This article was originally published on the Brown Political Review website, December 3, 2017.
On November 8th, 2016, India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, announced the demonetization of the Indian economy. This move, ostensibly to root out corruption and black money, has been unsuccessful. Overnight, ₹500 and ₹1000 currency bank notes — which made up 86% of the economy — became worthless, and people stood in lines at ATMs for hours to deposit their old, soon-to-be-useless money in exchange for money of smaller denominations and the newly minted currency. This contentious economic move was meant to shock the system, so that…
This story was originally published on the Brown Political Review website, January 11, 2018
We live in a time of rapid technological advancement. This has large implications for national security. Even during peacetime, covert attacks can easily be carried out with the help of evolving technology. Most recently, Canadian and American diplomats in Cuba have reported strange ailments, which the US government has attributed to sonic weaponry — a new realm of technology whose ramifications are not yet fully understood.
The mysterious symptoms experienced by US diplomats in Cuba, such as hearing loss and mild concussions, demonstrate the growing threat…
This article was originally published on the Brown Political Review website, October 9, 2018
Vice President Mike Pence created much ado in August when he revealed “Space Force,” — a proposed sixth branch of the US military. Discretely and nearly simultaneously, however, President Trump began to unravel an Obama-era policy, making it easier for the military to launch cyberattacks. Under Obama’s Presidential Policy Directive 20 (PPD-20), interagency approval was required before cyberweapons could be deployed. U.S. Cyber Command is now relatively free to launch and respond to cyberattacks, without oversight from the State Department, Commerce Department, or intelligence agencies.
Because…
This article was originally published on the Brown Political Review website, November 3, 2019
In the past month, 75% of Iraq’s internet was turned off amid mass anti-corruption protests. In Bangladesh, Rohingya refugee camps are suffering from drastic restrictions in telecommunication capability and internet access, cutting off refugees’ ability to share information about life in the camps and limiting the efficacy of humanitarian aid workers. Hong Kongers fear an onslaught of censorship and internet restrictions in the wake of Carrie Lam’s invocation of the Emergency Regulations Ordinance to ban face masks in public. We take it for granted that when…
This article was originally published on the Brown Political Review website, December 21, 2019
Do robots deserve human rights? It seems like a ridiculous question: Animals have animal rights, property is protected by property rights, and humans are given human rights. But as artificial and machine intelligence continues to develop at an astonishing pace, humanoid machines that can think, communicate, and respond are becoming a (somewhat limited) reality. …
This article was originally published in the Brown Political Review, May 11, 2017
As the tools of modern warfare have developed from tanks and submarines to drones and satellites, one thing has stayed consistent: For the past 50 years, the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) has been the backbone of American nuclear strategy. The doctrine is based on deterrence, which is a strategic stalemate in which all sides refrain from attacking the others because of the certainty that there would be a retaliatory nuclear strike. But today, MAD faces a dangerous new threat: cyberwarfare. Like anti-ballistic missiles in the…
Annie Lehman-Ludwig
Brown ’20 — membership associate at the Global Network Initiative; former associate section manager and senior staff writer at Brown Political Review
