Visit us at Network2020.org. On October 4th, Flávio Bolsonaro beat Brazil's president, Lula da Silva, in the first round of the election. No one in Brazil's modern democracy had ever lost the first round and gone on to win. On October 25th, Lula won by 3.6 points. Two days after the vote, we sat down in London with Christopher Sabatini to ask what Lula does with a fourth term, and what Donald Trump does with a winner he didn't want. They talk about Brazil's debt and its rare earths, the Donr...

Visit us at Network2020.org. Yemen is at war again. This month, Houthi missiles struck the airport in Riyadh and the presidential palace in Aden, and in September the Houthis fought their way down the coast to the mouth of the Red Sea. In May 2020, five years into the war, we sat down with Helen Lackner to ask why it started and who could end it. She explained why Saudi Arabia wanted out, and why the Houthis needed the war more than the Saudis did. Since then, a UN truce has come and gone, th...

Visit us at Network2020.org. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence, commercial satellite imagery, open-source intelligence, and data analytics are transforming the threat detection landscape. Capabilities once held almost exclusively by governments are increasingly distributed across private firms and publicly available platforms, creating new opportunities for collaboration while also raising difficult questions around trust, verification, security, and alliance coordination at a time wh...

Visit us at Network2020.org. The world has changed dramatically in the 250 years since Benjamin Franklin’s mission to France in 1776. It is changing again now, with new powers rising, new technologies reshaping how nations engage with one another both diplomatically and confrontationally, and new questions about what diplomatic leadership looks like in the 21st century. Centralized and personalist diplomacy, technological capabilities, and economic statecraft may be as central to modern diplo...

Visit us at Network2020.org. A major shift is underway in the defense posture of Northern Europe. Finland and Sweden joined NATO, ending long periods of non-alignment. Together, the “Nordic-Baltic Eight” (NB8) give more military aid to Ukraine as a percentage of GDP. Strong balance sheets, driven by innovation and digital transformation, have enabled the region to become leaders in European security. What does this shift in power mean within the European Union and for transatlantic relations...

Visit us at Network2020.org. The United Arab Emirates’ recent decision to leave OPEC after nearly six decades is about far more than oil—it is the latest sign of a growing rift with Saudi Arabia and a marker of Abu Dhabi’s willingness to challenge a regional order long dominated by Riyadh. From normalizing relations with Israel to pursuing strategic autonomy between the United States and China, the UAE has repeatedly shown that it is prepared to break with old frameworks when they no longer s...

Visit us at Network2020.org. The Philippines sits at the center of an increasingly contested Indo-Pacific, caught between its traditional ally in Washington, and rising interference from Beijing. The country’s strategic location including control of the Luzon Strait, which sees over one trillion dollars in passing goods annually, makes it an important player in the jockeying for economic position in the South China Sea. And the disputed Scarborough Shoal is the last link in the Chinese artifi...

Visit us at Network2020.org. For nearly eighty years, Europe's security has rested on a single assumption: that the Americans would be there. In early March, days into the war with Iran, and weeks after Washington threatened to take Greenland from a NATO ally, we sat down with Jeremy Shapiro to ask whether that assumption still holds, and what Europe does if it doesn't. Since this conversation was recorded, the Pentagon has ordered thousands of American troops out of Germany, canceled an armo...

Visit us at Network2020.org. From the Strait of Hormuz to the international monetary system to the semi-conductor supply chain, the world is becoming increasingly aware of how dependence on critical chokepoints is shaping how countries can wield power and leverage. As diplomacy becomes increasingly transactional and technological and energy systems undergo rapid transformation, understanding these visible and invisible chokepoints is essential to any decision maker. Is the weaponization of ge...

Visit us at Network2020.org. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The COVID-19 Pandemic. On-and-off-and-on-again tariffs. Over the past few years, the deeply interconnected global system has experienced major shocks that international organizations and nation states alike have struggled to grapple with. In this age of uncertainty, businesses and governments need to make new calculations. More large companies are opening their own geopolitical units to stay steady...