The Weekly Leaf
This week, riots spun out of peaceful demonstrations in France and across Europe, U.S. Special Envoy Witkoff met with President Zelenskyy in Oslo and President Putin in St. Petersburg, U.S. Secretary of War Hegseth traveled to Israel after President Trump endorsed Prime Minister Netanyahu in upcoming elections, and the UK announced plans to send RAF fighter jets to support Saudi Arabia in “defensive counter air missions” following a spike in missile and drone attacks from Houthi rebels in Yemen.
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Registration Open | Aspen Security Forum: DC Edition
Please join us for an afternoon of conversations on the most pressing national security and foreign policy challenges of our time. The Forum will feature an array of decision-makers and thought leaders from Washington, DC and around the world. A light lunch will be included in programming, followed by an evening cocktail reception.
If you are interested in attending, apply at the link below.
This Week’s Content Highlights
Features from Aspen Strategy Group Members
Anja Manuel and Marko Papic interviewed by Morgan Brennan for CNBC’s Morning Call: “Iran Tensions, Global Conflicts, and the Impact on Markets”
Kay Bailey Hutchison for The Dallas Morning News: “As AI Rises, Create Opportunities for Texans”
Bill Burns interviewed by Ben Sasse and Chris Stirewalt for the American Enterprise Institute’s Not Dead Yet podcast
Elizabeth Economy interviewed Bonnie Glaser for the Hoover Institution’s China Considered podcast: “Taiwan: Will China Make Its Move?”
Mark Esper interviewed by Jonathan Karl for ABC’s This Week: “Iran Is ‘Confident About Their Position in the World’”
Michael Froman for the Council on Foreign Relations: “Will Europe’s Protests Mark a Turning Point?”
Jane Harman interviewed by Kailey Leinz and Joe Mathieu for Bloomberg’s Balance of Power: “U.S. Foreign Policy in ‘Freefall’”
David Ignatius for The Washington Post: “Vladimir Putin Is in the Hot Seat Now”
Dina Powell McCormick was appointed to the board of the Paley Center for Media
David Petraeus interviewed by Ayesha Hazarika for Sky News: “Russia Losing More Troops Than It Can Recruit”
Daniel Poneman interviewed Richard Meserve for the Nuclear Energy and National Security Coalition’s Atomically Speaking podcast: “The Physicist and the Lawyer: A Conversation With Dr. Richard Meserve”
Penny Pritzker and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson interviewed Brian Chesky for The CEO Signal podcast: “Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on the Founder’s Role & Bridging Silicon Valley’s AI Divide”
David Rubenstein interviewed by Romaine Bostick for Bloomberg’s The Close: “David Rubenstein on New Book, ‘Speaking of America’”
David E. Sanger for The New York Times: “Trump’s Push for Deals With Russia Powers His Frustration With Ukraine”
Post of the Week
Features from ASG Rising Leaders and Fellows
Sofia Economopolous (‘24) interviewed Etienne Dubuc at Bloomberg’s Canadian Finance Conference
Liana Fix (‘23) interviewed by Danny Kemp, Aurelia End, and W.G. Dunlop for AFP: “Trump Faces Fresh Questions Over Ties to ‘Humanitarian’ Putin”
Jessica Ji (‘26) quoted by Emily Forlini for Fortune: “Powerful New AI Models Are Fueling a Growing Wave of Cyberattacks, Experts Say”
James Martin (‘22) is tied with Brian Mast in the race for Florida’s 21st Congressional District
Things to Know
Content Relevant to Aspen Security Forum Discussions
Saeed Al-Batati and Vivian Nereim for The New York Times: “Major Yemeni City Running Out of Food and Water as Houthis Encircle It”
Arthur Carpentier, Thomas Eydoux, Claire Mayer, Gilles Rof, and Richard Schittly for Le Monde: “French Protests: From Intelligence Failures to Insufficient Police Presence, Overview of a Security Disaster”
Wesley Dockery and Jon Shelton for DW: “Africa CDC Calls Crisis Meeting After Ebola Case in Nigeria”
The Economist: “Unruly Protests Have Shaken Albania, Italy, and Beyond”
Jerry Fisayo-Bambi for Euronews: “El Salvador Launches Military Operation in Haiti to Free Four Kidnapped Aviation Technicians”
Lucy Fisher and Ahmed Al Omran for the Financial Times: “UK to Deploy Jets to Defend Saudi Arabia Against Houthi Attacks”
Michael R. Gordon and Thomas Grove for The Wall Street Journal: “Witkoff’s Praise of Putin as ‘Humanitarian’ Tracks With U.S. Approach to Russia”
James LaPorta for CBS News: “Hegseth Meets With Netanyahu in Israel Ahead of Elections and Possible Restart to Iran War”
Chantelle Lee for TIME: “Alberta Voted to Stay in Canada. That Doesn’t Quite Settle the Separatist Debate”
Ephrat Livni for The New York Times: “China Criticizes U.S. Ban on DeepSeek A.I. in Government Systems”
Toby Mann for BBC: “U.S. Orders Some Diplomats to Leave Saudi Arabia as Houthi Attacks Escalate”
Jess Shankleman and Chloe Chaplain for Bloomberg: “UK Approves North Sea Jackdaw Field Following Lengthy Battle”
Gerry Shih and Suheir Hashimeh for The Washington Post: “For West Bank Palestinians, Settler Attack on Journalist Is Part of Ongoing Siege”
Alexander Ward and Lara Seligman for The Wall Street Journal: “Trump Called Musk and Asked Him to Lift Ukraine Starlink Restrictions”
Mari Yamaguchi for the AP: “Japan and the U.S. Kick Off Joint Drills Around Islands as Regional Tensions Rise”
From the Archives
Revisit our conversation on the successes and shortcomings of the second Trump administration’s foreign policy from the 2026 Aspen Security Forum.
“What the Hell Is Going On?” Live Podcast
Stephen J. Hadley, 20th U.S. National Security Advisor; Founding Principal, Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC
Robert O’Brien, 27th U.S. National Security Advisor; Chairman, American Global Strategies
Michèle Flournoy, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; Co-Founder and Managing Partner, WestExec Advisors
Marc Thiessen, Co-Host, What the Hell Is Going On; Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Columnist, The Washington Post
Moderator: Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal
Book of the Week
The AGI Chronicles: The Inside Story of the Race to Create an Artificial Superintelligence
By Kevin Roose
“For the last decade, a handful of AI companies have been racing to build the most powerful technology in history: artificial general intelligence, or AGI—a computer system capable of outdoing humans at almost anything….
Kevin Roose’s The AGI Chronicles is the definitive, behind-the-scenes account of the trillion-dollar sprint to create AGI. Drawing on more than 150 interviews with insiders at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind, as well as unpublished company documents and research memos, Roose reconstructs the most consequential decade in tech history. He takes us inside the rooms where researchers watch large language models learn to talk, reason, and code at superhuman speed. He brings us to the White House, where top officials grapple with a technology that is improving too fast to understand, let alone regulate… And he ushers us into the San Francisco AI scene, where ‘accelerationists’ in hacker houses and ‘doomers’ at AI safety summits battle each other for supremacy.
With reportorial rigor and page-turning suspense, The AGI Chronicles reveals the true story of the most high-stakes technological quest in human history—an audacious attempt to create a new, alien form of intelligence that could either save humanity or destroy it.”
Around the Institute
The Aspen Cyber Summit is the nation’s premier annual technology and cybersecurity policy gathering, bringing together the top voices from government, industry, and civil society to create a safer world, online and off. As threats move faster than ever, from complex nation-state operations to the rapid integration of AI in our daily lives, we’re moving beyond simply identifying risks to driving actionable, cross-sector solutions. The Summit will take place in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, November 18, 2026, at Capital Turnaround. Aspen Digital is offering a 50% comped code “CYBERFRIENDS” to friends of the Aspen Strategy Group. Register to secure your spot today!
Podcast of the Week
Yasir Zaidan and Michael Lewis joined Rajini Vaidyanathan for BBC Newshour: “Sudan: ‘Laboratory for Drone Technology’”
Join Our Team!
The Aspen Strategy Group is seeking a Program Manager to oversee and manage our main leadership initiatives: the Rising Leaders Program (RLP), which is now in its sixth year, and the Albright International Leaders Program (AILP) which will be launched in 2027. While the focus of the role will be on these leadership programs, the Program Manager will also contribute across the other pillars of our work including the Aspen Strategy Group and Aspen Security Forum.
This position is set in a very collaborative, ambitious, dynamic-team, and fast-paced environment. As the ASG team prepares for each new cohort/class of leaders, meeting, program, and project, the Program Manager is given a high level of responsibility and ownership to manage the responsibilities and portfolio assigned to them. We seek candidates with the ability to work both efficiently as part of a team and independently to ensure the success of the ASG’s various activities.
Thank you for sharing this opportunity with your networks.
