Camden Conference in the World ~ June

“Tech Bros” such as Mark Zuckerburg and Elon Musk are the “largest dictators,” and “have proven that we all, regardless of culture, language or geography have far more in common than we have differences because we’re all being manipulated the same way,” Philippine journalist, Nobel prize winner, and speaker at Camden’s 2020 Media Conference speaker Maria Ressa told the Hay-on Wye literary festival in Wales last month. Platforms such as Facebook and X (Twitter) “change the way we feel,” she said, which in turn “changes the way we see the world and changes the way we act.” She advised that the US remove legal protections for social media from lawsuits over content posted by users and restrict children’s access more tightly.

Both Ressa and multi-Camden Conference moderator Nicholas Burns spoke at commencement events at Harvard University last month. Ressa delivered the university Commencement Address, calling on students to “choose their best selves” in an impending struggle with fascism due to Big Tech; and Burns called on graduates of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government to find solutions to the “most pressing issues of the next century,” starting with climate change and also including technology.

Former chief economic advisor to the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a speaker at February’s India Camden Conference, Arvind Subramanian wrote in a widely circulated article last month about the ways in which a US trade war with China could rebound to the benefit of India and other countries by opening up a bigger foothold for them in Western markets. Subramanian also argued in a Wall Street Journal article  that India’s official data overstates economic growth by up to 2%.

Martin Jacques, keynoter at Camden’s 2019 China conference, in a UK Sunday Mail article gives three reasons for China’s startling success in electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing: Beijing’s long-term industrial planning, the fact that China’s domestic market is “huge and the most competitive in the world,” and “the continuing priority that China attaches to the industrial sector.” Jacques, a well-known author and visiting professor at Tsinghua and Fudan universities in China, notes the “desperate attempt” of the West to block China’s access to state-of-the-art technology – even as Washington blocks Chinese access to the US EV market – and concludes: “As King Canute failed to halt the tide, so the West will fail ignominiously to prevent China’s rise.”

MIT professor, co-director of labor studies at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a speaker at Camden’s 2023 Global Trade Conference, David Autor in May debated the likely impacts of AI on middle-skilled jobs with NPR’s “On Point” host Meghna Chakrabarti. The interview followed up on an article published by Autor back in February in which he argued that AI “can enable a larger set of workers equipped with necessary foundational training to perform higher-stakes decision-making tasks currently arrogated to elite experts, such as doctors, lawyers, software engineers and college professors. In essence, AI — used well — can assist with restoring the middle-skill, middle-class heart of the U.S. labor market that has been hollowed out by automation and globalization.”

“For the first time in a long time, the West has completely disappeared from Russian politics. Official relations have been reduced to an exchange of accusations or threats and the gradual denunciation of a legal framework built up over decades,” is the latest analysis of Russian foreign relations by Fyodor Lukyanov. In discussing trends discernible in a post-unilateral world, Lukyanov emphasizes the importance of migration policy in a way that may resonate in the West: “… in a world where the mobility of people is increasing for various reasons (climate, inequality, etc.), the ability to regulate migration flows will be the most important condition for sustainability and development. It will also be an instrument of foreign policy.” A speaker at Camden’s 2015 Russia conference, Lukyanov is editor of Russia in Global Affairs and one of the best known commentators on Russian foreign policy worldwide.