Latest / Hoover Daily Report / Hoover Daily Report | May 26, 2026

Transcript

Hoover Daily Report | May 26, 2026 · Hoover Daily Report

• 0:00
  Welcome to "the Hoover Daily Report". Ideas Advancing
• 0:04
  Freedom. It's Tuesday, May 23rd, twenty twenty six .
• 0:07
  Today, Herb Lin and Maria Langan-Reekoff write about how governments can avoid the
• 0:12
  strategic surprises that come with rapid technological advances. Timothy Garton
• 0:17
  Ash offers eight ways free nations can hasten Vladimir Putin’s demise. And
• 0:21
  author Sebastian Junger discusses his own brush with death in a life spent
• 0:25
  observing the deaths and near misses of others engaged in conflict.
• 0:30
  Anticipating and Navigating Strategic Technological Surprise.
• 0:33
  Hoover Institution Research Fellow Herb Lin and researcher Maria Langan-Reekoff
• 0:38
  argue in this new essay that rapid technological advancement creates
• 0:43
  strategic surprises that governments and institutions struggle to anticipate. They
• 0:48
  define strategic technological surprises as disruptions that overturn prevailing
• 0:54
  assumptions, shift power dynamics, and demand significant and rapid societal
• 0:59
  responses. China’s development of the DeepSeek AI R1 model exemplified this,
• 1:04
  shattering assumptions about China’s ability to produce competitive AI at
• 1:09
  scale. The authors warn that the convergence of technologies like
• 1:13
  artificial intelligence, bioengineering, quantum computing, and space capabilities
• 1:19
  accelerates change at unprecedented speed. These disruptions differ from
• 1:23
  historical innovations because of their pace and interconnected nature.
• 1:28
  This is How to Defeat Vladimir Putin.
• 1:30
  Writing in The Guardian, Senior Fellow Timothy Garton Ash lays out eight
• 1:35
  elements of a strategy he says democracies in Europe and their allies
• 1:39
  can use to ensure the defeat of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s “external
• 1:43
  ambitions.” First, Garton Ash implores the free nations of the world to stay the
• 1:48
  course with Ukraine, even beyond a future ceasefire, and let it into the EU. “Only
• 1:53
  when Ukraine is a reasonably prosperous, secure, stable, and democratic member
• 1:58
  state of the EU will we be able to say that Putin has been defeated there,” he
• 2:03
  writes. Next, Garton Ash suggests a continued re-armament of Europe,
• 2:07
  concerted efforts to defeat Russia-sympathetic parties in national
• 2:11
  elections, and diplomatic outreach to the “other Russian constituencies” likely
• 2:15
  open to an anti-authoritarian message.
• 2:18
  I
• 2:18
  ndia Will Not Become Another China.
• 2:20
  In The Diplomat, Research Fellow Dinsha Mistree and Bill Drexel of the Hudson
• 2:25
  Institute argue US foreign policy risks a fundamental misunderstanding if it
• 2:30
  applies lessons learned about China, an authoritarian state seeking to upend
• 2:35
  global norms and trade to serve its own interests, to India, another rising power
• 2:40
  that very much wants to retain the global status quo. “The lesson of China is not
• 2:45
  to distrust every rising power. It is to distinguish between those that seek to
• 2:50
  overturn the international order and those likely to strengthen it,” Mistree
• 2:55
  and Drexel write. “And India, whatever its imperfections, has every reason to
• 3:00
  want the current system to endure.” They point out India is not and has never been
• 3:05
  an expansionist power and is a natural bulwark against a rising China.
• 3:09
  US Declaration at 250: New Challenges, Enduring Principles.
• 3:13
  At RealClearPolitics, Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz writes that American
• 3:17
  universities are failing to educate students about the principles underlying
• 3:22
  the nation’s founding and its 250-year rise to global economic, political, and
• 3:26
  military superpower. He contends higher education has corrupted liberal education
• 3:31
  through three problematic ideals: political activism that treats
• 3:35
  progressive views as orthodoxy rather than teaching students to evaluate
• 3:39
  competing arguments; methodological obsession in social sciences that
• 3:43
  prioritizes scientific techniques over understanding human affairs; and
• 3:47
  professional focus on training future scholars rather than informed citizens.
• 3:51
  Berkowitz says this betrayal produces graduates who are fundamentally ignorant
• 3:56
  of the Declaration of Independence and the American experiment in ordered
• 4:00
  liberty. He advocates a new curriculum centered on the Declaration,
• 4:04
  constitutional system, Western civilization, and the comparative study
• 4:08
  of other cultures.
• 4:09
  Facing Death, with Sebastian Junger.
• 4:11
  What does a lifelong atheist do when his dead father appears above him in the
• 4:16
  emergency room? Author and war reporter Sebastian Junger nearly bled to death in
• 4:21
  2020 from a ruptured aneurysm, and what he saw in those moments sent him on a
• 4:26
  journey into physics, near-death experiences, and the nature of
• 4:30
  consciousness itself. In his third appearance on EconTalk, Junger discusses
• 4:35
  his remarkable book In My Time of Dying with Visiting Fellow Russ Roberts. He
• 4:40
  reflects on covering wars from Sarajevo to Afghanistan, the strange phenomenon of
• 4:45
  dying people seeing the dead, and why he’s still an atheist. Along the way,
• 4:49
  Junger offers a powerful meditation on terror and reverence, blessing and
• 4:54
  wounding, and why understanding life’s fragility might be the most sacred gift
• 4:59
  of all.
• 4:59
  Featured Hoover Podcast: Uncommon Knowledge.
• 5:02
  For more than two decades, the Hoover Institution has been producing Uncommon
• 5:06
  Knowledge with Peter Robinson, a series hosted by Hoover fellow Peter Robinson as
• 5:10
  an outlet for political leaders, scholars, journalists, and today’s big
• 5:14
  thinkers to share their views with the world.
• 5:16
  That’s your Hoover Daily Report for Tuesday, May 23rd, twenty twenty six.
• 5:20
  Each weekday, we bring you research, analysis, and commentary focused on
• 5:25
  public policy, national security, and the ideas shaping American society and
• 5:29
  government.
• 5:30
  The Hoover Institution at Stanford University is grounded in constitutional
• 5:34
  principles with a commitment to sustaining the safeguards of the American
• 5:38
  way of life.
• 5:38
  Thank you for listening.
• 5:40
  For links to all the articles and interviews mentioned today, visit
• 5:44
  hoover.org slash, HDR.