This week, President-elect Donald Trump announced key Cabinet picks, President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping traveled to the APEC summit in Lima, COP29 kicked off in Azerbaijan, and President of Indonesia Prabowo Subianto visited Washington.
Read more below.
This Week’s Content Highlights
Features from Aspen Strategy Group Members
Elizabeth Economy and Zanny Minton Beddoes interviewed by David Westin for Bloomberg: “The Election Heard Around the World”
Peter D. Feaver and Martin E. Dempsey for The Washington Post: “The Right and Left Are Talking About the Military in Dangerous Ways”
Michèle Flournoy and William “Mac” Thornberry interviewed by Colin Demarest for Axios’ Future of Defense event
Susan B. Glasser, Tim Alberta, Helen Lewis, and Asma Khalid interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg for Washington Week With The Atlantic
Michael J. Green quoted by Latika M. Bourke for The Nightly: “Donald Trump Could ‘Flip’ Russia, Normalise Relations With Vladimir Putin to End Ukraine War: Mike Pezzullo”
Kay Bailey Hutchison interviewed by Kailey Leinz and Joe Mathieu for Bloomberg
David Ignatius for The Washington Post: “If Israel Doesn’t Help Gaza’s Civilians, Biden Has to Stop Supplying Weapons”
Jack Reed quoted by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali for Reuters: “How a Trump Presidency Could Lead to a Purge at the Pentagon”
David E. Sanger and Catie Edmondson for The New York Times: “Once They Were Neocons. Now Trump’s Foreign Policy Picks Are All ‘America First.’”
Dan Sullivan quoted by Mike Brest for The Washington Examiner: “Trump Picks Fox News Host Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense”
Tweet of the Week
Apply for the Rising Leaders Program
Things to Know
Content Relevant to Aspen Security Forum Discussions
Gracelin Baskaran, Christopher Hernandez-Roy, Henry Ziemer, and Fabio Murgia for CSIS: “Latin America: The World’s Copper Stronghold”
Tom Bateman for BBC News: “U.S. Says Israel Hasn’t Breached Its Law Against Blocking Aid in Gaza”
Kenza Bryan for the Financial Times: “France Shuns COP29 as Divisions Deepen at UN Climate Summit”
Jane Flanagan for The Times: “Inside the Vast Refugee Camp Where Thousands Flee Horrors of Sudan’s War”
Mike Gallagher for The Wall Street Journal: “Pentagon Has Two Years to Prevent World War III”
Edward Howell for The National Interest: “North Korea’s Combat Role in Ukraine War Intensifies Nuclear Threat”
Renad Mansour for Foreign Affairs: “The Axis of Resilience”
Phillips Payson O’Brien for The Atlantic: “Helping Ukraine Is Europe’s Job Now”
Christian Shepherd and Lyric Li for The Washington Post: “China Opens Huge Port in Peru to Extend Its Reach in Latin America”
Sebastian Strangio for The Diplomat: “Indonesia’s Prabowo Meets With President Biden on U.S. Trip”
U.S. Department of Homeland Security: “Roles and Responsibilities Framework for Artificial Intelligence in Critical Infrastructure”
Euan Ward for The New York Times: “Israel Pounds Area Near Beirut Amid Signs of a Widening Offensive”
Spotlight: AI and National Security
Revisit original pieces on the nexus of artificial intelligence and national security from “Intelligent Defense: Navigating National Security in the Age of AI,” a compilation of papers emanating from the discussions at the
2024 ASG Workshop.
Read the collection for insights into this game-changing technology, like an assessment of the threats and implications of Artificial General Intelligence by Founder of Mila – Quebec AI Institute Yoshua Bengio; a comparison of AI and social media regulation by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Senior Vice President Eileen O’Connor; and more.
From the Archives
Revisit our bipartisan conversation on foreign policy, defense, and more from the 2024 Aspen Security Forum.
Chris Coons, U.S. Senator for Delaware
John Cornyn, U.S. Senator for Texas
Dan Sullivan, U.S. Senator for Alaska
Moderator: Ellen Nakashima, National Security Reporter, The Washington Post
Book of the Week
By Max Boot
“… Reagan’s 1980 presidential election augured a shift that continues into this century. Boot writes not as a partisan but as a historian seeking to set the story straight. He explains how Reagan was an ideologue but also a supreme pragmatist who signed pro-abortion and gun control bills as governor, cut deals with Democrats in both Sacramento and Washington, and befriended Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Cold War. A master communicator, Reagan revived America’s spirits after the traumas of Vietnam and Watergate. But Boot also shows how Reagan was armored in obliviousness. He traces Reagan’s opposition to civil rights over forty years, reveals how he neglected the exploding AIDS epidemic, and details how America experienced a level of income inequality not seen since the Gilded Age.
With its revelatory insights, Reagan: His Life and Legend is no apologia, depicting a man with a good-versus-evil worldview derived from his moralistic upbringing and Hollywood westerns. Providing fresh examinations of ‘trickle-down economics,’ the Cold War’s end, the Iran-Contra affair, as well as a nuanced portrait of Reagan’s family, this definitive biography is as compelling a presidential biography as any in recent decades.”
Podcast of the Week
Neil Melvin interviewed Philip Shetler-Jones and Ha Chae Kyoun for the Global Security Briefing podcast: “North Korea’s Emergence as an International Security Actor”
