Think Tanks
Here's a look at documents from think tanks
Featured Stories
Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft: 'The Wrong Race: The US, China, and AI Competition'
NEW YORK, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft issued the following brief (No. 110) on September 18, 2026, by Alvin Wang Graylin entitled "The Wrong Race: The US, China, and AI Competition."
Here are excerpts:
* * *
Executive Summary
The conventional wisdom in Washington says the United States and China are locked in an existential race to reach a decisive strategic advantage in developing artificial intelligence, or AI. Take Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's recent comments: "Beating China -- there is no day after tomorrow if China wins at this ... If they ... Show Full Article NEW YORK, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft issued the following brief (No. 110) on September 18, 2026, by Alvin Wang Graylin entitled "The Wrong Race: The US, China, and AI Competition." Here are excerpts: * * * Executive Summary The conventional wisdom in Washington says the United States and China are locked in an existential race to reach a decisive strategic advantage in developing artificial intelligence, or AI. Take Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's recent comments: "Beating China -- there is no day after tomorrow if China wins at this ... If theywere to pull ahead of us on AI, then nothing else matters." President Donald Trump has made similar comments lately, citing competition with China as the reason for his refusal to slow down AI growth, stating that "whoever wins AI wins."
Such assumptions about the AI race now underwrite close to a trillion dollars a year in capital expenditure, a comprehensive export control regime, and arguments that AI is a national security matter that should not be subject to the ordinary give-and-take of market competition and government oversight. At the extreme, some in Washington have even raised the possibility of military strikes should China appear poised to gain artificial general intelligence, or AGI, first.
But the assumptions behind the "AI race" framework are deeply flawed. While there are legitimate national security concerns around AI, there is no decisive "finish line" to AI innovation that will grant a final victory to either the United States or China. As with previous transformative technologies, we should prepare for the continuing long-term development of AI through competitive markets, not total geopolitical victory for one side. US-China capability gaps at the frontiers of AI technology typically last only a few months, and there is no competitive "moat" that will secure a permanent advantage to either nation.
The idea that the greatest AI security threat to the United States lies only in large frontier models sponsored by a nation-state like China is flawed as well. The most dangerous models are often those smaller specialized ones that could be created or utilized by non-state rogue actors for the purpose of deploying biological, chemical, or cyber weapons. The assumption of US-China conflict prevents the exact global cooperation to protect against this very real threat.
The upcoming summit between President Trump and President Xi Jinping is an opportunity to chart a cooperative path forward that moves beyond the flawed model of an existential AI race and establishes sensible cooperative measures around shared harm and safety standards. We outline specific proposals for such measures in this brief.
Beyond the summit, the United States should reject the idea of any "national security exemption" for AI labs from ordinary market discipline and legal regulation and, instead, take steps to safeguard American workers from the threat of displacement by automation.
* * *
View full version at: https://quincyinst-2.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/17163452/QUINCY-BRIEF-NO.-110-SEPT-2026-GRAYLIN.pdf
[Category: ThinkTank]
Here are excerpts:
* * *
Executive Summary
The conventional wisdom in Washington says the United States and China are locked in an existential race to reach a decisive strategic advantage in developing artificial intelligence, or AI. Take Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's recent comments: "Beating China -- there is no day after tomorrow if China wins at this ... If they ... Show Full Article NEW YORK, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft issued the following brief (No. 110) on September 18, 2026, by Alvin Wang Graylin entitled "The Wrong Race: The US, China, and AI Competition." Here are excerpts: * * * Executive Summary The conventional wisdom in Washington says the United States and China are locked in an existential race to reach a decisive strategic advantage in developing artificial intelligence, or AI. Take Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's recent comments: "Beating China -- there is no day after tomorrow if China wins at this ... If theywere to pull ahead of us on AI, then nothing else matters." President Donald Trump has made similar comments lately, citing competition with China as the reason for his refusal to slow down AI growth, stating that "whoever wins AI wins."
Such assumptions about the AI race now underwrite close to a trillion dollars a year in capital expenditure, a comprehensive export control regime, and arguments that AI is a national security matter that should not be subject to the ordinary give-and-take of market competition and government oversight. At the extreme, some in Washington have even raised the possibility of military strikes should China appear poised to gain artificial general intelligence, or AGI, first.
But the assumptions behind the "AI race" framework are deeply flawed. While there are legitimate national security concerns around AI, there is no decisive "finish line" to AI innovation that will grant a final victory to either the United States or China. As with previous transformative technologies, we should prepare for the continuing long-term development of AI through competitive markets, not total geopolitical victory for one side. US-China capability gaps at the frontiers of AI technology typically last only a few months, and there is no competitive "moat" that will secure a permanent advantage to either nation.
The idea that the greatest AI security threat to the United States lies only in large frontier models sponsored by a nation-state like China is flawed as well. The most dangerous models are often those smaller specialized ones that could be created or utilized by non-state rogue actors for the purpose of deploying biological, chemical, or cyber weapons. The assumption of US-China conflict prevents the exact global cooperation to protect against this very real threat.
The upcoming summit between President Trump and President Xi Jinping is an opportunity to chart a cooperative path forward that moves beyond the flawed model of an existential AI race and establishes sensible cooperative measures around shared harm and safety standards. We outline specific proposals for such measures in this brief.
Beyond the summit, the United States should reject the idea of any "national security exemption" for AI labs from ordinary market discipline and legal regulation and, instead, take steps to safeguard American workers from the threat of displacement by automation.
* * *
View full version at: https://quincyinst-2.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/17163452/QUINCY-BRIEF-NO.-110-SEPT-2026-GRAYLIN.pdf
[Category: ThinkTank]
Hudson Institute Issues Commentary: Five Trends Driving Change in Europe
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, posted the following commentary to Freedom Frequency:
* * *
Sep 29, 2026
Freedom Frequency
Five Trends Driving Change in Europe
Russia lashes out, China maneuvers, and the political center of gravity shifts.
Peter Rough
Despite recent strains, the transatlantic relationship boasts the world's most integrated economic system. As Dan Hamilton and Joseph Quinlan estimate in the latest edition of their authoritative annual survey, the $9.8 trillion transatlantic ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, posted the following commentary to Freedom Frequency: * * * Sep 29, 2026 Freedom Frequency Five Trends Driving Change in Europe Russia lashes out, China maneuvers, and the political center of gravity shifts. Peter Rough Despite recent strains, the transatlantic relationship boasts the world's most integrated economic system. As Dan Hamilton and Joseph Quinlan estimate in the latest edition of their authoritative annual survey, the $9.8 trillion transatlanticeconomy today employs around 16 million American and European workers. Every day in 2025, more than $6.4 billion in goods and services crisscrossed the Atlantic. Moreover, last year over half of the foreign direct investment (FDI) in the United States was European, while US firms accounted for over half the FDI in Europe over the same twelve-month period.
To be sure, the European economy is relatively stagnant compared to its US counterpart. Europe is dominated by legacy companies more adept at fine-tuning existing technologies than at innovating new ones. On average, the forty largest and most liquid companies trading on the German stock exchange, the DAX 40, are over a century old.
Even so, Europe's economy remains of signal importance to the global balance of power. The continent boasts world-leading research universities like ETH Zurich, TUM Munich, and Cambridge, and cutting-edge companies like ASML, Infineon, and ARM Holdings. The American future may be in Asia, but its present is still in Europe.
Because Europe remains vital to the prosperity and security of the United States, it is important for policymakers in Washington to grapple with the following five trends that will shape the continent for the foreseeable future.
Trend #1: heightened Russian aggression
Russia poses the greatest present threat to the European order, and Russia's top foreign policy priority is to subordinate Ukraine. Moscow's strategy for achieving that goal is to separate Ukraine from its Western partners and drive Kyiv into a one-on-one matchup in which Russia can bring its superior size and weight to bear. Tactically, Russia often pursues this aim on a trial-and-response basis, testing various means of aggression before stepping back to study the West's posture and response to its machinations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has kept enough of his advanced capabilities in reserve to make credible threats against a Europe that is still in the process of rearming and uncertain about the extent of support it can expect from Washington. However, Putin is almost certainly wary of a broader war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) while the bulk of his conventional forces are tied down in Ukraine. To pressure the West to limit its support for Ukraine, therefore, Putin will operate on both ends of the escalation ladder, leaning especially on nuclear saber-rattling and hybrid warfare.
On the upper rungs of the escalation ladder, Putin has inverted the traditional nuclear-weapons paradigm, turning a historically defensive deterrent into a tool for offensive threats. Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has engaged in nuclear saber-rattling repeatedly, either to deter the West from supporting Ukraine or compel it to wind down its assistance for Kyiv.
In March 2023, for example, Putin announced that Russia would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, while Belarusian crews received training on Russia's 9K720 Iskander short-range ballistic missile system. In May, Russia for the first time integrated Belarusian units into highly publicized joint nuclear exercises. Moscow has also altered its official doctrine to lower the threshold for nuclear use, has revoked its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, has conducted highly publicized nuclear drills, and has on multiple occasions fired the nuclear-capable Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile into Ukraine. Russia has also boasted of successfully testing a nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable Burevestnik cruise missile and Poseidon torpedo.
At the lower end of the escalation ladder, Russia has significantly increased the pace and scope of its hybrid attacks since the start of its full-scale invasion. These attacks have ranged from active measures like election meddling and severing deep-sea cables to electronic operations like Global Positioning System (GPS) jamming and criminal acts like arson. Moscow has also repeatedly violated the airspace of NATO's eastern flank, most notably with Russian fighter jets entering Estonian skies for a dozen minutes last September and a Russian drone hitting an apartment block in the Romanian city of Galati just last month. Since June--and especially since the attack on Leipzig airport--the pace and brazenness of these hybrid attacks have intensified sharply, setting off alarms across Western capitals. The Kremlin intends to make clear that the longer the war in Ukraine continues, the more the likelihood of European fatalities rises. Moscow hopes that Europe will press Ukraine to shut down the war on Russia's terms--or at least circumscribe its assistance to Kyiv.
The rapid pace of innovation in new forms of unmanned vehicles, especially unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), may upend Russia's calculus. In Ukraine, persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) measures have created vast grey zones, stretching miles across the front lines, in which large-scale troop movement has become all but impossible. Moreover, Ukraine has fielded an impressive array of strike systems that attack Russian military logistics and energy infrastructure daily. Ukraine is even able to hit Moscow and St. Petersburg with these systems. As a result, Ukraine may yet be able to force Russia into a cease-fire before it is itself ground down.
Putin maintains an unbending hostility toward Ukraine and the West, which he reiterates at regular intervals. For the foreseeable future, Russia will not moderate its aggressive stance toward Europe.
Trend #2: the decline of Russian power
Putin has expended an enormous measure of Russian power in Ukraine. For its part, Ukraine has succeeded in substantially degrading Russia's ground forces, including its elite airborne and naval infantry units, and has destroyed vast quantities of high-end equipment. Today, Russia is making only incremental progress toward occupying the remaining areas of the Donbas region of Ukraine. If present trends continue, Russia will not succeed in occupying those areas by the end of this year or possibly even next.
Ukraine's tenacity and sacrifice have given Western policymakers a chance to rally to the country's aid. Now, after three years of cumulative Western sanctions and Ukrainian long-range strikes against Russia's energy infrastructure, the Russian economy is on the cusp of crisis. Officials in Moscow have publicly revised their expectations for Russia's economic performance downward, while this year the country's budget deficit will likely surpass the liquid assets remaining in its National Wealth Fund. Outside Moscow, most of Russia's regional authorities also face ballooning deficits.
Cut off from international capital markets, Russia has turned to domestic bond offerings to plug this fiscal gap. Yet these efforts are shell games--state-backed actors purchasing bonds using liquidity provided by the Russian Central Bank. In effect, Russia is printing money. It remains to be seen whether Putin is willing to cut benefits or raise taxes at the levels required to finance his military operations into the future.
Even if Ukraine emerges from the war vulnerable and traumatized, moreover, Russia will be unable to reassert its prewar influence easily. As one ambassador in residence in Kyiv from a European country put it to me in the spring, "Russia has lost Ukraine for one hundred years."
In fact, Russia's influence is deteriorating across its periphery. In Europe, Sweden and Finland have joined NATO, adding two highly capable militaries to the alliance. Moldova is choosing a European path. In the Caucasus, more subtle forms of strategic estrangement have occurred. In 2023, Azerbaijan took control of Nagorno-Karabakh in an operation that showcased the rise of Turkiye's power and the decline of Moscow's influence. In response, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan froze his country's participation in Russia's Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). In May, Pashinyan instead hosted a gathering of the European Political Community in Yerevan, building on Armenia's tightening relations with the European Union and France in particular.
Azerbaijan's relations with Russia have also cooled. After Russia's shootdown of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 in December 2024, Moscow stonewalled when Baku looked for conciliatory gestures. Then, actions of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in Yekaterinburg in June 2025 led to the deaths of several Azerbaijanis. Azerbaijan is evolving to become a key supplier of natural gas to Europe and a key facilitator of the middle corridor. The country's fraternal relations with Turkiye, summarized as Tek millet, iki devlet--one nation, two states--far surpass its ties with Russia.
Today, the United States has an opportunity to accelerate Russia's estrangement through the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) and the substantial American investment being mobilized around it. Both US Vice President J. D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have visited Yerevan this year, with Vance also traveling to Baku.
A related opportunity exists in Central Asia, where Kazakhstan's "multivector" hedging is an attempt to diversify its strategic options beyond its bureaucratic, geographic, historical, and economic links with Russia. Kazakhstan's president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has declined to recognize Russian claims on Ukrainian territory, and has taken steps to enforce Western sanctions against the Kremlin. In November, President Trump hosted a historic C5+1 Summit at the White House, reinforcing the September 2023 New York Declaration that encourages closer ties with Washington among the Central Asian republics.
Russia's relative weakness is most pronounced in the Far East, where fewer than ten million Russians face one hundred million Chinese along a 2,500-mile border. While the EU agreed to loan Ukraine 90 billion euros this year--unlikely ever to be repaid--China continues to delay even finalizing the megaproject Power of Siberia-2 natural gas pipeline, which is crucial for Russia's economic future.
A new class of military veterans born out of the war in Ukraine is rising in Russia, just as the country's influence throughout its periphery wanes. In the coming years this group will compete for power with the intelligence services and with the children of the last generation of Soviet apparatchiks. Like interwar Germans, these veterans will commingle with hard-liners to sell resentment to the country's citizens, and will likely cast their nation as having been betrayed rather than stopped in Ukraine. The Russia of tomorrow will resemble a rabid, aged bulldog whose declining health manifests itself in fits of outward aggression.
Trend #3: the rise of Northern Europe
From the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in the 1950s to the founding of the European Union at Maastricht in the 1990s, American policymakers have long centered the relationship between France and Germany in their strategic thinking on Europe. By now, the image of a Franco-German engine driving European integration is a well-worn cliche. Many use this paradigm to distinguish the founding states of modern-day Western Europe from those Eastern European countries that suffered under communism. Indeed, the Rumsfeldian distinction between an "old" and "new" Europe still shapes many mental maps of Europe today.
France and Germany still comprise the primum mobile of the continent. Within hours of taking his oath of office in May 2025, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz traveled to Paris to announce with French President Emmanuel Macron the creation of a joint defense and security council. At a joint German-French cabinet meeting in Toulon last August, Merz delivered his opening remarks in fluent French. These acts, and the regular Franco-German consultations that surround them, reflect more than mere nostalgia, but the fruits of a continuing partnership.
Three decades after the fall of the Iron Curtain, however, the east-west dichotomy of the Cold War may be giving way to a new distinction--one between north and south. On matters of policy, and on issues of political economy, foreign policy, and international trade, north-south may be becoming the new east-west.
Since the sovereign debt crisis of the last decade, the nations of the continent's Mediterranean South have advocated for the mutualization of European debt. The Northern European members of the EU, on the other hand, have hewn more closely to the strictures of the Growth and Stability Pact, and have consistently voiced their skepticism over any debt-mutualization schemes.
Before the exigencies of the coronavirus pandemic pushed Germany to assent to the EU's recovery instrument, which allowed for some limited issuance of joint debt, Berlin was part of a grouping of countries known as the "Frugal Five," nations whose relatively low debt-to-GDP ratios have long given them room to maneuver in moments of crisis. One such crisis arrived with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. From the Scandinavian countries to the Netherlands, the Baltic states, and Poland, Northern Europe has taken the lead in supporting Ukraine in its fight for survival.
It is no secret, for example, that the widely heralded Czech ammunition initiative, which sources and supplies Ukraine with weapons from around the world, relied on the generosity of Northern Europe. So, too, has NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte's Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) mechanism for procuring US-made ballistic missiles for Ukraine.
The nations of Northern Europe have exercised this generosity in the service of a common geopolitical vision. In Europe, public wariness of Russia increases as one journeys north at least as much as it does as one travels east. Today, if the primary focus of Europe's Mediterranean nations is how to stem Arab and African irregular migration, the major challenge in the North and Baltic Seas is Russian irregular warfare. Sweden and Finland's accession to NATO has only facilitated the strategic convergence of the littoral states of Northern Europe.
A new set of challenges is reorganizing Europe. Yet while north-south is in the process of supplanting east-west, one dynamic remains just as it was during the Cold War: Germany, once again, is the pivot point through which the continent's diverging geographies run.
Indeed, while it is easy to become overwhelmed by the dizzying number of political fora in Europe today--from the Council of the Baltic Sea States, the Benelux 3, the Weimar Triangle, and the Nordic-Baltic 8 to the Bucharest 9, the Visegrad 4, the Mediterranean 9, and the Austerlitz 3--the very proliferation of these groupings illustrates that no one country aside from the United States has the economy, population, and geographic position to assume the leadership of Europe. More likely, a coalition of Northern European countries that includes the United Kingdom with the pivot state of Germany at their center will decide the geopolitical future of Europe.
Trend #4: the return of national rivalries
Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has drained the poison of national rivalries out of Europe, while providing the continent with the bulk of its military power. As the United States pulls down its forces to address contingencies elsewhere, however, long-dormant rivalries are likely to resurface with greater regularity and salience.
As Germany continues to build what Merz has promised will "become Europe's strongest conventional army," France is moving under the guise of strategic autonomy to subsume German rearmament under French leadership. Paris's insistence on dominating the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) collaboration with Berlin is illustrative. The most direct and obvious expression of this effort, however, was Macron's speech in March at Ile Longue, where he announced the establishment of a bilateral nuclear steering group with Berlin. Similarly, the United Kingdom also included mention of nuclear consultations with Berlin in its July 2025 Kensington Treaty with Germany.
Even before Germany began this buildup, Polish leaders of the Law and Justice Party and President Karol Nawrocki viewed Germany with skepticism bordering on hostility. While many Central and Eastern European states are glad to see Germany increase its spending to counter Russian aggression--see Lithuania's regular praise of the German brigade--Mitteleuropa also harbors a healthy skepticism that Berlin will ever prove willing to fire on Russian troops. In their darkest moments, these leaders may even envision a future in which Germany accommodates Russian power at their expense.
The heady days of 1990s-style liberalism, when a popular nationalist like Austria's Jorg Haider was denounced as an outlier or dismissed as a rogue, are over. Today, Europe is equal parts nationalist and liberal, with new leaders revisiting historical feuds or embracing national differences in ways that would have been unthinkable only thirty years ago. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's decision last month to name an elite military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought in the 1940s, sparked a crisis in Polish-Ukrainian relations. Political crises and separatist flirtations are also increasing in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while recent exigencies in northern Kosovo serve to remind of broader tensions in the Western Balkans.
As the United States attempts to hand off leadership in Europe, it is likely to foster rising tensions rather than deeper unity. Historical rivalries, frozen for decades by American involvement, will thaw and reassert themselves, making European cooperation more difficult.
Trend #5: China's economic subversion of Europe
Against this backdrop, Europe also faces a major test from the People's Republic of China (PRC), which uses economic stratagems and subversions to weaken the continent.
The PRC has constructed an export-led manufacturing economy that prioritizes control of global supply chains and dominance in key strategic sectors over market economics. In fact, the PRC has stoked production in major export sectors and depressed domestic consumption through a raft of dubious methods: state subsidies, intellectual-property theft, regulatory interventions, nontariff trade barriers, and currency manipulation. Since 2022, it has also benefited from cheap Russian energy.
Europe is now subject to the same China shock that the United States first experienced in the early 2000s, as the Sino-European economic relationship has grown dramatically out of balance. As the European Commission points out, "In the period 2015-2025, the deficit increased over fivefold in volume, while more than doubling in value." Last year, the PRC's trade surplus in goods with the EU hit Euros360 billion.
Moreover, as Sander Tordoir and Brad Setser wrote for the Center for European Reform recently, "Nowhere is that shock more consequential than in Germany. Its manufacturers in core industries--cars, machinery, chemicals, and aircraft--are being simultaneously squeezed out of China and other foreign markets, and at home." The PRC is destroying Germany's export demand, with Berlin's vaunted automobile industry emblematic of a broader economic malaise. In 2025, sales of Porsche, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz in China declined 26 percent, 5 percent, and 19 percent, respectively. Strong periodic employment data notwithstanding, German industry sheds approximately 10,000 jobs per month.
The breakdown of the largest industry in Europe's largest economy would trigger social upheaval in the heart of the continent, with all the risks to regional stability that normally accompany de-industrialization. Just past the one-year mark of its assumption of power, Germany's coalition government is one of the most unpopular in the country's history. While Merz's personal approval ratings have hit historic lows, he and his coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), have suffered crushing electoral defeats in one regional election after another.
Of course, Berlin is not blind to the China shock it is enduring. But the PRC leverages its relationship with Germany's multinationals like Volkswagen and BASF to protect its predatory model. The weaker German industry grows, the less strength it has to refuse the PRC's poisoned chalice.
Although the PRC's support for Russia in Ukraine has cost it its Eastern European vector, Beijing has built another route into the heart of Europe through Greece, Serbia, and Hungary. The PRC also makes appeals for greater cooperation to leaders susceptible to such entreaties for ideological, economic, or political reasons, like Spain's Pedro Sanchez, Serbia's Aleksandar Vucic, or French President Emmanuel Macron.
US economic policy toward Europe should be guided by a clear strategic imperative: mitigating European dependencies on China that expose allies to coercion. This could include the creation of a trade and investment zone reserved for US partners and allies, provided it does not devolve into lowest-common-denominator regulatory regimes that undermine US innovation in critical areas such as AI.
There are three, and only three, economic centers in the world today: North America, Europe, and East Asia. Just as Russia seeks to isolate Ukraine from the West, so, too, China seeks to separate Europe from the United States. If it can neutralize Europe as a factor in Sino-American competition, Beijing's chances of supplanting Washington on the world stage increase significantly. Beijing has grasped this reality. The United States must do the same--or risk losing the contest.
Read in Freedom Frequency (https://www.thefreedomfrequency.org/p/five-trends-driving-change-in-europe).
* * *
Peter Rough is a senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at Hudson Institute, which he launched in December 2022.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/five-trends-driving-change-europe-peter-rough
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Sep 29, 2026
Freedom Frequency
Five Trends Driving Change in Europe
Russia lashes out, China maneuvers, and the political center of gravity shifts.
Peter Rough
Despite recent strains, the transatlantic relationship boasts the world's most integrated economic system. As Dan Hamilton and Joseph Quinlan estimate in the latest edition of their authoritative annual survey, the $9.8 trillion transatlantic ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, posted the following commentary to Freedom Frequency: * * * Sep 29, 2026 Freedom Frequency Five Trends Driving Change in Europe Russia lashes out, China maneuvers, and the political center of gravity shifts. Peter Rough Despite recent strains, the transatlantic relationship boasts the world's most integrated economic system. As Dan Hamilton and Joseph Quinlan estimate in the latest edition of their authoritative annual survey, the $9.8 trillion transatlanticeconomy today employs around 16 million American and European workers. Every day in 2025, more than $6.4 billion in goods and services crisscrossed the Atlantic. Moreover, last year over half of the foreign direct investment (FDI) in the United States was European, while US firms accounted for over half the FDI in Europe over the same twelve-month period.
To be sure, the European economy is relatively stagnant compared to its US counterpart. Europe is dominated by legacy companies more adept at fine-tuning existing technologies than at innovating new ones. On average, the forty largest and most liquid companies trading on the German stock exchange, the DAX 40, are over a century old.
Even so, Europe's economy remains of signal importance to the global balance of power. The continent boasts world-leading research universities like ETH Zurich, TUM Munich, and Cambridge, and cutting-edge companies like ASML, Infineon, and ARM Holdings. The American future may be in Asia, but its present is still in Europe.
Because Europe remains vital to the prosperity and security of the United States, it is important for policymakers in Washington to grapple with the following five trends that will shape the continent for the foreseeable future.
Trend #1: heightened Russian aggression
Russia poses the greatest present threat to the European order, and Russia's top foreign policy priority is to subordinate Ukraine. Moscow's strategy for achieving that goal is to separate Ukraine from its Western partners and drive Kyiv into a one-on-one matchup in which Russia can bring its superior size and weight to bear. Tactically, Russia often pursues this aim on a trial-and-response basis, testing various means of aggression before stepping back to study the West's posture and response to its machinations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has kept enough of his advanced capabilities in reserve to make credible threats against a Europe that is still in the process of rearming and uncertain about the extent of support it can expect from Washington. However, Putin is almost certainly wary of a broader war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) while the bulk of his conventional forces are tied down in Ukraine. To pressure the West to limit its support for Ukraine, therefore, Putin will operate on both ends of the escalation ladder, leaning especially on nuclear saber-rattling and hybrid warfare.
On the upper rungs of the escalation ladder, Putin has inverted the traditional nuclear-weapons paradigm, turning a historically defensive deterrent into a tool for offensive threats. Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has engaged in nuclear saber-rattling repeatedly, either to deter the West from supporting Ukraine or compel it to wind down its assistance for Kyiv.
In March 2023, for example, Putin announced that Russia would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, while Belarusian crews received training on Russia's 9K720 Iskander short-range ballistic missile system. In May, Russia for the first time integrated Belarusian units into highly publicized joint nuclear exercises. Moscow has also altered its official doctrine to lower the threshold for nuclear use, has revoked its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, has conducted highly publicized nuclear drills, and has on multiple occasions fired the nuclear-capable Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile into Ukraine. Russia has also boasted of successfully testing a nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable Burevestnik cruise missile and Poseidon torpedo.
At the lower end of the escalation ladder, Russia has significantly increased the pace and scope of its hybrid attacks since the start of its full-scale invasion. These attacks have ranged from active measures like election meddling and severing deep-sea cables to electronic operations like Global Positioning System (GPS) jamming and criminal acts like arson. Moscow has also repeatedly violated the airspace of NATO's eastern flank, most notably with Russian fighter jets entering Estonian skies for a dozen minutes last September and a Russian drone hitting an apartment block in the Romanian city of Galati just last month. Since June--and especially since the attack on Leipzig airport--the pace and brazenness of these hybrid attacks have intensified sharply, setting off alarms across Western capitals. The Kremlin intends to make clear that the longer the war in Ukraine continues, the more the likelihood of European fatalities rises. Moscow hopes that Europe will press Ukraine to shut down the war on Russia's terms--or at least circumscribe its assistance to Kyiv.
The rapid pace of innovation in new forms of unmanned vehicles, especially unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), may upend Russia's calculus. In Ukraine, persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) measures have created vast grey zones, stretching miles across the front lines, in which large-scale troop movement has become all but impossible. Moreover, Ukraine has fielded an impressive array of strike systems that attack Russian military logistics and energy infrastructure daily. Ukraine is even able to hit Moscow and St. Petersburg with these systems. As a result, Ukraine may yet be able to force Russia into a cease-fire before it is itself ground down.
Putin maintains an unbending hostility toward Ukraine and the West, which he reiterates at regular intervals. For the foreseeable future, Russia will not moderate its aggressive stance toward Europe.
Trend #2: the decline of Russian power
Putin has expended an enormous measure of Russian power in Ukraine. For its part, Ukraine has succeeded in substantially degrading Russia's ground forces, including its elite airborne and naval infantry units, and has destroyed vast quantities of high-end equipment. Today, Russia is making only incremental progress toward occupying the remaining areas of the Donbas region of Ukraine. If present trends continue, Russia will not succeed in occupying those areas by the end of this year or possibly even next.
Ukraine's tenacity and sacrifice have given Western policymakers a chance to rally to the country's aid. Now, after three years of cumulative Western sanctions and Ukrainian long-range strikes against Russia's energy infrastructure, the Russian economy is on the cusp of crisis. Officials in Moscow have publicly revised their expectations for Russia's economic performance downward, while this year the country's budget deficit will likely surpass the liquid assets remaining in its National Wealth Fund. Outside Moscow, most of Russia's regional authorities also face ballooning deficits.
Cut off from international capital markets, Russia has turned to domestic bond offerings to plug this fiscal gap. Yet these efforts are shell games--state-backed actors purchasing bonds using liquidity provided by the Russian Central Bank. In effect, Russia is printing money. It remains to be seen whether Putin is willing to cut benefits or raise taxes at the levels required to finance his military operations into the future.
Even if Ukraine emerges from the war vulnerable and traumatized, moreover, Russia will be unable to reassert its prewar influence easily. As one ambassador in residence in Kyiv from a European country put it to me in the spring, "Russia has lost Ukraine for one hundred years."
In fact, Russia's influence is deteriorating across its periphery. In Europe, Sweden and Finland have joined NATO, adding two highly capable militaries to the alliance. Moldova is choosing a European path. In the Caucasus, more subtle forms of strategic estrangement have occurred. In 2023, Azerbaijan took control of Nagorno-Karabakh in an operation that showcased the rise of Turkiye's power and the decline of Moscow's influence. In response, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan froze his country's participation in Russia's Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). In May, Pashinyan instead hosted a gathering of the European Political Community in Yerevan, building on Armenia's tightening relations with the European Union and France in particular.
Azerbaijan's relations with Russia have also cooled. After Russia's shootdown of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 in December 2024, Moscow stonewalled when Baku looked for conciliatory gestures. Then, actions of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in Yekaterinburg in June 2025 led to the deaths of several Azerbaijanis. Azerbaijan is evolving to become a key supplier of natural gas to Europe and a key facilitator of the middle corridor. The country's fraternal relations with Turkiye, summarized as Tek millet, iki devlet--one nation, two states--far surpass its ties with Russia.
Today, the United States has an opportunity to accelerate Russia's estrangement through the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) and the substantial American investment being mobilized around it. Both US Vice President J. D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have visited Yerevan this year, with Vance also traveling to Baku.
A related opportunity exists in Central Asia, where Kazakhstan's "multivector" hedging is an attempt to diversify its strategic options beyond its bureaucratic, geographic, historical, and economic links with Russia. Kazakhstan's president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has declined to recognize Russian claims on Ukrainian territory, and has taken steps to enforce Western sanctions against the Kremlin. In November, President Trump hosted a historic C5+1 Summit at the White House, reinforcing the September 2023 New York Declaration that encourages closer ties with Washington among the Central Asian republics.
Russia's relative weakness is most pronounced in the Far East, where fewer than ten million Russians face one hundred million Chinese along a 2,500-mile border. While the EU agreed to loan Ukraine 90 billion euros this year--unlikely ever to be repaid--China continues to delay even finalizing the megaproject Power of Siberia-2 natural gas pipeline, which is crucial for Russia's economic future.
A new class of military veterans born out of the war in Ukraine is rising in Russia, just as the country's influence throughout its periphery wanes. In the coming years this group will compete for power with the intelligence services and with the children of the last generation of Soviet apparatchiks. Like interwar Germans, these veterans will commingle with hard-liners to sell resentment to the country's citizens, and will likely cast their nation as having been betrayed rather than stopped in Ukraine. The Russia of tomorrow will resemble a rabid, aged bulldog whose declining health manifests itself in fits of outward aggression.
Trend #3: the rise of Northern Europe
From the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in the 1950s to the founding of the European Union at Maastricht in the 1990s, American policymakers have long centered the relationship between France and Germany in their strategic thinking on Europe. By now, the image of a Franco-German engine driving European integration is a well-worn cliche. Many use this paradigm to distinguish the founding states of modern-day Western Europe from those Eastern European countries that suffered under communism. Indeed, the Rumsfeldian distinction between an "old" and "new" Europe still shapes many mental maps of Europe today.
France and Germany still comprise the primum mobile of the continent. Within hours of taking his oath of office in May 2025, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz traveled to Paris to announce with French President Emmanuel Macron the creation of a joint defense and security council. At a joint German-French cabinet meeting in Toulon last August, Merz delivered his opening remarks in fluent French. These acts, and the regular Franco-German consultations that surround them, reflect more than mere nostalgia, but the fruits of a continuing partnership.
Three decades after the fall of the Iron Curtain, however, the east-west dichotomy of the Cold War may be giving way to a new distinction--one between north and south. On matters of policy, and on issues of political economy, foreign policy, and international trade, north-south may be becoming the new east-west.
Since the sovereign debt crisis of the last decade, the nations of the continent's Mediterranean South have advocated for the mutualization of European debt. The Northern European members of the EU, on the other hand, have hewn more closely to the strictures of the Growth and Stability Pact, and have consistently voiced their skepticism over any debt-mutualization schemes.
Before the exigencies of the coronavirus pandemic pushed Germany to assent to the EU's recovery instrument, which allowed for some limited issuance of joint debt, Berlin was part of a grouping of countries known as the "Frugal Five," nations whose relatively low debt-to-GDP ratios have long given them room to maneuver in moments of crisis. One such crisis arrived with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. From the Scandinavian countries to the Netherlands, the Baltic states, and Poland, Northern Europe has taken the lead in supporting Ukraine in its fight for survival.
It is no secret, for example, that the widely heralded Czech ammunition initiative, which sources and supplies Ukraine with weapons from around the world, relied on the generosity of Northern Europe. So, too, has NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte's Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) mechanism for procuring US-made ballistic missiles for Ukraine.
The nations of Northern Europe have exercised this generosity in the service of a common geopolitical vision. In Europe, public wariness of Russia increases as one journeys north at least as much as it does as one travels east. Today, if the primary focus of Europe's Mediterranean nations is how to stem Arab and African irregular migration, the major challenge in the North and Baltic Seas is Russian irregular warfare. Sweden and Finland's accession to NATO has only facilitated the strategic convergence of the littoral states of Northern Europe.
A new set of challenges is reorganizing Europe. Yet while north-south is in the process of supplanting east-west, one dynamic remains just as it was during the Cold War: Germany, once again, is the pivot point through which the continent's diverging geographies run.
Indeed, while it is easy to become overwhelmed by the dizzying number of political fora in Europe today--from the Council of the Baltic Sea States, the Benelux 3, the Weimar Triangle, and the Nordic-Baltic 8 to the Bucharest 9, the Visegrad 4, the Mediterranean 9, and the Austerlitz 3--the very proliferation of these groupings illustrates that no one country aside from the United States has the economy, population, and geographic position to assume the leadership of Europe. More likely, a coalition of Northern European countries that includes the United Kingdom with the pivot state of Germany at their center will decide the geopolitical future of Europe.
Trend #4: the return of national rivalries
Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has drained the poison of national rivalries out of Europe, while providing the continent with the bulk of its military power. As the United States pulls down its forces to address contingencies elsewhere, however, long-dormant rivalries are likely to resurface with greater regularity and salience.
As Germany continues to build what Merz has promised will "become Europe's strongest conventional army," France is moving under the guise of strategic autonomy to subsume German rearmament under French leadership. Paris's insistence on dominating the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) collaboration with Berlin is illustrative. The most direct and obvious expression of this effort, however, was Macron's speech in March at Ile Longue, where he announced the establishment of a bilateral nuclear steering group with Berlin. Similarly, the United Kingdom also included mention of nuclear consultations with Berlin in its July 2025 Kensington Treaty with Germany.
Even before Germany began this buildup, Polish leaders of the Law and Justice Party and President Karol Nawrocki viewed Germany with skepticism bordering on hostility. While many Central and Eastern European states are glad to see Germany increase its spending to counter Russian aggression--see Lithuania's regular praise of the German brigade--Mitteleuropa also harbors a healthy skepticism that Berlin will ever prove willing to fire on Russian troops. In their darkest moments, these leaders may even envision a future in which Germany accommodates Russian power at their expense.
The heady days of 1990s-style liberalism, when a popular nationalist like Austria's Jorg Haider was denounced as an outlier or dismissed as a rogue, are over. Today, Europe is equal parts nationalist and liberal, with new leaders revisiting historical feuds or embracing national differences in ways that would have been unthinkable only thirty years ago. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's decision last month to name an elite military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought in the 1940s, sparked a crisis in Polish-Ukrainian relations. Political crises and separatist flirtations are also increasing in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while recent exigencies in northern Kosovo serve to remind of broader tensions in the Western Balkans.
As the United States attempts to hand off leadership in Europe, it is likely to foster rising tensions rather than deeper unity. Historical rivalries, frozen for decades by American involvement, will thaw and reassert themselves, making European cooperation more difficult.
Trend #5: China's economic subversion of Europe
Against this backdrop, Europe also faces a major test from the People's Republic of China (PRC), which uses economic stratagems and subversions to weaken the continent.
The PRC has constructed an export-led manufacturing economy that prioritizes control of global supply chains and dominance in key strategic sectors over market economics. In fact, the PRC has stoked production in major export sectors and depressed domestic consumption through a raft of dubious methods: state subsidies, intellectual-property theft, regulatory interventions, nontariff trade barriers, and currency manipulation. Since 2022, it has also benefited from cheap Russian energy.
Europe is now subject to the same China shock that the United States first experienced in the early 2000s, as the Sino-European economic relationship has grown dramatically out of balance. As the European Commission points out, "In the period 2015-2025, the deficit increased over fivefold in volume, while more than doubling in value." Last year, the PRC's trade surplus in goods with the EU hit Euros360 billion.
Moreover, as Sander Tordoir and Brad Setser wrote for the Center for European Reform recently, "Nowhere is that shock more consequential than in Germany. Its manufacturers in core industries--cars, machinery, chemicals, and aircraft--are being simultaneously squeezed out of China and other foreign markets, and at home." The PRC is destroying Germany's export demand, with Berlin's vaunted automobile industry emblematic of a broader economic malaise. In 2025, sales of Porsche, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz in China declined 26 percent, 5 percent, and 19 percent, respectively. Strong periodic employment data notwithstanding, German industry sheds approximately 10,000 jobs per month.
The breakdown of the largest industry in Europe's largest economy would trigger social upheaval in the heart of the continent, with all the risks to regional stability that normally accompany de-industrialization. Just past the one-year mark of its assumption of power, Germany's coalition government is one of the most unpopular in the country's history. While Merz's personal approval ratings have hit historic lows, he and his coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), have suffered crushing electoral defeats in one regional election after another.
Of course, Berlin is not blind to the China shock it is enduring. But the PRC leverages its relationship with Germany's multinationals like Volkswagen and BASF to protect its predatory model. The weaker German industry grows, the less strength it has to refuse the PRC's poisoned chalice.
Although the PRC's support for Russia in Ukraine has cost it its Eastern European vector, Beijing has built another route into the heart of Europe through Greece, Serbia, and Hungary. The PRC also makes appeals for greater cooperation to leaders susceptible to such entreaties for ideological, economic, or political reasons, like Spain's Pedro Sanchez, Serbia's Aleksandar Vucic, or French President Emmanuel Macron.
US economic policy toward Europe should be guided by a clear strategic imperative: mitigating European dependencies on China that expose allies to coercion. This could include the creation of a trade and investment zone reserved for US partners and allies, provided it does not devolve into lowest-common-denominator regulatory regimes that undermine US innovation in critical areas such as AI.
There are three, and only three, economic centers in the world today: North America, Europe, and East Asia. Just as Russia seeks to isolate Ukraine from the West, so, too, China seeks to separate Europe from the United States. If it can neutralize Europe as a factor in Sino-American competition, Beijing's chances of supplanting Washington on the world stage increase significantly. Beijing has grasped this reality. The United States must do the same--or risk losing the contest.
Read in Freedom Frequency (https://www.thefreedomfrequency.org/p/five-trends-driving-change-in-europe).
* * *
Peter Rough is a senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at Hudson Institute, which he launched in December 2022.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/five-trends-driving-change-europe-peter-rough
[Category: ThinkTank]
Housing Market Indicators Reveal Decelerating Price Growth and Inventory Rebound Across Metropolitan Areas
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- A monthly statistical release issued by the American Enterprise Institute, titled 'AEI Housing Market Indicators, September 2026' and authored by Edward J. Pinto and Tobias Peter, details broad shifts across national borrowing costs, inventory levels, and home price appreciation. The findings track lending conditions through August and September to gauge structural pressure on purchasers. No report number is listed in the document.
The analysis shows that annual home price appreciation slowed to a preliminary 1.3 percent in August 2026, falling from a revised ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- A monthly statistical release issued by the American Enterprise Institute, titled 'AEI Housing Market Indicators, September 2026' and authored by Edward J. Pinto and Tobias Peter, details broad shifts across national borrowing costs, inventory levels, and home price appreciation. The findings track lending conditions through August and September to gauge structural pressure on purchasers. No report number is listed in the document. The analysis shows that annual home price appreciation slowed to a preliminary 1.3 percent in August 2026, falling from a revised1.6 percent in July 2026 and 1.8 percent in August 2025. Across metropolitan markets, annual growth ranged across 11.9 percentage points, extending from negative 3.7 percent in Seattle to positive 8.2 percent in St. Louis. Meanwhile, financing conditions showed the median purchase note rate climbing to 6.99 percent in week 39 of 2026, while available supply reached 4.7 months in August as nationwide inventory expanded 2.4 percent compared to the prior year.
Beyond transaction metrics, the document examines municipal zoning policies that limit the production of smaller residences, finding that only 16 percent of homes constructed from 2015 through 2024 met the threshold for starter units. The researchers assess proposals to reduce minimum lot sizes to 1,000 square feet in residential subdivisions, while evaluating the trade-offs of proposed alterations to credit evaluation requirements.
"FHFA is considering moving to a bi-merge or single credit report system, but differences between bureau scores can encourage score shopping. If investor uncertainty increases even slightly, higher mortgage rates could swamp the upfront savings on credit reports. A typical tri-merge credit-report costs $80-$100, but a 1 bp higher rate due to increased investor uncertainty would cost $1,000 over 30 years on a $400,000 mortgage."
The publication, issued on September 29, 2026, concludes by highlighting demographic influences on the domestic housing deficit. According to the authors' projections, restoring domestic marriage rates among adults aged 25 to 64 to levels recorded in the year 2000 would release approximately 1,076,400 residences, which represents roughly 18 percent of the estimated national six-million-unit shortage.
-- Moira Sirois, Targeted News Service
* * *
View report at:
[Category: ThinkTank]
The analysis shows that annual home price appreciation slowed to a preliminary 1.3 percent in August 2026, falling from a revised ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- A monthly statistical release issued by the American Enterprise Institute, titled 'AEI Housing Market Indicators, September 2026' and authored by Edward J. Pinto and Tobias Peter, details broad shifts across national borrowing costs, inventory levels, and home price appreciation. The findings track lending conditions through August and September to gauge structural pressure on purchasers. No report number is listed in the document. The analysis shows that annual home price appreciation slowed to a preliminary 1.3 percent in August 2026, falling from a revised1.6 percent in July 2026 and 1.8 percent in August 2025. Across metropolitan markets, annual growth ranged across 11.9 percentage points, extending from negative 3.7 percent in Seattle to positive 8.2 percent in St. Louis. Meanwhile, financing conditions showed the median purchase note rate climbing to 6.99 percent in week 39 of 2026, while available supply reached 4.7 months in August as nationwide inventory expanded 2.4 percent compared to the prior year.
Beyond transaction metrics, the document examines municipal zoning policies that limit the production of smaller residences, finding that only 16 percent of homes constructed from 2015 through 2024 met the threshold for starter units. The researchers assess proposals to reduce minimum lot sizes to 1,000 square feet in residential subdivisions, while evaluating the trade-offs of proposed alterations to credit evaluation requirements.
"FHFA is considering moving to a bi-merge or single credit report system, but differences between bureau scores can encourage score shopping. If investor uncertainty increases even slightly, higher mortgage rates could swamp the upfront savings on credit reports. A typical tri-merge credit-report costs $80-$100, but a 1 bp higher rate due to increased investor uncertainty would cost $1,000 over 30 years on a $400,000 mortgage."
The publication, issued on September 29, 2026, concludes by highlighting demographic influences on the domestic housing deficit. According to the authors' projections, restoring domestic marriage rates among adults aged 25 to 64 to levels recorded in the year 2000 would release approximately 1,076,400 residences, which represents roughly 18 percent of the estimated national six-million-unit shortage.
-- Moira Sirois, Targeted News Service
* * *
View report at:
[Category: ThinkTank]
Empire Center: Newly Retired NYC Firefighters Average Over $177k In Pensions
ALBANY, New York, Sept. 30 -- Empire Center, a non-profit think tank, issued the following news release:
* * *
Newly Retired NYC Firefighters Average Over $177k In Pensions
September 29, 2026
New York City firefighters and fire officers retiring last year after full careers were entitled to average annual pension benefits of $177,016, according to new data added to SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center's government transparency website.
Among the 499 new retirees with at least 20 years of service, 150 were eligible for pensions over $200,000. Nearly 93 percent (462) of these full-career retirees ... Show Full Article ALBANY, New York, Sept. 30 -- Empire Center, a non-profit think tank, issued the following news release: * * * Newly Retired NYC Firefighters Average Over $177k In Pensions September 29, 2026 New York City firefighters and fire officers retiring last year after full careers were entitled to average annual pension benefits of $177,016, according to new data added to SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center's government transparency website. Among the 499 new retirees with at least 20 years of service, 150 were eligible for pensions over $200,000. Nearly 93 percent (462) of these full-career retireeswere eligible for six-figure pensions.
Looking at the most recent data for all New York City Fire Pension Fund retirees - including those with fewer than 20 years in service, the average pension for all 16,157 FDNY retirees, as of fiscal year 2026, came to $103,619. Both amounts include in-service disability payments for some.
Overall, 1,000 retirees were eligible for pensions over $200,000, nearly 28 percent more than the previous year's total of 784. Out of these, 76 were eligible for pensions over $300,000. Those 1,000 retirees make up about 6 percent of the pension roll but account for $242 million in annual benefits -- roughly 14 percent of the fund's $1.67 billion in yearly payouts.
268 FDNY retirees are eligible for pensions larger than the $258,750 salary paid to Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Unlike his salary, the pensions are exempt from state and city income tax.
The highest pension among all retirees went to John Sudnik, who was eligible for $427,977 after retiring in July, 2023. The next highest eligible pensions went to:
* Patrick McEvoy, Captain, $404,730
* Michael Ajello, Assistant Chief of Department, $387,579
* John Hodgens, Assistant Chief of Department and former Chief of Department, $385,551
* Michael Gala, Deputy Chief, $381,883
Sudnik went to court over his own benefit. He and fellow former Chief of Department Thomas Richardson petitioned for roughly $266,000 each in retroactive raises and a recalculated pension, which was dismissed by a judge in April 2025. The fund's largest pension had been challenged as too small.
The Chiefs of the 2023 FDNY Revolt
Two of the five largest pensions in the FDNY fund belong to chiefs at the center of the 2023 revolt at fire department headquarters. In February 2023, then-Commissioner Laura Kavanagh demoted three assistant chiefs, and Chief of Department John Hodgens resigned in protest. He later returned to the post and retired in May 2025, eligible for $385,551 - the fourth-largest pension in the fund.
Five chiefs sued over the demotions and reassignments that followed, alleging age discrimination. Together they are eligible for $1.57 million a year, for life:
* Michael Gala, $381,883 (fifth-largest in the fund)
* Joseph Jardin, $319,125
* Michael Massucci, $312,273
* Fred Schaaf, $291,199
* Frank Leeb, $260,622
Not Just the Brass
The largest pensions do not belong only to the department's leadership. Of the 10,340 people who retired at the rank of firefighter, 104 are eligible for pensions above $200,000 and two collect more than $300,000. Terence O'Connor, who retired in 2024 as a firefighter after 39 years, is eligible for $368,052 -- the seventh-largest pension in the fund, ahead of all but four of the department's former chiefs.
Among last year's full-career retirees, the 234 who left at the rank of firefighter averaged $146,771. More than 87 percent of them (205) were eligible for six-figure pensions, and 16 cleared $200,000.
Three Decades of Escalation
The average pension awarded to a full-career FDNY retiree who received pensions in FY2026 has nearly quadrupled since 1990, rising from $45,878 to $177,016. While some of the gap between the earliest and latest cohorts reflects three decades of wage growth, most of it does not. The difference is primarily driven by the benefit formula itself, and by what counts as pay inside it.
* * *
Chart: Average Pension of Full-Career FDNY Retirees
* * *
The figures include benefits from an optional program that allows members to make extra contributions to the pension plan, and the pension fund's "Variable Supplement Fund" and "Christmas bonus" programs.
The pensions are constitutionally guaranteed by New York taxpayers and exempt from New York State income tax. New York City government retirees, including firefighters, also receive city health care coverage at no cost.
The data are only publicly available thanks to a 2014 Empire Center lawsuit, which won a state court ruling requiring the fire pension fund to disclose retiree names alongside benefit amounts.
* * *
The Empire Center, based in Albany, is an independent, not-for-profit, non-partisan think tank dedicated to promoting policies that can make New York a better place to live, work and raise a family.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/newly-retired-nyc-firefighters-average-over-177k-in-pensions/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Newly Retired NYC Firefighters Average Over $177k In Pensions
September 29, 2026
New York City firefighters and fire officers retiring last year after full careers were entitled to average annual pension benefits of $177,016, according to new data added to SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center's government transparency website.
Among the 499 new retirees with at least 20 years of service, 150 were eligible for pensions over $200,000. Nearly 93 percent (462) of these full-career retirees ... Show Full Article ALBANY, New York, Sept. 30 -- Empire Center, a non-profit think tank, issued the following news release: * * * Newly Retired NYC Firefighters Average Over $177k In Pensions September 29, 2026 New York City firefighters and fire officers retiring last year after full careers were entitled to average annual pension benefits of $177,016, according to new data added to SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center's government transparency website. Among the 499 new retirees with at least 20 years of service, 150 were eligible for pensions over $200,000. Nearly 93 percent (462) of these full-career retireeswere eligible for six-figure pensions.
Looking at the most recent data for all New York City Fire Pension Fund retirees - including those with fewer than 20 years in service, the average pension for all 16,157 FDNY retirees, as of fiscal year 2026, came to $103,619. Both amounts include in-service disability payments for some.
Overall, 1,000 retirees were eligible for pensions over $200,000, nearly 28 percent more than the previous year's total of 784. Out of these, 76 were eligible for pensions over $300,000. Those 1,000 retirees make up about 6 percent of the pension roll but account for $242 million in annual benefits -- roughly 14 percent of the fund's $1.67 billion in yearly payouts.
268 FDNY retirees are eligible for pensions larger than the $258,750 salary paid to Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Unlike his salary, the pensions are exempt from state and city income tax.
The highest pension among all retirees went to John Sudnik, who was eligible for $427,977 after retiring in July, 2023. The next highest eligible pensions went to:
* Patrick McEvoy, Captain, $404,730
* Michael Ajello, Assistant Chief of Department, $387,579
* John Hodgens, Assistant Chief of Department and former Chief of Department, $385,551
* Michael Gala, Deputy Chief, $381,883
Sudnik went to court over his own benefit. He and fellow former Chief of Department Thomas Richardson petitioned for roughly $266,000 each in retroactive raises and a recalculated pension, which was dismissed by a judge in April 2025. The fund's largest pension had been challenged as too small.
The Chiefs of the 2023 FDNY Revolt
Two of the five largest pensions in the FDNY fund belong to chiefs at the center of the 2023 revolt at fire department headquarters. In February 2023, then-Commissioner Laura Kavanagh demoted three assistant chiefs, and Chief of Department John Hodgens resigned in protest. He later returned to the post and retired in May 2025, eligible for $385,551 - the fourth-largest pension in the fund.
Five chiefs sued over the demotions and reassignments that followed, alleging age discrimination. Together they are eligible for $1.57 million a year, for life:
* Michael Gala, $381,883 (fifth-largest in the fund)
* Joseph Jardin, $319,125
* Michael Massucci, $312,273
* Fred Schaaf, $291,199
* Frank Leeb, $260,622
Not Just the Brass
The largest pensions do not belong only to the department's leadership. Of the 10,340 people who retired at the rank of firefighter, 104 are eligible for pensions above $200,000 and two collect more than $300,000. Terence O'Connor, who retired in 2024 as a firefighter after 39 years, is eligible for $368,052 -- the seventh-largest pension in the fund, ahead of all but four of the department's former chiefs.
Among last year's full-career retirees, the 234 who left at the rank of firefighter averaged $146,771. More than 87 percent of them (205) were eligible for six-figure pensions, and 16 cleared $200,000.
Three Decades of Escalation
The average pension awarded to a full-career FDNY retiree who received pensions in FY2026 has nearly quadrupled since 1990, rising from $45,878 to $177,016. While some of the gap between the earliest and latest cohorts reflects three decades of wage growth, most of it does not. The difference is primarily driven by the benefit formula itself, and by what counts as pay inside it.
* * *
Chart: Average Pension of Full-Career FDNY Retirees
* * *
The figures include benefits from an optional program that allows members to make extra contributions to the pension plan, and the pension fund's "Variable Supplement Fund" and "Christmas bonus" programs.
The pensions are constitutionally guaranteed by New York taxpayers and exempt from New York State income tax. New York City government retirees, including firefighters, also receive city health care coverage at no cost.
The data are only publicly available thanks to a 2014 Empire Center lawsuit, which won a state court ruling requiring the fire pension fund to disclose retiree names alongside benefit amounts.
* * *
The Empire Center, based in Albany, is an independent, not-for-profit, non-partisan think tank dedicated to promoting policies that can make New York a better place to live, work and raise a family.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/newly-retired-nyc-firefighters-average-over-177k-in-pensions/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Economic & Social Research Institute: 'Fuelling Change: The Distributional and Climate Impacts of Farmers Supplying Biomethane Feedstocks in Ireland'
DUBLIN, Ireland, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- The Economic and Social Research Institute issued the following research series on September 23, 2026, entitled "Fuelling Change: The distributional and climate impacts of farmers supplying biomethane feedstocks in Ireland."
Here are excerpts:
* * *
Student mobility in Northern Ireland is a recurring topic in media coverage and policy debate, and among higher education stakeholders such as universities, schools, and further education providers. Despite this attention, the supporting evidence base remains limited. This study aims to address this gap in the ... Show Full Article DUBLIN, Ireland, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- The Economic and Social Research Institute issued the following research series on September 23, 2026, entitled "Fuelling Change: The distributional and climate impacts of farmers supplying biomethane feedstocks in Ireland." Here are excerpts: * * * Student mobility in Northern Ireland is a recurring topic in media coverage and policy debate, and among higher education stakeholders such as universities, schools, and further education providers. Despite this attention, the supporting evidence base remains limited. This study aims to address this gap in theknowledge base using a mixed methods study which includes Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) applicant data, student surveys, and stakeholder engagement to gain a full understanding of student mobility to and from Northern Ireland.
The general perception is that the region experiences a 'brain drain' which poses risks for long term economic performance. However, the evidence presented in this research suggests a more nuanced picture. Comparative analysis indicates that, once regional patterns are examined appropriately, Northern Ireland does not differ markedly from other UK regions in terms of participation in higher education or the proportion of students studying outside their home region. Around 78 per cent of Northern Ireland students study locally, with approximately 22 per cent studying elsewhere. When compared with Wales and many English regions, outward mobility from Northern Ireland is not unusually high. Rather, the findings from this research indicate that outward mobility is broadly in line with other regions, while a distinguishing feature is comparatively low inward student flows. Understanding this imbalance requires better data and understanding of students who leave and those who come here to study, their return decisions, and the longer-term career impacts of mobility.
* * *
View the full doc at: https://www.esri.ie/system/files/publications/RS234_1.pdf
[Category: ThinkTank]
Here are excerpts:
* * *
Student mobility in Northern Ireland is a recurring topic in media coverage and policy debate, and among higher education stakeholders such as universities, schools, and further education providers. Despite this attention, the supporting evidence base remains limited. This study aims to address this gap in the ... Show Full Article DUBLIN, Ireland, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- The Economic and Social Research Institute issued the following research series on September 23, 2026, entitled "Fuelling Change: The distributional and climate impacts of farmers supplying biomethane feedstocks in Ireland." Here are excerpts: * * * Student mobility in Northern Ireland is a recurring topic in media coverage and policy debate, and among higher education stakeholders such as universities, schools, and further education providers. Despite this attention, the supporting evidence base remains limited. This study aims to address this gap in theknowledge base using a mixed methods study which includes Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) applicant data, student surveys, and stakeholder engagement to gain a full understanding of student mobility to and from Northern Ireland.
The general perception is that the region experiences a 'brain drain' which poses risks for long term economic performance. However, the evidence presented in this research suggests a more nuanced picture. Comparative analysis indicates that, once regional patterns are examined appropriately, Northern Ireland does not differ markedly from other UK regions in terms of participation in higher education or the proportion of students studying outside their home region. Around 78 per cent of Northern Ireland students study locally, with approximately 22 per cent studying elsewhere. When compared with Wales and many English regions, outward mobility from Northern Ireland is not unusually high. Rather, the findings from this research indicate that outward mobility is broadly in line with other regions, while a distinguishing feature is comparatively low inward student flows. Understanding this imbalance requires better data and understanding of students who leave and those who come here to study, their return decisions, and the longer-term career impacts of mobility.
* * *
View the full doc at: https://www.esri.ie/system/files/publications/RS234_1.pdf
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center for American Progress: 5 Ways the FTC Can Protect Americans From AI-Fueled Surveillance Pricing
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- The Center for American Progress issued the following report on September 24, 2026, by Megan Shahi, Zoe Baird, and Jared Bernstein entitled "5 Ways the FTC Can Protect Americans From AI-Fueled Surveillance Pricing."
Here are excerpts:
* * *
The harms of surveillance pricing
Businesses have long adjusted prices based on supply, demand, inventory, timing, and other market conditions. The concern surrounding AI-fueled surveillance pricing is not simply that prices change but--as the FTC's policy statement makes clear--that businesses have a growing ability to ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- The Center for American Progress issued the following report on September 24, 2026, by Megan Shahi, Zoe Baird, and Jared Bernstein entitled "5 Ways the FTC Can Protect Americans From AI-Fueled Surveillance Pricing." Here are excerpts: * * * The harms of surveillance pricing Businesses have long adjusted prices based on supply, demand, inventory, timing, and other market conditions. The concern surrounding AI-fueled surveillance pricing is not simply that prices change but--as the FTC's policy statement makes clear--that businesses have a growing ability touse personal, individualized information about who a consumer is, including their socioeconomic status, preferences, and private circumstances, to determine the price presented to them. Moreover, the consumer can experience this without the ability to control such granular scrutiny or even be aware that it occurs.
As the FTC's policy statement acknowledges, surveillance pricing is a nascent practice, and there is little research on the potential impacts to consumers. Those studies that exist demonstrate that some consumers benefit, while others pay more. And as the FTC's policy statement points out, "the more sophisticated personalized pricing practices become, the less likely consumers are to benefit."
Surveillance pricing is especially concerning when consumers receive no offsetting benefit. One investigation found that Instacart used AI pricing software from its subsidiary Eversight to test different prices on shoppers without these users' knowledge. Some customers paid up to 23 percent more than others for the same grocery items from the exact same locations at the exact same time. Following the investigation, Instacart ended the price-testing practice and the FTC opened an inquiry. This episode also underscores concerns that have prompted growing state scrutiny of surveillance pricing, including laws such as New York's disclosure requirement for personalized algorithmic pricing.
Other research has found that firms generally benefit from personalized pricing, while its effects on consumers tend to be unfavorable. For example, using two randomized field experiments at ZipRecruiter, Dube and Misra (2022) found that personalized pricing increased the firm's expected profits and reduced the total economic benefit received by consumers. Some individual consumers were better off, not because they gained more power but because the algorithm offered lower prices to those less willing to pay. In another study, Buchholz and others (2025) examined auctioned rides on a ride-hailing platform. The authors estimate that, relative to uniform platform pricing, personalized pricing reduced the total economic benefit received by consumers by 2.5 percent but increased the combined economic benefit received by consumers, drivers, and the platform by 5.2 percent, as gains to the platform and drivers outweighed the losses to consumers. Across these studies, gains accrued unevenly, mostly to firms and not to consumers.
The FTC's current work also builds on an important foundation established by the commission's prior investigation into surveillance pricing. In July 2024, the FTC unanimously used its Section 6(b) authority to seek information from eight companies offering pricing products and services that used AI and other technologies alongside consumers' personal information to target prices. The FTC's initial findings, released in January 2025, showed that pricing intermediaries could use highly granular information--including precise location, browser and shopping history, and even consumers' interactions with webpages and items left in online shopping carts--to tailor prices, promotions, and product offerings to individual consumers. The study also found that the intermediaries examined worked with at least 250 clients across sectors ranging from grocery stores to apparel retailers. Importantly, the FTC described those findings as preliminary and stated that its review of the information collected through the 6(b) orders was ongoing. The Center for American Progress encourages the commission to continue and complete this work, including by referencing the findings and prior study in the forthcoming policy statement. The information already collected through the study can provide an important empirical foundation for understanding how surveillance pricing is deployed in practice and for informing the commission's enforcement approach going forward.
The commission has both the authority and the responsibility under Section 5 of the FTC Act to address unfair or deceptive surveillance pricing practices, particularly where consumers ought to be able to reasonably expect that they are offered the same price as others. The FTC's proposed policy statement provides an important foundation for enforcement, but greater clarity and stronger protections are needed to address how increasingly sophisticated surveillance pricing practices affect consumers. The FTC can strengthen its approach through clearer guidance and substantive guardrails, but federal action should not end there. Congress should build on ongoing state efforts to develop protections against harmful surveillance pricing practices to establish durable federal protections for consumers. (see text box) As policymakers consider how to protect consumers from the risks of surveillance pricing while preserving legitimate pricing practices, the five principles below should guide the way forward.
* * *
View the full article at:
[Category: ThinkTank]
Here are excerpts:
* * *
The harms of surveillance pricing
Businesses have long adjusted prices based on supply, demand, inventory, timing, and other market conditions. The concern surrounding AI-fueled surveillance pricing is not simply that prices change but--as the FTC's policy statement makes clear--that businesses have a growing ability to ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- The Center for American Progress issued the following report on September 24, 2026, by Megan Shahi, Zoe Baird, and Jared Bernstein entitled "5 Ways the FTC Can Protect Americans From AI-Fueled Surveillance Pricing." Here are excerpts: * * * The harms of surveillance pricing Businesses have long adjusted prices based on supply, demand, inventory, timing, and other market conditions. The concern surrounding AI-fueled surveillance pricing is not simply that prices change but--as the FTC's policy statement makes clear--that businesses have a growing ability touse personal, individualized information about who a consumer is, including their socioeconomic status, preferences, and private circumstances, to determine the price presented to them. Moreover, the consumer can experience this without the ability to control such granular scrutiny or even be aware that it occurs.
As the FTC's policy statement acknowledges, surveillance pricing is a nascent practice, and there is little research on the potential impacts to consumers. Those studies that exist demonstrate that some consumers benefit, while others pay more. And as the FTC's policy statement points out, "the more sophisticated personalized pricing practices become, the less likely consumers are to benefit."
Surveillance pricing is especially concerning when consumers receive no offsetting benefit. One investigation found that Instacart used AI pricing software from its subsidiary Eversight to test different prices on shoppers without these users' knowledge. Some customers paid up to 23 percent more than others for the same grocery items from the exact same locations at the exact same time. Following the investigation, Instacart ended the price-testing practice and the FTC opened an inquiry. This episode also underscores concerns that have prompted growing state scrutiny of surveillance pricing, including laws such as New York's disclosure requirement for personalized algorithmic pricing.
Other research has found that firms generally benefit from personalized pricing, while its effects on consumers tend to be unfavorable. For example, using two randomized field experiments at ZipRecruiter, Dube and Misra (2022) found that personalized pricing increased the firm's expected profits and reduced the total economic benefit received by consumers. Some individual consumers were better off, not because they gained more power but because the algorithm offered lower prices to those less willing to pay. In another study, Buchholz and others (2025) examined auctioned rides on a ride-hailing platform. The authors estimate that, relative to uniform platform pricing, personalized pricing reduced the total economic benefit received by consumers by 2.5 percent but increased the combined economic benefit received by consumers, drivers, and the platform by 5.2 percent, as gains to the platform and drivers outweighed the losses to consumers. Across these studies, gains accrued unevenly, mostly to firms and not to consumers.
The FTC's current work also builds on an important foundation established by the commission's prior investigation into surveillance pricing. In July 2024, the FTC unanimously used its Section 6(b) authority to seek information from eight companies offering pricing products and services that used AI and other technologies alongside consumers' personal information to target prices. The FTC's initial findings, released in January 2025, showed that pricing intermediaries could use highly granular information--including precise location, browser and shopping history, and even consumers' interactions with webpages and items left in online shopping carts--to tailor prices, promotions, and product offerings to individual consumers. The study also found that the intermediaries examined worked with at least 250 clients across sectors ranging from grocery stores to apparel retailers. Importantly, the FTC described those findings as preliminary and stated that its review of the information collected through the 6(b) orders was ongoing. The Center for American Progress encourages the commission to continue and complete this work, including by referencing the findings and prior study in the forthcoming policy statement. The information already collected through the study can provide an important empirical foundation for understanding how surveillance pricing is deployed in practice and for informing the commission's enforcement approach going forward.
The commission has both the authority and the responsibility under Section 5 of the FTC Act to address unfair or deceptive surveillance pricing practices, particularly where consumers ought to be able to reasonably expect that they are offered the same price as others. The FTC's proposed policy statement provides an important foundation for enforcement, but greater clarity and stronger protections are needed to address how increasingly sophisticated surveillance pricing practices affect consumers. The FTC can strengthen its approach through clearer guidance and substantive guardrails, but federal action should not end there. Congress should build on ongoing state efforts to develop protections against harmful surveillance pricing practices to establish durable federal protections for consumers. (see text box) As policymakers consider how to protect consumers from the risks of surveillance pricing while preserving legitimate pricing practices, the five principles below should guide the way forward.
* * *
View the full article at:
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS: 'Using AI to Fight World Hunger: Crop Optimization'
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following report on September 17, 2026, by Zane Swanson, Emma Curtis, Joely Virzi, and Caitlin Welsh entitled "Using AI to Fight World Hunger: Crop Optimization."
Here are excerpts:
* * *
The quantity and quality of crop yields is determined by the interplay of genetic, environmental, and management variables, or GxExM. Environmental factors (e.g., changing temperature, rainfall, soil condition, and pests) and a lack of access to crop management tools and strategies significantly limit the yield potential ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following report on September 17, 2026, by Zane Swanson, Emma Curtis, Joely Virzi, and Caitlin Welsh entitled "Using AI to Fight World Hunger: Crop Optimization." Here are excerpts: * * * The quantity and quality of crop yields is determined by the interplay of genetic, environmental, and management variables, or GxExM. Environmental factors (e.g., changing temperature, rainfall, soil condition, and pests) and a lack of access to crop management tools and strategies significantly limit the yield potentialof farmers around the world.
Crop breeding, whether done "conventionally" or using genetic engineering techniques, works to create new and improved plant varieties that are
* more resilient to environmental stressors;
* resistant to pathogens and pests; and
* higher in nutritional value.
The Role of AI
* AI enhances the global systems that support crop breeding by reducing data fragmentation and improving access to vast quantities of plant information. It transforms data collection and analysis processes for trait discovery and validation, and democratizes powerful cutting-edge scientific tools. Crop development can take a decade or more to bring a new and improved variety to market. AI-enabled tools shorten that timeline greatly.
* AI helps unlock the vast quantities of biological data stored in the genomes of wild plants and crops stored in farms and gene banks. It also transforms the methods available to turn that data into beneficial traits in crops around the world. AI is supporting novel ways to bring new high-quality seeds to market at an unprecedented pace, helping to overcome the rate of global ecological change that challenges today's production.
* * *
The report is posted at: https://features.csis.org/ai-to-optimize-crops/
[Category: Think Tank]
Here are excerpts:
* * *
The quantity and quality of crop yields is determined by the interplay of genetic, environmental, and management variables, or GxExM. Environmental factors (e.g., changing temperature, rainfall, soil condition, and pests) and a lack of access to crop management tools and strategies significantly limit the yield potential ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (TNSLrpt) -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following report on September 17, 2026, by Zane Swanson, Emma Curtis, Joely Virzi, and Caitlin Welsh entitled "Using AI to Fight World Hunger: Crop Optimization." Here are excerpts: * * * The quantity and quality of crop yields is determined by the interplay of genetic, environmental, and management variables, or GxExM. Environmental factors (e.g., changing temperature, rainfall, soil condition, and pests) and a lack of access to crop management tools and strategies significantly limit the yield potentialof farmers around the world.
Crop breeding, whether done "conventionally" or using genetic engineering techniques, works to create new and improved plant varieties that are
* more resilient to environmental stressors;
* resistant to pathogens and pests; and
* higher in nutritional value.
The Role of AI
* AI enhances the global systems that support crop breeding by reducing data fragmentation and improving access to vast quantities of plant information. It transforms data collection and analysis processes for trait discovery and validation, and democratizes powerful cutting-edge scientific tools. Crop development can take a decade or more to bring a new and improved variety to market. AI-enabled tools shorten that timeline greatly.
* AI helps unlock the vast quantities of biological data stored in the genomes of wild plants and crops stored in farms and gene banks. It also transforms the methods available to turn that data into beneficial traits in crops around the world. AI is supporting novel ways to bring new high-quality seeds to market at an unprecedented pace, helping to overcome the rate of global ecological change that challenges today's production.
* * *
The report is posted at: https://features.csis.org/ai-to-optimize-crops/
[Category: Think Tank]