EDITORS’ NOTE
It is no exaggeration to say that competition has made our world what it is today. States compete over resources, people, and the myriad other factors that raise thrones or topple them. Businesses, driven by the gales of market competition, discard yesterday’s products and refashion them into today’s innovations. Individuals, too, ceaselessly compete amongst themselves for professional, personal, or romantic gain—all in the hopes of building a satisfying life.
In some domains, a lack of competition is the largest hindrance to equitable outcomes. Mitsuki Jiang demonstrates the desperate need for competition in the increasingly ossified pharmaceutical market—and profiles the new players ready to provide just that. In “A New Prescription,” she explains that these alternative pharmacy models, though effective at making generic medications vastly more affordable, fall short when it comes to brand-name prescriptions. The antidote, Jiang argues, is federal intervention designed to level the playing field.
Competition is not always a panacea, however. Israel, a multiethnic, multilingual state, is fracturing under the weight of discriminatory policies. In “Twisted Tongues,” Nina Lidar notes that the increasing marginalization of Arabic is exacerbating competition and inhibiting understanding between Jews and Arabs. To unite the state, per Lidar, the Israeli government must work toward equality by dismantling laws that make Arabic a second-class language.
In a familiar form of geopolitical competition, the fight between the West and Russia for influence in the Balkans is rapidly reaching a breaking point, as Ashton Higgins shows in “The Southern Slavs Asunder.” Though Serbia has long been in the Russian orbit due to the lingering effects of Pan-Slavism, Russia’s growing militarism and the West’s economic attractiveness are
causing Serbians to become leery of their longtime patron. If Serbia turns Westward, Higgins contends, Russia’s quest for Balkan hegemony may be at an end.
As states continue to compete for geopolitical supremacy, they are taking the fight to a new front: the digital realm. Daniel KyteZable’s “A Race to the End of Time” explores Q-Day, the fast-approaching moment when quantum computers render current digital security systems obsolete. With the United States and China competing to improve their quantum chops, the Global South is becoming increasingly vulnerable to digital exploitation. Such technological advancements, Kyte-Zable argues, are likely to increase global inequality.
While futuristic technology has pernicious implications in the battle between nations, it might be just what is needed when competing with nature. In “Man vs. Mosquito,” Aman Vora shines a light on the increasingly frantic conflict between scientists seeking to end the scourge of mosquito-borne illness and the insects’ adaptations that keep the threat alive. Vora argues that the threat of diseases such as dengue and malaria is grave enough to justify using cutting-edge tools like gene editing, even if they cause apprehension for some.
We hope this special feature, rather than providing a one-dimensional perspective on competition, will remind you of its immense power for good or ill. Even as competition inexorably scours away deficiencies in markets or organizations, its all-encompassing tide sweeps away protections trusted by the vulnerable and traditions long-cherished by all. Therefore, we enjoin you not to get so caught up in the fire of competition that you forget the many benefits cooperation can bring.
– Isabel & Bryce
EXECUTIVE BOARD
EDITORS IN CHIEF
Isabel Greider
Bryce Vist
CHIEFS OF STAFF
Gus LaFave
Alexander Lee
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICERS
Rohan Leveille
Annabel Williams
MANAGING EDITORS
Grace Chaikin
Harry Flores
Elliot Smith
CHIEF COPY EDITORS
Grace Leclerc
Miguel Valdovinos
INTERVIEWS DIRECTORS
Hiram Valladares Castro-Lopez
Yuliya Velhan
DATA DIRECTORS
Ryan Doherty
Asher Labovich
CREATIVE DIRECTORS
Christine Wang
Thomas Dimayuga
Haimeng Ge
MULTIMEDIA DIRECTORS
Matias Gersberg
Mitsuki Jiang
WEB DIRECTOR
Kevin Kim
DIVERSITY OFFICER
Jordan Lac
INTERVIEWS BOARD
INTERVIEWS DIRECTORS
Hiram Valladares Castro-Lopez
Yuliya Velhan
DEPUTY INTERVIEWS
DIRECTORS
Alexander Delaney
Ben Ringel
Matteo Papadopoulos
Mira Mehta
INTERVIEWS ASSOCIATES
Alexandra Lehman
Ariella Reynolds
Avital Strauss
Benjamin Greenberg
Benjamin Stern
Charles Adams
Charles Wortman
Colten Edelman
Eiffel Sunga
Elijah Dahunsi
Ellia Sweeney
Emma Brankstein
Emma Stroupe
Gabi Yuan
Henry Robbins
Jie Yu Kuo
Justin Meszler
Kate Javerbaum
Lina Legesse
Matthew Kotcher
Michael Citarella
Michele Togbe
Miles Munkacy
Nash Riebe
Samuel Trachtenberg
Simon Wordofa
Taleen Sample
Theodore Fisher
William Vogel
Zoe Targoff
BOARD OF ADVISORS
Alexander Samaha
Alexandros Diplas
Allison Meakem
Hannah Severyns
Isabel Tejera
Tiffany Pai
Zander Blitzer
DATA BOARD
DATA DIRECTORS
Ryan Doherty
Asher Labovich
DATA ASSOCIATES
Aimee Zhang
Alex Freehoff
Alex Wick
Amanda Sun
Amine Chajar
Amy Qiao
Ariel Shifrin
Benjamin Buka
Casey Crockett
Chai Harsha
Gabi Yuan
Irene Zhao
Jed Morgan
Jennifer Shim
Jester Abella
Jo Gasior-Kavishe
Logan Rabe
Nikhil Das
Sita Pawar
Sofia Barnett
Tiffany Kuo
Titi Zhang
William Yu
COPY EDIT BOARD
CHIEF COPY
EDITORS
Grace Leclerc
Miguel Valdovinos
MANAGING COPY
EDITORS
Renee Kuo
Tiffany Eddy
COPY EDITORS
Anum Azhar
Benjamin Levy
Darisel Velez
Davis Kelly
Desi Silverman-Joseph
Ellie Brault
Emily Colon
Harshil Garg
Maddy Brooks
Nicolas Clampitt
Sara Santacruz
Yael Wellisch
MULTIMEDIA BOARD
MULTIMEDIA DIRECTOR
Matias Gersberg
Mitsuki Jiang
MULTIMEDIA ASSOCIATES
Michele Togbe
Leyad Zavriyev
Jack Stein
Erica Yun
Catharine Paik
BUSINESS BOARD
BUSINESS DIRECTORS
Rohan Leveille
Annabel Williams
BUSINESS ASSOCIATES
Mariana Melzer
Gabi Yuan
Manav Musunuru
Mehari Milton
John Lee
Caroline Novatney
WEB BOARD
WEB DIRECTOR
Kevin Kim
WEB DEVELOPERS
Akshay Mehta
Alex Wick
Anh Nguyen
Armaan Patankar
Brooke Wangenheim
Devon Kear-Leng
Hao Wen
Narin Kim
Nicholas Kitahata
Shafiul Haque
William Yu
EDITORIAL BOARD
MANAGING EDITORS
Grace Chaikin
Harry Flores
Elliot Smith
SENIOR EDITORS
Amina Fayaz
Ashton Higgins
Elsa Lehrer
Suzie Zhang
EDITORS
Aman Vora
Ariella Reynolds
Daphne Dluzniewski
Ela Snyder
Jodi Robinson
Kenneth Kalu
Rohan Pankaj
Sofie Zeruto
Sophie Forstner
Steve Robinson
William Loughridge
STAFF WRITERS
Ananya Narayanan
Andreas Rivera Young
Annika Reff
Brianna Paliz
Cecilia Hult
Chiupong Huang
Colten Edelman
Daniel Kyte-Zable
Daria Dmitrieva
Ellie Silverman
Evan Tao
Gigi Alioto-Pier
Jeremy Gold
Jordan Lac
Julianna Muzyczyszyn
Kayla Morrison
Keyes Sumner
McConnell Bristol
Mia Madden
Mitsuki Jiang
Morgan Dethlefsen
Nathan Haronian
Neve Diaz-Carr
Nicolaas Schmid
Nina Lidar
Noah Kim
Ophir Berrin
Phil Avilov
Ross Rutherford
Sonya Rashkovan
Tianran (Alice) Cheng
CREATIVE BOARD
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Christine Wang
Thomas Dimayuga
Haimeng Ge
DESIGN DIRECTORS
Muhaddisa Ali
Patrick Farrell
Hannah Jeong
GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
Natalie Ho
Hyunmin Kim
Claire Lin
Elliott Romano
ART DIRECTORS
Lana Wang
Jason Aragon
Jacob Gong
Lucia Li
Maria Hahne
Ziwei Chen
Grace Liu
Angela Xu
COVER ARTIST
Su Yun Song
ILLUSTRATORS
Alexandra Zeigler
Ariel Pan
Ashley Nguyen
Ayca Tuzer
Carmina Lopez
Eliza Goodwin
Emmie Wu
Haley Sheridan
Hannah Rice
Hye Won (Hayley) Kim
Kaitlyn Stanton
Kex Huang
Kyla Dang
Larisa Kachko
Lily Engblom-Stryker
Peishan Yu
Qingyang (Tiffany) Zhu
Rafael Mediodia
Samantha Takeda
Sarah Mason
Sophia Spagna
Xinyi Liu
Xinyuan (Fiona) Song
Yan (Jessica) Jiang
Yuan Jiang
Yushan (Sabrina) Jiang
DIVERSITY TEAM
DIVERSITY OFFICER
Jordan Lac
DIVERSITY ASSOCIATES
Alexander Delaney
Ilektra Bampicha-Ninou
Titi Zhang
High and Dry
Federal and state governments are abdicating their duty to provide the Navajo Nation with water
by Nicolaas Schmid ’27, an International and Public Affairs concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR
illustration by Hye Won (Hayley) Kim ’24, an Illustration major at
RISD and illustrator for BPR
As the American Southwest struggles through a regional “megadrought”—the worst of its kind in 1,200 years—states continue to battle for nature’s most abundant, yet most precious, resource. Southwestern state governments are particularly concerned about who should get Colorado River water, with each state striving to funnel a portion of the limited supply to itself. These enduring negotiations over water allocation, however, have largely ignored a critical population in the region: the Navajo.
Covering an area larger than West Virginia, the Navajo Reservation is home to over 170,000 people, close to a third of whom lack access to reliable running water. Although present conditions are astonishingly dismal, this crisis has been decades in the making—and the federal and Arizona governments have been anything but helpful in solving it. Ever since the Navajo were forcefully removed from their ancestral homelands and subsequently returned to a fraction of their territory, they have struggled to survive in the face of US complacency. To address the resource crisis on the Reservation and rectify historical wrongs, states should look beyond their own needs and collaborate with the federal government to deliver water to the Navajo Nation.
The scarcity of water on the Reservation impacts nearly every aspect of daily life. Even before the drought, families on the Reservation reported having to drive miles to reach water stations where they could fill up their storage tanks. For those without outhouses, the lack of running water means getting in the car and driving to the nearest toilet each time they need to use the restroom. Even Buu Nygren, the Navajo President, described resorting to using “windmill water that is supposed to be for livestock.” State governments stood by as the lack of water made adequate hand-washing impossible during the Covid-19 pandemic. Cases and deaths on the Reservation skyrocketed—the Navajo infection rate was higher than that of New York, and their
Covid-19 mortality rate surpassed that of any state in the country.
Moreover, the water that the Navajo can access is often tainted by irresponsible government projects: Some of the Navajo Nation’s already scarce groundwater sources have been rendered unusable by uranium mining projects that contaminate surrounding areas with radioactive particles. Stricken by both drought and a lack of viable water sources to begin with, access to clean water remains a priority for the Nation. Like most governments in the Southwest, the Navajo are looking to the Colorado River to resolve their current crisis.
The question of whether Indigenous tribes have the right to water from the Colorado has already been settled—116 years ago, to be exact. In its 1908 Winters v. United States decision, the Supreme Court affirmed that the United States must guarantee Native populations the water
required for their operations to fulfill its side of the 19th-century treaties that created the reservations. Although this was a landmark affirmation of Indigenous rights across the country, the case did not explicitly determine how the tribes would secure their allotted resources.
It was not long before Southwestern states began rolling back the advancements made by Winters. In 1922, states in the Colorado River Basin ratified a compact to settle river disputes in the region. A provision in the agreement denied that the United States held any obligation to assert or protect the water rights of tribal governments. Instead, one by one, each tribe in the region has been forced to make separate compacts with the states in which they are located.
Over 80 years later, federal inaction sanctioned by state governments has left the Navajo Nation negotiating alone with the state of Arizona to obtain the water resources it needs. Arizona has hurled numerous obstacles at Navajo attempts to secure a fair water allotment: Decades-long court cases and drawn-out hydrological assessments have nullified any progress made during negotiations. In a show of state superiority, Arizona has even tried— albeit unsuccessfully—to leverage the tribe’s casino license to force a favorable settlement for Arizona citizens. The fight is rigged, and the power dynamic between Arizona and the Navajo Nation has made it difficult to reach an agreement that comes out fair for both parties.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, a century after Winters was decided, the Navajo returned to the Supreme Court to demand their rightful access to water via federal authority in 2023. In its Arizona v. Navajo Nation decision, the Court denied the tribe’s request to get the federal government involved, claiming the treaty that created the Reservation did not mandate the federal government to actively protect the tribe’s water access, despite the federal government maintaining authority in state-tribal relations. The majority opinion further argued that “Indian treaties cannot be rewritten or expanded beyond their clear terms.” What good is a treaty
that provides dry land to a tribe if the water necessary for survival does not accompany it? Justice Neil Gorsuch, siding with the Navajo in a striking dissent, described their situation best, writing that the Navajo have been “told repeatedly that they have been standing in the wrong line and must try another.”
Despite another blow from the federal government, all hope for an agreement with Arizona is not lost. In February, the Navajo Nation released a summary of a current proposal in the works with the state, expressing confidence that a settlement will be reached soon. The proposal will affirm Navajo claims to water in the Colorado River Basin. Yet even with an agreement seemingly on the horizon, there is little confidence that this century-long impasse will be overcome. The Navajo need water now, but some court hearings for resource adjudication are not even scheduled to begin until 2027.
Furthermore, even if an agreement is struck with Arizona, congressional funding for key water infrastructure projects—vital for ensuring that the allocated water actually gets to the Reservation—is not guaranteed. In 2010, talks between the Navajo and Colorado River authorities resulted in a consensus, but the agreement was shut down by Congress. The federal government thought that the burden of the $800 million infrastructure projects included in the compromise outweighed the dire situation on the Reservation.
Just last year, testifying in front of the Senate, President Nygren asked the body to fund key infrastructure projects that would bring water to the Nation from the San Juan River. Nygren said that the Navajo had been too occupied “worrying about basic essentials of life” to focus on “moving forward” and “building [themselves] up.” It is time that the federal government upholds its duty to “secure the permanent prosperity and happiness” of the Navajo people, as stated in its 1849 treaty with the tribe. The Navajo need enough water to drink, bathe, and nourish their fields—only then can they meaningfully grow as a nation.
“What good is a treaty that provides dry land to a tribe if the water necessary for survival does not accompany it?”
One Strike, You’re Out
fine total increased every day the strike went on. In response to the strike, Massachusetts lawmakers have proposed legislation to allow public sector employees, except those working in public safety, to strike after six months of negotiations have passed. This legislation has stalled.
Public sector strikes in the United States were common in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1968, for instance, sanitation workers went on strike in New York, leading to pileups of garbage around the city. In 1975, as many as 55,000 state, county, and municipal employees struck for higher wages. These norms changed in 1981, when President Ronald Reagan fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, a disciplinary action virtually unheard of in years prior. His decision created nationwide hostility toward public sector strikes—hostility that has continued into the present.
Public sector employees must have the same right to strike as their private sector counterparts
by Evan Tao ’27, an International and Public Affairs concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR
On January 19, 2024, teachers went on strike in the Boston suburb of Newton, Massachusetts. Before their union came to the decision to strike—with 98 percent of members voting in favor—it spent 10 months negotiating new contracts with the city to no avail. By striking, the teachers hoped to secure pay increases on par with hikes in Newton’s cost of living, especially for classroom aides. They also demanded social workers in every school, describing them as essential to students’ mental well-being, particularly after the pandemic. Furthermore, in fiscal year 2024, the school district’s budget was cut by nearly $4 million, even as the city posted nearly $29 million in surplus.
By February 2, the strike ended, with teachers having successfully secured many of their goals. Troublingly, however, the city’s children had missed 11 days of school, and their parents had been forced to scramble to adjust their schedules. Anger over the economic harm of such a lengthy strike has sparked debates in
the community on whether teachers, and public sector employees as a whole, should strike at all. While there are strong arguments against public sector strikes, organizing to withhold labor remains one of the few means employees have to reclaim power and advocate for their needs. The right of teachers to strike must be safeguarded. The strike divided Newton families over who bore the brunt of the blame. Parents groups released an open letter blaming Mayor Ruthanne Fuller’s budget cuts for the strike. In it, they explained, “We worry that [Mayor Fuller] is out of touch with the reality of our public schools. Our trust in her has eroded every time she’s chosen not to prioritize our children.” Others, conversely, blamed the teachers’ union for delaying negotiations. A group of parents filed a class-action lawsuit against the union, claiming that it “chose its illegal strike and chose to bear the costs of contempt of court to keep striking to drive parents to a point of desperation: ‘Pay them whatever they want, just get my kid back in school.’ That was willful, wanton, and wrong.”
Teachers’ strikes are technically illegal in Massachusetts, but teachers in the state often withhold labor anyway in contempt of court. For breaking the law, the Newton union will pay $625,000 in fines to both the city and state—the
There are many legitimate arguments used to justify this enmity. Public sector workers provide essential services, from education to air traffic control to emergency response. Unlike in the private sector, customers cannot switch services easily: A parent cannot move their child to another school as simply as they can start shopping at another grocery store. When teachers strike, students and families suffer. Further, public sector employees have access to unique channels for negotiation, like lobbying for government policies to increase their pay. Other arguments contend that public sector employees have a civic duty to provide services and that this duty should be prioritized over their private interests. From that perspective, striking represents a breach of public trust.
Engaging with these arguments more deeply, however, reveals their fragility. Although a teacher strike hurts the public in the short term, long-term school underfunding hurts it more. Which is worse for a student: missing school for 11 days or attending a decrepit school with underpaid teachers for 12 years? Teacher strikes ultimately serve, not hurt, the public interest. Additionally, in employer-employee relationships, the employer typically holds the majority of power. Striking remains the most powerful tool unions have to secure victories for their workers, including teachers.
Admittedly, striking can be dangerous in certain portions of the public sector, such as police and fire departments. These workers should arguably never strike and instead use other avenues for self-advocacy. To pull another example from Massachusetts history, in 1919 Boston police officers went on strike, and riots and robberies quickly followed. (Like the air traffic controller strike 62 years later, this strike was busted by a famously pro-business Republican: then-governor Calvin Coolidge.) However, there is a bright line between safety and non-safety
illustration by Samantha Takeda ’27, a prospective Painting major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR
workers—teachers and sanitation workers are not the same as police officers and firefighters.
In Newton, striking was certainly the union’s last resort; alternate avenues for negotiation had failed teachers repeatedly. Contract negotiations had taken place behind the scenes for almost a year beforehand, and policies that would have raised school budgets by increasing property taxes had been rejected by voters. Contrary to the idea that teachers had incentives to “hold children’s education hostage” to stall negotiations, the union faced increased fines every day the strike went on. If anything, it was in the school committee’s interest to stall.
So why do so many observers default to blaming the teachers, and not the school committee, for drawing out negotiations? Precedents like Reagan’s strike crackdown have normalized anti-union sentiments, making it easy to paint unions as greedy and indifferent to the public good. These misrepresentations fail to consider the fact that teachers serve the public and therefore care what the public thinks of them. When parents are convinced that teachers don’t have students’ best interests in mind, it impacts their ability to do their jobs well.
Most of all, the illegality of teacher strikes allows opponents to claim the moral high ground. One observer in the Boston Globe
“Which is worse for a student: missing school for 11 days or attending a decrepit school with underpaid teachers for 12 years? Teacher strikes ultimately serve, not hurt, the public interest.”
argued, “Newton educators are teaching their students that breaking the law and thumbing one’s nose at a judge’s order are OK—if it is in your self-interest.” Never mind that a primary strike demand was to secure mental health support for students and that the union was willing to incur hefty fines to that end. On the contrary, Newton educators are teaching their students the importance of standing up for themselves and others.
What would it look like if employers faced the heat? Let’s flip the argument about civic duty: Even more than their employees, public sector employers like school committees bear the primary responsibility for providing public services. Employers should, by default, be held accountable for failing to successfully negotiate with their employees, as this failure impedes their duty to deliver services to the public.
To shift the burden onto employers, Newton voters must hold their city officials accountable at the voting booth. They can also support teachers by legalizing the right to strike. Ultimately, witnessing the teacher strike will provide students with a better civics lesson than any day in the classroom could.
Interview by Name ‘XX
Illustration by Name ‘XX
17
Interview Title An Interview with Interviewee Name
An Interview with Elfidar Iltebir
Truth and Solidarity for Uyghur People
Interviewee Description.
Elfidar Iltebir is the president of the Uyghur American Association, an organization dedicated to preserving Uyghur culture, serving the Uyghur diaspora, and engaging in activism to protect Uyghur human rights. Born in Ürümqi, Xinjiang (also known as East Turkestan), China, she grew up in Türkiye and has lived in the United States since 2000. Iltebir has led campaigns to raise awareness in the United States about crimes against the Uyghur people and to mobilize support for legislation opposing such crimes. She also provides translation services to community members. Outside of her activism, she is currently a structure analyst at an energy firm.
This is a question. Do not indent questions. This is a response. Do not indent responses unless it is the start of a new paragraph within the same response. There should be no extra line space between a question and a response. Line space should only be present between the end of a response and the beginning of a new question.
Mira Mehta: A lot of people don’t know or have denied the accusations that the Chinese government is committing genocide against the Uyghur people. What do you see as the biggest barrier to informing people about the situation?
Elfidar Iltebir: First of all, there is forced sterilization. The birth rate fell by 60 percent from 2015 to 2019. That is a way of proving that Uyghurs are being basically killed before they’re even born. Another part is children being separated from their families. When the parents are in concentration camps, forced labor factories, and prisons—sent or taken to those places— children are taken to state-run orphanages, boarding schools, and kindergartens. From age four to grade 12, kids are being separated from their families. Phase two is indoctrination: They have stripped away their language, their culture, their religion, their familial bonds—their world, basically. So that is another part that fits into genocide.
Another argument we Uyghurs make is that China has already studied the Genocide Convention, and they’re doing it with different tools than what we know as genocide. In the past, for example, in the Holocaust, there were mass killings in gas chambers. The Chinese government is not doing that, but they have DNA and full biometric data of all the Uyghurs in the camps, and they’re using us as a ready market for an organ harvesting business. Besides that, if you remember two years ago, Customs and Border Protection officials in New York confiscated 13 tons of hair. That’s hundreds of thousands of prisoners’ and detainees’ hair. And so they’re not
just keeping us away from our families and using us for forced labor, they’re also selling us piece by piece with our hair and our organs, using us as a testing zone for their medicines, for their technology, facial and voice recognition tools, and so many other things.
So this is definitely a genocide, but because of China’s strong control of its own internet, we are not providing enough videos and documents—like what’s going on in Israel, or Gaza, or Ukraine, or when there is an earthquake— for people to believe what is happening. When something happens somewhere else in the world, people share it. We still see leaked documents, leaked videos here and there on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok). But of course, there is very strong control. What we are hearing and seeing is the tip of the iceberg, basically. The Chinese government is also sending journalists away and not giving them access to forced labor camps. China is hiding them, and they’re very good at this—committing genocide behind closed doors and still enjoying impunity at the United Nations and elsewhere.
MM: You’ve talked about looking for solidarity and looking for people to take more action. What role do you think the United States can or should play in supporting Uyghur people?
EI: The United States has been playing a lot of roles so far, so I want to start with appreciation and gratitude. Some of that action is also linked to our hard work because some countries try to look at this issue as Western or US propaganda or exaggeration. It hurts me so much because we—as in Uyghurs—were asking for time off
from work for weeks and weeks and knocking on every single door on Capitol Hill, explaining what’s going on to every single Congress member. We wrote thousands of letters. We tried our best to raise awareness in the United States, and then US lawmakers began to understand what’s happening. Citizens of other countries don’t have access to their Congresses as we do in the United States. Here, we are, thank God, allowed to talk to our own Congress members and say, “I’m a US citizen, and this is happening to my family. This is happening to my hometown.” So in that way, we are lucky in the United States. And, back to your question, how can people in the United States help? They can still call their Congress members and senators to pass Uyghurrelated bills. So right now, there is one bill called the Uyghur Policy Act that helps protect Uyghur activists. It also has provisions for the United States to help the Uyghur cause. For example, it would increase Uyghur-cause-related work at the United Nations, increase coordination with other countries, and have the State Department appoint a special coordinator to handle Uyghur issues. That’s not the only bill, of course. There is also the Transnational Repression Policy Act, which protects Uyghurs on US soil, and a Uyghur organ harvesting bill. So, supporting things like that is one way the United States can help.
Edited for length and clarity.
Edited for length and clarity.
Interview by Mira Mehta ’25
Illustration by Carmina Lopez ’25
Cardinal Zyns
Democrats’ attacks on Zyns threaten to give the GOP an opportunity to target young voters
by Andreas Rivera Young ‘24, a History and Political Science concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR illustration by Sarah Mason ‘26, an Illustration major at RISD and illustrator for BPR
Zynbabwe. Lip Pillow. Zynnachino. Upper Decky.
These are just a few of the nicknames given to Zyns, flavored nicotine pouches that users place between their lips and gums. Zyns have flooded college campuses and achieved popularity similar to that of vaping in the 2010s, thanks to their prominence on TikTok, brand endorsements from professional sports leagues like Major League Baseball, and promotion by conservative celebrities like Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan. They now comprise 24 percent of the smokeless nicotine market despite being a relatively new product. Since Zyns do not contain tobacco, they present a lesser risk of gum cancer and other health risks typically associated with staples like chewing tobacco, making the product more attractive to many users.
The rising popularity of Zyns has attracted regulatory scrutiny. In January, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) urged the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate Zyns. He specifically cited the marketing practices of Philip Morris International—the company that sells Zyns—which he claimed target adolescents. While his mission is valiant, Schumer will need to build a larger coalition to battle against Republican lawmakers who have already weaponized his FDA referral. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), for instance, posted an image of himself with a tin of Zyns on X, captioning the post, “Come and take it, Chuck.” Tillis, like many other Republican leaders, is framing Democrats’ attempts to regulate Zyns as part of a broader attack on the freedoms of Americans.
The Republican strategy is potentially very
effective. Democrats appear Big Brother-esque, telling individuals what they can and cannot consume and exerting undue influence on the private sphere. Using this strategy, Republicans can target young voters, with whom they face a 21-point deficit in recent polls. Democrats also have to contend with intense lobbying efforts conducted by Philip Morris. The company, which has historically spent millions of dollars every year to pressure policymakers to loosen restrictions on the nicotine industry, purchased Swedish Match—the original fabricator and owner of the Zyn brand—for $16 billion in 2022. As Zyns have soared in popularity, Philip Morris has hired more lobbyists to pressure US lawmakers to ensure that federal regulators leave their new product alone. These lobbying efforts may explain some Republicans’ reluctance to regulate Zyns.
How can Democrats fight back? Most obviously, the party could try to focus attention on the health impacts of Zyns on young users rather than allow itself to be drawn into Republicans’ culture war framing. There is indeed inadequate research on the health outcomes of Zyn users, an issue that the FDA could easily resolve by funding more research on the topic. Nicotine has previously been shown to be particularly harmful for adolescents, who are at greater risk of forming an addiction due to their brain chemistry. Democrats should focus on researching Zyns’ health consequences instead of regulating and taxing the product for all users.
But Republicans may be able to portray even this limited regulation strategy as government overreach, as any potential broadside
against Zyns could be refashioned into a rallying cry against nicotine regulation as a whole. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has even had time to call for a “Zynsurrection,” referencing the January 6 insurrection. Messaging like Greene’s shows how drastically Republicans are spinning this issue to subsume it into the culture war. A potential avenue for Democrats to defuse this line of attack would be to engage groups such as Parents Against Vaping E-cigarettes to fight the blowback. By attracting parent groups, Democrats could position themselves as explicitly looking out for child safety rather than policing adult nicotine use.
Regulators will likely crack down on Zyns if dangerous health effects are discovered, just as they did with vaping a few years ago. Until then, however, Democrats should leave Zyns alone rather than rushing to regulate and tax them. Action more aggressive than the FDA referral will only give Republicans additional ammunition in the culture war. Many people addicted to nicotine will continue to use the substance no matter what the government does to stop them, so policymakers should focus on harm reduction rather than ending nicotine use outright. Democrats should center their messaging more explicitly on child safety and increased research funding while building a coalition of Zyn-skeptics in the long term. There are various ways to go about keeping Zyns out of adolescents’ hands, but rushing to regulate this product is a recipe for political disaster right before the 2024 elections.
Conceptions of Conception
How the GOP has been forced to choose popular opinion over pro-life allies
by Jesse Eick
’26.5, an International and Public Affairs and History concentrator
illustrations by Ruobing Chang ’25, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR
On February 16, 2024, in a scripture-filled concurrence for LePage v. The Center for Reproductive Medicine, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker asserted three ideals that form the “theologically based view of the sanctity of life adopted by the people of Alabama”: “(1) God made every person in His image; (2) each person therefore has a value that far exceeds the ability of human beings to calculate; and (3) human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.”
In the case, an 8-1 majority decided that “the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.” While one might expect abortion opponents to applaud this decision, LePage has created fierce competition between two flanks of the Christian right: those who want to protect “life” in its every form and those who support creating life through methods such as in vitro fertilization (IVF). In a post-Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health
Organization world, Republican leaders are stuck in a quagmire, forced to abandon their longtime anti-abortion allies on the issue of IVF for the sake of broader public opinion.
LePage was filed by three couples who underwent IVF treatment at a Mobile, Alabama fertility clinic. After each of the couples had given birth to healthy babies, they paid to cryo-preserve the additional embryos created during the IVF process for potential use in later pregnancies. However, the frozen embryos were accidentally destroyed after a patient opened one of the freezers in which they were stored. The plaintiffs posited that the destruction of these embryos constituted a wrongful death, violating the 1872 Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The Alabama Supreme Court agreed, transforming extrauterine embryos from property into persons entitled to rights.
In the week after the LePage decision was released, three IVF providers in the state— including the defendant in the case, The Center for Reproductive Medicine at Mobile Infirmary— halted their services for fear of legal repercussions. The IVF process often creates excess embryos, some of which might ultimately be disposed of due to inviability, genetic abnormality, or patients’ decisions not to use them. However, after the Court’s decision, any embryos
discarded in the state of Alabama will be legally considered murdered children. Employees at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, one of the clinics that paused its services, announced that they were “saddened that this will impact our patients’ attempt to have a baby through IVF, but we must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments.”
While this decision caused consternation in the medical world, it also sparked debates in Republican circles. Since the largely unpopular Dobbs decision, Republican leaders have struggled not to be cast as extremists in the abortion debate. IVF is a hugely popular procedure supported by 86 percent of Americans and 58 percent of Republican voters—supporting it enables Republican lawmakers to appear on the side of popular, common-sense policy. Moreover, in a world in which 42 percent of Americans say they or someone they know has used fertility treatments, IVF is an essential means of procreation. The GOP has historically been a family-values party and thus wishes to support modern medicine that can aid family expansion.
Consequently, in the weeks following the decision, congressional Republicans jumped to clarify their support for IVF procedures and those who pursue them. Senate GOP campaign materials advised candidates to “clearly state support for IVF” and “publicly oppose any efforts to restrict access” to it. Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) expounded that “there’s nothing more pro-family than supporting the birth of babies…I am absolutely certain that in vitro fertilization is a great thing, that God has given us this technology and we should use it.” In the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) said, “[W]e strongly support continued
“By attempting to stand on the side of IVF and public opinion, GOP leaders are threatening to shatter their union with the anti-abortion lobby—a union that has existed since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.”
nearing the end of his life, has incalculable value that deserves and is guaranteed legal protection.”
Rose’s tone quickly soured after Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed the bill shielding IVF providers from liability: She lamented, “Tragically, the Governor of Alabama has given the IVF industry a license to kill.” She further stated, “Politicians cannot call themselves prolife, affirm the truth that human life begins at the moment of fertilization and then enact laws that allow the callous killing of these preborn children simply because they were created through IVF.” Pro-life groups are even running ads against Republican representatives who vote to protect IVF, employing the disturbing images of scalpels, gore, and infants commonly found in anti-abortion campaigns. While this imagery is typically levied against pro-choice Democrats, anti-abortion groups are now attacking the prolife Republicans who were once their allies.
nationwide access to in vitro fertilization. We want to help loving moms and dads bring precious life into this world.” Three weeks later, the Alabama state legislature affirmed its support for the treatment, passing a bill to protect IVF providers from legal liability and rendering moot the anti-IVF implications of the LePage ruling.
However, while members of the Republican Party were vocalizing their support for IVF, anti-abortion political action groups across the country were celebrating the LePage decision. Following the ruling, Lila Rose, president and founder of the pro-life group Live Action, applauded the Court for recognizing that “[e] ach person, from the tiniest embryo to an elder
The fact that anti-abortion groups are targeting politicians they would typically support emphasizes the tension caused by the IVF issue. By attempting to stand on the side of IVF and public opinion, GOP leaders are threatening to shatter their union with the anti-abortion lobby—a union that has existed since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Perhaps this is a politically savvy move: Although the anti-abortion Christian right have been staunch supporters of the GOP establishment, their extreme views are by no means popular among the broader electorate. On the other hand, might losing such a loyal voting bloc hurt the Republican political cause? The full impacts of this fissure remain to be seen in November.
A Realist About Reasons
A world-renowned moral and political philosopher, T.M. Scanlon spent over 35 years at Harvard (and before that, at Princeton) as a scholar, teacher, and writer dedicated to addressing questions about morality, justice, and rights. One of his books, What We Owe to Each Other, became the basis of moral contractualism, a theory proposing that morality originates from agreements between people. It shapes contemporary thinking on everything from public health to economic equality to the fundamental social and political contracts that sustain our democracy. It also framed a four-season hit show on NBC called The Good Place, in which characters actively deploy the philosophy to redesign the afterlife.
Ariella Reynolds: In 1998, you published your seminal treatise on contractualism, What We Owe to Each Other, in which you say the judgments of right and wrong are “judgments about what would be permitted by principles that could not reasonably be rejected, by people who were moved to find principles for the general regulation of behavior that others, similarly motivated, could not reasonably reject.” What do I owe you? Do I owe you something different from what I owe my family?
T.M. Scanlon: This philosophy is about what we can justify to people in general. When I first wrote an article called “Contractualism and Utilitarianism,” which came out in 1982, I said that I was going to give an account of morality.
Interview by Ariella Reynolds ’27
Illustration by Carmina Lopez ’25
But by 1998, I’d narrowed my focus. Contractualism wasn’t everything you called morality. That is, you could try to justify, on the basis of contractualist principles, the duty to take care of your children. And I thought, there are other things that are clearly part of the morality of right or wrong in a general sense, and I wasn’t giving an account of all of that. Morality, as people commonly use it, doesn’t refer to a single subject. So I just redefined the subject as what we owed to each other. That was why I called the book What We Owe to Each Other
AR: You’ve said in other interviews that Michael Schur, the creator of The Good Place, discovered you—and contractualism—by way of one of your graduate students who was working on a paper about whether it was possible for human beings to improve. Do you think we are improving as human beings?
TMS: Mike Schur did a terrific job. It’s a wonderful show. And I was, of course, flattered that he liked my book. But he describes the kind of justification involved in contractualism as something like a real-time attempt to actually convince people, whereas I want to say an act is wrong if people would have good reason to reject any principle that permitted it—which isn’t a matter of whether they would agree to it in fact or not.
I’m inclined to think that an awful lot of people, maybe even most people, care about being good human beings by some standard of goodness, although they have very different standards of goodness in mind. I mean, part of the appeal of many religious doctrines is that they provide a model in which people can feel that they’re good people. But that’s just a hypothesis. And that doesn’t necessarily draw people together because they have different ideas about what makes people good.
AR: Three university presidents were unable to condemn open calls on campus for genocide against Jews. In your view, what does moral clarity require here? Did these presidents own their responsibility to it?
TMS: The presidents were actually trying to answer the question, and I thought they gave the right answer. I thought that what they said was, “It’s contrary to the idea of a university that university discipline should be brought down on people just because something they say is very seriously morally wrong.” People have to be able to debate about what’s morally right and morally wrong. But the basis of university discipline has to be immediate harm to other people. If I’m threatening you or saying things that genuinely cause you to feel your life’s in danger, then that’s a different matter. But the mere hatefulness of a person’s position isn’t, by itself, grounds for university discipline. I actually think that that’s the correct position, and they basically said that.
AR: The Founding Fathers relied on Enlightenment philosophers, but it doesn’t seem like our government still does. I interviewed Tom Nichols, a writer for The Atlantic, who said that our democracy is hanging by a thread. So you’d think now would be the time to bring back the philosophers. Why don’t they have a seat at the table?
“I’m inclined to think that an awful lot of people, maybe even most people, care about being good human beings by some standard of goodness, although they have very different standards of goodness in mind.”
TMS: It’s understandable that people are not just doing philosophy. And this is a point that Socrates makes in that dialogue: Often, people think of philosophical argument as being successful if it can be used to persuade other people, and that’s what we hope for. But I think a lot of people think they’ve already got their minds made up. They aren’t feeling any uncertainty about that, and they’re just trying to persuade other people or prevent other people from persuading third parties or something like that.
AR: You were part of a discussion group of 10 to 12 people back in your Princeton days with luminaries such as Tom Nagel, Ronald Dworkin, Robert Nozick, and many others. In an interview with The Utopian, you called this the most important time in your philosophical development. What made it so important?
TMS: Well, it was like having this gang of great teachers, for one thing. In my career, I was mainly doing logic, philosophy, mathematics, and things like that, although I was interested in moral and political philosophy, and I got more drawn into it because I was doing a lot of teaching in that area. So this was partly a way of developing more expertise in the field. Second, it was something that provided me with confidence that other people think that we’re not just banging things up, that there’s something there. And that gave me confidence in myself, because these people were willing to talk to me, and so I could be a member of this group, which was amazingly flattering. I was kind of a junior partner in the group, so I thought, “Wow, this is amazing.”
AR: What sorts of things are you working on now? I know you mentioned a set of articles. Anything else?
TMS: Well, I guess in the last couple of years or so, one of the main things I’ve been doing is trying to figure out what seems to be really defensible about contractualism. How does it need to be refined in order to be defensible, and what’s really mistaken or maybe confused about it? That’s not much fun. But on the other hand, you feel that you owe it to other people to do it. If you put these misleading ideas out there and somebody even made a television program out of them, then you have to do some damage control, right?
Edited for length and clarity.
The Student Sentinels
Universities must step up to protect their students from transnational oppression
When “Zooey,” a Chinese international student at the Berklee College of Music, put up posters on campus reading, “WE WANT FREEDOM—WE WANT FOOD ON OUR TABLES… STAND WITH CHINESE PEOPLE,” a fellow student and Chinese national, Xiaolei Wu, threatened to send police after Zooey’s family in China and to “chop [her] bastard hands off.” Wu tipped off the Chinese Public Security Agency, doxxed Zooey online, and bombarded her with physical threats on social media. Zooey sought help from her university, which prohibits stalking and harassment. However, Berklee turned her away and did not take action to protect her. It was not until the FBI arrested Wu and a federal court convicted him that the incident was resolved.
equitable access to political and civic life for all students.
Transnational repression is a daily reality for international students on American campuses— one that colleges and universities have been woefully complicit in. The refusal of administrators and faculty at American universities to acknowledge, much less resist, transnational repression means that universities play a key role in making such coercion effective. Its victims are left feeling abandoned and confused, with no trusted allies.
by Chiupong Huang ’27, an English concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR
illustrations by Lucia Li ’24, an Industrial Design major at RISD and Art Director for BPR
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and other authoritarian nations often attempt to quell dissent and political organizing beyond their borders by using a wide and evolving range of intimidation tactics. These techniques have involved police threatening loved ones in China both physically and financially, counter-organizing with the help of Party-funded Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs), online and offline verbal harassment, and surveillance and hacking. Such actions are part and parcel of what has come to be called “transnational repression,” an under-reported and under-addressed phenomenon in American colleges and universities. Universities must combat the use of violence and coercion that impede students’ First Amendment rights to ensure
Echoing experts and organizations that aid victims, I urge universities to create clear guidelines on reporting, prevention, justice, and security—all measures that lie well within universities’ purview. Creating a designated reporting mechanism that connects victims with a network of resources—such as government agencies and campus police—while allowing for potential prosecution is paramount to organizing any response to transnational repression. Furthermore, education for incoming staff and students regarding the rights they are entitled to is needed not only to warn potential perpetrators of consequences but also to illustrate avenues for otherwise disenfranchised students to enjoy their rights. Universities have already successfully employed similar structural protections to combat threats like drug and alcohol misuse and sexual violence. The threat of transnational repression deserves similar attention.
Administrators have refused to protect academic freedom against transnational repression
“University administrators assume that East Asian students are bookish, STEM-oriented, and docile and that their right to freedom of speech does not need to be protected because they do not use it.”
in countless instances like the one at Berklee. In 2023, Zhang Jinrui, a Georgetown Law School student and key organizer of pro-democracy activism at Georgetown, was harassed by a fellow student who was a member of the university’s CSSA branch. The harasser berated and pointed his phone camera at Zhang, telling his friends that he was video-calling Chinese authorities to report Zhang for his pro-democracy activism. Georgetown does not have a specified reporting mechanism for seeking aid or justice in such cases and has allowed its CSSA to continue operating on campus without condemnation. In 2020, members of the Brandeis University CSSA petitioned administrators to cancel a Zoom panel on
the Uyghur genocide. After the date, time, and link to the meeting were published on WeChat, the panel was Zoom-bombed by students who, using the platform’s shared screen draw feature, scrawled “BULLSHIT” over the presenter’s screen and played the Chinese national anthem. Brandeis administrators failed to condemn the act and did not attempt to hold the responsible students accountable. In 2022, a Columbia University student was punched unconscious at a pro-democracy protest. Still, the University refused to issue a public safety alert, signaling indifference toward such violence.
Victims of transnational oppression report that their conversations in seminars might be disclosed to the Chinese embassy and hesitate to enroll in courses on topics the PRC deems “sensitive.” Chuangchuang Chen told ProPublica, “If there are more than three or four Chinese students in the same class, you are scared to talk. A Chinese student is definitely seen in good favor by the Chinese government for reporting someone.” A Georgetown faculty member echoed this sentiment to Radio Free Asia , observing that Chinese students are unable to speak freely in classrooms out of fear that they will be reported by their classmates.
Why would American colleges and universities willfully ignore and tolerate transnational repression despite the obvious harm it creates on their campuses? For one, Chinese students bring in an estimated $12 billion in tuition each year. Without public pressure, universities are reluctant to take any action that would threaten their golden goose. Zhou Fengsuo, the president of Humanitarian China, remarked in an interview for Brown Political Review that universities are complicit in Chinese transnational repression: “They have become part of the problem by basically institutionalizing this fear. They do not want the Chinese student population to feel different from China. That means you are spreading the brainwashing, the fear, here.”
Some PRC-affiliated students and groups also weaponize the language of racial equity and social justice, exploiting the issue of antiAsian hate to pressure universities to ignore transnational repression. The Washington State University CSSA, for instance, hounded the University into removing posters protesting the treatment of ethnic minorities in China by claiming that the posters were racist toward Chinese people. The letter that the Brandeis CSSA sent to administrators urging them to cancel the Uyghur genocide panel also invoked the supposed anti-Asian racism of its target. While these CSSAs co-opt real concerns about racism to advance their agendas, universities’ refusal to defend their Chinese students from transnational repression reflects actual anti-Asian prejudice. This complicity communicates to these students that their safety, academic freedom, and quality of education are a second-class priority. Discussing transnational repression in his classroom, Professor James Millward of Georgetown University told ProPublica that “most Chinese students just want to get educated and get on with their business.” Millward’s statement reflects the attitudes of universities toward their Chinese students more broadly: University administrators assume that East Asian students are bookish, STEM-oriented, and docile and that their right to freedom of speech does not need to be protected because they do not use it.
University officials seem to forget that the purpose of repression is silence, and the invisibility of transnational repression speaks to its danger. While universities have little control over the policies of foreign governments, administrators cannot simply stand by and watch while the powers of an entire state are pitted against individual students. Students at risk of being targeted by foreign governments deserve to know that their universities will denounce their victimization and pursue their safety.
Benjamin Greenberg: Looking back to your career in the public sector at the White House, can you talk about your role as a deputy US trade representative?
Karan Bhatia: The role of the deputy USTR is to support the US trade representative, but also to be the focal point for the president’s trade policy, typically with some particular area of the world. There’s a geographic component to it as well as a substantive component. When I was there, my focal areas were Asia and Africa. This was back in the 2005 to 2007 period, which was a very active time in US international trade negotiations. One of the principal things that I spent my time on was negotiating the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement, which was the largest free trade agreement that the United States had ever done.
BG: At your confirmation hearing to become deputy US trade representative, you talked a lot about the importance of free trade and open markets for America. Can you talk a little bit more about why you think free trade is so integral to the United States?
KB: I think what we need to remember is that, at the end of the day, the United States, although the world’s largest economy, is still only 5 percent of the world’s population. So if you’re an American company, if you’re an American farmer or a rancher, if you’re an American worker, much of your potential opportunity actually lies outside of the United States. The growth of the US economy in many different ways is tied inextricably to those global markets. They are places that we sell to. They are places that we acquire
An Interview with Karan Bhatia
Creating Technology Policy
Karan Bhatia is the head of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google, a role he has held since 2018. He leads the company’s engagement with a broad array of public policy issues and oversees its involvement with government officials and key political stakeholders in the United States, along with more than 100 other countries. Bhatia previously worked at General Electric for a decade, where he led its government affairs function. Earlier in his career, he served in senior positions at the Departments of Commerce and Transportation. His last role was as deputy US trade representative (USTR) with the rank of ambassador, overseeing American international trade policy with Asia and Africa.
inputs from. Talent comes from abroad and goes abroad. Capital comes from abroad and goes abroad. The clear evidence is that the growth of the US economy means more jobs for people. Improved standards of living have been tied to globalization and international markets. So I’m a pretty unabashed advocate for trade and for globalization. And since being deputy USTR, I’ve had the privilege of working for two companies, General Electric and now Google, that are at the forefront of driving a lot of that globalization.
BG: Delving a little bit deeper into Google and government affairs, where do you see the future of government regulation of AI, especially in regard to the data security and intellectual property concerns that were brought up in the New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI?
KB: I think the regulation of AI is still in its early days. But we have already seen a number of steps taken. Europe has adopted something called the EU AI Act. In the United States, we’ve seen codes of conduct agreed to between the White House and some key technology companies. And we’re seeing a variety of regulatory and policy initiatives in this space around the world. I think that’s good. There is a need for regulation in this space. This is an incredibly powerful technology, and it does need some guardrails around it. But I also think that it is an incredibly exciting technology.
And what you’re seeing policymakers struggle with is: How do we address the risks without slowing it down, undermining it, or distorting the technology in ways that prevent us from
capturing the benefits, like unbelievable scientific advancements that might be made in medicine or in tackling problems like climate change, or just in becoming a more effective economy? I think that one significant issue is going to be: To what extent are there new laws that need to be developed to deal with this? Or do you rely on the existing legal infrastructure?
BG: That’s a really interesting perspective. If you could create the ideal law, let’s say, to improve internet security, what do you think that would be?
KB: Internet security is a great example of what I’m talking about here. You will see there’s a Financial Times op-ed that was published by Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, which talks about the role that AI can play in addressing cybersecurity. He clearly acknowledges that there are two sides to this coin—that yes, AI can be utilized by bad actors to strengthen their hand, but it can also be an incredibly powerful tool for protecting users and for strengthening cybersecurity. So, I think a big question for policymakers is: Are there very specific forms or applications of the technology that need to be limited, or do there need to be limits on the ability of that technology to be exported, used, or disclosed? That merits some degree of regulation. But I also think the other side is: How does government policy incentivize people to innovate in this space? How do we pull together a set of government policies that actually do result in AI being a net plus to cybersecurity, not a negative?
Edited for length and clarity.
Interview by Benjamin Greenberg ’27
Illustration by Carmina Lopez ’25
MAN VS. MOSQUITO
TWISTED TONGUES
by Nina Lidar
by Ashton Higgins
Aman Vora
A RACE TO THE END OF TIME
MaN v S. MOSquITO
The growing arms race between disease-carrying mosquitos and geneediting technology
From bed nets to insecticides, progress is being made to combat this terrifying rise. But the current generation of anti-mosquito tools is not aggressive enough to mitigate this deadly problem: Bed nets do little to stop Aegypti, which primarily feed on blood during the day, and toxic insecticides have only harmed the environment and driven mosquito resistance. In order to save lives from this man-made and mosquito-driven catastrophe, humanity must embrace its most promising scientific technologies: genetic engineering and Wolbachia bacteria, conscious that we are fighting against both Mother Nature and human nature itself.
Scientists have recently discovered a new ally in the fight against mosquitoes: the mosquitoes themselves. One tactic out of this playbook has been injecting the Wolbachia bacteria, which naturally occurs in over 50 percent of the
world’s species, into Aegypti mosquitoes. When a Wolbachia-infected female lays eggs, the bacteria prevents the progeny from acquiring and transmitting dengue, chikungunya, and Zika. Moreover, when a Wolbachia-infected male fertilizes eggs, the progeny will not hatch.
Science: 1. Mosquitoes: 1.
It’s a middle school math teacher’s favorite trivia question: What is the world’s deadliest animal? After images of a hunting tiger or towering gorilla flash through our imaginations, we remember that it is the humble mosquito, whose terrible impact on human lives and healthcare systems is only projected to grow. As carbon emissions continue to rise with no plateau in sight, one oft-forgotten implication of increasing global temperatures is the devastating impact they will wreak on public health, with historically ignored diseases now able to thrive in a new, warmer climate. With global temperatures barreling toward the preferred range for mosquitoes, the number of individuals at risk of contracting malaria and dengue fever may increase by four to seven billion by 2070 relative to 1999.
This threat is already a reality. Take dengue, for example: From 1980 to 1989, there were 1.5 million reported cases globally. Compare that to 2019 alone, when 5.2 million cases were reported. World Health Organization (WHO) officials described this astronomical rise in dengue as a “canary in the coalmine of the climate crisis.” No longer will mosquito-borne diseases primarily threaten equatorial regions—northern cities globally are at risk due to the rise of Aegypti and Anopheles mosquitoes.
Science: 0. Mosquitoes: 1.
“Scientists have recently discovered a new ally in the fight against mosquitoes: the mosquitoes themselves.”
The World Mosquito Program (WMP) has embraced this strategy, releasing hundreds of millions of both male and female Wolbachiainfected mosquitoes across 14 countries and protecting an estimated 11 million people as of December 2022. In the dengue-overwhelmed city of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, the release of Wolbachia-infected Aegypti mosquitoes reduced the number of symptomatic dengue cases by 77 percent and hospitalization by 86 percent. These promising results were replicated in Medellín, Colombia, with an observed 95 percent drop in dengue cases. And in Queensland, Australia, dengue was almost completely eradicated.
Science: 2. Mosquitoes: 1.
As with so many silver-bullet climate mitigation solutions, however, success stories fail to paint a full picture. The cost of mosquito-release programs is nearly $15 per person and far more expensive in rural areas. To blanket the world with Wolbachia mosquitoes, in essence seeking to outcompete the 100 trillion (and counting) existing mosquitoes, is infeasible. Though mosquito releases should be self-sustaining, scientists discovered that the Wolbachia bacteria weakens mosquitoes, reducing their ability to mate and pass on the Wolbachia infection to the next generation. This has contributed to infected mosquitoes failing to establish themselves in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Puerto Rico.
Making matters worse, scientists are fighting a dynamic opponent: Mother Nature herself. Given the rapid rates of mutations among arboviruses like dengue, it is not a matter of if, but when, the viruses will evade the protection brought on by Wolbachia—undoing decades of research.
Science: 2. Mosquitoes: 2.
As such, in conjunction with the more restrained Wolbachia approach, we must also turn to one of humanity’s greatest fears: gene editing. Oxitec, a biotech firm, has proven that its gene-drive technology can kill Aegypti without
by Aman Vora ’27, an Applied Math-Economics concentrator and Editor for BPR illustration by Alexandra Zeigler ’24, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR
the need for continuous mosquito release. Oxitec designed a kill gene that prevents the survival of female offspring but allows male progeny to survive and reproduce, passing on the kill gene. In Brazil, where Oxitec is commercially approved, the gene drive was linked to a 90 percent reduction in mosquitoes.
Even more thrillingly, University of California scientists designed a gene that prevents the spread of malaria in Anopheles mosquitoes. These scientists have set up a lab on the remote island of São Tomé and Príncipe and are awaiting legal approval to release a colony of their modified mosquitoes. Unlike the WMP or Oxitec approach, the efforts on São Tomé do not just seek to kill off a population of mosquitoes but rather fundamentally change the genetic makeup of a species.
Science: 3. Mosquitoes: 2.
Rightfully, these Jurassic-Park-esque technologies beg the classic eschatological question: What does it mean to mess with nature? Hesitancy is already circulating on the airwaves, with one Nigerian environmentalist, Nnimmo Bassey, writing of the stalled São Tomé project, “People cannot consent to what they do not understand. They’re just being used as guinea pigs.” In the Florida Keys, Oxitec trials were
halted after residents raised concerns about the gene-editing technology. Delusion runs rampant, with suggestions that “Bill Gates’ gene-edited mosquitoes” were responsible for an uptick in malaria cases after a release in Texas—a scientifically impossible feat.
Science: 3. Mosquitoes: 3.
While gene editing is an approach that must be undertaken with caution and proper monitoring, there is no reason to believe that modified mosquitoes pose any great threat to our well-being. Dwelling on future doomsday scenarios will do little to alleviate the catastrophe that we are facing today: 700,000 people die annually from mosquito-borne diseases. To not fight for these lives as best we can would perhaps be the greatest injustice humanity can inflict on itself.
The WMP, Oxitec, and University of California scientists sell a great story, and if they can succeed in eradicating dengue or malaria, it will undoubtedly be one of humanity’s greatest triumphs. But history tells us that it will certainly be a battle: As soon as funding for mosquito releases drops—an incessant risk when it comes to diseases classically associated with the Global South—or research into new dengue or malaria strains is forgotten, progress will stall. Wolbachia bacteria are not the silver-bullet, one-and-done
“To not fight for these lives as best we can would perhaps be the greatest injustice humanity can inflict on itself.”
solution that the WMP sells, and gene-edited mosquitoes will have to constantly change to counter the evolutionary pressure of mutating viruses.
Discovering a potential escape hatch for arboviruses should therefore not be taken to imply that other climate-driven diseases can be ignored or that the public health apparatus is sound. Rather, it should be a wake-up call for the world about the human-induced public health crisis at our doorstep.
We must recognize that the best way to mitigate deaths from this crisis is to prevent outbreaks from happening at all. With months of development required for each release of mosquitoes, no known cures for Zika or dengue, and rising global temperatures, there is little time to waste. It is essential to embrace this opportunity to stymie the rise of dengue and malaria—never forgetting that our savvy opponent is armed with millions of years of evolutionary experience. Despite fears of high costs, failures, and mutant mosquitoes, the time is now to embrace the humble mosquito as a technological weapon.
Science: 4. Mosquitoes: 3. For now, at least.
T w ISTED TONguES
The marginalized status of Arabic in Israel deepens ethnic inequality
In 2018, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed the Basic Law: Israel—The Nation State of the Jewish People. The law has since been widely derided for its discriminatory nature and codification of the ethnic tensions that have characterized Israel since its 1948 inception. It granted the right of self-determination only to Jewish citizens, declared the goal of Jewish settlement a national value, and established Hebrew as the sole national language, reducing Arabic to a “special status” language. The statuses of Hebrew and Arabic are especially pertinent in the context of larger Israeli society: Linguistic divides deepen the segregation that pervades Israeli municipalities and schools.
Language is foundational to social interaction. It dictates, perhaps more than any other facet of everyday life, one’s ability to function within a social network. Entrenched deeply within both Israeli ethnic communities and the Israeli education system is a stark lingual disparity: Hebrew is prioritized over Arabic. Instead of supporting all of its citizens, Israel actively operates against its Arabic-speaking populations by facilitating severely imbalanced cross-language comprehension between them and their Jewish counterparts. Moreover, the onus has been placed on the former group to accommodate and conform to the standards of the latter—resulting in
inequitable opportunity, entrenched bias, and media echo chambers that, among the native Hebrew-speaking majority, favor an Israeli nationalist perspective. Israel must reverse the tenets of the 2018 Nation State Law, reinstate Arabic as a national language alongside Hebrew, and fund and mandate the equal education of both languages in all public schools.
One of the starkest examples of systemic discrimination against Arab Israelis is visible in the nation’s education system. About 1.6 million students are enrolled in Israeli primary and secondary schools, but, as of 2016, only 2,000 students total attended joint Jewish-Arab schools. Instead, students overwhelmingly attend homogenous schools with curricula distinctly informed by ethnicity. In schools for Jewish Israelis, classes are in Hebrew; Arab students generally receive their education in Arabic. While learning Arabic is not mandatory for Jewish Israeli students, for Arab students, learning Hebrew is now required. The resulting disparity in language proficiency is staggering: About 90 percent of Arab citizens are fluent or near-fluent in Hebrew, compared to a meager 6 percent of Israeli Jews who speak Arabic. In a nation that is roughly 74 percent Jewish and 21 percent Arab—excluding the approximately 5 million Arabic-speaking Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories of Gaza and the West
Bank—these statistics indicate an undeniably two-tiered language system.
The composition of Israeli municipalities also reflects both the state’s and the major ethnic groups’ antipathy toward facilitating cross-cultural relations and ethnolinguistic equality. Despite the substantial size of Israel’s Arab population, ethnically integrated municipalities are remarkably uncommon. A mixed city in Israel is characterized by minority Arab enclaves within a majority Jewish municipality. As it stands, there are only eight mixed cities in total—or seven excluding Jerusalem, where the Arab population primarily lives in annexed East
“To now require all citizens to learn only Hebrew while leaving Arabic by the wayside represents a slap in the face to Israel’s already second-class Arab population.”
by Nina Lidar ’26, an English and Political Science concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR illustration by Xinyuan (Fiona) Song ’25, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR
Jerusalem and is excluded from Israeli citizenship. Moreover, only 10 percent of Israel’s Arab citizens live in these mixed cities. The remainder of the 134 recognized Arab municipalities in Israel are not mixed. Similarly, the majority of the nation’s Jewish population lives in predominantly Jewish cities. Unsurprisingly, in Jewish cities, people speak Hebrew, and in Arab cities, they speak Arabic. Visual markers of this linguistic difference pervade the city: In Jewish and mixed cities, the names of stores are written primarily in Hebrew, often with an Arabic inscription underneath, while the opposite is true in Arab cities. Street names and signs display a similar pattern.
The stark separation of Jews and Arabs and the attendant inequality between Hebrew and Arabic have caused ethnic fracture and deepened ethnic resentment. Changes to Israeli domestic law regarding language could reverse these trends by facilitating understanding between Jews and Arabs.
Such understanding has been sorely lacking even at the best of times, but the need for cross-cultural comprehension has been sharpened by the war in Gaza. Since the beginning of the war, Hebrew-language Israeli outlets have been near-uniformly pro-Israel. Even liberal Israeli publications such as Haaretz have largely focused on the trauma of October 7 and the return of the Israeli hostages. Mainstream Hebrew-language media often ignores the atrocities in Gaza and does not include the perspectives of Gazans; most allusions to these perspectives are oblique appendages to an Israel-centered narrative. If Israeli Jews’ Arabic language comprehension were better, the likelihood of Jewish engagement with Arabic reporting would be far higher. Such exposure could engender a greater understanding of Israel’s war crimes and potentially soften hardline stances on the war—which, in domestic Hebrew media, is largely framed as an appropriate and vital response to the events of October 7.
Indeed, Arab citizens within Israel are overwhelmingly opposed to the nation’s military
“Segregation will self-perpetuate for as long as the status of language continues to represent ethnic hierarchy. ”
for instance, has a significant number of native Spanish speakers—12.5 percent of the population—but conducts federal proceedings only in English and mandates that English be taught in public primary and secondary schools. It does not mandate Spanish language education. Many more countries across the world have adopted similar systems to manage multilingual populations. So why, given these similarities, should Israel receive criticisms from which others appear exempt?
The difference stems from Israel’s unique situation—in particular, from the recency and character of the nation’s establishment. In what is described in Arabic as the Nakba, or the “catastrophe,” the 1948 formation of Israel violently displaced around 800,000 Palestinians, some internally and others into surrounding countries and occupied territories. About 60,000 people in Israel today were born in 1948; in other words, living memory recalls a time when Hebrew did not reign. To now require all citizens to learn only Hebrew while leaving Arabic by the wayside represents a slap in the face to Israel’s already second-class Arab population. While a single national language is conducive to establishing equal rights and opportunity under one government, enforcing the domination of a language not natively spoken by a significant proportion of the population generates inequity and erodes culture.
actions in Gaza. While their ethnic ties to Gazans no doubt contribute to this sentiment, it is bolstered and informed both by their own systemically enforced abjection within Israel and the widespread consumption of Arabic-language media. It is too late for voting-age Israelis to receive adequate Arabic language instruction during this war, but the one-sidedness of domestic Hebrew-language coverage demonstrates the necessity of bolstering Arabic instruction for future generations.
Some might argue that the emergence of a dominant language under a unified government is necessary and inevitable. The United States,
Jewish-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian relations remain fraught, but a clear path lies before Israel regarding its attitude toward language: It must end the Nation State Law’s degradation of Arabic and actively prioritize the learning of Arabic for its entire Jewish population. Segregation will self-perpetuate for as long as the status of language continues to represent ethnic hierarchy. The ability of Israeli Jews to sympathize with Arabic-speaking fellow citizens and with residents of Gaza and the West Bank only stands to benefit from improved Arabic language ability. Arab citizens would recognize an increased level of respect and equitable opportunity with the reinstatement of Arabic as an official language in what is as much their homeland as Israel is for its Jewish population.
THE SOuTHERN SL av S a SuNDER
How Russia’s War to “repatriate” Ukraine might spell the end for its close ties to Serbia and its quest for Balkan hegemony
by Ashton Higgins ’26, a Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and Anthropology concentrator and Senior Editor for BPR
illustrations by Jason Aragon ’24, an Illustration major at RISD and Art Director for BPR
Exhausted by centuries of imperialism, 19th-century Slavic intellectuals proposed “PanSlavism”—or the unity of all Slavic peoples along shared cultural and political lines into a singular geopolitical bloc—as a defense against neighboring aggressors. The ideology has found footing with various movements throughout the Slavic world over the last two centuries. Most notably, Pan-Slavism has consistently been invoked by Russians to justify foreign expansion. In the eyes of Moscow, what is Slavic is Russian.
This push for Russian-dominated PanSlavism is being employed to justify the invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Russian control of Ukraine is necessary to protect against Western corruption of inherently “Eastern” Slavic lands. Despite the fact that Russia and Ukraine are separate states, Putin perceives Ukrainian ties with the West as a direct threat to Slavic unity.
While Russia might win the battle close to home, it could lose the war across the broader Pan-Slavic world. The invasion of Ukraine has sent ripples through Russia’s sphere of influence, and former allies are questioning their allegiance to Moscow. This is nowhere more evident than on the Balkan peninsula, home to the Southern Slavs. Although the Balkans may seem geographically distant from Russia, the region has a strong Slavic
history and identity and has faced strong pressure from Russia to join its Pan-Slavic orbit, with mixed results. Serbia—Russia’s strongest Balkan ally—is already facing internal dissent, and the current pro-Russian administration seems to be tottering. As Russia attempts to weaponize PanSlavism in its invasion of Ukraine, it might lose its already waning grasp on the Southern Slavs.
The Balkan Peninsula saw its first Slavic settlers arrive in the 6th century. Like Ukraine, the Balkans have been a borderland between various powers for millennia. Successive occupations by the Mongols, Ottomans, Austrians, and Germans cut the Southern Slavs off from their Eastern and Western counterparts and produced the variety
of ethnicities, cultures, and religions seen across the peninsula today. This unique diversity has wrought both extreme ethnic violence and strong Pan-Slavic unity at different points in history, creating a complicated web of geopolitical relationships on the peninsula today.
The unification of what is today Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, and Slovenia into Yugoslavia (literally, “Land of Southern Slavs”) in 1918 fostered decades of domestic peace and inclusivity, as the Yugoslav federation remained a member of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries even at the peak of Cold War polarization. Although the Yugoslavian project could be
interpreted as a feat of Pan-Slavism, such success was limited to unifying (most of) the Southern Slavs; for the majority of its history, Yugoslavia was not aligned with the otherwise Pan-Slavic Soviet Bloc that brought Eastern and Western Slavs together under the Warsaw Pact.
The breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 resurrected violence on the peninsula, as each newly born state stressed its ethnonationalism over its identification with the broader Slavic community. Serbia—as the holdout defender of the Yugoslavian federation—sought to assert itself as the preeminent Slavic state in the region, sparking much of the bitter conflict seen during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Bosnian Muslims faced ethnic cleansing and genocide at the hands of Serbo-nationalist militants, who still call for Bosnian reintegration with Serbia and support Russia today. Calls for Kosovar independence prompted further violence and ethnic cleansing from the Serbian army.
Against the backdrop of the fighting, the new post-Yugoslav nations sought international support to help rebuild their war-torn communities and gain global political legitimacy. Struggling to maintain hegemony over its Southern Slavic neighbors, Serbia turned to Russia (as the main proponent of Pan-Slavism) to bolster its self-proclaimed status as the beacon of Slavism in the
“As Russia attempts to weaponize Pan-Slavism in its invasion of Ukraine, it might lose its already waning grasp on the Southern Slavs.”
Balkans. Over the last two decades, Serbia has undertaken the task of doing Putin’s bidding throughout the Southern Slavic region in the hopes of becoming a major player in the broader Slavic pantheon. Although Serbia is a candidate for the European Union, many Serbs consider Russia to be their “greatest friend.” The European Union recently escalated pressure on Serbia to abandon its ties to Russia by making membership approval conditional upon whether Serbia joins all other members in sanctioning Russia for invading Ukraine. In response, Serbia signed a major three-year gas supply deal with Putin. But close Serbian allyship with Russia, coupled with severe trauma from prior Serbian aggression, has already pushed all other Balkan nations into the wide arms of the West. Since 2020, every Balkan state except Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia has become a member of NATO—and in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO has affirmed support for Bosnia’s imminent accession. Croatia recently joined Slovenia as a full member of the EU Schengen Zone, which the country’s internal minister hailed as “the final affirmation of our European identity.” Other Balkan states like Montenegro have expressed frustration regarding their stagnant EU candidacies and are determined to achieve accession soon. In response, Russia has launched multiple covert operations to foment unrest in countries
“Further cracks in Vučić’s legitimacy could spell the end for pro-Russian politicians in Serbia as opposition to the West becomes increasingly unpopular.”
The Serbia Against Violence protests facilitated a union of multiple opposition parties in the elections, calling for stronger democratic protections safeguarded by Western democratic institutions like the European Union and the United Nations. Vučić won in December, but only through fraud, intimidation, ballot stuffing, and even bussing voters in from Bosnia. These instances of democratic backsliding have left the Serbian public fed up with their Eastern alignment, with daily protests resuming to demand the elections be voided. Russia has responded by staunchly defending Vučić and the fairness of the elections.
Back in June 2023, Prime Minister Ana Brnabić said she was willing to resign if it would quell protests—a gambit widely seen as trying to take the pressure off Vučić. In March, Vučić announced that Brnabić would indeed step down amid government reshuffling following the December elections. Only a few days later, Vučić also announced that the Belgrade municipal elections would be rerun in June due to allegations of fraud. After nearly a year of antigovernment and pro-Western demonstrations, Vučić is feeling the pressure. Further cracks in Vučić’s legitimacy could spell the end for pro-Russian politicians in Serbia as opposition to the West becomes increasingly unpopular. Recent comments from Putin
claiming that international support for Kosovo should set a precedent for the recognition of pro-Russian breakaway states in eastern Ukraine have even made some pro-Russian Serbians feel betrayed by their closest ally.
Russia’s war for Ukraine is undercutting buy-in for Russian influence across the Balkans, including in Serbia, whose delicate balancing act between East and West looks increasingly untenable domestically. Shocking gun violence and democratic backsliding have pushed swaths of Serbs to align with Western integration and criticize Vučić as a singular corrupting force in politics. Russia might solidify its hold over Ukraine, but its grip on the Balkans is slipping. Instead of achieving the Pan-Slavic dream, Russia may be handing the Southern Slavs over to the Western pan-European order on a silver platter.
like Montenegro, with the aim of turning their governments back Eastward—mostly to no avail.
Russia’s Balkan ambitions could therefore be reaching a breaking point. And, although threats from the European Union seem to leave Serbia unfazed, escalations of Russian aggression and disdain for the current pro-Russian government in Belgrade have sparked massive domestic unrest that could sever Serbian ties to Moscow for good.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has become increasingly authoritarian while also making obvious overtures to Putin. Opposition to Vučić has been mounting for months due to his violent rhetoric—reminiscent of Putin’s in recent years—which many blame for inciting two mass shootings in May 2023 that claimed the lives of 17 people, most of whom were children. The resulting Serbia Against Violence protests continued for months. Vučić attempted to consolidate power in the wake of the unrest by spouting violent and nationalist rhetoric, using the police to suppress protests, and launching smear campaigns against the media and European Union, the latter of which he recently blamed for an alleged “destabilization campaign” against him. He also called a snap election in December 2023—a tactic he has used before when faced with declining popularity.
a NE w PRESCRIPTION
The role of alternative pharmacy models in the battle for affordable medicine
by Mitsuki Jiang ’27, an Applied Math-Economics concentrator, Multimedia Director, and Staff Writer for BPR
illustration by Lily Engblom-Stryker ’26, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR
Within the muddy waters of the US healthcare system lies a persistent and ever-growing problem: exorbitantly high drug prices. The cost of medications is on the rise, and over the past few years, 44 percent of Americans have chosen not to fill a prescription because of its price. In response, alternative pharmacy models have begun to disrupt the corporate-greed-driven pharmaceutical market by retailing drugs at far lower prices. These models show clearly that the drug supply chain operates more cost-effectively when simplified. Drawing from these alternative pharmaceutical models, the federal government should consider strategies to gradually eliminate reliance on the pharmaceutical middleman.
The drug pricing structure of traditional pharmaceutical models is unnecessarily complex. The supply chain begins with the manufacturer and then passes through pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), wholesalers, and/or pharmacies before reaching the consumer. PBMs facilitate negotiation between drug manufacturers and pharmacies, determining which drugs are available to the public and at what cost. Many manufacturers sell products to PBMs at discounted prices in exchange for having their drugs positioned opportunely on formularies, or lists of insurance plans’ preferred medications. However, consumers do not reap the rewards of
this quid pro quo, as PBMs keep the profits. Thus, as PBMs avariciously demand higher and higher discounts, manufacturers raise their drug prices to compensate, leaving consumers with bloated prescription prices. PBMs also drive up consumer costs through other unsavory practices, many of which are shrouded in secrecy.
Drug prices have increased by 313 percent since PBMs became more active in the drug market in 2006, forcing patients to massively overpay for their drugs while PBMs hide their profit margins from public view. And, troublingly, the three largest PBMs control 79 percent of the market and operate under just three insurance companies, rendering peer accountability impossible.
In contrast to these opaque business practices, new, alternative pharmacy models are prioritizing transparency in their pricing structures. In January 2022, businessman Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs launched its online pharmacy, with over 100 medications sold directly from manufacturer to consumer, eliminating the middleman. The company sells all drugs at just 15 percent more than their manufacturing cost, plus a $5 pharmacy labor fee and a $5 shipping fee. Now, over two years later, it has expanded to sell 2,200 drugs directly to patients. Often, the difference between the price on the Cost Plus Drugs website and the generic retail price is shocking. For example, Imatinib (generic for Gleevec, a medication used to treat cancer) sells at a colossal retail price of $2502.50 yet costs only $13.40 on Cuban’s website.
Cost Plus Drugs is not the only alternative pharmacy entering the game. Amazon is trying out a subscription service that gives unlimited access to over 50 generic medications at a flat monthly fee of $5, while GoodRx helps consumers identify the cheapest drug prices in their immediate vicinity. These companies are undeniably shaking up the drug market by making thousands of generic drugs more accessible than ever before.
But for brand-name drugs, which accounted for almost 80 percent of prescription drug spending in 2018, alternative pharmacy solutions fall
short. Cost Plus Drugs, for example, almost exclusively offers generic drugs, which are already 80 to 85 percent less expensive than their branded alternatives. This is particularly troublesome because more than 500 branded drugs do not yet have a generic counterpart—and new, cutting-edge medications are particularly prone to lacking an unbranded option. Since brand-name drugs are protected under patents, manufacturers have the right to sell them at any price. Thus, drugmakers typically don’t sell brand-name drugs for less than their sticker price unless they are incentivized to do so.
Cultivating a world where all pharmaceutical drugs are accessible thus requires more than just alternative pharmacy models: It also necessitates extensive reforms that tackle the underlying issues inherent in a PBM-centric system. The federal government must take a page from successful alternative models to implement holistic solutions. In the immediate future, the government must improve transparency in the market by mandating the disclosure of PBM pricing practices. In the long run, the government ought to foster competition within the pharmaceutical industry by encouraging the expansion of alternative pharmacy options to sell more medications, including brand-name drugs. Taken together, these measures could erode the power of PBMs.
By prioritizing health outcomes over financial gains, alternative pharmacies embody the potential for radical change in the pharmaceutical industry. They are a wake-up call for reform in the drug market—a call the federal government must now answer.
a RaCE TO THE END Of TIME
The approach of
“Q-Day” threatens to leave the Global South behind
Cryptographers are preparing for the end times. “Q-Day”—the moment when quantum computers become sufficiently advanced and accessible that commonplace digital security systems are instantly rendered unviable—is fast approaching. But Q-Day’s apocalyptic effects will not be felt equally. The unique inability of developing nations to safeguard against digital vulnerabilities threatens to resurrect the techno-colonialism of the Cold War.
The security of commonplace cryptographic systems rests on computationally difficult math problems. Cracking the RSA cryptographic security protocol, used for secure communication and digital authentication, requires factoring a number hundreds of digits long, a task that would take a classical computer trillions of years to accomplish. The gravity of the threat posed to traditional cryptographic systems by quantum computers—a nebulous topic for most—stems from their fundamental makeup. Whereas their classical counterparts rely on lines of binary bits (zeros or ones), quantum computers utilize ‘qubits,’ which exist as a simultaneous superposition of zeros and ones. As a result of qubits’ improved data-storing capabilities, quantum computers are incredibly quick: In 1994, mathematician Peter Shor demonstrated that a large quantum computer could crack RSA in just 10 seconds.
Though experts have insisted that a functional quantum computer has been decades away for the past 30 years, credible evidence now suggests that Q-Day will occur within the decade. Last year, Harvard’s Quantum Initiative derived a working solution to the high error rate of qubits, which had previously rendered quantum computers unreliable. IBM is shifting toward developing compatible software, paving the way for quantum computing to become widely accessible.
The prospect of unhindered decryption and global surveillance has spurred many of America’s peers to develop their own quantum computers. Russia produced a 16-qubit system last July and China is already poised to outstrip US private-sector development. Last year, McKinsey estimated that the Chinese Communist Party spent $15.3 billion on quantum computing research, far exceeding the US government’s $3.7 billion. In response, the Biden administration floated restrictions on American investment in Chinese-led production of quantum hardware.
Should a foreign rival develop a quantum computer, the implications for international security will be profound. Secure communication with overseas spies will become infeasible, military operations will be impossible to effect covertly, and diplomatic negotiations will no longer be able to occur digitally. Quantum computers will offer as much insight into our virtual past as our virtual future: Numerous intelligence agencies are storing encrypted internet traffic now to decrypt later, thereby gaining access to swathes of digital communications from the past decade.
While the growing competition between the United States and China to improve quantum hardware and software garners international attention, a quieter—though no less urgent— race to shore up digital defenses rages in the background.
Last year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) endorsed the CRYSTALSKyber algorithm as a quantum-safe alternative to public-key cryptography. Unlike RSA, the security of the CRYSTALS-Kyber algorithm, a ‘lattice-based’ cryptosystem, relies upon a math problem whose complexity surpasses even quantum computers’
“Nations with access to and defense against quantum computing stand to exploit those with insecure data.”
computational ability. While lattice-based cryptography is still maturing, it is widely accepted as the most economical successor to existing quantum-unsafe cryptography.
This is hardly a free lunch, however. The switch to quantum-safe cryptosystems is a tall order, even for wealthy nations. The complete overhaul of digital security standards is still embryonic, as NIST remains bogged down in ensuring the safety of CRYSTALS-Kyber and its sibling systems. Nor will the transition be quick: The widespread implementation of new standards for symmetric-key cryptosystems (another type of quantum-unsafe cryptosystem) in 2001 and secure communication in 1998 each took over 15 years to complete. Even eliminating the usage of public-key cryptography is a Sisyphean task: Many corporations are woefully unaware of which quantum-unsafe cryptosystems are ingrained in their software, necessitating a full rewrite of widely used programs.
We are not moving quickly enough. Above all logistical issues, the time-frame challenge is most harrowing: The Biden administration’s deadline for migration to lattice-based cryptography is 2035, a date that will likely lag far behind Q-Day, which could be five years away. The federal government’s first—albeit skeletal—step toward ensuring digital privacy must be the rapid
by Daniel Kyte-Zable ’27, an Applied Math concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR illustration by Larisa Kachko ’26, a Painting major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR
implementation of CRYSTALS-Kyber in the state’s most critical functions, such as Department of Defense and CIA communications, and in digital commerce to prevent a possible financial collapse. NIST also cannot abandon the private sector, which will need support to secure its systems and transition to a post-quantum future.
But while the United States and other developed nations at least possess the infrastructure to prevent digital cataclysm, such infrastructure is inaccessible to much of the Global South. Postquantum migration requires clear, top-down protocols—a challenge for governments operating in wartime or combatting financial precarity. Nations without wealthy private sectors to test protocol development will struggle further. Implementing lattice-based cryptosystems will be a remote concern for countries with already unreliable digital infrastructure.
Reliance on classical cryptosystems will cripple the evolution of the Global South in a post-quantum world. Internet access and digital development, crucial steps for internal economic growth, are conditioned on cybersecurity. Quantum computing will render advancements toward secure telecommunications and online banking redundant—threatening to return developing nations to the pre-digital era. Additionally, the vulnerability of cryptocurrencies risks disaster for middle and lower-income nations reliant
on them, as a quarter of all Bitcoins currently in circulation are susceptible to theft by quantum computers. Abandoning cryptocurrencies without a secure digital banking alternative will further divorce developing nations from global markets.
Q-Day’s gravest possible repercussion is a resurgence of the techno-colonial relationship between the “Third World” and the West that first arose during the Cold War. Amidst struggles for global influence with the Soviet Union in the 1950s, the CIA partnered with Crypto AG, a Swiss manufacturer, to sell ciphers (a precursor to digital cryptosystems) to non-aligned nations that could not manufacture their own. These ciphers
contained weaknesses that only the CIA could exploit, thereby allowing the United States to “read approximately half” of all secret messages dispatched by said states.
As US-China competition grows fiercer, either power could leverage its quantum computers to surveil exploitable nations, disrupt their governments’ digital procedures, and threaten the free election of “undesirable” candidates by manipulating electoral data. The modern world order may regress to the exploiter-exploited relations of 19th-century imperialism. Nations with access to and defense against quantum computing stand to exploit those with insecure data. The stakes are clear: Spurred by global posturing and jingoism, the US-China quantum race could decide the war for influence over Asia and Africa—and disable the superpower status of the losing party.
The Global South’s existential danger could be easily mitigated, should a benevolent power furnish it with the resources to implement CRYSTALS-Kyber. Pragmatically, though, it is unlikely that such a benefactor will be found, and the Global South will again lose a fight it did not wage. History repeats itself—and if no radical change occurs soon, the already vulnerable will find themselves in dire straits when Q-Day finally arrives.
Cherry-Picked Charity
The shameful origins of Sweden’s welfare state
by Cecilia Hult ’26, an English and Political Science concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR
by Ayca Tuzer ’24, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR
The deal was simple. She was a 23-year-old single mother of two children in Sweden during the early 1950s. Hindered by a battle with alcoholism, she struggled to care for her children. Now, she had fallen pregnant for a third time. She was too young and too busy. Without the resources and stability to take care of another child at that moment, she wanted an abortion. But, at the behest of the Swedish state, her request would only be granted if she agreed to a condition: irreversible sterilization.
This is not a story of violated due process or a legal misunderstanding. Rather, this is how the well-oiled mechanism of state-mandated sterilization functioned in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark for most of the mid-20th century. Swapping the request for an abortion for gender reassignment surgery, the same deal was forced upon transgender individuals in these four countries well into the 21st century—even as recently as last year in the case of Finland. Of all these nations, however, Sweden stands out as the principal proponent of sterilization policies, sterilizing an estimated 63,000 individuals between 1934 and 1976. A prime example of the dangers of welfare state government overreach, Sweden’s compulsory sterilization policies reveal a dark undercurrent to the Nordic welfare model’s success, in which national cohesion stems from a systematic erasure of undesirable differences.
Sweden’s first sterilization law went into effect in 1934 and its second in 1941. Between the two laws, the state granted itself the ability to sterilize those it considered either likely to give birth to children with disabilities or unfit to raise a child—in other words, those deemed
illustration
“In addition to being a blatant human rights violation, this was a state believing in its own right to forcibly impose a moral code of chastity onto its citizens. Consent was utterly irrelevant. Bodies were left mutilated and amputated at the state’s bidding.”
“feeble-minded,” antisocial, mentally ill, or physically disabled. During this same period, Sweden began to develop into a modern welfare state, implementing reforms ranging from universal health insurance to affordable housing programs. Among the reforms was a series of policies focused on raising the birth rate in the wake of World War II. While most of the population celebrated the introduction of maternity aid and childcare benefits, parents who needed this new state support the most found themselves tangled up in the strings attached. Many people, primarily women, were told they could only receive certain benefits if they agreed to be sterilized.
The Swedish welfare state openly acknowledged the necessity of removing “undesirable elements” from society to ease policy implementation. During debates in the Swedish Parliament, proponents of the sterilization laws cited the care costs of “mentally defective” individuals as an explicit economic motivator for implementing the legislation. The children of “feeble-minded” parents were deemed likely to become the state’s responsibility, and the cost of expanding social assistance was seen as simply too high if that assistance required accommodating a high proportion of “mentally deficient” individuals. Sterilization thus aimed to ensure that future generations of Swedish citizens would be composed of only the optimal candidates for state support, or those who—ironically—would need it least.
Government-sponsored sterilization permeated beyond just active requests for state aid or even conditional benefits. IQ tests mandated by child protection services deemed the children of families in poverty to be “feeble-minded,” and their low scores were used to justify sending them to state mental institutions where they would then be sterilized. A 13-year-old girl faced the procedure after her priest believed she had not been concentrating during confirmation class. Another schoolgirl was similarly sterilized for having subnormal intelligence that was, in actuality, a result of her undiagnosed nearsightedness. Sometimes, the state would not even tell the individual what was occurring, pretending the operation was an appendectomy for fear that they would be overly promiscuous if they knew they could no longer get pregnant. In addition to being a blatant human rights violation, this was a state believing in its own right to forcibly impose a moral code of chastity onto its citizens. Consent was utterly irrelevant. Bodies were left mutilated and amputated at the state’s bidding.
After 40 years of implementation, the initial sterilization laws were finally overturned in 1976. Nonetheless, this period of Sweden’s modern history reveals a key danger of its welfare state: Its level of reach into the lives of its citizens can
easily result in coerced civil rights violations that are sponsored by an unprincipled government. No financial compensation can undo the policy’s success. The generational legacy exists in what is now absent: unbroken family lines. Instead, the majority of sterilized individuals are destined to be descendant-less.
The repeal of the 1934 and 1941 laws was by no means the end of state-mandated sterilization in Sweden. Four years before 1976, Sweden implemented a new iteration of this eugenics program, requiring sterilization for anyone seeking a sex-change operation. In another ironic coupling of progressive politics with conservative social ideals, Sweden became the first country in Europe to formally allow preferred gender recognition but, once again, on the condition of either infertility or active sterilization. The social motivations for this stipulation were the same as before. The Swedish government had an idea of what constituted a good parent and believed its duty was to prevent “problem parents” from raising “problem children.” When this stipulation was finally repealed in 2012, it was not by the Swedish government’s choice but rather due to a long overdue ruling by the Stockholm Administrative Court of Appeals that the law was unconstitutional and incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
Sweden’s trajectory of sterilization laws is not unique. Sterilization programs were in effect in Norway from 1934 to 1977, in Denmark from 1929 to 1967, and in Finland from 1935 to 1970. Likewise, infertility through sterilization was a requirement for preferred gender recognition in all the aforementioned countries until the 2010s, with Finland only changing its policy in 2023 as a result of court intervention rather than legislative repeal. This is one shared story with the same motivations, effects, and legacies playing out across Nordic countries over the last century. It is a story that offers the Nordic model a new definition: a model in which the provision of welfare services originates in the intentional refinement of the population to those deemed maximally self-sufficient and socially homogeneous. Through forced sterilization, all of these nations unashamedly curated their own futures in accordance with a uniform idea of morality, maturity, and idealized citizenry. They attempted to condition “undesirable elements” out of existence.
An Interview with Andrew Yang
Forward Thinking
Andrew Yang is an entrepreneur, author, and former Democratic presidential candidate known for his advocacy of Universal Basic Income (UBI). Yang graduated from Brown in 1996, where he earned a degree in Economics, and later received a law degree from Columbia. In 2018, Yang announced his candidacy for the 2020 presidential election, gaining significant attention for his proposal to provide a ‘Freedom Dividend,’ a form of UBI, to every American adult. Although he did not secure the Democratic nomination, his campaign brought issues like automation to the forefront of national discourse. Following his presidential run, Yang founded the Forward Party, focusing on electoral reform and promoting ranked-choice voting.
Zoe Targoff: How did you decide to start the Forward Party? What are its founding principles?.
Andrew Yang: I realized that our two-party system right now is built with perverse and distorted incentives for our representatives. The numbers I like to use are that Congress has approximately a 15 to 20 percent approval rating and an incumbent reelection rate of 94 percent. So if you look at that system, you say, “Wait, how can four out of five Americans be unhappy or upset about whatever is happening legislatively and have essentially 19 out of 20 people get reelected every time?” It’s because about 90 percent of the congressional districts in the country are drawn to be noncompetitive in general elections. If you go
Interview by
Zoe Targoff ‘26
Illustration by Carmina Lopez ‘25
to the primary, you might have an impact in some cases, but even then, it’s quite rare, certainly at the congressional level. So, I realized that we needed to change our system of incentives, starting with changing our primaries from being so closed and partisan, where 8 percent of Americans effectively choose 83 percent of the members of Congress, to nonpartisan primaries and ranked-choice voting. There is no way to make those changes from within the two-party system. Let’s say I was a Democrat running around saying, “Hey, change the way you vote for people,” then everyone would think it was a “blue” plot. But also, it turns out that some of the people who are resisting this change the most are institutional Democrats because they see right now exactly what’s needed to win. If more people voted in a new type of primary system, then they might actually have to change their ways. So that’s what led me to start the Forward Party.
ZT: Could you explain a little bit more about how rankedchoice voting works logistically and how it would help?
AY: Let’s say there were five of us running for Congress. The way ranked-choice voting works is that you can rank multiple candidates, let’s say one through three; you could conceivably rank all five, but that’s very rare. And whoever gets majority support wins. So if on the first ballot you, Zoe, have 51 percent of the first-place votes, then you win, and that’s the way it’d work in any system. But let’s say none of us gets 51 percent on that first ballot. Rankedchoice voting takes the least popular candidate and then looks at those ballots and says, “Okay, who do these people choose second?” So then the fifth candidate’s supporters get reallocated based upon who their second choice was, and you repeat that process until one of us gets over the 50.1 percent mark.
So the effects of this are, number one, none of us can be a spoiler, because right now if I run and I draw votes away from the Democrat, then people would say, “Oh, I can’t vote for you.” But in this system, they could vote for me and then the Democrats second, and everyone would be cool. The other thing is that it discourages negative campaigning, which has been shown to hurt women and minority candidates. I think women may have a more conciliatory and consensus-building approach, which benefits from rankedchoice voting. It also allows new parties to emerge without any fear of “messing it up.”
ZT: Do you think the Forward Party could help alleviate the increasing polarization in American politics that we have right now?
AY: That’s very much the design. Because again, if you have both major parties who are beholden to the most extreme and ideological 8 to 10 percent, then you have a lot of folks who feel left out. And the polarization is leading to hostility and animosity, and in some cases even conflict and violence. So imagine a system where people could vote however they wanted and different points of view could emerge.
Even if you had a three-party system in the United States, it would be a dramatic improvement over the current system. Right now, politicians will literally withhold major legislation and solutions because they’re afraid it’s going to make the other side look good—and you’re seeing that
“So imagine if there was a third party with even two US senators and 10 members of Congress who could look at both sides and say, ‘Look, we’re just here to get the people’s business done.’”
right now with an enhanced child tax credit bill that passed the House. Our Republican senators said, “We don’t want to give Biden a win, even though that would lift 400,000 American children out of poverty.”
My organization, Humanity Forward, has been encouraging that bill to pass. And the fact that it’s being held up for nakedly political reasons should make us angry, but it’s also totally the norm, and both sides are doing it. So imagine if there was a third party with even two US senators and 10 members of Congress who could look at both sides and say, “Look, we’re just here to get the people’s business done. We don’t care about who looks good or bad. So if either side comes and brings it to us, we’ll do it.” And in this system, that would be a game changer.
ZT: What do you think, if anything, Brown students can do to move us forward as a democracy and create a better political environment?
AY: I remember being your age and feeling a strong desire to make the world a better place. However, I also recall the uncertainty that came with it—the sense of not knowing where to start. Even as I considered various paths and actions, there was always this nagging doubt in the back of my mind, questioning whether my efforts would truly make a difference. It’s a common struggle for those who aspire to create positive change, wrestling with the fear that their chosen course might not ultimately be effective. What I would suggest to folks is that, after you really dig into the issues, you start to realize that we’re being set up and manipulated by a corrupting system that is not trying to make our lives better. And it’s not making our lives better because it doesn’t have to. I want people to dig into some of the structural incentives and know that if we improve the design, we can free our leaders and public servants to do the right thing by us and be rewarded for it. Right now, we’re asking them to do things that will end their careers, essentially.
Edited for length and clarity.
Everybody Wants to Rule the Motherland
The Russian opposition seems no closer to uniting after the death of Alexei Navalny
by Bryce Vist ’25, an Economics and International and Public Affairs concentrator and Editor in Chief for BPR
illustrations by
Maria Hahne ’24, an Illustration major at RISD and Art Director for BPR
The death of Alexei Navalny on February 16, 2024 was equally shocking and unsurprising. Few expected Navalny’s confinement in an unusually strict Siberian penal colony to end happily, and his death spurred a dizzying set of tributes and memorials as supporters laid flowers at Russian embassies across the world. Within Russia, thousands of mourners braved government repression to pay their respects at his grave—many later ended up detained.
The West crowned Navalny the unquestioned leader of the Russian anti-Putin opposition for many reasons. He had been a nationally recognized politician since at least 2013, when he nearly won the mayorship of Moscow, and the anti-corruption exposés carried out under the auspices of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) successfully embarrassed the Putin regime at home and abroad. Moreover, Navalny’s willingness to return to Russia despite repeated assassination attempts won him a passionate following. Thus, after his death, Western news media was quick to refer to him as the opposition’s “brightest star” and the regime’s most “formidable opponent.” This idolization begs the question: If Navalny is gone, what is to become of the Russian opposition?
The answer is more easily supplied than most would expect. The Russian opposition will likely continue along exactly the same path as it trod before, tripping the same snares and making the same blunders. The reason for this admittedly pessimistic assessment is that Navalny was not the leader of the “Russian opposition” but merely the standard-bearer of its largest sect. In contrast to what outside observers might presume, Navalny showed little interest in merging his bloc with others to present a united front. His successors are gearing up to repeat the error.
What are the factions of the Russian opposition, and what keeps them divided? The three largest are those headed by Navalny (and now his wife Yulia Navalnaya), Maxim Katz, and the tag team of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Garry Kasparov. A survey of 2,088 signatories of the largest petition against the war in Ukraine found that 26.3 percent supported Navalny as opposition leader, 21.7 percent supported Katz, and 13.8 percent supported Khodorkovsky and Kasparov, while 14.1 percent opted for “none of the above.”
The sharpest divide is between the Navalny and Katz camps. Katz, who now lives in Israel, got his start as Navalny’s lieutenant during the 2013 Moscow mayoral race. Though Navalny’s team was initially quite complimentary of Katz’s skills and talents, the two later fell out sharply. In 2016, Navalny referred to Katz as a “dishonest person and just a crook.” Katz replied that Navalny disliked the existence of an “alternative center of power” within the opposition—in other words, Navalny was more interested in leading
the opposition than seeing it succeed.
These personal attacks set the stage for larger feuds on matters of policy. Prior to the 2024 Russian presidential election, Katz put forth the view that the opposition should unite around a shared slate of candidates rather than boycott the election or protest at polling stations. In response, Navalny, in a message from prison, told Katz to “go to hell,” and the chair of the FBK likewise instructed him to “stop selling pink unicorn snot.” Navalny’s organization instead encouraged Russians to pick and choose their votes carefully, boycotting the most obviously rigged elections and coming out in force in unexpected, lower-stakes contests, such as those for the Yekaterinburg city legislature.
The last remaining faction, led by former oligarch Khodorkovsky and former World Chess Champion Kasparov, espouses an even stronger view against elections than the Navalny camp: no voting under any pretense. Khodorkovsky first made international headlines when he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2005 on politically motivated charges. Since his release in 2013, he has become an anti-Putin crusader, creating the Open Russia civil society organization—which was shut down by the Kremlin in 2021—and teaming up with Kasparov and his Free Russia Forum. Khodorkovsky’s relations with Navalny have also been strained: He implied in a 2017 interview that Navalny would become another Putin should he come to power and reiterated Katz’s complaint that Navalny believes “there can only be [one] leader.” Immediately after Navalny’s death, Khodorkovsky was quick to renew the call for a big-tent opposition coalition and cast Navalny as the main obstacle to accomplishing it in the past.
If the only division within the Russian opposition was on the question of voting in elections, there would be serious hope of reconciliation. Unfortunately, this split is just one of many. Opposition supporters cannot agree on whether the invasion of Ukraine should be abandoned entirely or prosecuted to the full despite its initial inadvisability, as the anti-Putin, right-nationalist Roman Yuneman argues. Nor can they agree on the antecedent questions of whether the 2014 invasion of Crimea was illegal or whether the peninsula should be returned. They are split evenly on whether a democratic Russia should permit the secession of ethnic-minority republics. There is not even consensus on whether or not the killing of pro-war propagandists is acceptable, with roughly 29 percent saying it ought to be. And all of these policy differences do not account for a definite left-right divide among opposition supporters, with roughly one-third describing themselves as firmly right-of-center and one-fifth as firmly left-of-center.
Some may have hoped that the death of
“The Russian opposition will likely continue along exactly the same path as it trod before, tripping the same snares and making the same blunders.”
Navalny would serve as a wake-up call for the remaining opposition leaders to put aside their personal and political differences, but initial indications have been far less than promising. Following Navalny’s death, Yulia Navalnaya has taken up his mantle as the “leader of the opposition.” Like her late husband, she has refused to build bridges with the disparate camps the Western media so readily marginalizes. For instance, on her personal X account, Navalnaya has trashed fellow opposition member Boris Nadezhdin for suggesting that people should be allowed to criticize Nalvany. Navalnaya can certainly be forgiven for an outburst in a time of grief, but such words do not build coalitions. The rancor between Katz and Navalny supporters has not lessened either, with Katz obliquely criticizing the latter group’s attitude of “learned helplessness” with respect to the most recent elections.
And if all of this was not enough, the Russian opposition has yet to confront its other fundamental problem: It is not popular. Though good polling is very difficult to conduct in Russia, a reputable independent pollster, Russian Field, found that, when offered a choice between Putin and “a worthy candidate of views similar to yourself,” 47 percent of voters opted for Putin. In other words, almost half preferred Putin over the candidate of their dreams. Additionally, 58 percent perceived Putin as the candidate “most aligned with their interests.” Though 58 percent may not be the 87 percent that Putin received in the sham presidential election, it still represents a larger popular majority than any US president
has received since 1984. If there was a genuine groundswell of popular support against Putin, the fact that the opposition spends nearly as much ammunition on itself as it does on Putin would not be fatal. But that is not the case, and every barb hurled from one oppositionist to another only makes the Putin regime more secure.
To present a serious alternative to Putin, the Russian opposition must put aside its childish factionalism and unite around a big-tent platform centering on policies that have near-universal support, such as a crackdown on endemic corruption. Fighting about thorny issues can wait until after Putin is overthrown. Some may argue that the lack of a detailed platform serves as a barrier to popular support, but efforts to replace Putin will fail if individual opposition constituencies prioritize their own pet issues. Factional standard-bearers like Navalnaya, Katz, Khodorkovsky, and Kasparov should recognize that a movement as broad as theirs cannot have one leader and would prosper if they worked together to present a united front.
Navalny’s personal strength, willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice for his beliefs, and faith that the Putin regime will someday “collapse and crumble” should always be cornerstones of the opposition movement. But the bitter personal antipathies and petty quarrels that characterized his time as so-called “opposition leader” are better left in the past. Otherwise, Russia’s liberal opposition is certain to die with him.
Interview by Name ‘XX
Illustration by Name ‘XX
Interview Title An Interview with Interviewee Name
An Interview with Gaia
Art in Conversation
Interviewee Description.
Gaia is a street artist and muralist. He grew up in Manhattan, New York, and graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2011. Though Gaia currently lives in Baltimore, he spends most of his time traveling and painting murals that bring attention to underrepresented communities. In 2018, Gaia partnered with the Tomaquag Museum to paint Still Here in Downtown Providence. Still Here depicts Lynsea Montanari, a local Narragansett woman, in contemporary garb. She holds an image of Princess Red Wing, a founder of the Tomaquag Museum, in her arms.
This is a question. Do not indent questions. This is a response. Do not indent responses unless it is the start of a new paragraph within the same response. There should be no extra line space between a question and a response. Line space should only be present between the end of a response and the beginning of a new question.
Taleen Sample: I want to begin by broadly talking about your work as an artist. Then, we can narrow in on Still Here. Can you begin by telling me a bit about your background and when you decided to become an artist?
Gaia: My name is Gaia. I’m a street artist and muralist. I’m originally from Manhattan, New York. I started doing wheat paste and posters illegally in New York City, finding vacant spaces and popular street art spots that other people hit previously. I slowly transitioned my practice away from an object-making, poster-and-gallery-based practice to a place-based practice. Now I produce murals and consult with organizations and brands to bring public art into various settings.
TS: I’ve always been really drawn to your art because the portraits in murals like Still Here have a very distinctive human quality. How do you engage with communities in your place-based art to make sure you capture the essence of what it means to be a human there?
G: Ultimately, you want the work to resonate with the local audience because they are going to be the ones who live with the piece of art. Naturally, consulting stakeholders is important for developing content. You have to determine those stakeholders and figure out which voices to center and who will be marginalized. Because there are so many competing voices and agendas, it’s inevitably a practice in conflict resolution and consensus building and just identifying some of the most compelling stories that haven’t been told yet. American civil history is dominated by white men and their achievements. I try to find stories that haven’t been told. I try to center them
and retell them, but then I try to find people who are related to that narrative so that they can help shape what the work really looks like.
TS: I know Still Here features an Indigenous woman who is local to Providence. What was your relationship with her like throughout the creative process? How did you collaborate together? How did you really get to know her story and how she wanted to be portrayed?
G: The story behind Still Here and its production and content development has a kind of mythological quality because we were really pressed for time and under tremendous duress from a schedule perspective. Tomaquag is a pan-tribal museum that represents a lot of different tribes and is obviously dedicated to preserving First Nations history in the region. Tomaquag was engaged pretty late in the process, and they ultimately salvaged it because I had told the client that I would be happy to pursue a particular style of work—something pretty flowery, nothing too conceptual, pleasing to the viewer and the developer—if we centered an Indigenous voice. We were able to meet and figure out what would go on the wall in a very quick turnaround. It required a tremendous amount of trust, which led to a meeting between the various parties. We had the lift on-site, all the paint ready to go, and the background was already getting done. We could have technically left that Tomaquag meeting with no content whatsoever or with no permission to actually paint the mural. Fortunately, in our in-person consultation, I was able to pitch the idea properly. They were open to it.
Lynsea Montanari and Lorén Spears, who is
the director of the Tomaquag, agreed that day to really be part of it. All the additional elements like the strawberries and deer and various flora were added in subsequent days. They provided a list of elements they wanted to see included, and I created a collage in response. Lynsea was also open to a visual device I utilize often, which is a person holding a document of the past. I’m intrigued by representation and the paradoxes that arise in representation. I was compelled by the question, “What does it mean to ‘look’ Indigenous or ‘look’ First Nation?” I suggested challenging that concept by providing a contemporary vision. They had this beautiful image of Princess Red Wing, who founded the Tomaquag Museum. They said, “This is a kind of matron of this space. It would be fabulous if she was included.” Since she does have identifiable regalia, it would locate the imagery in the past and the present.
It was a really quick turnaround. It was pretty nerve-wracking. Ideally, that’s a longer process. Intriguingly enough, I think: “What would that have ultimately looked like if it was a longer process?” It’s obviously a mystery and hard to answer, but I’m not sure it would have been that much better. It was a lot of duress, but we still came up with a good final result.
Edited for length and clarity.
Edited for length and clarity.
Interview by Taleen Sample ’26
Illustration by Carmina Lopez ’25
Surveillance on the Steppe
China's attempts to build a surveillance state in Central Asia are welcomed by the region's governments but threaten ordinary citizens
In 2019, Akqol became Kazakhstan’s first “smart city.” Today, an extensive network of high-resolution cameras tracks everything from pedestrians’ morning commutes to traffic flow, energy consumption, and school attendance. Designed to bring urban security and operations into the 21st century, this experimental city resulted from a deal made by various Kazakh organizations, including national telecommunications giant Kazakhtelecom, government-owned mineral supplier Eurasian Resources Group, and tech start-up Tengrilabs, which is based in the capital, Astana.
by Nathan Haronian ’25, an Applied Math and International and Public Affairs concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR
illustration by Emmie Wu ’24, an Illustration and Jewelry + Metalsmithing major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR
But while the city was planned and built by Kazakhs, its technology was not. Instead, Akqol relies on Chinese telecom companies Hikvision and Dahua, which have been helping Central Asian governments implement mass surveillance technology across critical infrastructure. Chinese tech companies have also increased their funding of Central Asia’s technical educational institutes and provided the region with 5G connectivity. For Central Asian governments— which have sought to become leading tech hubs independent from Russia since the invasion of Ukraine—Chinese investment into their lagging,
“When it comes to the proliferation of Chinese technology in Central Asia, citizens have the most to lose.”
landlocked economies is more than welcome. However, while China’s tech may appear attractive, the citizens of Central Asia need to seriously consider the risks that such investments pose to the political autonomy, economic independence, and educational needs of their countries.
A chief concern with Chinese tech infrastructure is data privacy. Although most Central Asian countries have laws protecting citizens’ personal and biometric data, loopholes allow governments to access data in the case of a perceived security risk. Central Asian governments, which tend to score badly on corruption indices and measures of authoritarianism, will likely use these surveillance projects to impede citizens’ rights. For example, in January 2022, following violent unrest in Kazakhstan over government corruption and the 30-year rule of autocrat Nursultan Nazarbayev, China sent an analytics team to identify protestors using data collected by city-wide Hikvision cameras. Additionally, legal experts say that both Chinese and Central Asian governments have the technical capabilities to block social media content they deem threatening, creating another technology-based human rights threat.
The crux of the matter is whether China has access to data collected by Chinese companies in Central Asia—a question much like the one US lawmakers are asking themselves as they finalize a national ban on Chinese-owned TikTok. Such data breaches in Central Asia would pose a threat to the region’s citizens and their governments: Biometric and surveillance data in the hands of a foreign government would allow that government to track the location and activities of citizens, some of whom may have access to sensitive political information. Central Asia’s e-fears are not unfounded—China’s 2015 National Security Law and 2017 National Intelligence Law require citizens and private enterprises to “support,
assist, and cooperate” with the Chinese state to maintain national security and intelligence interests. Telecommunications companies must therefore share surveillance data when requested by the government. It is, then, not hard to conclude that companies with strong ties to the state (such as Hikvision and CETC) or highly exploitable ownership structures can collect data overseas and ship it back to the Chinese government. Early evidence indicates that such speculation is right on target: One investigation revealed that Huawei technology is capable of disrupting and intercepting US military communications. Another alleged that Chinese IT was transferring data from the African Union headquarters to China. If the Chinese government indeed has access to surveillance data on Central Asian citizens, it will make these countries much more vulnerable to political interference.
Also looming large is the issue of Uyghur human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The topic remains extremely controversial among Central Asians, as the Uyghurs make up a sizable proportion of the region’s population and are closely related to the Muslim Turko-Mongolic ethnicities of Central Asia. Western countries have sanctioned many of China’s telecommunications companies for enabling the mass surveillance used to track Xinjiang residents. For citizens in Central Asian countries, some of whom have Chinese or dual citizenship and have been detained in Xinjiang detention centers, Chinese access to civilian data could make Xinjiang more dangerous and inaccessible. Central Asians traveling to Xinjiang for work or family reasons could be subject to increased persecution if the Chinese government obtains surveillance data identifying their movements. Another potential avenue for human rights abuses comes from China’s efforts to silence pro-Uyghur activists in Central Asian countries, particularly
Kazakhstan. If surveillance data is shared with the Chinese government, Beijing may have more leverage to strongarm the Kazakh government into silencing protestors and activists.
Large-scale surveillance and smart city projects are also extraordinarily expensive and frequently lead Central Asian countries to take on large debts to China. In Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital, the government took out a $21 million loan from Huawei to implement a city-wide traffic surveillance system. In 2018, it was estimated that it would take two decades to pay off the loan, but with a recent 2019 upgrade to increase camera density and add facial recognition technology, it is likely to take even longer. Wealthier countries make even pricier deals, like Uzbekistan’s $1 billion deal with Huawei and CITIC Guoan Information Industry to manufacture and install facial recognition surveillance systems. If a country cannot pay off its debts, it can potentially be forced to turn over natural resource extraction sites for little or no compensation. Because Central Asian industry is concentrated in extractive activities like mining and quarrying, such seizures can significantly increase dependence on China.
Even China’s development of technical education in Central Asia has been criticized for trying to exert influence over citizens. In Kazakhstan, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev supported the goal of training 100,000 IT specialists by 2025 on the Huawei ICT Academy curriculum. Huawei has already opened 50 IT academies in Kazakhstan, with curricula laser-focused on Huawei technology and professional development within Chinese telecommunications companies. While tech education is beneficial, critics argue that the training structure prepares Central Asian youths to be administrative staff within Chinese companies without giving them the skills needed to develop technology domestically.
When it comes to the proliferation of Chinese technology in Central Asia, citizens have the most to lose. Their autocratic governments are implementing mass surveillance systems at the expense of basic infrastructure, and China may already be spelunking into databases containing private information on Central Asians. And while Central Asian countries are generally careful not to become too dependent on any one power, dependency via telecommunication and surveillance technology is a largely novel phenomenon, complete with a slew of hidden and politically fraught risks. The people of Central Asia need to diversify the sources of their telecommunications infrastructure and redesign their tech education system to support the development of local technologies.
Reindeer Politics
Nordic progressivism’s exploitative relationship with the Sámi
by Keyes Sumner ’27, an International and Public Affairs concentrator and Staff Writer for BPR
illustrations by Kaitlyn Stanton ’26, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR
In 2019, Norway sent pop band Keiino to the Eurovision Song Contest. The group performed their Arctic-inspired banger “Spirit in the Sky” in front of 182 million viewers and won the public vote. The crowning jewel of the song, and the principal reason for its popularity, was the joik , a traditional form of song among Scandinavia’s Sámi people.
The Sámi, one of Europe’s few Indigenous peoples, are native to a broad Arctic mountainous region that straddles modern Nordic political borders. Historically, they spoke Uralic languages, were largely semi-nomadic, and lived separately from the Norse and Finnish peoples further south. However, during the mid-19th century, as nationalism swept across Europe, Nordic countries—particularly Norway—suppressed the distinct Sámi identity, which they saw as backward; the Norwegian government argued that the remaining tribe members were “so degenerated that there is little hope of any change for the better for them.” Despite modern Scandinavia’s progressive political status, this state-sponsored discrimination has only changed forms, remaining indelibly attached to government policy. Amid outward state appreciation of Sámi culture, analysis of actual political institutions demonstrates that the Nordic progressive model rhetorically celebrates indigeneity while simultaneously oppressing it.
1851 marked the beginning of a centuries-long state policy of fornorsking, or Norwegianization, that sought to supplant Sámi language and tradition with Norwegian culture. This long saga of forced assimilation targeted children in particular, as teachers were given financial incentives to suppress the use of the Sámi language in schools. Forced assimilation during the rise of nationalism was commonplace across the world, but Indigenous peoples’ rights groups characterize fornorsking as globally unique due to its “determined, continuous and long-lasting conduct,” which ultimately extended into the 1970s. As a result of these policies, many Sámi languages are critically endangered, and at least a fourth of traditional reindeer herding grounds have been lost to land development.
During the late 20th century, as fornorsking fell out of public favor, the Norwegian government was forced to confront the question of how to remedy a century of state-sponsored injustice. One core solution was to provide federal funding for the promotion of Sámi art and language.
The Sámi Grand Prix (SGP), born in 1990, is one of the most visible fruits of Norway’s new cultural policy. The SGP is comprised of two contests, a song contest and a joik contest. The competition is a joint effort between Swedish and Norwegian national broadcasters, but it has also featured musicians from Finland and Russia. The existence of the SGP means that the
once-suppressed joik can be heard on radio stations, creating a broader national awareness of Nordic cultural diversity.
While the SGP is a valuable tool for Sámi cultural visibility, its existence feels sanctimonious when paired with an economic agenda and political system that still systematically marginalizes Indigenous heritage. During the late 1980s, Sámi parliaments were created in Norway and Sweden to serve as elected bodies that oversaw issues relevant to the Sámi. However, in each country, the decisions of these parliaments have been overturned when they differ from those of the federal government. Despite its name, the Sámi Parliament in Sweden does not hold any real legislative authority, since it is a government agency under the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation. In 2022, when the Parliament argued—with the support of the United Nations—that the establishment of an iron mine in Kallak would cause pollution to a surrounding area traditionally used for reindeer herding, the Swedish government greenlit the project anyway.
Similarly, in Norway, the Sámi Parliament need only be consulted, not listened to. Despite the Sámi Parliament’s insistence that the erection of a wind farm would unjustly occupy traditional Sámi reindeer herding grounds, construction went ahead. About 60 percent of Norwegian hydroelectric power is generated in Sápmi, the traditional land of the Sámi, and the government frequently invokes the need for further investment in green energy as a justification
for the occupation of specific sites of importance. Thus, Nordic countries use green energy’s espoused progressive virtue to outweigh their responsibility to protect Indigenous tradition. The Norwegian Supreme Court was not convinced by this argument regarding the windmills and ruled in favor of the Sámi. When the dispute finally ended, the turbines stayed standing, and the Sámi received a $473,000 grant earmarked for the “strengthening of Sámi culture.” This allocation shows that countries like Norway and Sweden are only willing to protect Sámi heritage when it actively curates an image of a modern, open Nordic society.
As federal broadcasting money builds highly visible stages for the uninhibited expression of previously-quelled cultural art, one would be inclined to believe that Sweden and Norway’s relationship with the Sámi has fundamentally changed. However, in actual political practice, mechanisms intended for Sámi representation have been rendered powerless. Instead, Scandinavia’s relationship with indigeneity has turned from overtly oppressive to covertly exploitative. Until the Sámi are afforded meaningful control over their homeland, the artistic promotion of Indigenous cultural diversity will only be insulting.
“When the dispute finally ended, the turbines stayed standing, and the Sámi received a $473,000 grant earmarked for the ‘strengthening of Sámi culture.’”
Arm(s) and a Leg
The relationship between the German defense lobby and the state must become more transparent
by Mathilda Silbiger ’24, an International and Public Affairs concentrator and former Editor in Chief for BPR
illustrations by
Sophia Spagna ’24, an Illustration major at RISD and Illustrator for BPR
Olaf Scholz, clad in a black coat, digs a shovel into the ground, loosens sand, and tosses it a few inches forward. Alongside Boris Pistorius, his defense minister, the German chancellor has just broken ground on a new Rheinmetall ammunition factory in Lower Saxony. He grins and shakes hands with Armin Papperger, Rheinmetall’s CEO, for the cameras. Before long, this factory will produce 200,000 artillery shells each year.
It’s been two years since Scholz pledged that Germany would take on a larger role in European security and the defense of Ukraine—an effort to which his government has already committed €100 billion. Now, as the German military restocks and modernizes, national arms giants like Rheinmetall, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW), and Diehl Defence are arguing that the government should invest in long-term, high-volume national procurement contracts that are safer and more lucrative for the defense industry. The
providing billion- and multi-million-euro contracts for defense manufacturers. Rheinmetall, for one, is currently in the running for a €3 to 4 billion armored scout vehicle deal. Lockheed Martin, which secured a roughly €10 billion contract for an order of its F-35s, previously treated members of the Bundestag Defense Committee to a €24,000 four-course dinner—where it presumably lauded the warplanes’ capabilities over a champagne toast.
Even with an increasingly spending-happy German Ministry of Defense, the national defense industry needs foreign buyers to make large-scale weapons production—for both domestic and foreign use—economically viable. All arms exports require the sign-off of the federal government. But the responsible ministries have become decidedly less picky about export destinations, particularly to war zones. In January, they signed off on Diehl Defence’s sale of 150 air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia—ignoring the governing coalition’s agreement to ban arms exports to states “demonstrably directly involved in the war in Yemen.” All in all, a staggering €11.71 billion worth of arms exports were approved in 2023, compared to €4.9 billion in 2020.
To secure a share of the defense spending pie, Rheinmetall, KMW, and others rely on lobbyists—many of them former ministers and Bundestag representatives (MdBs). Some worry that sitting politicians’ decision-making can be influenced by the prospect of a lucrative lobbying role after they leave government. Dirk Niebel, federal development minister until 2013, for instance, supported the controversial export preapproval of 200 tanks partially manufactured
“[High corruption risk] positions must be vacated after five years, but this rule has been broken 450 times since 2004. Some of those in ‘high corruption risk’ positions have held them for up to 28 years.”
by Rheinmetall to Saudi Arabia in 2012. Barely a year after his exit from the Merkel cabinet, Niebel joined Rheinmetall as chief lobbyist. The friendships that Niebel formed with high-ranking officials during his time in government now give him greater sway over the government’s decisions: He regularly meets with the likes of State Secretary Susanne Baumann and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck on behalf of his new employer. Niebel’s is not an exceptional case: The revolving door between government and industry has been an issue in German politics for years. And while MdBs are able to request and publicize records of federal ministers’ meetings with lobbyists, the reason for such meetings is often vaguely categorized as a “general discussion”—no great victory for transparency.
Staffers often make an even faster switch: A Free Democratic Party MdB’s chief of staff, for example, departed the Bundestag for Rheinmetall in March without any lag between the two jobs. “A door opens, a door closes,” she wrote on LinkedIn. Between 2017 and 2023, 330 outgoing Federal Ministry of Defense employees entered immediate employment in the defense industry. To prevent ex-staffers and politicians from monetizing their contacts and information, Abgeordnetenwatch, a parliamentary transparency watchdog, recommends a three-year pause between government service and lobbying. The current mandated cooling-off period, however, tops out at 18 months and applies only to parliamentary state secretaries and members of government.
While still in office, MdBs frequently hold roles in organizations like the Association of the German Army (FKH) and the German Association for Defense Technology (DWT), which many see
as lobbying forums. Defense Committee Chair Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who recently turned heads for sporting a “Taurus [missiles] for Ukraine” shirt, is a member of both groups. In an interview, she denied that they were lobbying organizations. In actuality, representatives of Rheinmetall, Airbus, Boeing, KMW, and other defense contractors regularly cozy up to MdBs on the Budget and Defense Committees at FKH and DWT parliamentary evenings, roundtable discussions, and social gatherings. Neither side is required to disclose the content of these informal conversations, which may well sway how MdBs vote on major procurement projects.
The awarding of contracts falls to the Defense Ministry’s Procurement Office, headquartered in an old Prussian office building in Rhineland-Palatinate. Here, 2,400 positions are considered “high corruption risk” due to frequent contact with the defense industry. These positions must be vacated after five years, but this rule has been broken 450 times since 2004. Some of those in “high corruption risk” positions have held them for up to 28 years. Conversely, lawyers and auditors tasked with overseeing the integrity of contract awarding are few and far between.
Diehl Defence seems to have found its cushy relationship with the German federal government useful when Alexander Biber, the mayor of Troisdorf, a small town in North RhineWestphalia, threatened to foil its growth plans. Troisdorf is already home to a Diehl subsidiary’s factory, and the plant’s expansion onto adjacent land—which had already been approved for the long-term presence of explosive materials— was seen as logical for increasing the production of ammunition and explosives. After Biber
announced plans to zone the land for commercial and residential use instead, Diehl’s friends at the Ministry of Defense and the Bundestag rushed to its aid. “This is not about Troisdorf or even about Germany; this is about Ukraine, all of us, our sheer survival,” an enraged StrackZimmermann contended on an evening talk show. Diehl executives promptly consulted with Pistorius and North Rhine-Westphalian Minister-President Hendrik Wüst, who appeared to push Biber to take a meeting with the arms giant.
Germany requires representatives of special interests to publicly disclose the purpose, scope, financing, and nature of their work in an online Lobbying Register, which was first made mandatory in 2022 and expanded in October 2023. Companies that fail to register are banned from lobbying members of government. In practice, however, the Lobbying Register reveals very little. The Rheinmetall entry, for instance, merely reports that its lobbyists are engaged in a “direct, transparent and trust-based dialogue” with the government. With billion-euro contracts at stake, an expansion of the Lobbying Register is desperately needed to ensure the integrity of procurement and export approval decisions.
The war in Ukraine has rehabilitated the German arms industry’s image at home. As Berlin assumes an ever more critical role in the security of Europe, the integrity of its arms procurement and export agreements must be beyond reproach. The government must maintain trust and enact more effective transparency measures to make the defense industry’s lobbying visible to the German people, who are bankrolling its current moment in the sun.
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