Author Archives: lawac
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Saepe culpa illo vero adipisci maiores consequuntur! Nobis tempora saepe, ut sint?
Jon Alpert/Portals/0/MoviePosters/CubaCamerman.jpg
The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman, has recently begun to assert his power dramatically on two stages at the same time – domestically and in a new foreign policy – but is risking overreach in both areas, according to James Gelvin. Speaking to a LAWAC Global Cafe breakfast on Nov 10th, Gelvin, who is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at UCLA, said that 'there is an incredible potential for overreach' in the actions of the 32 year-old Crown Prince, whose father King Salman only appointed him as his successor in June of this year.
Artificial intelligence is on the brink of permeating every major industry, from healthcare to transportation. AI is also becoming a larger part of everyday life, with virtual assistants such as Apple's Siri already in the hands of millions around the world and the use of self-driving cars on the rise. In a panel discussion hosted by the LAWAC Young Professionals on November 1, four experts in machine learning debated the ethics of AI and what these rapid developments mean for humanity.
The Iranian nuclear deal, which former President Obama regarded as his signature foreign policy achievement, has been pushed into limbo by President Trump who refused on October 13th to recertify the agreement while stopping short of scrapping the pact. 'We don't know where it will end,' said Ambassador Thomas Pickering. 'Conflict is not to be ruled out.'
Ireland has transformed itself in the past 20 years, both economically and socially, from one of the more socially conservative countries in Europe to one of the most prosperous and open-minded states, according to Dan Mulhall, the new Irish Ambassador in Washington.
When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was chased out of power by the Tahrir Square demonstrations in January-February 2011, a wave of hope swept across the Middle East and around the world that finally democracy would overtake the region’s hitherto authoritarian regimes. Six years later it is clear that hope was a 'false dawn'…
Vicente Fox, former President of Mexico from 2000-06, delivered a spirited defense of free trade and the benefits of US-Mexican economic cooperation, saying 'we have to work together because we have a dream together – that we can do much better.'
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who just won a fourth term as Germany’s leader in the September 24th elections, did not originally want to run again, and had to be talked into putting her name forward by President Obama, among others, according to William Drozdiak.
The US Congress is increasingly asserting itself in US foreign policy in the face of a distracted White House, according to Republican House member Ed Royce – and it is happening on a bipartisan basis.
Eric Schmidt, one of the Google founders, has said that 'the internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand.' Containing data that amounts to 50 billion times the amount in the US Library of Congress, the indexed internet is simply too large for anyone to fully oversee – and that, according to Alexander Klimburg, is what makes it so hard to control and so open to abuse.
Matthew Heineman/Portals/0/MoviePosters/City-of-Ghosts.jpg
China is being 'completely disingenuous' in its supposed efforts to help contain North Korea's nuclear program, and needs to do much more so the US is not forced to take on Pyongyang on its own, which could lead to war, according to Admiral James Stavridis, a 35 year-veteran of the US Navy.
My Account
