast
David E. Sanger for The New York Times: “Trump Seems Trapped by Iran War, Even as He Wields the World’s Biggest Hammer”
Jake Sullivan for Foreign Affairs: “How to Reindustrialize America”
Robert Zoellick, Esther Brimmer, and Michael Mandelbaum interviewed by William Brangham for PBS News’ Compass Points: “America’s Global Legacy at 250”
Post of the Week
|
Young Leaders Spotlight
Features from ASG Rising Leaders and Fellows
Rebecca J. Anderson (‘26) et al. for the McKinsey Global Institute: “The Global Balance Sheet 2026: Imbalance and Divergence”
Maria Fernanda Bozmoski (‘26) and Juan Sebastian Chamorro for the Atlantic Council: “How the U.S. Should Respond to Ortega Declaring No More Elections in Nicaragua”
Marcus Coleman (‘23) for Bright Harbor: “Recovery Is About Better Relationships, Not Bigger Checks”
Liana Fix (‘23) and Molly Carlough for the Council on Foreign Relations: “As Zelenskyy Meets Trump, Ukraine’s Political Crisis Reveals a Silver Lining”
Gabrielle Lazor for The Aspen Times: “Dialogue Still Matters So Long as We Maintain the Capacity for Surprise”
Helen Toner (‘21) for Fortune: “The Hugging Face Hack Was Just a Matter of Time and Exposes a Huge Blind Spot in AI Policy”
Things to Know
Content Relevant to Aspen Security Forum Discussions
Cristina Criddle for Financial Times: “Anthropic’s Claude AI Models Hack Into 3 Outside Groups During Testing”
Evelyn Ann-Marie Dom for Euronews: “Evacuees Return in Spain and French Wildfires Stabilise, Though Heatwave Keeps Authorities on Alert”
The Economist: “Saudi Arabia Is Locked in a Dangerous Stand-off With the Houthis”
France 24: “Around 60,000 Migrants Cross Into Spain’s Ceuta Exclave From Morocco”
Diaa Hadid and Omkar Khandekar for NPR: “India’s ‘Cockroach’ Movement Ousts Minister, but Can Modi Calm Youth?”
Alex Horton, Terrence McCoy, Samantha Schmidt, and Dylan Moriarty for The Washington Post: “Deadly U.S. Boat Strikes Have Failed to Curb Cocaine Supply, Pentagon and DEA Officials Say”
Jen Judson for Bloomberg: “U.S. Strikes Iran Again as Conflict Spreads Across Middle East”
Conor Pope for The Irish Times: “Former Presidents, Current Prime Ministers, and Britpop Kings Celebrate Mayo’s All-Ireland Triumph”
Summer Said and Georgi Kantchev for The Wall Street Journal: “Egypt Suffers First Drone Attack, Widening the Iran War”
Helen Sullivan for BBC: “Hamas Says It Has Agreed to Disarm After Trump Announces Board of Peace Plan”
Zia ur-Rehman, Jalaluddin Mughal, and Elian Peltier for The New York Times: “Clashes Erupt in Pakistani Kashmir as Voting in Local Election Begins”
Tiago Ventura for TIME: “Russian Bombardment Kills at Least Eight in Ukraine as Zelensky Renews Plea for Air Defense Supplies”
Kathryn Watson for CBS News: “Trump Meets With Zelenskyy and Netanyahu Separately Amid Wars in Iran, Ukraine”
Mari Yamaguchi and Mayuko Ono for the AP: “Quake Survivors in Southwestern Japan Sleep in Cars in Sweltering Heat as Death Toll Rises to 34”
From the Archives
Revisit our wide-ranging conversation on the state of global affairs and U.S. foreign policy from the 2026 Aspen Security Forum.
|
Condoleezza Rice, Co-Chair, Aspen Strategy Group; 66th U.S. Secretary of State; Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Mark T. Esper, 27th Secretary of Defense; Partner, Red Cell Partners Venture Capital
Penny Pritzker, 38th U.S. Secretary of Commerce; Founder and Chairman, PSP Partners
Moderator: Peter Spiegel, The Washington Post
Book of the Week
|
London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth
By Patrick Radden Keefe
“In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain’s spy agency, captured video of a young man pacing back and forth on a high balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury tower on the bank of the river Thames. At 2:24 a.m., he jumped into the river.
In a quiet London neighborhood several miles away, Rachelle Brettler was worried about her son. Zac had told her that he had gone to stay with a friend for the weekend, but then he did not come home. Days later, a police car pulled up and two officers relayed the dreadful news: Her son was dead.
In their unbearable grief, Rachelle and her husband, Matthew, struggled to understand what had happened to Zac… Only after his death did they learn that he had adopted a fictitious alter ego: Zac Ismailov, son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a great fortune…. In a bravura feat of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the Brettlers’ quest, peeling back layers of mystery and exposing the seedy truths behind the glamorous London of posh mansions and private nightclubs, a city in which everything is for sale, and aspirational fantasies are underwritten by dirty money and corruption. London Falling is a mesmerizing investigation of an inexplicable death and a powerful narrative driven by suspense and staggering revelations. But it is also an intimate and deeply poignant inquiry into the nature of parental love and the challenges of being a parent today, a portrait of a family trying to solve the riddle not just of how their son died, but of who he really was in life.”
Around the Institute
|
The American Economy in a New Era
Join the Aspen Economic Strategy Group on Wednesday, August 5 from 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. ET as Stanford Digital Economy Lab Director Erik Brynjolfsson and Lazard CEO and Chairman Peter Orszag sit down with AESG Director Melissa S. Kearney to discuss how America’s business leaders and policymakers can promote economic growth and broad-based prosperity in a new era shaped by rapid advances in AI and a shifting geopolitical landscape.
Register today to join the conversation.
Register for the Livestream Here
Podcast of the Week
Co-Hosts Ankit Panda and Katie Putz for The Diplomat’s Asia Geopolitics Podcast: “Why Did China Test a Submarine-launched Ballistic Missile?”
|
SAVE THE DATE: 2026 ASF DC
Wednesday, December 9 | Washington, D.C.
Save the date for the 2026 Aspen Security Forum: DC Edition on Wednesday, December 9, 2026. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months!
|
The Aspen Strategy Group wishes you all a wonderful rest of the summer!
