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Talks and interviews from Hoover Institution events.
Episodes
Thursday Jul 23, 2020
Thursday Jul 23, 2020
The Hoover Institution presents an online virtual speaker series based on the scholarly research and commentary written by Hoover fellows participating in the Human Prosperity Project on Socialism and Free-Market Capitalism. This project objectively investigates the historical record to assess the consequences for human welfare, individual liberty, and interactions between nations of various economic systems ranging from pure socialism to free-market capitalism. Each session will include thoughtful and informed analysis from our top scholars.
Monday Jul 20, 2020
Monday Jul 20, 2020
The Hoover Institution presents an online virtual speaker series based on the scholarly research and commentary written by Hoover fellows participating in the Human Prosperity Project on Socialism and Free-Market Capitalism. This project objectively investigates the historical record to assess the consequences for human welfare, individual liberty, and interactions between nations of various economic systems ranging from pure socialism to free-market capitalism. Each session will include thoughtful and informed analysis from our top scholars.
Tuesday Jun 30, 2020
Tuesday Jun 30, 2020
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
The Hoover Institution and the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) hosting Ensuring America’s Innovation in Artificial Intelligence with Condoleezza Rice and Dr. Fei-Fei Li on Tuesday, June 30, 2020 at 11AM PT/ 2PM ET.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to radically transform every industry and every society. Such profound changes offer great opportunities to improve the human condition for the better, but also pose unprecedented challenges. As this new era arrives, the creators and designers of AI must account for diversity of thought and ensure systems are built to properly reflect what it means to be human. Guiding the future of AI in a responsible way that translates American values of equality, opportunity and individual freedom will be paramount to ensuring our shared dream of creating a better future for all of humanity.
Thursday Jun 25, 2020
Thursday Jun 25, 2020
Although pandemics are not rare in history, societies rarely remember history’s lessons for containing disease. Using network science and the history of the last two great plague pandemics in the 1340s and 1890s, this paper traces the evolution of various disease-fighting policies and evaluates their effectiveness. Policies are most effective when they disrupt disease transmission networks by erecting borders between communities—maritime quarantines, sanitary cordons, and blockades. In contrast, policies that target a pathogen’s geography have sizeable economic costs and often produce social unrest—public hygiene and sanitation, housing changes, lockdowns, and policing. The paper concludes that the epidemiological models used to guide COVID-19 policy inappropriately treat populations as homogeneous. Instead, whether Y. Pestis or COVID-19, policymakers should focus on understanding disease transmission networks—and how to disrupt them.
Manny Rincon-Cruz is a researcher at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where he helped launch and currently serves as the executive director of the History Working Group. His research focuses on various aspects of monetary history, Chinese history, and network science. He has written about the social networks of power in the history of the American presidency, the role of collegial networks in the promotion or demotion of Chinese political elites, and is currently working on modeling the spread of the Nazi party in its first three years. Since January 2020, he has been working to better understand the spread and containment of COVID-19, whether in Taiwan or the US. He nonetheless remains keenly interested in how digital technology is transforming both our public sphere and our monetary systems, here and abroad.
Thursday Jun 11, 2020
Thursday Jun 11, 2020
Humanity’s control over infectious disease – achieved by modern science, good policy, and economic growth – is one of the most remarkable successes of our species. But can a history of this triumph help us evaluate how fragile it is? And what does the COVID-19 pandemic look like in the long perspective of human control over infectious disease?
Kyle Harper is Professor of Classics and Letters and the Senior Vice President and Provost at his alma mater, the University of Oklahoma. A historian of Rome, Harper is the author of three books, Slavery in the Late Roman World, awarded the James Henry Breasted Prize; From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality, which received the Award for Excellence in Historical Studies from the American Academy of Religion; and The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, which has been translated into 11 languages. His next project is a history of infectious disease, from human origins to the present, which will bring the natural sciences into conversation with the study of the human past.
Thursday Jun 04, 2020
Thursday Jun 04, 2020
Much like in war, drones can take the place of a human on dangerous frontlines. During the COVID-19 crisis, drones have been used to resupply the vulnerable populations, help enforce lockdowns, screen people’s temperature, and deep clean a nation’s streets. Predictably, policymakers and manufactures have pushed to relax restrictions to allow the rapid rollout of robotic technologies. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples of drone ‘misuse’, this talk explores the kinetic, biological, chemical and information security threats posed by drone technologies. Despite the newfound utility of the drone, there are real dangers to rapid relaxation and mass roll-out of drone technology at this time.
James Rogers is DIAS Assistant Professor in War Studies, within the Centre for War Studies, at SDU, and Associate Fellow within LSE IDEAS, at the London School of Economics. He is currently Special Advisor to the UK Parliament's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drones, Special Advisor to the United Nations on state and non-state weapons development, and a UK MoD Defence Opinion Leader. He has previously been a Visiting Research Fellow at Stanford, Yale, and Oxford.
Thursday May 07, 2020
Thursday May 07, 2020
It has become commonplace among beleaguered leaders seeking to rally popular support to say that the COVID-19 pandemic is a “war,” albeit against an “invisible enemy.” For a number of obvious reasons, a pandemic is very different from a war, of course. We think of a pandemic as a natural disaster, whereas a war as man-made. Nevertheless, the two kinds of disaster have much in common. This paper considers one particular point of resemblance, namely the way the pandemic came as a surprise to most people, despite numerous warnings of the likelihood of such a disaster. The paper then explores the economic, social, political and geopolitical consequences of World War I and shows what they can teach us about the possible consequences of the pandemic.
Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior fellow of the Center for European Studies, Harvard. He is the author of fifteen books, most recently The Square and the Tower, and an award-making filmmaker, having won an international Emmy for his PBS series The Ascent of Money.
Monday May 20, 2019
Monday May 20, 2019
Monday, May 20, 2019
A Century Of Ideas: Technology, Innovation, And The Future Of The US Economy
This session will discuss the historical sources of prosperity in the United States over the past century and will look at the drivers of prosperity over the next century. Panelists will also address the ongoing debate about the impact of artificial intelligence and robotics on standards of living and the relevant facts and data to consider.
Thursday Apr 18, 2019
Thursday Apr 18, 2019
Thursday, April 18, 2019
A Century Of Ideas: A Century Of Prosperity: A Review Of The Standard Of Living, 1919 Vs. 2019
The past century has witnessed dramatic improvements in the standard of living in the United States. Panelists will discuss the role that free markets, property rights, innovation, regulation, and national security have played in this remarkable advancement in human well-being.
Tuesday Mar 26, 2019
Tuesday Mar 26, 2019
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
A Century Of Ideas: One Hundred Years Of Democracy And Foreign Policy
The United States was founded on the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and for decades, support for democracy around the world has been a central tenet of American foreign policy. The past century provides many examples of prosperity in thriving democracies balanced with the instability of authoritarian and repressive regimes. This panel discussion examines the changing role of democracy building in America’s foreign policy over the past century.