Five Global Threats and What to Do About Them

There’s no shortage of threats facing the globe, from challenges to democracy, to emerging capabilities like artificial intelligence and biotechnology, to ongoing conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, the United States and Iran, and the potential for conflict between China and Taiwan.In this episode of World Class, Colin Kahl shares a conversation he moderated with a panel of scholars from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where they take a deep dive into the forces driving each of these issues, and opportunities for resolving them.Drew Endy highlights the need to secure the biotechnology frontier, as AI makes it ever more possible for bad actors to bring bioweapons to life. Didi Kuo discusses where democracy is doing well, and what can be done to push back against authoritarianism. Abbas Milani provides personal and scholarly insights into the conflict in Iran and the country's democratic potential. Steven Pifer debunks the idea that Russia is making meaningful progress in its war of aggression against Ukraine, and outlines how the United States can be more effective as a negotiator between the two sides. And Oriana Skylar Mastro shares what people are getting wrong about U.S. competition with China, and where more nuance is needed in understanding the relationship. While each of these challenges is significant, they are not unsolvable. As Colin Kahl reminds listeners, “These are not inevitabilities. These are choices. We can choose to engineer a world of abundance and opportunity, or we can create a lot of dangerous things that make life worse. We can choose to defend freedom in the United States and around the world, or we can choose not to. We can choose to wield American power with wisdom and with a degree of restraint, or unwisely with hubris, like an international wrecking ball. We can keep the problems solvable.”The original audio of this episode was produced during a panel held at Stanford University on October 17, 2026. It has been edited for length and clarity.FEATURING:Drew Endy is a senior fellow, by courtesy, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Hoover Institution. An associate professor of Bioengineering, he has served on the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, among other national committees and task forces. In 2008, Esquire magazine recognized Professor Endy as one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century.Didi Kuo is a center fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies based at its Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. She is a scholar of comparative politics, with a focus on democratization, corruption and clientelism, political parties and institutions, and political reform.Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies and an affiliate at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also a research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution.Steven Pifer is an affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and The Europe Center, both at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. His research focuses on nuclear arms control, Ukraine, Russia, and European security. Pifer served more than 25 years with the State Department and was the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 1998-2000.Oriana Skylar Mastro is director of the Indo-Pacific Policy Lab, a center fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a courtesy assistant professor of Political Science. Her research focuses on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination, and coercive diplomacy. She serves in the United States Air Force Reserve, working as the Pentagon’s deputy chief of reserve China global strategy.For this episode's reading recommendations, check out books from our scholars, including Synthetic Aesthetics: Investigating Synthetic Biology’s Designs on Nature (Drew Endy), The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave – and Why They Don’t (Didi Kuo), The Shah (Abbas Milani), The Eagle and the Trident (Steven Pifer), and Upstart: How China Became a Great Power (Oriana Skylar Mastro). If you like what you hear, you can get additional content from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.

Great powers were once built on tangible assets: territory, armies, oil, ships and steel. While those still matter, power in today's world also comes from data, knowledge, and algorithms. And, unlike in previous eras, much of that power now sits with private companies, a domain U.S. intelligence agencies weren’t designed to track. FSI Senior Fellow Amy Zegart warns this leaves America open to a technological Pearl Harbor, where a competitor like China leapfrogs the U.S. in the technology race with devastating results for national security. She joins Colin Kahl on World Class to discuss how intelligence agencies can keep up, why frontier AI models need independent testing, and what this summer’s OpenAI–Hugging Face hack says about concentrated corporate power. They also explore how drones are changing the rules of coercion. As Russian drones probe NATO’s skies and U.S. interceptor stockpiles run low, Zegart makes the case for why the spear factory, rather than the tip of the spear, may become a nation's most credible signal of resolve and deterrence. Amy Zegart is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where she also leads the Technology Policy Accelerator and the Oster National Security Affairs Fellows Program; an associate director and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI; and a professor of political science by courtesy, The author of five books, she specializes in U.S. intelligence, emerging technologies, and national security.This episode's reading recommendations are "China’s New Economic Weapons" by Evan S. Medeiros and Andrew Polk in the April 2025 edition of Washington Quarterly, and Arms and Influence by Thomas Schelling.This episode was supported by research using Anthropic Claude. All outputs were reviewed by humans and the final expression was produced by the authors. If you like what you hear, you can get additional content from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.

James Fearon, one of the preeminent thinkers in international relations, joins Colin Kahl to talk about why conflicts around the world are roaring back, and how more might be prevented. Fearon shares his perspectives from academia and government on why and how the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran are unfolding, and how an active conflict could be avoided with China in the Indo-Pacific.James Fearon is the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a professor of political science. He is a senior fellow at FSI, affiliated with CISAC and CDDRL. His research interests include civil and interstate war, ethnic conflict, the international spread of democracy and the evaluation of foreign aid projects promoting improved governance. Fearon was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. Some of his current research projects include work on the costs of collective and interpersonal violence, democratization and conflict in Myanmar, nuclear weapons and U.S. foreign policy, and the long-run persistence of armed conflict.This episode's reading recommendation is, “The Personalist Global Order: When Individual Whims Drive Great Power Policy” by Seva Gunitsky and Semuhi Sinanoglu, published in the January 2026 issue of Foreign Affairs. If you like what you hear, you can get additional content from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.

The heads of national security policy at OpenAI and Anthropic join World Class to discuss how artificial intelligence is intersecting with national security, the U.S.-China AI race, and how the risks and advantages of AI are resonating in the national security space. Together with host Colin Kahl, Sasha Baker (OpenAI) and Tarun Chabra (Anthropic) dive into the Hugging Face server breach, AI safety proposals on Capitol Hill, and new models like Kimi K3 coming online. Sasha Baker is the head of national security policy at OpenAI. Prior to that, she served as the acting under-secretary for policy and the deputy under-secretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon, and as the senior director for strategic planning on President Biden's National Security Council staff. Tarun Chhabra is the head of national security policy at Anthropic. He previously served as deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for technology and national security on the National Security Council staff, where he coordinated the Biden administration's strategies for technology competition with China and technology partnerships with U.S. allies and partners. This weeks reading/watching recommendations are AI 2027, a project by Daniel Kokotajlo; AlphaGo, a documentary by director Greg Kohs; and "Nineteenth-Century Horse Sense" by Francis Thompson. If you like what you hear, you can get additional content from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.

Artificial intelligence, social media, biotechnology, energy systems, propaganda, and geopolitics — each is transformative on its own, but together they're converging in unprecedented ways that are rapidly reshaping our world. On this episode of World Class, Colin Kahl shares expertise and insights from a panel of scholars on how emerging technologies are impacting society, politics, and global security. Drew Endy is a bioengineer at Stanford University who studies and teaches synthetic biology. Endy served on the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) the Committee on Science Technology & Law (CSTL) the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Synthetic Biology Task Force and, briefly, the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board (DIB). He currently serves on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research. Andrew Grotto is a research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Grotto’s research interests center on the national security and international economic dimensions of America’s global leadership in information technology innovation, and its growing reliance on this innovation for its economic and social life Jeff Hancock is a leading expert in behavioral sciences and the psychology of online interaction, Professor Hancock studies the psychological aspects of social media and AI technology. He is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University, Founding Director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI), Founding Editor of the Journal of Online Trust & Safety, and previously the co-director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. Jennifer Pan is a Professor of Communication and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. Her research focuses on political communication and authoritarian politics. Pan uses experimental and computational methods with large-scale datasets on political activity in China and other authoritarian regimes to answer questions about how autocrats perpetuate their rule The audio for this episode was originally recorded at an event held at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies on May 5, 2026. If you like what you hear, you can get additional content from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.

Even though China is the main global competitor to the United States, has there has been sufficient planning in Washington on how the U.S. might respond to aggression against the island of Taiwan by Beijing? Eyck Freymann wants to make sure there is. He joins Colin Kahl on World Class to discuss his new book, Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China, which outlines how the U.S. can integrate its military strength, economic leverage, technological leadership, and diplomatic influence into a single, coherent plan to prevent war. Eyck Freymann is a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University, where he directs the Allied Coordination Working Group. He is also a non-resident research fellow at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, the Institute of Geoeconomics in Tokyo, and the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. His latest book, Defending Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War with China is available from Oxford Academic Press. This episode's reading recommendation is "A New Era of U.S.-China Interaction: From Competing to Racing" by Evan S. Medeiros, published on April 17, 2026 in Asia Policy. If you like what you hear, you can get additional content from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.

On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched wide-spread, coordinated attacks against Iran which struck military, naval, and nuclear infrastructure and killed many of the country’s senior leaders. On a special episode of World Class, Colin Kahl discusses the war, its immediate impacts, and its possible trajectory with Israeli security expert Ori Rabinowitz and Iranian studies professor Dr. Abbas Milani. The audio of this episode was originally recorded during a panel discussion held at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University on March 4, 2026. Colin Kahl is the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow. He has served as a senior White House and defense official advising on national security policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Most recently he was the under secretary of defense for policy at the U.S. Department of Defense from 2021 to 2023. Abbas Milani is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a visiting professor in the department of political science. In addition, Dr. Milani is a research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution. Ori Rabinowitz is a tenured senior lecturer at the International Relations Department of the Hebrew University and a visiting fellow at the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. Her research covers the Israeli defense posture, U.S.-Israeli relations, nuclear proliferation, and the security landscape of the Middle East. The original panel was moderated by Jim Goldgeier, who is a research affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and a professor at the School of International Service at American University. If you like what you hear, you can get additional content from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.

H.R. McMaster and Jake Sullivan, the respective national security advisors of the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, join Colin Kahl to sort through everything that has happened in U.S foreign policy since the start of the year, from Venezuela and Iran to Greenland and strain on U.S.-European alliances, and the ever-present competition with China and Russia, and how all of these issues may affect the rest of 2026. H.R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the 25th United States National Security Advisor from 2017 to 2018, and was appointed as the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute from 2018 to 2019. His podcast, Today's Battlegrounds, can be found on all major platforms. Jake Sullivan served as the National Security Advisor for all four years of the Biden administration. He is now the Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Senior Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire, and he hosts the podcast The Long Game alongside Jon Finer. This episode's reading recommendations are "What Is Claude?" by Gideon Lewis-Kraus for The New Yorker, and "The Weakness of the Strongmen," by Stephen Kotkin in Foreign Affairs. If you like what you hear, you can get additional content from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.

There are a lot of changes happening in the world, from the "rupture" in the global order to a new host of World Class! Colin Kahl, the new director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, joins Michael McFaul to take on the role of podcast host and discuss how institutions like FSI can better study and contribute understanding about the rapidly changing world.Colin Kahl is the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow. He has served as a senior White House and defense official advising on national security policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Most recently he was the under secretary of defense for policy at the U.S. Department of Defense from 2021 to 2023.Michael McFaul is a senior fellow at the the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and former director of the institute. His latest book is Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America and the New Global Disorder. His personal blog can be found on Substack. If you like what you hear, you can get additional content from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.

Gabrielius Landsbergis is the former minister of foreign affairs of the Republic of Lithuania. Previously, he was the chairman of the Homeland Union Party while concurrently a member of the Lithuanian Parliament. Before assuming these roles, Landsbergis was also a member of the European Parliament and began his career as a diplomat for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania. He is currently based at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he is the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow.His recent opinion piece in the New York Times can be viewed here. If you like what you hear, you can get additional content from scholars at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies by following us on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, and by subscribing to our newsletters and updates.