“Our new program with the IFC builds on a decade and a half’s worth of experience in developing mid-career training for public leaders on policy implementation, which has been critical both to economic growth and to democratic legitimacy,” said Francis Fukuyama, LAD co-founder and Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.

“The last decade has been a period of profound change in emerging markets infrastructure finance,” added Michael Bennon, Program Manager for CDDRL’s Global Infrastructure Policy Research Initiative. “This program is so timely because the success or failure of infrastructure development increasingly hinges on the capacity and governance of public institutions.”

“I am delighted that LAD has forged this new partnership with IFC,” shared Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL. “By equipping participants to address immediate infrastructure challenges, this new program will lay a foundation for long-term, sustainable economic development in complex political, cultural, and economic environments.”

About IFC

IFC is the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets. For more than 60 years, it has leveraged the power of the private sector for global good. Today, it’s using that experience to transform ideas into investments for green growth, inclusive jobs, and impactful projects.

“Delivering strong, bankable PPPs requires planning, strong infrastructure governance, innovative thinking, and close cooperation between partners,” said Linda Munyengeterwa, Global Director of IFC’s Public-Private Partnerships and Corporate Finance Advisory Services. “When it comes to PPPs, governments need to consider all their projects and prioritize and screen projects to determine which are most suited to the PPP model and which are better procured publicly. This training will help key decision makers advance their understanding of key issues affecting the feasibility and success of PPPs to help them leverage their infrastructure programs to better deliver economic and social benefits for their citizens.” 

FC Imabari is a soccer team in Imabari City, Ehime Prefecture. “FC” stands for “football club.” Takeshi Okada—a former soccer player and the former head coach of the Japan National Team who led the Japan men’s national soccer team to its first-ever World Cup appearance in 1998—is the owner of FC Imabari and Masafumi Yano is the Chief Operating Officer. During my first visit to Imabari City in March 2024, I was invited to watch an FC Imabari game and met with Okada, Yano, and others affiliated with FC Imabari. During the game and while strolling around Imabari City, I could sense the excitement that the team has brought to the city. FC Imabari High School, a private school in Imabari, was conceptualized by Okada and enrolled its inaugural classes this year. In a May 13, 2023 article, “Ehime: Ex Japan Soccer Coach Okada Tackles New Challenge in Field of Education,” in The Yomiuri Shimbun, he stated, “I want to foster autonomy and independence that survive an era that humanity has never experienced.” (Photo of Takeshi Okada below; courtesy FC Imabari.)

With Okada’s educational priorities in mind, FC Imabari Advisor Yukari Hara took the initiative to discuss the possible development of Stanford e-FC Imabari to support the mission of FC Imabari High School. Stanford e-FC Imabari was launched in fall 2024 to help encourage students at FC Imabari High School and from three public schools in Imabari City to not only consider the importance of autonomy and independence but also their roles in the local community and the world at large. Stanford e-FC Imabari focuses on the three key themes of (1) diversity, equity, & inclusion (DEI); (2) entrepreneurship; and (3) community building. During conversations with FC Imabari High School teachers Nozomi Echigo (social studies) and Yoshikazu Nakashima (English), I came to highly value the importance that the FC Imabari teachers place upon engaging students through their multiple intelligences, including kinesthetic, artistic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligences as well as linguistic and quantitative intelligences. I have had the privilege of visiting many schools in Japan, and FC Imabari High School is the only high school that I have visited that was inspired by how lessons—like teamwork, collegiality, and cooperation—in team sports such as soccer are critical to the education of youth.

Stanford e-FC Imabari is taught by SPICE instructor Alison Keiko Harsch, who used to be an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program in Kagawa Prefecture, a neighboring prefecture to Ehime Prefecture on Shikoku, one of the four main islands of Japan. Harsch will be returning to Shikoku later this year to make her first visit to FC Imabari High School. She reflected,

My years as an ALT on Shikoku significantly shifted the course of my life. It was in Shikoku that I fell in love with teaching, and in particular became passionate about engaging students in rural areas of Japan. The opportunity to work with students through Stanford e-FC Imabari has been hugely rewarding as it brings my work full circle back to my second home, Shikoku. It is an honor to contribute to the mission of FC Imabari High School.

During a recent visit to Imabari City on October 7 and 8, 2024, I had the opportunity to meet Stanford e-FC Imabari students not only at FC Imabari High School (Principal Shota Tsuji) but also at the three public high schools that have students who are participating in Stanford e-FC Imabari. These public high schools include Imabari West High School (Principal Teruo Koike), Imabari West High School, Hakata Branch (Branch Principal Hiroki Yano), and Imabari East High School (Principal Hiroyasu Watanabe). SPICE and FC Imabari High School are grateful to Ehime Prefecture’s Board of Education for its support of the engagement of these three public schools. Through my four meetings with students, I could see the bonds that have already developed between the four schools.

Principal Tsuji noted that “Through Stanford e-FC Imabari, we hope to not only provide unique learning opportunities for FC Imabari High School but also to build synergy between our school and local public schools. As the FC Imabari soccer team has strengthened our sense of community in Imabari, I would like to see greater community building between FC Imabari High School and local public schools.” Also, Hinako Tamai, English teacher at Imabari West High School, Hakata Branch, commented, “Being on a remote island, Hakata Island, in the Inland Sea, I feel fortunate that our students have this opportunity to work with Stanford University. Hakata Island now not only has physical bridges with Shikoku but also intellectual bridges with Stanford University and other schools in Imabari City.”

SPICE looks forward to continuing its work with Stanford e-FC Imabari to help cultivate students’ autonomy and independence—Mr. Okada’s goal—and underscore the importance of their roles in the local community and the world at large.

Importantly, SPICE would like thank Yoshihisa Ozasa, the founder and Chairman of Link & Motivation, Inc., for generously providing the necessary funding to make Stanford e-FC Imabari possible. 

Stanford e-FC Imabari is one of SPICE’s local student programs in Japan.

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This article originally appeared in The Stanford Daily on October 25, 2024.

Audra Plepytė, the Lithuanian ambassador to the U.S., called for continued resistance to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and emphasized her country’s key role in the war.

Plepytė spoke in conversation with Michael McFaul ’86 M.A. ’86 — the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute, a political science professor and a former U.S. ambassador to Russia — at a Tuesday event in Encina Hall.

In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Many Western countries promptly sanctioned and condemned Russia in response. As a Baltic state near the Russian border, Lithuania has been particularly vocal about their need to prevent Russia from succeeding in its invasion and supporting Ukraine until it can defeat Russia. Lithuania has illustrated their support by providing monetary aid, advocacy and by taking in almost 90,000 Ukrainian refugees since the start of the war.

In an interview with The Daily, Plepytė said that young people must be value-oriented in their politics. “They shouldn’t get used to bad things,” she said.

Throughout the discussion, Plepytė repeatedly highlighted the importance of maximizing aid to Ukraine to restrain Russia and protect the global political order.

“Russian aggression against Ukraine is not only about Ukraine,” she said. “It’s about the future security architecture in Europe [and] the global world order.”

Click the link for a full transcript of "Whatever Victory Takes: Ambassador Audra Plepytė on Support for Ukraine."

Plepytė explained that “the rest of the world” will be watching the way that countries respond to Russia’s takeover attempt. She specifically mentioned China, Iran and North Korea. “We see that those countries [are] already working together, acting together,” she said.

The ambassador cited Iranian involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war as a reason to address the conflict head-on. Iran has sent Russia assistance for the war in the form of drones and missiles, according to U.S. intelligence sources. “They are uniting, so we have to remain united,” Plepytė said.

Plepytė said that the Northern Baltic region is donating more monetary aid to Ukraine per capita than any other region. Currently, 23 countries contribute more than 2% of their GDP to aid Ukraine, according to her, and Lithuania is one of the highest contributors relative to its size, contributing 3.2% of their GDP. She emphasized that other nations around the world need to be contributing more and that the aid needs to be explicitly dedicated to Ukraine’s victory.

One audience member, Jan Duffy ’72, praised Lithuania for its role in global politics. “I’ve visited Lithuania multiple times over the last 15 years, and I have seen a country that’s gone from East Bloc, Eastern European, to — in less than 15 years — one of the most modern countries in the world,” she told The Daily.

Plepytė commended the U.S. and the Biden administration’s initial response to the “unprecedented” full-scale invasion of Ukraine, saying that the U.S. did “very well,” although it could have been more and faster.

Duffy echoed Plepytė’s argument that the U.S. should follow Lithuania’s example as a democratic country giving aid to Ukraine. “It is just this brave little country,” she said. “[It] just stands up again in a way that I feel like we, in the U.S. should be doing.”

McFaul asked the ambassador to respond to concerns among some American citizens about “extremists” dragging the United States into “a war with Russia.”

Plepytė said that she believes that responding assertively to Russia will not lead to a war, but rather, “non-action will drag us into World War III.” Russia is like a bully, she noted.

“If you stand up on time and strong, they will listen to that… We shouldn’t be afraid of our victory,” she said.

At the conclusion of their discussion, Plepytė awarded McFaul with the Cross of Knight of Order for Merits to Lithuania under a decree of the Lithuanian president. McFaul initially won the award in February for his active stance in rallying military aid for Ukraine and championing Lithuania but was unable to travel to the country to receive it.

“I had hoped to be in Lithuania for [this], but in some ways it’s more special to be here with people that know me,” McFaul said.

Geopolitical Competition

Dunnmon, a CISAC affiliate and senior advisor to the director of the Defense Innovation Unit, spoke about the “holistic geopolitical competition” among world powers in the AI realm as these systems offer “unprecedented speed and unprecedented scale.”

“Within that security lens, there’s actually competition across the entirety of the technical AI stack,” he said.

Dunnmon said an underlying security question involves whether a given AI software is running on top of libraries that are sourced from Western companies then if software is being built on top of an underlying library stack owned by state enterprises. “That’s a different world.”

He said that “countries are competing for data, and it’s becoming a battlefield of geopolitical competition.”

Societal, Environmental Implications

Lobell, a senior fellow at FSI and the director of the Center for Food Security and the Environment, said his biggest concern is about how AI might change the functioning of societies as well as possible bioterrorism.

“Any environment issue is basically a collective action problem, and you need well-functioning societies with good governance and political institutions, and if that crumbles, I don’t think we have much hope.”

On the positive aspects of AI, he said the combination of AI and synthetic biology and gene editing are starting to produce much faster production cycles of agricultural products, new breeds of animals, and novel foods. One company found how to make a good substitute for milk if pineapple, cabbage and other ingredients are used.

Lobell said that AI can understand which ships are actually illegally capturing seafood, and then they can trace that back to where they eventually offload such cargo. In addition, AI can help create deforestation-free supply chains, and AI mounted on farm tractors can help reduce 90% of the chemicals being used that pose environmental risks.

“There’s clear tangible progress being made with these technologies in the realm of the environment, and we can continue to build on that,” he added.
 

AI and Democracy

Persily, a senior fellow and co-director of FSI’s Cyber Policy Center, said, “AI amplifies the abilities of all good and bad actors in the system to achieve all the same goals they’ve always had.”

He noted, “AI is not social media,” even though it can interact with social media. Persily said AI is so much more pervasive and significant than a given platform such as Facebook. Problems arise in the areas of privacy, antitrust, bias and disinformation, but AI issues are “characteristically different” than social media.

“One of the ways that AI is different than social media is the fact that they are open-source tools. We need to think about this in a little bit of a different way, which is that it is not just a few companies that can be regulated on closed systems,” Persily said.

As a result, AI tools are available to all of us, he said. “There is the possibility that some of the benefits of AI could be realized more globally,” but there are also risks. For example, in the year and a half since OpenAI released ChatGPT, which is open sourced, child pornography has multiplied on the Internet.

“The democratization of AI will lead to fundamental challenges to establish legacy infrastructure for the governance of the propagation of content,” Persily said.

Balance of AI Power

Fukuyama pointed out that an AI lab at Stanford could not afford leading-edge technology, yet countries such as the U.S. and China have deeper resources to fund AI endeavors.

“This is something obviously that people are worried about,” he said, “whether these two countries are going to dominate the AI race and the AI world and disadvantage everybody.”

Manuel said that most of AI is now operating with voluntary governance – “patchwork” – and that dangerous things involving AI can be done now. “In the end, we’re going to have to adopt a negotiation and an arms control approach to the national security side of this.” 

Lobell said that while it might seem universities can’t stay up to speed with industry, people have shown they can reproduce those models’ performances just days after their releases.
 

On regulation — the European Union is currently weighing legislation — Persily said it would be difficult to enforce regulations and interpret risk assessments, so what is needed is a “transparency regime” and an infrastructure so civil entities have a clear view on what models are being released – yet this will be complex.

“I don’t think we even really understand what a sophisticated, full-on AI audit of these systems would look like,” he said.

Dunnmon suggested that an AI governance entity could be created that’s similar to how the U.S. Food and Drug Agency reviews pharmaceuticals before release.

In terms of AI and military conflicts, he spoke about the need for AI and humans to understand the rewards and risks involved, and in the case of the latter, how the risk compares to the “next best option.”

“How do you communicate that risk, how do you assess that risk, and how do you make sure the right person with the right equities and the right understanding of those risks is making that risk trade-off decision?” he asked.

The Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy program was established in 1982 to provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to analyze and address complex global challenges in a rapidly changing world, and to prepare the next generation of leaders for public and private sector careers in international policymaking and implementation.