 Hello, everyone. Welcome. Nice to have you with us. My name is Steve Hadley. I'm the Chair of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and I'm delighted to welcome you all to this critical discussion on the hinge of history, governance in an emerging new world. I want to extend special welcome and thanks to Secretary George B. Schultz for joining us this afternoon, as well as the leadership and staff of Stanford's Hoover Institution for their partnership in this event. Let me also encourage everyone to follow the conversation on Twitter with hashtag hinge of history. As many of us have spent the last eight and a half months on Zoom, we have seen how quickly the world can change overnight. And yet while COVID-19 pandemic was a shock to much of the world, Secretary Schultz and his colleagues, many of them joining us here today, were fully aware that this kind of challenge was in our future. In fact, they spent two years rigorously examining the rapid changes and challenges facing us from technology that's changing faster than at any time in human history to climate change, nuclear proliferation, mass migration, and the potential for infectious diseases far deadlier than COVID-19. And they focused on the ways in which these challenges are complicating governance around the globe. Last month, the Hoover Institution published their findings in an aptly named volume, A Hinge of History, which distills the analysis of more than 60 original essays by experts and practitioners from around the world and more than 30 roundtables and public panels. They conclude rightly so that we cannot meet these changes and challenges without international cooperation and U.S. leadership. And no one exemplifies the leadership qualities needed to seize this moment better than Secretary Schultz. He is one of two people in the history of the United States to have served in four cabinet positions. In his last position as Secretary of State under President Reagan, he played a key role in bringing a successful conclusion to the Cold War and strengthened relationships between the United States and its allies in the Asia Pacific. In 1989, he was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, and now serves as the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. I should also point out that USIP's Great Hall is named in honor of Secretary Schultz, which serves as a tribute to his tireless efforts in international diplomacy and the peaceful resolution of conflict. We are deeply grateful for his support and partnership with the U.S. Institute of Peace. I have the great privilege of moderating a conversation with Secretary Schultz for the next 15 minutes, and then I'll turn it over to Ambassador George Moose to facilitate a conversation with several of the leading collaborators on the hinge of history, which will conclude with a Q&A session with the audience. So without further ado, let's get started. Mr. Secretary, once again, thank you very much for being with us for this session today. Let me begin by asking a basic question. What was the genesis of the Hinge of History project, and why do you believe that at this moment in time we are facing what many have called a historical inflection point? Like many organizations at Hoover, we have both sessions, and in both sessions, Albert came. This notion, particularly Jim, to me and me. But here's the point. Big changes are afoot. The demography of the world is changing rapidly and radically. Every developed country has low fertility and rising longevity. The age structure of the population is turning turned around, and almost all are losing working-age population rapidly. So there's a huge change. The US, Canada, and Australia are of the same demographics. We're not losing working-age population, because we're immigration countries. Let's hope we can keep it going. But at any rate, there's a gigantic demographic change taking place that has big implications. The world population will continue to increase, because fertility is still high in Africa and in a few other countries. But the countries where fertility is high are countries where there isn't much economic outlook and where the climate is changing. I'm sorry, President Trump, it's changed. And you've got drought conditions in many places. And where you have drought and where you have poverty, people don't have anything to eat. So they migrate. So we're going to see migration problems that we need to expect and think about and figure out how to handle them. Then you look at technology. Artificial intelligence has gotten lots of attention justifiably so. It changes the nature of work. It changes the way we can look into all kinds of things. It's very powerful. But there's also 3D printing. Nobody ever talks about that. But that's a method of making something that makes it possible to make most of the things you want close to where you are. In other words, low-cost contributions to manufacturing are disappearing. And that means that there's going to be a de-globalization take place. That has big implications. Then there's weaponry. There's nuclear weapons and things that are all too present that we've been working on for a long time. But I think of that Iranian drone that flew without detection some distance and took out a Saudi oil facility by hitting it right on the button. That means that any fixed installation anywhere in the world is a target, potentially. Drones are not expensive. And the equipment to put on the mixer is not expensive. You don't have to be a big country or even a small country or even a country to get a hold of this stuff. There's problems that are there. So there's a new world out there that we need to think about and figure out what to do. Now, how do you go about it? I think there's a lesson to be learned from what the people at the end of World War II did. They were on a hinge of history. People like Ashes and Truman, Marshall, Clayton, they looked back, what did they see? They saw two World Wars. First one said in rather vindictive terms that it helped lead to the circuitry. They saw the Holocaust. They saw 52 million people were killed in the Second World War. They saw the Great Depression. They saw the currency manipulation and protectiveness and then aggravated it. And they said, as we could say now, what a crummy world. And then they said, that's different from World War I. We walked away. They said, we're part of it, whether we like it or not. That's what we have to say today. We're part of this world, whether we like it or not. And they sent out to try to bring out something different. They didn't tell people what to do with it. They brought them together and organized discussions. Remember, there were 44 countries in Britain Woods. How it came the IMF, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and now the World Bank. The general agreement on absolute trade. Virtuums of World Health Trade Organization. So this all was put forward. It was very constructive. The NATO played a huge part in bringing the Cold War to an end. It's a big deal. So this was working from a hinge in history and constructively. And we have to do that now. And what we do, for example, we know that children growing up now are going to wind up having to change jobs maybe three or four times during their lifetime. And job B is not going to be like job A. So they need to be able to retrain themselves. And the experience is overwhelming. If you give me a well-trained K through 12 person, I can retrain that person much more effectively than if the person doesn't have that background. So we have to look at our K through 12 education system in the U.S. and make it better. And we have to look around the world and help people. For instance, in the African problem, if these people are going to migrate, our reason to be well-educated, that's going to help them a lot. I mean, they're much more comfortable being received somewhere. So education is a big part of what we're wanting to do and we need to look all around the world about it. Then there's always a tendency with new technology that comes that disrupts the strategy of the process. No, we want to work the other way. We want to encourage it. Because both artificial intelligence and 3D printing have so much to contribute. And so we want to see them flourish. But we want to deal not only with their pluses but with their minuses. That's the point. Don't stop them. Deal with them. And we need to help the world do that. And I'm sure there are ways in which we can do and we can do a collaboration with others that will help in all of this. So we have a big task ahead and we have to remember we're looking at that world out there. We're a part of it whether we like it or not. And we can give leadership and we can gain from interaction. So that's our story. It was a big undertaking. And in our book we talk about well, how does all this affect China? How does it affect Russia? How does it affect the US? How does it affect the Earth? And so on. And we also have a few chapters on particular subjects. Like what went on hell. Lucy Sparrow who's here developed and wrote her husband a really stunning paper. And all this work that we did about a year and a half on different subjects incorporated in the book. And a lot of the sessions were really riveting. And we wanted to do it because we had a little round table place and we'd have these riveting discussions and we'd take the group over to a big hall at Hoover House about 450 people. And we just put up a sign saying this is going to happen here if you want to come, come. And undergraduates poured in hesitant people from the community. A lot of Silicon Valley people came. The place was full and we had a good time there. So it was a good process. Very stimulating. And we tried to capture it all in this book. A Hedge of History. Can't hear you. Thank you, sir. In the book, you've argued that the United States is remarkably well positioned to ride this wave of change. Can you elaborate on that a bit? What assets do we have? What weaknesses do we have to bring to bear on these significant changes? And why are you optimistic about America's future in this context? We're a resilient country. We've handled change well over the years. We also are the most diverse country in the world. And one of the challenges that everybody will have to face is how you govern over diversity. It's not easy. But I've watched a couple here, a couple examples. Way back in 1969 when I was Secretary of Labor, I went to Jerusalem and for some reason I was lucky enough that the reigning mayor, Teddy Collick, took me over for an evening. They took me to one party after another. Everybody having a good time. All different plastic away. All different. And they took me back to his office and all of a sudden I realized Teddy's teaching me something. And he said, you saw all these parties. My job as mayor of Jerusalem is to make Jerusalem a peaceful, beautiful place. And I have always different places. So I have to let each of them blow off steam the way they want. As long as they do it in a way that doesn't prevent somebody else from doing what they want. Having them all glad to live on what they call the golden gnome of Jerusalem. So it's managing diversity, that diversity express itself, but putting it under an overall thing. Now my wife, who I brag about a long time has a similar problem. San Francisco has about 70 consulates. So in every consulate, every country has a national day. Everybody has the Fourth of July, like me too. She has a event in City Hall. She flies that country's flag. She plays their national anthem. She gets a little cookie baked with some bulletin for them. That's my way of saying, you're welcome. We recognize you. And McGrandy are living under their creative genius of San Francisco. It's the same idea. We're living under a common theme of some kind. So I think that's an example of a diversity that's there or something that we hope where many others have. But you can look around the world, can't you? And you can see a lot of countries that are not dealing with diversity very well. They fight. And they don't have figured out how to get along in the government. You've talked about leadership. And it is, you've also talked about the importance of helping other nations to rise to the occasion. Can you talk a little bit about why U.S. leadership is important at this juncture and how the United States should lead? Is the United States, it's not the same country as it was at the end of World War II. Do we need to lead somewhat differently than Atchison, Truman and Eisenhower did in that day? Can you talk a little bit about that? Well, first of all, there's an idea that's been floated around that when we do something out of the world, we're making a gift to other people. That's not the way to look at it. When we want to see a better world, a more secure world, a more peaceful world, a more prosperous world, that's good for us. That isn't just good for them. It's good for us. So we're doing these things in our own interest, not in the interest of somebody else. So I think that's the way to look at it. I have to ask you this question. It's a little off-script, but we have a new President-elect who will hopefully be inaugurated on January 20th. You have long experience. Do you have any advice for the President-elect and his team as they take the reins of power in Washington here in January? They will take the reins of power. Let's be clear. I hope they do well. I think they need to realize they have to be tough as well as the nine. I remember in Marine Corps boot camp at the start of World War II, the sergeant handed me my rifle. He said, take good care of this rifle. This is your best friend. And remember one thing. Never point this rifle at anybody unless you're willing to pull a trigger. No empty threats. It's too easy to spread threads around and not be able to back them up. So you're going to make a thread. You're going to make somebody feel you're going to do something. Be sure you're ready to back it up. Oh, don't do it. But I think that there's a lot to work with. I wrote a note to Janet Yellen. And I said, Janet, there used to be a picture of Alexander Hamilton on the wall in the Secretary of Secretary's office over the fireplace. But I bet it's still there. When I was there, the sportsman had him with his hand out and he was going to reach out and shake his hand. He got his freaking shaking hands with Alexander Hamilton. But I got him a lot of mileage out of that picture when I was in office. So do the same. Mr. Secretary, it's been an honor to join you for this conversation. We want to thank you for being with us today. And it's now my pleasure to turn the floor over to my friend and colleague, Vice Chair of the USIP Board of Directors, Ambassador George Mose. Thank you, Steve. And a sincere thank you, special thank you to my former boss, Secretary Schultz. First for his extraordinary leadership. Second and secondly for his extraordinary vision. And the Hinge of History project is a demonstration of both. It is a project of truly epic undertaking that brought together scores of preeminent experts from widely ranging backgrounds and disciplines over the course of 30 roundtables and panel discussions and public discussions and personally presided over by Secretary Schultz himself. And it's a great pleasure to be joined today by three of the distinguished experts who participated in and contributed to that project. On a personal note, I will say that I was privileged to serve as the moderator for the roundtable on Africa about which I will say a few words a little later on in our conversation. But each of our panelists has contributed insightful scholarship and deep reflection on the trends that are forcing change in our world and forcing us to rethink what it means to govern in the 21st century. Changes in the form of mass migration and technological innovation to nuclear proliferation and climate change. So joining us today are Dr. James Timby Annenberg, distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and one of the co-directors of the Hinge of History project. Jim served as a senior advisor to the State Department until 2016 and played a central role in the negotiation of the INF and START nuclear arms reduction agreements. Dr. Sylvia Giorguli Socedo, president of the Mexican Society sorry, president of El Colegio de Mexico Conmex and past president of the Mexican Society of Demography. Her research work has involved collaborations with Stanford Princeton and Brown universities and her research focus has been on issues of international migration with an emphasis on migration from Mexico to the United States. Dr. Lucy Shapiro a senior fellow by courtesy at Stanford's Hoover Institution a professor in developmental biology at Stanford School of Medicine and director of Stanford's Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine. She specializes in cancer research genetic engineering and climate research. And last but not least, we are pleased to be joined by Dr. Chester Cocker the James R. Slushinger professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown University and a former chair of USIP's Board of Directors. Before we begin, I would like to remind our audience that we hope to have a little time for your questions before we close. You can submit those questions in the chat below. If you have any questions of your YouTube page or via USIP's Facebook and Twitter accounts. So to begin, I would like to invite each of our panelists to take about five minutes to describe their work on the Hinge of History Project and how the trends described by Secretary Schultz manifest in their areas of focus. And let me begin with Jim George. Machines used to do what they were programmed to do. Now machines can be trained to learn from examination of lots of data. Applications of machine learning are disrupting industries throughout the economy. For almost every job some parts can be done better by machines. Nearly every worker is affected in some way in manufacturing, retail, finance, healthcare even computer programming. And the pace of change continues to be swift. These new technologies have great potential to make us more prosperous, more healthy and better informed. But they also raise problems. Some workers need new skills to keep up with the evolution of their jobs. Others need training for new occupations. Community colleges in partnership with industry have proven successful in providing the skills to support a transition from one job to the next. This is a recurring theme in our project. The transformational changes present big opportunities and big problems and much will depend on our ability to capture the benefits and mitigate the problems. Social media connect and inform people worldwide. But they spread misinformation and they pose new challenges for governments. Individuals can identify others of the same mind and link up with them to oppose initiatives and result as gridlock. In the words of one of our partners we can now stop anything we don't want but we can't enable anything that we need. Now 3D printing as Secretary Schultz said 3D printing and other ways to produce goods near where they will be used provide many benefits including a little more choice customized products even unique products, lower costs reshoring of jobs other countries could see disruption of their economies as low cost labor becomes less of an advantage. Now these 3 transformational technologies artificial intelligence the information revolution and new manufacturing methods these all come together to affect our national security they've enabled the development of smart inexpensive lethal systems that can be produced in large numbers strike with great precision and threaten legacy systems Iran demonstrated the potential of these capabilities in its strike on a Saudi oil field as Secretary Schultz said and more recently Azerbaijan used drones to great effect against Armenia. We ourselves find we are in uncharted territory in future conflicts which are likely to involve actions in space and cyberspace as well as the more familiar land, sea and air information and communication networks will play a crucial role but they could be disrupted the side with the most accurate information is likely to prevail. We can expect increased reliance on machine learning to support decision making in future in a future conflict involving advanced conventional systems space cyberspace this potential for unintended consequences is difficult to predict what the outcome could be and events could unfold very quickly. So our national security will depend on taking advantage of these revolutionary technologies while meeting the challenges posed by such technologies in the hands of our adversaries nuclear weapons are unique danger that deserves more attention nuclear weapons are particularly worrisome when viewed in the context of advanced conventional weapons and competition in space and cyberspace. There's potential that a conventional conflict could escalate to use of nuclear weapons perhaps to misinformation or miscalculation my last point is one one of our conclusions is that the United States is in a better position than many other countries to succeed to ride this wave to take advantage of the opportunities before us Steve you asked Mr. Schultz about this let me give you my sort of summary of why this is true our industries and our universities are at the forefront of innovation in the new technologies talented people all over the world are attracted to the United States our tradition of immigration allows us to maintain the size of our workforce even as we grow older workers need new skills for new jobs but we know how to do that the biggest problem we see is the shortfall in K-12 education but overall the United States is in a better position than most to take advantage of these opportunities and mitigate the problems I would like to George Thank you Jim that's an excellent way to get us launched into this complex conversation but let me now turn to Dr. Sylvia Giorguli-Sosado and ask her if she could talk to us speak to us about the important trend of migration and population and what lessons we should draw from the trends that we are seeing now Thank you Good afternoon I want to take 20 seconds first to congratulate Mr. Schulz for his 100th birthday I'm grateful for the invitation to this celebration and for the space to share ideas I enjoy going through the publication a hinge of history and I recognize the great condensation of such diverse discussions that I will trigger further discussion and hopefully actions I'm a demographer and I come from a sending country so what I will say comes from that perspective and what we discuss in the forums first I think that one of the issues that the discussion in this greater project has has brought in is population dynamics and population change as something that has to be included when we think about global governments we're talking about changes in the size of the populations the regional distribution which of course interact with other issues such as the environmental ones with technological change and with white socio-economic and political processes one of the advantages of demography is that it's more certain than the other trends for example economic trends political trends so we do know what's going to happen almost for certain and that is why we shouldn't include it when we talk about the future so what do we know now from a global perspective first we have polarised scenarios we have a group of countries that are rapidly aging with the shrinking workforce and we have on the other extreme a group of countries which are young which still have a growing young population declining fertility and are delaying this aging process and the first strong idea to be considered here is when we look at it from a global perspective there seems to be a demographic complementarity of course that for example migration is not going to solve all these unbalances and differences in demographic issues and each of the countries will have to find a way to face the demographic challenges but these scenarios can anticipate us that there will be a sustained and probably increasing migration both internal and international in the years to come and therefore we have to consider the great challenge of managing a large scale migration I have to say that migration is not good or bad by itself its implications for sending countries for receiving countries for migrants and their families depend on the management of migration it depends on the decisions taken by governments in the countries of origin in the countries of destination and in the countries in transit countries and from a regional perspective I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from what is going on within our region and when I refer to our region I'm talking about the North Earth Triangle of Central America Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador Mexico, US and I will also include Canada in the discussion and when you look at the region in general what we find is a very highly mobile region there's a lot of mobility and historical mobility within the region with diverse flows going south to north but also very large flows from north to south return migrations and more recently even migration for example of US born children to Mexico we also have a region with historical linkages that have built large binational communities that through technology stay connected and we have a mix of reasons for migrating a combination of economic reasons labor-driven migration environmental reasons for example related to climate change, political reasons related to the persistent violence in Central America and Mexico all of these mix together and sometimes it's very difficult to differentiate the reasons for migrating for one or other reason they are all mixed together on the other side on sending countries we have a context of much uncertainty for the youth uncertainty regarding the economic perspectives the labor perspectives for the youth uncertainty regarding the violence that affects mainly young male adults but also women and prevalence of for example high teenage fertility in Mexico in Guatemala and Honduras and US will remain as an unquestionable magnet for the migration flows of all the region and in spite of the decreasing fertility and the decreasing population growth we can expect a persistent migration with new components that pose new challenges in this discussion around the management of migration and just to mention one this large family component that forces us to think about migration differently to the way we thought about it two or three decades ago mainly based on labor migration thinking about working age in relation but now we have these large family components just well to keep it short and close around the management of migration it's full of paradoxes, challenges we need creative approaches and but what we do know from what we have learned along many many decades is that the migration that the trends that we are seeing today need an approach based on shared responsibilities and with the binational multinational participation thank you Thank you Dr. Giorgio Gulli I hope we'll have a chance to talk a little bit about how Africa is somewhat different in terms of the demography particularly and the fact that there are a number of countries there where we are not yet seeing that decline in fertility rates that we are seeing in other parts of the world but the implications of that might be as well but before I do that Dr. Shapiro you authored a report in Africa oh sorry Dr. Shapiro you authored or co-authored a report for the Hinge of History project on the causes and the consequences of global warming I wonder if you would share with us your principle takeaways from from that contribution yes I'd be happy to I'm going to stress just at the beginning that this is no ordinary time on our planet the earth is not static it is constantly changing over millennia and there have been cataclysmic events that have initiated changes that play out over very long periods of time that in the past have led to climate change and mass extinctions we are now in the midst of the sixth great mass extinction what is different now is that the rate of change of the world's ecosystem is extremely rapid in geophysical time and it is we humans who have produced this cataclysmic event and it has deep consequences for ongoing global stability so really what am I talking about what does this mean it means that carbon emissions and consequent changes in global weather patterns biological systems on all continents and in the seas are shifting as the earth warms and the oceans acidify wiping out the food chain based in the oceans coral reefs and also importantly causing a shift in global infectious diseases that is only now being recognized by the international community these shifts are exacerbated by overpopulation deforestation urban crowding by geopolitical upheavals by jet travel global trade by loss of borders that all lead to the fact that we are living in a global village when we had our meeting as part of the hinge of history we predicted that there would be another pandemic not if but when furthermore we assumed that it was probably going to be a pandemic influenza flu coronavirus not expected and it was the confluence of creating a strain of extraordinary contagion that has led to a pandemic that's changing the face of everything we're doing but I want to stress that this is not going to be the first one it's not going to be the last one and that small changes in ambient temperature result in changes in the habitat of viral, fungal and bacterial pathogens and importantly the vectors the mice the rats the bats the mosquitoes that carry them to the human hosts as well as to our sources of food our plants and our livestock we are this is not in the future this is now for the first time for example malaria has moved into the highlands of East Africa furthermore we are getting all diseases in new places and new diseases are emerging from animal populations which are now displaced most of these new diseases there are no vaccines and no drugs and even when we have drugs we are getting resistance to them Artemisinin what we use for malaria resistance is growing rapidly so as a counter balance to the damage to our planet we are in the midst of a technological revolution the good news as referred to by Jim Timby we also now have access to information stored in the instructions in the DNA of all living organisms and the ability to effectively manipulate this information which is actually a monumental breakthrough most obviously demonstrated recently within weeks by the ability to generate vaccines at what has been coined warp speed which has been simply astonishing and why has that worked because we were able to garner the new technology of being able to work with the DNA inside all organisms all the instructions to make an entirely new class of vaccines that are going to hopefully turn around the vaccine the incredible destructive pandemic that we are now facing so let me just conclude by making four points that we in our group thought was essential going forward and that is one it is essential that we establish international scientific partnerships these bugs, these pathogens no no borders we cannot work on this alone number two we need aggressive pandemic preparedness now not after yet another thing occurs in order to do this we need sophisticated surveillance international databases and the sharing of vaccines across all countries of the world we need three to build trust we need our US population to trust their leaders to listen to scientists who are trying to tell us how to protect ourselves and move forward we need international trust with colleagues in countries throughout the world and for all of this to gain trust and something useful we need diplomacy and for this I turn to George Schultz who I know of no better sign of exquisite diplomacy that is what we need now thank you George thank you Dr. Shapiro one of the key takeaways from what you just said was just a reminder of how these various megatrends are colliding with and interacting with each other in ways that compound their disruptive capability enforced so climate and health and climate and migration so I think one of the benefits of one of the great distinctions of the Hindu history was it brought together a range of experts from across these various disciplines and obliged us all to look not only at how the trends in our respective areas are impacting us but how collectively how together how interactively they are affecting the planet and also our ability to govern the planet which leads me then logically to our next panelist of Chester Crocker another of my former bosses and Chet has done enormous work on these questions of governments and how we manage to strengthen the institutions of governments to enable us to both mitigate the impacts of and magnify the positive impacts of these trends. Chet would you share some thoughts with us? I'll be happy to George let me start though by saying that the remarkable aspect of this Hinge of History project is that it's a 30,000 foot look at our future led by by George Schultz who is the most most remarkable statesman who is not a prisoner of ideology and not a prisoner of disciplines. He's a multi-disciplinary person who can look at all these different variables and he's got a great appetite for the inputs and the insights of experts like we've already heard experts on different topics he has an appetite for their contribution so what we're seeing in this project is lots and lots of hinges and now we have to find ways to mobilize responses to the challenge that those hinges represent in the African area we actually looked at several different dimensions we looked at migration and demography which is of course critical Africa represents today perhaps 15 to 20 percent of the world's population it'll be 25 to 30 percent by 2050 it'll be 40 percent possibly 50 or 60 percent by the year 2100 depending on fertility patterns which are not yet obviously resolved we don't know how the fertility trends will vary over time we do know some of the variables but we don't know exactly which countries in which subregions will empower and liberate women so that's a huge a huge factor and we looked at the impact of internet technology the mobile internet technology which has actually created tremendous opportunities for business and for communication for people who previously had no knowledge of what was going on in the marketplace and they could instantly pick up their cell phone and figure out what the price should be for corn or wheat or cassava whatever product in the neighboring country and would know what to do with their so it's an upside it's a tremendous upside what information technology can bring we looked at trade patterns and there again you have the issue that's quite striking in the African context to George which is that most African countries trade primarily with non-African countries and what's needed is a liberation of intra-regional trade so that more and more countries can trade and find comparative advantage with each other we looked as I mentioned at climate as well and the impact of climate trends on migration on agriculture and on urbanization patterns Africa is rapidly becoming a highly urbanized place so it's it's important to bear in mind all that we've already heard including the risk of pandemic disease in Africa's growing burgeoning cities so that's part of what we looked at I did a piece for this project on governance trends and it's fair to say I think that the governance issue in Africa is a very complex one we have the problem of the big men syndrome where people stay in office for far too long and change the constitution rapidly and try to stay in office as long as they can there's a lot of ethnic entrepreneurs who are seeking to govern by manipulating ethnic variables there's lots of challenges for African governance and I could paint a pretty stark picture but I'm not going to do that I'm going to say that there's some good news in this story too which is that there's lots and lots of demand from Africans young and not so young African people are demonstrating and taking to the street when they feel the need to assert the right to a better future so I don't think we can just look at governments anymore we have to look at whole societies and figure out where the key vectors are and the key variables so that's just in a very quick nutshell George thank you very much for the chance to speak Thank you Chet very much for that excellent summary of the conversation around the round table on these challenges of Africa and I would add to that and I think Chet you would agree that as we looked at it and admittedly we were kind of Africa centered but nevertheless we could make a very strong case that of all of the continents Africa is the one that is likely to be most heavily impacted by these trends both separately and in the ways in which they integrate themselves and there are a lot of historic reasons for that we know this is a continent that even going back pre-colonial times the institutions of governance have not been as fully developed as they have in other parts of the world that in and of itself poses a challenge and we also know that some of these trends we can already see have already begun to have impacts the impacts of climate on migration you mentioned the movement of populations to urban areas which of course are already under great stress in terms of how they are managing the challenges of delivering services to their citizens or even maintaining law and order in a safe environment for their citizens and we've also seen how for example these trends of climate are magnifying reinforcing other trends such as trends of extremism and criminality where criminal groups and extremist groups are exploiting the disruptions to take advantage of them in order to advance their own either criminal or political goals simply to say that and I think Chet could agree the institutions of governance are going to be challenged at every level at the national level, at the sub-national level and at the regional level and the global level and it also means that given the history here that as one looks at Africa it is the place where I think we recognize it's going to be the demands for outside external assistance and support are going to be even greater than they are which again is a challenge for leadership and going back to what Secretary Schultz said earlier these are not things we are doing simply because we are seek to be altruistic and moral they are things we know from history affect us in very direct ways and therefore require demand our attention and will certainly demand the attention of our leaders but with that in mind Jimmy let me return to you because you talked about technology and you mentioned the roles of social media and technology and innovation and I wondered if you would share with us do you view this new digital ecosystem and all this technological innovation including of course the role of social media as inherently inhospitable to or incompatible with democracy and governance what can and should leaders do to try to ensure that technologies societal dividends are evenly distributed thank you again George I would not say that democracy is incompatible with social media but there certainly is a challenge there there is a problem to be solved democracy requires citizens to make informed choices when they choose their representatives when they choose their leaders and the social media companies are not in business to provide the most accurate information to citizens and to prepare them to make these choices they're in the business of attracting attention they're trying to attract your attention so they can sell your attention to advertisers and it turns out that stories that are sensational but incorrect attract more attention than the less interesting reality so but these social media platforms they're not just big companies anymore they are a key source of news and information for many people and they now help to provide different realities to different audiences and the companies and some of the government as well recognize that this is a problem and you know not just different opinions but different facts that's a recognized problem and we're starting to see social media companies labeling and curating some of what gets transmitted what gets amplified in their networks governments are addressing this question of their hearings and so forth so I think we're in the beginning of a path to deal with this problem that you're talking about as far as even distribution that's not something we've addressed in our project we've looked mainly at the problem of I mean before the pandemic there were more jobs than there were there were jobs going unfilled there were people looking for jobs jobs being disrupted by technology so we focused on that transition on improving that safety net retraining and so forth but maybe we should talk about the question you raised of distribution as Secretary Schultz said in a slightly different way we're continuing this project it now has a national security emphasis but in today's environment it's hard to find something that's not connected to national security certainly the pandemic COVID-19 so this I think this could be a fair issue that we could take up in our continuing work thank you Jim Dr. Giorgulli let me ask you we are at the moment the latest statistics from the UN High Commission for Refugees would indicate that we have something on the order of 80 million refugees and displaced persons in the world which the figure that continues to climb and yet we which is a very small proportion of our total population certainly not something that we on the face of it could not manage but yet we were seeing such a dangerous erosion in the international norms as govern the status of refugees, migrants and we have newly emerging categories of migrants we have climate migrants for example can you tell us from your perspective what we need to be doing with our global institutions to shore up the support and the protections for people who are obliged to move for all kinds of different reasons thank you for the question I think that one of the main challenges that we are facing regarding the management of migration is that we have the gaps and the problems that we have not been able to solve in the past and then we have these new types of migration new actors participating increasingly in migration flows such as children and so we haven't solved the past and now we are already facing new challenges and I think that a very good example is what's happening with the refugee and asylum system in the US I would like to mention for example that I studied by Doris Meissner in the Migration Policy Institute and I pointed out some years ago the practical problems in the management of migration regarding asylum in the US so we already have a broken system you are lagging behind in terms of how to manage large populations with no documentation status and then you have these new flows and the persistence also of violence driven or war driven migration the other issue is that well we have this document that was signed in 2018 I think on global government migration that yes the compact global compact where the US didn't sign by the way and I do think that in a certain way we have good instruments and an idea that we should be going but the problem is when you put it and when you earth it to the specific national national situations so on one way it's clear that countries have the sovereignty and the responsibility of managing what happens at the borders but on the other side it's not so clear how to compaginate or synchronize the interests of the countries and I would like to say that to the issue that you have raised regarding the challenges to global governments that in migration specifically we haven't been able to build a global governance by itself and I think that in terms of the governments the efficiency and the speed to respond to the emerging new situations is not what it should be so it creates larger gaps in the global communities. Thank you very much and that is a subject worthy of its own seminar in symposium. Let me turn to Dr. Shapiro Jim Timby said earlier that he thought the US was well positioned to navigate in these rapidly changing and challenging times but frankly as one looks at our handling of the Covid and the under-resourcing of so many areas in R&D and science and technology one might question that optimism. I wonder what you would share with us in terms of your perspective on that. I think you're still muted, yes. I'm always so anxious to give the answer that I don't look at my little red button I think that the problems that we have are the juxtaposition of governance and what's happening scientifically and in the natural world and there is a disconnect and what we desperately need as I said at the end of my very brief statement is better communication and diplomacy so that these different worlds that George Schultz helped bring us together in this hinge of history exercise can communicate being more specific the technology that was available not only to us in the United States but at many other countries in delving into living organisms and figuring out how to manipulate them has been world changing the use of these now requires communication and diplomacy that we don't have right now and so to me the greatest realization is that the United States is not an island we live in a global village and we must learn how to share and learn from other countries and other societies one of the most important challenges we face is remaining in conversations and data sharing with countries like China it is not simply to say I don't trust what they say or do we have to be in the same tent we have to share our data and understand how to learn what they know and what we know so that the extraordinary technologies that are now at hand can in fact be applied if I may, let me just tell you a tiny bit of good news in all of this bad news about pandemic and that is the ability to make a vaccine based on a little piece of instruction called mRNA hotshot vaccines which are probably going to be shot into most of us has allowed us to do because it's something that we can make in the laboratory a small piece of instruction the next time we get a new virus that is pandemic quality or epidemic quality all you need is the sequence of that piece of DNA or DNA then in a matter of weeks you can figure out how to make a brand new vaccine you still have to scale you still have to produce you still have to distribute but this is a paradigm shift in how to make vaccines and it is going to save us for the next one and the next one and the next one so this is a rather long handed answer to your enormous question but hopefully there was a nugget of something good in it there was more than a nugget and certainly a welcome nugget of good news on the horizon as you talk about the new technologies as applied to the development of new medicines by the way that was a question that came from the audience and I'm going to ask another one coming from the audience and I'm going to put it to chat if you don't mind Shed you've talked about this before but I wonder if you could amplify that how did these macro trends of migration, of climate of pandemics, of technological innovation how do they intersect with the tenets of fragility as of course we understand at USIP in other words how are these trends exacerbating the underlying drivers of fragility and therefore of conflict thank you George they intersect in a number of different ways they intersect for example by creating a situation in which wealthy entrepreneurs, wealthy individuals in Africa may decide that they would rather park their money in Europe or in the United States or somewhere in Asia and so the total net inflow of foreign assistance, ODA as we call it official development assistance is actually about half of what the flight capital is in an average year in Africa so while we're watching what looks like a good news story we're also not seeing the part that's underneath it's like the bottom of the iceberg which is the flight capital leaving Africa and that of course drains and hollows out governmental institutions and makes it very hard for African governments to deliver the goods to their people to make opportunities for training and education to open up secondary schooling to women which is a vitally important variable if you don't have open secondary school education for women you're not going to see fertility trends change so these things all intersect in that kind of a pattern thank you and we spent a great deal of time talking about that at our panel and one of the observations you made earlier which is that we need to look now we tend to focus our attention on governance at the national level and it's quite clear that we're going to have to be much more creative and broaden our lens as we think about institutions of governance and focus on those wherever they may be that seem to be functioning whether that has to be at the urban area or at the county area or the provincial area or at the regional level and certainly in all of those cases as Dr Shapiro said earlier it's going to require global leadership as well because none of these problems are problems that can be solved by individual nations acting alone just please yes for a minute I think one of the things that is quite troubling in a way is the tendency of major authoritarian powers and I'm thinking of China and Russia and Turkey and maybe a few others to export their views of governance into Africa and that makes it even harder for African leaders to figure out which models they want to follow and which models are going to be truly African models so the governance models will come from within Africa but also from outside of Africa indeed and we've seen that this can be a sort of an imitation or demonstration effect people see success in terms of good governance and there's an inclination to try to emulate it but that works in their direction as well sadly we've seen how some autocrats give examples that we get other autocrats and so something else in the auditing mind below question also from our audience it sort of goes to a question you addressed in part before but it's a bit more explicit and it's a question of how can these technologies be used to advance or efforts at peace building and building resilience in societies and how will the new technology affect the relationship between citizens and state thank you George before I do that can I just go back to this question in your question to Lucy you sort of thought that I was too optimistic what I meant to say was that our assessment is that we are in a good position we still have to be smart about it when all these bright people want to come to the United States we have to give them visas and let them in and so forth anyway a point well taken Jim thank you technologies for peace building clearly social media and other sort of information technology to connect people that clearly is connected to peace building but I would also say that if we are going to be working on peace building and be working on international cooperation I mean first of all all of these issues that we have discussed today are global that can all only be solved by international cooperation so working together on solving some of these problems will be helpful but I think in general if if we are going to work together for a better more peaceful world it would be good to have you to emphasize our strengths to maintain our technological leadership to maintain our economic strength to maintain our military strength if we can do all those things then I think we will be in a position to lead and I think from that position I think that will be helpful for the sort of peace building that your organization is at the forefront of Thank you Jim, thanks very much Dr. Joe Gulley let me return to you if I might You know well that immigration is a radioactive rail in American politics and culture and so how would you go about framing for the new leadership the incoming administration the argument for the voting, more attention and perhaps even resources to addressing the issues and the challenges that you identified earlier on Yeah So and you're talking about our region, no? Our region, I think in this case our region Yeah Well I think that there are like two different levels one has to do with the principles that guide migration policies and has to do with the introduction of human rights and a more humanistic approach to the management of migration as principles the other has to do with very pragmatic issues and I think that there are a lot of things that can be done in pragmatic in concrete cases or situations where there might be some debate but I think it's easier to solve for example the case of the Dreamers which has been a long discussion in the US seems to be certain conversions about the idea of finding a way out to legalize migrants that arrive when they were children and that have been in the US for a long time and that which have lost their connection with their countries of origin but in spite of these certain convergence at least in the discourse finding the way out of the solution has been slow in terms I go again to the case of asylum seeking and refugees there's a problem with backlogs with a very long time processing the applications so there are very specific issues that I think can be attended and can result in large changes in terms of regularizing of finding a way out in the migration system within the US but the other issue has to do with diplomacy and the relationship with the other sending countries now it has been very complicated regarding the third safe country the MPP the role that sending countries have to play in terms of their own responsibility for the ability of sending countries but also in terms of the capability of finding a solution that is good for the region as a whole I do think that finding legal paths increasing labor visas for example fostering this increase in development in the main region sending regions that has to do not only with economic development but also with social cohesion and political stability are some of the challenges and when we talk about migration and cooperation for development we won't see the results in 1, 2, 3, 5 years we know that it's a long term but I think that it's sort of pointing out in the right direction I don't know if I answered your question well it's really takes us a good ways down the road and again another question that we could devote much much more time to if we had the time to do that Dr. Shapiro let me return to you and I have another question from the audience and it relates to again to multilateral institutions international channels and I'm thinking of this particularly in the context of current COVID prices because we have seen alas our international institutions WHO in particular severely stressed and challenged by the not only the science and the magnitude of the pandemic itself but also by the politics of the pandemic and so the question would be what are to be successful what are the international structures that we need to be thinking about either building or rebuilding in order to be successful as we face these these inevitability as you pointed out earlier of the more pandemic to come look I think that one of the big problems we've had is imperfect communication not only between our government and the population here in the united states but between our country and countries throughout the world and that has taken an enormous toll on our ability to deal with this disease I think that we need some structure we need the world health organization we need it not politicized as it has been and what we should be doing is not abandoning it but working within it to make something that is valuable to all the members of the world health organization having free data available and I can't stress this too much understanding surveillance understanding what pathogens are swirling around the world understanding and knowing what the projection of infectious people are in Nigeria in Sweden in Chicago in Tokyo we all we need all of that information at once it can't be a patchwork quilt and that's what we should be aiming for and this is not impossible it's happened before and it has to happen again so my answer to this is that we need to have the organizations that work that let us communicate honestly with respect for science and with respect for what we must do to protect humanity at a time when there is enormous disruption in many many other levels that are going to be superimposed by climate change thank you Chet let me turn back to you and that's actually a question from our audience that actually builds on the comment that you made earlier when we were talking about demonstration effects good examples can be good examples and vice versa and the question is can you identify a successful model for how a country has risen to meet these kinds of challenges by adapting their governance structures and improving their governance systems yeah thank you George I think one doesn't only want to look within the African context but in North Africa I think I would point out the example of Tunisia which is the only the only Arab spring country that actually had a spring time and even a summer most of the others who had that experience rapidly descended into winter Morocco has also done a pretty good job of trying to be a modernized monarchy and making it possible for the currents of Islam to become constructive in the country and not tear the country apart elsewhere in Africa I think I can point to a few success stories that I think have been pretty durable with multiple alternations of power such as the country you know far better than I do George and that's Senegal in West Africa which has managed its own challenges of climate and migration and so forth but it's done it well Ghana has been quite successful in this regard as well down in Southern Africa Botswana is the example people always point to of adaptation and the building together of traditional ethnic norms and institutions into a modern polity George while I have the floor I can't refrain from pointing out that we've all been talking about diplomacy one way or the other and and the spark plug for this entire conversation is listening to us oh pine here George Schultz once remarked to his colleagues Mr. Secretary you said to us that good diplomacy is like gardening you do it all the time because you have to keep maintaining relationships so we have the gardening model we also have other models we have the need to occasionally build new institutions to come up with answers to new problems as they arise or strengthen institutions so maybe this current crisis might lead to reinvigorating the WHO who knows in my view we have to think more and more about having concerts of like-minded work together on problems and so concert diplomacy could become something of the future model but the bottom line is we need more diplomacy thanks Jett I'm not going to I'd like to actually invite a non-panelist to a pine on some of this as well and that's our chair Steve Hadley but I'll give you a couple of minutes Steve to think about that but I would welcome your thoughts about as you have listened to this conversation because you are always very suited drawing out themes and threads so let me turn back to you in just a minute but indeed Jett to your point we had a couple of questions from our audience about precisely about the issues of diplomacy where does diplomacy fit in to this new challenging agenda that has been described to us in the hinge of history is diplomacy as we have thought about it our of us ancient ones thought about it in the past or is diplomacy itself going to have to change and adapt in order to enable us to respond to and meet these challenges and indeed in particular specifically how has the COVID crisis affected our ability to pursue diplomacy in the traditional sense of that word and Jim I'm going to throw that one to you in the first instance Jim you're still muted so I think now most of us have not made the same mistake we all do let me start let's take the diplomacy question a little more broadly we haven't talked about China and Russia here and I think that's part of it as well and as we've discovered in our project both of these countries face real problems I mean China has a working age population has peaked they've become a steady decline they're not going to sustain the economic growth they've had in the past they have environmental challenges if we if we maintain our own strengths and our own technology our economic military our partnership with allies and friends we can be in a position to work with China and some of our differences we're seeking more reciprocity more level playing field trade and investment rules of the road and space and in cyberspace and so forth we think we can sit down with China and seek to resolve some of them and see some areas where we can cooperate maybe some areas that will remain competitive but we can sit down with some prospect of success and the same is true with Russia so we think that through this understanding of how these transformational changes are affecting not only us but other countries middle size and small countries as well this understanding that we're all facing similar problems could be conducive to the final solutions Thank you Jim, that's very much Steve, I know it's a bit unfair but might I just call on you to opine a bit on what you've been hearing in the course of this conversation what you take away from it and what you hope we make of it going forward Yeah, I would like to make a Go ahead Oh, you were talking to me or not? No, I was not but go ahead, make a comment and then we'll move on I'm sorry, I think I heard Celia. Now a general comment is you have mentioned the challenges to institutions for global governments from my perspective and not only within my field there's this lack of efficiency and the speed of governments to respond and there's also for example the role of multilateral organizations that I would like to discuss or to see more discussion about how they are also adapting to this new context and probably new ways of making or doing diplomacy and I agree with Lucy about the importance of having more diplomacy, scientific diplomacy but I also would like to know why we have now or are facing now this connection between empirically based, solid scientific knowledge and public policies if there was a greater communication before, why are we finding these obstacles now in the U.S. but in the global in the global context so I'm sorry that I interrupted my my apologies. We're not sorry at all that you injected that theme because it's a fundamental question isn't it I mean we are seeing not only here but all around the world this increasing disconnect between the if you have a rational scientific conversations that I'm interested to having and this growth of anti-epistemic communities that is threatening that whole system and that whole rationale we are sort of at the end of our time here but I did want to give our Chairman Steve Hadley an opportunity to share any thoughts he might have and that's before we close it. Well this has been a terrific program and the work that you've done is fabulous and I'm really looking forward to this book. I've got some things that are both above it and below it in some sense. We talked about the things that are needed internationally in order to meet these challenges and we talked about it in terms of organization but I think it's also we have to talk about the international political culture because do the things that Lucy Shapiro talked about you got to have transparency. You got to have an honest sharing of data. You know there's a lot of things about the in the international political culture that you need in order for us to do these things correctly and we have now a competition between an authoritarian state capitalism model which is not particularly transparent is not particularly sharing in terms of a candid assessments of what's going on that's represented by the Chinese and of course the model that we have in western values. Those are now in collision and in some sense how that competition comes out matters if we're going to have the right kind of international culture to deal with these problems which brings us back to the United States and to the underpinnings of all this. Yes we have a lot of advantages in confronting this new world as Jim said though we've got to do some things we've got to invest in infrastructure in education in technology if we don't do those things we won't be well positioned in this which brings us then to the American people. We're going to have to build support for this among American people and a lot of people already are saturated about the pace of change that's going on in society and we're basically talking about get ready there's going to be a lot more and really then this becomes a challenge of governance here at home how do we bring the American people as a whole behind this enormous project we're talking about and not have it leave some people behind or contribute to even greater divisions we've got to make this system work we've got to you know we've got to make our system of governance perform we've got to explain to people these challenges we've got to show that our government can actually come together and have policies that address them make the decisions for infrastructure and technology and all the rest that we need in order to succeed and we need to then restore confidence of the American people that we actually can handle the challenges coming forward and make this system work so that we once again become a model that countries want to emulate and we in the end of the day can win this ideological competition with China about what is the model that works and it's important if we're going to win that because that's the only way I think we're going to create the kind of international culture that we're going to need to do all the things that your panel has talked about so George you know that's a long way around but it shows the scale of what really needs to be done in so many arenas if we are going to make good on what this work suggests needs to happen if the world is going to deal with these challenges thanks George well thanks Steve I'm so glad I asked you to comment and I think you put your finger on the quintessential challenge for American leadership right now which is to rebuild that trust in those relationships with the American people that enable us then to do to perform the kind of leadership role that we are being called upon to play international so we have exhausted my time and I sure in a minute they're going to cut us all off so let me begin by thanking all of our panelists and our participants for what has been a fascinating conversation and needless to say this is a discussion that barely skims the surface of that vast body of research that was brought together in the Hinge of History Project but we hope that it will at least wet the appetite of our audience and lead them to go in search of more and before we close let me once again acknowledge and thanks Secretary Schultz for his bold and visionary leadership and conceiving of this project and directing it and for his distinguished record of service to our nation and for his greatly valued support for the US Institute of Peace I want to acknowledge and thank the staffs of both USIP and the Hoover Institution for their indispensable role in putting this event together we've heard today what we've heard today underscore is just how rapidly our world is changing and the shifting global demographics, migration patterns, climate change, technology innovations that are producing enormous socioeconomic and geopolitical shifts and disruptions particularly I would argue in Africa, Asia and Latin America so this Hinge of History Project is not only not only about our understanding of those forces but importantly as George Schultz conceived it about the choices that leaders at all levels will need to make if we are to manage and to harness those forces and the project brings to mind great historical figures of the past who faced with the generation defining challenges rose to meet the moment and if there's one clear message from this project it is that we are facing such a moment now where the choices that we make will have profound implications for generations to come I for one remain hopeful that our leaders will rise to meet this moment but I'm also mindful as Jim put it that we will require truly extraordinary leadership and that there is much work to be done and great commitment to international cooperation to ensure that those benefits are in fact realized we look forward to in fact we believe that the Hinge of History Project can and will become an indispensable resource for academics, for researchers, for policymakers and all who seek to navigate these complex challenges and changes in these daunting times and we thank you all again for joining us for this important discussion and our thanks again for George Schultz for once again leading us in the right direction thank you all