#19 Science and Diplomacy with William Colglazier

09/06/21 • 38 min

This episode’s guest is the American physicist Dr. William Colglazier. With an impressive resume, Colglazier’s long career has taken him to the Secretary of State, where he provided scientific and technical expertise and advice in support of the development and implementation of U.S. foreign policy as a Science and Technology Adviser. Today, he is the Editor-in-Chief of Science & Diplomacy and Senior Scholar in the Center for Science Diplomacy at the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Colglazier got his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology in 1971. He has since then worked at several prestigious institutes such as the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The years before his time at the Secretary of State, he oversaw studies in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Research Council (NRC) to provide independent, objective scientific advice on domestic and international public policy issues.

In this episode, Colglazier talks about his way into science and politics and his work to implement the Sustainable Development Goals through science, technology and innovation. He describes the current setbacks to science in public policies such as the Paris Agreement, Iran Nuclear Deal and the unpreparedness of the US in the recent pandemic.

Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the sake of a better future.

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Previous Episode

#18 The Difference Between R2-D2 and Siri with Alexander Ruiz

Our 18th episode is joined by Alexander Ruiz, Founder of Phaedrus LLC, an engineering company supporting the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, and Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, who discusses the transforming digital arena and the ensuing threats.
Ruiz got into the cyber-digital domain in his early years. Inspired by 90s movies like Top Gun, Alex devoted himself to computer communication. He continued his career in the American Air Force, effectively understanding the complex digital systems and later on turning to engineering. He saw the international cyber norms changing, threats growing and the nature of conflicts transforming.
To navigate through the new era of disinformation, Alex raises the issue of acknowledging the problem. We need to recognise the underpinnings of the information that affects us. Firstly, there are nefarious actors actively feeding us false information to swing an election or shape public opinion, but there are also the commercial actors who are using marketing tools like algorithms and optimization to benefit their own shareholders. The reconciliation needed is in the form of policy, but to update our laws to control what companies are allowed to do, the challenge often lies in lawmakers not knowing enough about the industry that they are trying to regulate.
Another issue is the growing gap between the institutional cyber capacity of governments and the one of il/legitimate non-state actors. The technical incapabilities of governments will affect the relationship between the government and the governed. How the state actors are supposed to control disruptive and harmful information alongside sects and conspirators, all while safeguarding freedom of speech, is something that Ruiz believes will be a huge challenge in the future. This development can partly be curbed by new technologies that can groom the information environment in order to protect against nefarious actors and social collapse.
Global Arena Research Institute is an independent, non-partisan research organisation that combines the most advanced methods of AI-driven data, scientific and other artificial reasoning capabilities, elevating data science into completely new levels of opportunity. Our goal is to provide unprecedented insights into the nature, impact, and management of globalization in order to improve institutional and governmental as well as business, energy and other sectors’ decision making. Our mission is to make the most of organically connecting AI-level reasoning capacities with the human-level critical reasoning capacities for the sake of a better future.

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#20 What Putin wants - with Shmuel Bar

Welcome to the new year of GARI podcasts! We’re excited by our 2022 guest lineup, starting with the brilliant Shmuel Bar!

Dr. Bar is the founder and CEO of IntuView – an Israeli based software company that has developed an integrated semantics-driven platform for fully-automated real-time analysis and “meaning mining” of unstructured textual documents in various languages. Dr. Bar served for thirty years in various positions in the Israeli Office of the Prime Minister of Israel. Since 2002, Dr. Bar has headed research projects – some of them for US government agencies - and published extensively on issues relating to the Middle East

Our main topic of discussion will be the current conflict around Russia and Ukraine and the actual international meaning of it all.

Can Russia get most of what it wants just by threatening to do it?
How far can Russia get in achieving its goal in reinstating a new regional or world order in which Russia is returning to some level of status that is comparable to what the Soviet Union had? The question is how much are the Americans interested in blocking that? Or are they reconciled with a new world order where the US is trying to get out of legacy commitments and even formal obligations?
Will the current issue do minor modifications for the next year or few years, or are we talking about a major shift in a trend, the abdication of the US as a world superpower?
We have a new nemesis to focus on - China
Putin knows he's actually doing Biden a favour, he has no interest in invading - but by making a crisis, the cusp of WW3 - Biden can “prevent” it. Allowing Biden to give Putin what he wanted to give him anyway. This allows Americans to claim a great victory and deal with the Chinese threat.

What does Intuview do?

Langauge, especially in the age of social media, changes very rapidly
We need to collect the information and allow the information to tell you what is prominent and what is not. Bringing together things that mean the same, so it's meaning mining

What has Intuview worked on?

What do people want in Saudi Arabia? Women cannot drive - husbands who cannot afford chauffeurs for their wives have to drive them around themselves. Intuview's research showed that what will make, especially Saudi Arabia's youth, happy, is to allow women to drive cars
Four or five months before the Arab Spring Intuview predicted that Tunisia, Lybia and Egypt (and Syria for other reasons) are liable to fall. The reason was that if you have an old autocratic leader that has been surrounded by the same people for 20 years who are yes men and have never made decisions all their life, as the leader gets older and is unable to control, then you can have the evolution of a crisis and nobody can control it. In the case of Egypt, the army men come from areas where they are posted, and they wouldn't open fire on the people they know and grew up with, so the only political force in the country that can take over would be the Muslim Brotherhood.

So what will happen now with Russia?

Russia is in no rush to resolve the conflict. Headlines will continue to say “we are on the