We asked Carnegie’s directors to select one piece each that they felt stood out or best represented the program’s work for the year. Their selections are below.
Africa
“DeepSeek R1: Implications of a New AI Era for Africa” by Sylvester Quansah
The release of DeepSeek R1 represented a watershed moment in the AI race and upended accepted notions of AI development budget requirements. For African countries seeking to harness the power of AI to fuel their development goals, DeepSeek R1 presents the continent with an opportunity to rethink and redefine its approach to AI. However, to seize this opportunity, African countries must foster the enablers necessary for a flourishing AI ecosystem.
American Statecraft
“From Caution to Competition: Positioning U.S. Development Finance for Industrial Power” by Afreen Akhter
This is the most in-depth study of how to strengthen the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) written to date.
Congress created the DFC as an alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s trillion-dollar effort to extend geopolitical influence and industrial power through strategic infrastructure investments abroad. Yet the agency remains constrained by an unsettled identity, slow and duplicative processes, narrow statutory and budgetary authorities, a modest scale, and a temporary authorization. This paper urges a more ambitious vision for the DFC—moving from a cautious agency to a permanent, expedient, and properly tooled instrument of American power. It proposes reforms along four dimensions: strategy, speed, scope, and scale.
Asia
“China’s Foreign Police Training: A Global Footprint” by Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Isaac B. Kardon, and Cameron Waltz
Most discussions of China’s international role—and especially of U.S.-China strategic competition—presume that Beijing will do like the United States has since 1945. But this mirror-imaging and projection of the American role onto China misses a crucial development: China has bolstered its global security role without U.S.-style treaties of alliance or hundreds of military bases in every region of the world by leveraging internal security cooperation and policing. Armed with an original new dataset of nearly 900 trainings provided to at least 138 countries, the authors shed new light on broader patterns of Chinese security engagement.
California
“Carnegie California AI Survey” by Ian Klaus, Mark Baldassare, Rachel George, Scott Kohler, Marissa Jordan, and Abigail Manalese
The Carnegie California AI survey offers the broadest statewide survey to date on artificial intelligence. It reveals notable insights into how California residents think about the technology in terms of their work, privacy, safety, and communities, as well as its impacts on the economy and the nation’s democracy. Key findings reveal anxiety and uncertainty around AI impacts. They also reveal notable gender and geographic divides but, importantly, in the state and national context, areas of substantial alignment between Republicans and Democrats.
The survey team developed additional publications from the data, including an analysis of the survey results that corroborates global findings that women trust AI less than men and are less enthusiastic about its adoption. Another highlighted how Bay Area residents’ thinking around AI in terms of importance to the state economy, future work, and government use differs from the rest of the state.
Democracy, Conflict, and Governance
“For Expertise to Matter, Nonpartisan Institutions Need New Communications Strategies” by Renée DiResta and Rachel Kleinfeld
In the startingly rapid, profound transformation of the media ecosystem in recent years, legacy media have lost enormous influence. Organizations and scholars grounded in fact-based analysis are struggling to maintain profile and stature in this new environment. The authors probe this situation and provide practical guidance on how the expert community can rethink and reconfigure its communication strategies and methods.
Europe
“Rebalancing the Transatlantic Defense-Industrial Relationship: Regional Pragmatism in Northeastern Europe” by Sophia Besch, Erik Brown, and Rafaela Uzan
As Europe pours unprecedented resources into defense, the transatlantic industrial relationship is being recalibrated in real time. This paper argues that the shift is not being driven by grand strategy or institutional redesign, but by pragmatic, capability-level decisions made under acute threat. Focusing on the Baltic Sea region, it shows how frontline states are pooling demand, standardizing equipment, and integrating Ukraine while carefully managing dependence on U.S. suppliers. The result is neither decoupling nor a return to the old bargain, but a fragile, practice-based path toward balance that could still be derailed by fragmentation, protectionism, or political volatility. The paper provides clear policy recommendations and sets up a wider Europe Program workstream for the next year on the future of transatlantic defense industrial relations.
Global Order and Institutions
“Is the Prohibition on the Use of Force Collapsing?” by Oona A. Hathaway and Stewart Patrick
For centuries, aggressive war was a legitimate means of solving international differences, and military conquest was commonplace. That changed in 1945, with the approval of the UN Charter, which prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State.” Eighty years later, that proscription is at risk of collapse, thanks to the norm-busting behavior of great powers, including Russia, China, and the United States itself.
In their article, the authors assess this moment of peril and identify requirements for building a more resilient and equitable international legal order.
Middle East
“The Widespread Fallout of Israel’s Qatar Strikes” by Amr Hamzawy, Andrew Leber, Marwan Muasher, and Sarah Yerkes
This piece, written in response to Israel’s strikes on Hamas leaders in Doha in September, was one of our best in terms of readership numbers. It features four Middle East Program scholars sharing their expertise from across the region, and it highlights the program’s—and Carnegie’s—ability both to be timely and to add new perspectives to the conversation.
Nuclear Policy
“Pursuing Stable Coexistence: A Reorientation of U.S. Policy Toward North Korea” by Frank Aum and Ankit Panda
U.S. policy toward North Korea is failing. Despite the United States’ singular focus on denuclearization, Pyongyang is well on the way to establishing a large and diversified nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, complete estrangement between the United States and North Korea forecloses efforts to reduce tensions. In this paper the authors propose an alternative: a focus on risk reduction and improved relations while maintaining deterrence. This concept—the pursuit of “stable coexistence”—seems to be catching on. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung mentioned key ideas from the paper in his victory speech in June. Meanwhile, North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un, who has spoken about coexistence with the United States, also seems open to the idea.
Russia and Eurasia
“Is Trump’s Push for Peace in Ukraine a Fantasy?” by Eric Ciaramella, Aaron David Miller, and Andrew S. Weiss
The work of Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program has focused on the unresolved dilemmas and trade-offs that are hampering the U.S. administration’s ability to move forward with its ambitious goals for normalizing relations with Russia, as well as the fact that Vladimir Putin will emerge from the war more aggrieved, resilient, and combative as he contends with what he portrays as an existential threat from the West.
South Asia
“Does ‘One Nation, One Election’ Make Sense for India?” by Milan Vaishnav, Caroline Mallory, and Annabel Richter
For more than a decade, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has championed an ambitious panoply of “One Nation” reforms—uniform national solutions to complex federal challenges. Arguably the most sweeping of these is the proposal for “One Nation, One Election,” which would replace India’s staggered electoral calendar with fully simultaneous state and national polls.
This paper offers a comprehensive assessment of the government’s blueprint for simultaneous elections. The authors show that while the appeal of a streamlined electoral cycle is intuitive, the reform rests on shaky evidence, raises significant concerns about federalism, and could unintentionally increase—rather than reduce—the number of elections. They argue that India’s democratic and institutional vibrancy is better served by careful, less disruptive reforms than by the radical redesign now on the table.
Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics
“Climate Clarity: On the Future of Climate Action in the United States” by Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, Noah Gordon, and Milo McBride
Since the start of the second Trump administration, the United States has canceled much of its policy support for clean energy and withdrawn from international cooperation to address the climate crisis, leaving the climate community shell-shocked. The narrative has shifted too, with opponents of the clean energy transition embracing what is best described as a “new climate denialism” rooted in the idea that decarbonization is unrealistic and expensive and that the United States can safely double down on fossil fuels while adapting to climate hazards.
The authors propose a different framework: climate clarity. It calls for the United States to join the real, ongoing global energy transition out of its own self-interest and for policymakers to link climate action to Americans’ desires for better health and lower prices. It also encourages policymakers to take an honest, dispassionate look at climate risks and how to prepare for them.
Technology and International Affairs
“The Trump Administration May Be About to Repeal the AI Diffusion Rule. Here’s What It Should Do Next” by Alasdair Phillips-Robins and Sam Winter-Levy
Among the second Trump administration’s many reversals of Biden-era policy, few have more geopolitical significance than the loosening of export controls on advanced semiconductors.
This article helped frame the stakes of this shift for a policymaking community that hadn't yet grasped its significance. The piece gave a comprehensive map of Trump's options in replacing the Biden rule and warned of core challenges—such as wily chip smugglers, hard-bargaining Gulf powers, and overwhelmed U.S. government staffers—that have continued to vex Washington.
This article, along with several companion pieces, established the authors as leading interpreters of chip control policy, a once-niche area that now routinely makes front page headlines. The two have been quoted in virtually every major outlet covering chip export controls and have kept in close contact with senior government and corporate officials in the United States and around the world.
