gaps persist between stakeholders. This is exacerbated by the lack of clear, standardized specifications from NATO, leading to inconsistent implementation and operational friction. Second, at its core, this is an intelligence-sharing challenge: member states operate under different national frameworks, threat perceptions, and priorities, which influence what information they are willing (or unwilling) to share. Third, the fragmentation of sharing systems is not merely a technical hurdle but often a deliberate choice made for operational and security reasons, reflecting concerns over sovereignty, data protection, and strategic advantage.

While technological advancements can enhance interoperability, they alone will not drive adoption. Our research highlights that the underlying issue is one of trust and incentives—NATO must establish mechanisms that encourage collaboration beyond just technological solutions. Without a strong foundation of mutual trust, transparency, and shared benefits, even the most advanced systems will face resistance. Creating sustainable incentives for participation—whether through policy alignment, risk reduction assurances, or value-added intelligence sharing—will be essential in fostering a more effective and unified cyber defense posture within NATO.

A key component of our project involves conducting in-depth research and stakeholder interviews focused on Mongolia's "Billion Trees Initiative," where we will be seeking actionable insights to scale up the initiative effectively and sustainably.

influencers work with politicians to coordinate these influence operations and shape public opinion. Our policy recommendations will address how governments and civil societies can work together to tackle this issue.

Australian Space Agency and U.S. Defense Innovation Unit, the goal of this project is to leverage Australia's strategic geographic position and investment in reentry infrastructure to mitigate the hurdles that U.S. commercial startups experience accessing military ranges for reentry. Our project aims to create a robust foundation for the development of orbital return capabilities in Australia, fostering greater commercial and national security collaboration between the U.S. and Australia.

to computational resources acts as a barrier to adoption. India has a thriving tech sector, and openly available AI models have the potential to democratize access to this trailblazing technology. At the same time, AI is expensive to build and deploy, and access to the specialized computational resources needed to do so is limited even for top Indian companies. Our team aims to develop solutions in partnership with Digital Futures Lab that can help bolster the AI ecosystem across India.

that contribute to this issue. During our fieldwork, we will explore community- and government-driven programs aimed at preventing and combating trafficking. Our final report will analyze existing policies, pinpoint gaps, and propose community-led interventions to address them.

Artificial Intelligence promises to transform Public Defenders in Brazil, as seen throughout our fieldwork trip in Rio de Janeiro. Our team spent the week discussing the integration of AI in legal practices with defenders from 13 states and experts from Instituto de Tecnologia e Sociedade (ITS Rio) and COPPE / UFRJ. We focused on developing AI tools tailored to reduce administrative burdens, enabling defenders to concentrate on advocacy. With nearly 80% of Brazilians entitled to free legal aid, AI can automate routine tasks like document categorization and grammatical corrections.

Significant challenges relate to privacy and potential biases in algorithms, underscoring the need for collaborative governance to ethically implement these solutions. Thus, a unified technological strategy is crucial. We hope that through our work, we can create a collaborative governance framework that will facilitate the development of digital and AI tools, ultimately helping citizens at large. We appreciated the opportunity to learn from incredibly dedicated professionals who are excited to find new ways to jointly develop tools.

We met with government agencies, legislators, military and national security officials, private sector actors, and civil society figures within Taiwan's vibrant ecosystem for countering Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI). On the ground, the team found that China’s FIMI operations are evolving and increasingly subtle and complex. As generative AI empowers malign actors, our team assessed that the battle against sophisticated, state-sponsored influence campaigns requires a more integrated and strategic approach that spans legal, technological, and societal responses.

During their time in Ghana, Skylar and Maya met with various stakeholders in the Ghanaian transportation field, including government agencies, ride-share apps, freight businesses, academics, and paratransit operators. Presently, paratransit operators, known locally as "tro tros," dominate the public transportation space and with a variety of meetings with their union officials and drivers in terminals around Accra they were able to learn about the nature of the tro tro business and their relationships — and lack thereof — with the government.

In D.C., Rosie met with development organizations and transport officials and attended the World Bank’s Transforming Transportation Conference and their paratransit and finance roundtable. Collectively, they learned about the issues facing the transport industry primarily related to problems surrounding bankability, infrastructure and vehicle financing, and lack of government collaboration with stakeholders. Insights from the trip spurred their team away from conventional physical interventions and toward solutions that will bridge stakeholder gaps and improve transport governance and policy implementation.

Our team had the opportunity to go to Mongolia and Washington DC where we conducted over twenty structured interviews with a variety of stakeholders. We spoke with people including local and central government officials, officials of international organizations, representatives from mining and cashmere industries, community organizations, academic researchers, herder households, NGOs and Mongolian politicians. Though we knew the practice of nomadic herding is core to Mongolia’s national identity, we didn’t fully realize just how integrated this practice, and the problem of grassland degradation, are in the economy, society and politics of Mongolia.

In the run-up to Mongolia’s election in June, this issue was especially top of mind to those we interviewed. Everyone we spoke with had some form of direct connection with herding, mostly through their own families. Our interviews, as well as being in Ulaanbaatar and the surrounding provinces, helped us to deepen our understanding of the context in which possible interventions operate. Most especially we observed all the extensive work that is being done to tackle grassland degradation and that institutionalizing and supporting these existing approaches could help tackle this issue.

While on the ground, our team met with members from Chinese student organizations and professional associations to gather primary evidence on the online harms they face. We also met with Tom Udall, the U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand, his team, and university faculty to brainstorm solutions to tackle this problem. We learned about the prevalent use of “super-apps” beyond WeChat in crowdsourcing solutions and support, and were able to better grasp the complexities of the relationships between public safety organizations and the focus demographic. In retrospect, it was insightful to hear from actors across the public, private, and civic sectors about the prevalence of online harms and how invested major stakeholders are in finding common solutions through a joint, holistic approach.

Our team met with private sector mini grid developers, government officials from the public utilities commission and energy ministry, and rural communities benefiting from mini grid electrification. While we saw first-hand the significant impact that solar mini grids can have on communities living in energy poverty, we also developed a deeper understanding of the macroeconomic, market, and policy conditions preventing the industry from reaching its full potential of providing energy access to millions of Sierra Leoneans. Moving forward, we will explore innovative climate finance solutions and leverage our policy experience to develop feasible recommendations specific to the local environment.

During our travels around Taiwan and our many meetings, we were surprised with the lack of consensus among local decision-makers regarding which potential solution pathways were likely to yield the most timely and effective results. These discrepancies often reflected the presence of information asymmetries and divergent institutional interests across stakeholders—both of which run counter to Taiwan’s most urgent strategic priorities. Revising existing bureaucratic authorities and facilitating the spread of technical expertise would enable—and enrich—investment in future resilience.

While we anticipated that structural inefficiencies would impede change to some degree, our onsite interviews gave us a clearer picture of where policy interventions will likely have the most positive effect for Taiwan's defense. With the insights from our fieldwork, we intend to spend the remainder of the quarter exploring new leads, delving into theory of change, and designing a set of meaningful policy recommendations.

Much of the agenda focused on specific proposals answering ten basic questions, including:

• Which sources should AI chatbots draw information from?
• Should AI chatbots use the user’s past conversations to improve user experience?
• Should AI chatbots use the user’s online activity to personalize interactions?
• Should AI chatbots be designed to be human-like?
• Should users be allowed to use AI chatbots for romantic relationships?

The deliberators in each country were convened on the Stanford Online Deliberation Platform, developed by the Stanford Crowdsourced Democracy Team. This platform is AI-assisted and moderates video-based discussions in small groups of ten. 

Participants noted a generally positive impact of AI, with an increase in positive perceptions post-forum. "This shift in viewpoint, especially notable among those previously unfamiliar with AI, underscores the value of informed discussion in shaping public opinion," remarked Alice Siu, Senior Research Scholar at FSI and Associate Director of the Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab.

The forum's methodical approach, with deliberations in 166 small groups and a separate control group for each country, ensured that the outcomes accurately reflected the effects of the deliberative process. Findings indicated that users and non-users of AI began to bridge their differences, aligning closer in their attitudes towards AI after the forum.

Siu also emphasized the significance of the event’s feedback, noting that "the high ratings from participants affirm the forum’s success in making complex discussions accessible and relevant. It is an encouraging sign for the future of democratic engagement with technology."

The Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab is dedicated to deepening our understanding of deliberative democracy processes and their application to critical contemporary issues like AI. The insights from this forum will inform ongoing research and policy recommendations, ensuring that AI evolves in a manner that considers diverse values and voices across the globe.

The project report is available below:

For detailed information on the forum’s conclusions or forthcoming projects, please reach out to James Fishkin (Director, Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab) or Alice Siu (Associate Director, Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab) or visit the Deliberative Democracy Lab website.

the Taiwanese cables to the Matsu Islands have been cut 27 times, most recently in spring 2023. Our final report and presentation will analyze Taiwan’s current emergency management and resiliency plans, identify areas of improvement, and present solutions to fix these gaps. All of us care deeply about democracy and the rule of law, and the security of Taiwan against PRC aggression is central in the fight for those ideals. Our hope is that this work helps in some small way to improve the security of Taiwan and its people.

need resources to be aware of online risks and the best measures to protect themselves. Netsafe has yet to find the most effective way to appeal to this demographic group.

We aim to understand the demographic's most frequently used online platforms, the most common types of online harms, cultural factors, and relevant stakeholders.

disinformation operations with near impunity. We’re particularly interested in how the development of new tools and tactics – like commercial firms’ use of paid influencers, or generative AI – will aid in further obscuring attribution and scaling operations. Our policy recommendations will address how governments, international organizations, and platforms can tackle this issue.

tools. Our research focuses on how the different state PDOs in Brazil can collaborate and share AI tools to help reduce their demand and better serve their clients. The goal is for AI to be a "shared public infrastructure" that multiple PDOs can use to serve their clients.

integrating solutions available at scale for the public. We aim to recommend policy interventions which reflect local demand, ensuring sustainable, efficient, and accessible transportation solutions for the community.

government interventions, local control of stock numbers, or strong market incentives, herds exceed the grassland carrying capacity in pockets that are becoming increasingly degraded. This threatens nomadic pastoralism, a traditional way of life. With such complex and interlinked drivers to this problem, it has been challenging to isolate the causes we should focus on. We have been working with our partners at The Asia Foundation who are in the early stages of piloting a solution.

these interventions have not led to a widespread growth in mini-grid development, as the industry continues to struggle. We hope to further explore the market and regulatory landscape and learn how sub-interventions including cross-subsidization, de-risking investment, demand creation, and other innovative and locally-based solutions may help improve the industry’s viability and aid in increasing access to affordable, renewable energy in Sierra Leone.

There are a number of ways to run a legitimate election. But the U.S. has learned in recent years, and Brazil learned in recent weeks, that it’s not always simple.

There are technical mechanics and processes of how votes are cast, collected and counted. But those are ultimately less important than the agreement – among opposing parties, and across a society – to abide by the results of those processes.

In 2020, President Donald Trump alleged, without evidence, that election fraud in several states had caused him to lose. A number of audits in various states found no evidence that irregularities in voting or vote counting processes had any effect on the outcome of balloting in those states.

Some of these results were later challenged in lawsuits seeking to alter the results of the election, and in every case, the election’s outcome was determined to be accurate.

Continue reading at theconversation.com

Since the pandemic started, one in 10 people living in Brazil has contracted COVID-19, and more than 600,000 deaths have been reported. Despite these staggering numbers, Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, has consistently downplayed the threat of the pandemic. The Brazilian Senate has had enough.

On October 26, seven out of the 11 members in a Senate committee voted in favor of recommending nine charges against the Brazilian president. Over the last six months, a Brazilian Senate Parliamentary Inquiry Committee composed of 11 Senators investigated the federal government’s management of the pandemic. 

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