The Yale Globalist: Surface

SURFACE

4

Camila Otero

on a New

by Adam McPhail

The New Silk Road:

Geopolitical Chess Move or a Genuine Helping Hand?

Simona Hausleitner

18

The Case for Irish Unification

Dylan Gunn

in this issue:

EDITOR’S NOTE 22

Forever in Flux: The Demographics of Healthcare Workers Amidst an Uncertain Pandemic by Anabel Moore

25

Blockchain, Robots, and Mars: Where do University Students Start? by Axel de Vernou

30

The Yale-NUS Closure’s Unanswered Questions by David Bloom

Dear Globalist readers,

The beginning of this Fall 2021 semester has been both intense and exciting. Nearly all of Yale’s undergrad uates have returned to campus and resumed in-person classes after a year and a half of online learning. However, Covid 19 remains ever-present. As such, the Glo community chose the theme SURFACE in response to how we are entering a new phase in our rapidly changing world and university, which, defined by global developments that might feel intimidating and threatening, leaves us with the question of where we go from here.

33

The End of the World: The Imminence and Art of the Doomsday Clock by Raina Sparks

SURFACE allows us to interrogate issues of which we are just now scratch ing the surface: issues that have been out of the spotlight and are now erupt ing into view. As such, our writers have tackled this theme from various angles. Camila Otero analyses the impact of Covid 19 in various countries around the world. Adam McPhail writes about US national security challenges. Simona Hausleitner discusses the “new Silk Road” of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its impact on economic integration between the East and the West. Anabel Moore explores the state of the healthcare system in the wake of the pandemic. Dylan Gunn argues for Irish reunification in a striking per spective piece. Axel de Vernou writes about space tourism, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence and their place in the University. David Bloom searches for answers after Yale-NUS's announcement of its 2025 disincorpo ration. Finally, Raina Sparks covers the Doomsday Clock and the most pressing threats to humanity in modern times.

We are very grateful for all of our writers’ hard work, and we hope our readers will enjoy learning about and exploring each of these issues as much as we did. We look forward to sharing our next quarterly issue later in the semester!

Warmly, Phoebe and Martina

Buenos Aires, March 2020 by Santiago Sito

COvid-19 on Different Planes

by Camila Otero

as the Covid 19 pandemic came into full swing, Covid 19 restrictions in Florida were far and few between. Only quite far along into the pandemic did Floridians receive some sort of strict quarantine— and such a quarantine was not in place for long. Nowadays, many Floridians and Americans in general have become exhausted and impatient with restric tions, claiming it to be an infringement of their rights. Masks are no longer mandated in Florida; unless a private business suggests the usage of masks, one can enter any space with other individu als completely maskless. People can also do so regardless of vaccination status, because Florida legislation now prohibits businesses or government entities from denying service based on this informa tion. This was seen by policymakers as a way to protect Floridians’ personal liber ties. Covid 19 was spurring political de bate not only in Florida, but throughout the entire United States. With responses to the pandemic increasingly politicized over time, it was difficult for there to be a serious and swift response. In reality, an adequate response never took place. Ac cording to the CDC, Florida became one of the states with the greatest number of total cases per 100,000 people, rallying in at number four (after Tennessee, North Dakota, and South Carolina) with a total of 16,770 cases per 100,000 people. This is significantly higher than the nation al average, in which there have been a total of 13,548 cases per 100,000 people since January 21, 2020. The number of deaths per 100,000 people in Florida is also remarkably higher than the national average: 262 compared to the nation’s av erage of 218 deaths per 100,000 people.

Many countries, particularly those in East Asia, took a starkly different approach to the pandemic, aiming to contain the virus from the beginning. The WHO received information of cases of pneumonia of an unknown cause from Wuhan, China on December 31, 2019, and on January 19, 2020, Covid 19 cases were first reported outside of Wuhan. Only four days were needed from this first case outside of Wuhan for the Chinese government to act. They implemented city lockdowns and mandatory quarantines to ban or limit traffic beginning January 23rd, as well

as strategies that encouraged social distancing beginning January 28th and centralized treatment and isolation strategy beginning February 2nd. In locking down a population of 40 million people, many other countries criticized China for this heavy-handed approach for infringing on their citizens’ human rights. However, researchers such as Dr. Xi Chen, an associate professor of Public Health at Yale University, stated that “if China did not do that, I don’t think China would have been able to survive.”

These strict measures were imperative, primarily because of the approach of the Spring Festival, widely considered the most important annual celebration in

consequences, and the necessity of early action can be seen in the stark differences in success of the United States versus South Korea, which managed to handle the pandemic much better from a public health aspect.

In Central America, Guatemala aimed to copy the model that East Asian countries like China, Japan, and South Korea implemented in stopping the spread of Covid 19 from the beginning. In particular, Guatemala wanted to uti lize CT scans as a tool to stop the spread of Covid 19, like these countries were doing. Guatemala did not have enough PCR tests to test its entire population, diagnose the areas where the disease was

Chinese culture that prompts the largest regular migration of people in the world. In a normal year, around 15 million peo ple would travel out of Wuhan during this holiday to visit their families. Thus, according to Dr. Chen, “if that were to happen without a lockdown of the epicenter (Wuhan), [Covid 19] would have spread very quickly.” These strict health policies, both at the national and local level, certainly paid off: it reduced the transmission rate and resulted in 1,408,479 fewer cases and potentially 56,339 fewer deaths.

South Korea, like China, reacted quickly after the first cases of Covid 19 were identified. Contrasted with the slow response of the US government, there quickly became two different global strategies for tackling Covid 19. Both South Korea and the United States identified their first Covid 19 case on the same day. However, South Korea started mass testing shortly after this first case was identified, while the United States took 45 days to scale up testing and a whole 100 days to catch up with South Korea. Per Dr. Chen, “viruses often spread exponentially, hence the first 100 days may determine the future of [a] pandemic.” The United States’ delayed response to the pandemic reaped terrible

coming from, and control its spread. At TechniScan, the largest diagnostic center in Central America that worked pro bono for the Guatemalan government during the pandemic, they investigated the use of CT scans for detecting Covid 19. Dr. Marco Cabrera, a radiologist at TechniScan, stated that their team “read an article that said that China was doing CT scans of the lungs, and because of the sensitivity of the CT scan in detect ing Covid 19 in the lungs (being more sensitive than the PCR tests), [they] knew what to do in the pandemic.” They utilized CT scans as the main form of diagnosing Covid 19 and, as a result, did manage to prevent the spread of the disease in Guatemala at the outset of the pandemic.

According to WHO, the first cases reported in Guatemala were on March 9, 2020. The government acted swiftly, and within a matter of weeks implemented restrictions, including a mask mandate both indoors and outdoors, social distancing guidelines, travel bans, and a strict lockdown for about 6 weeks. Dr. Cabrera recounted that “at the begin ning, for the first four months, we did OK. Our mortality rate was low, our community transmission rate was low, and I want to believe that the govern

“Viruses often spread exponentially, hence the first 100 days may determine the future of a pandemic.”

ment was working side by side with the people.” The implementation of strict restrictions, although it involved the temporary sacrifice of certain “individual rights,” was effective in preventing the spread of Covid 19 and, as a result, kept a country’s population safe. However, such restrictions were not feasible for some countries, especially for countries

demic responses and resources, almost every country’s economy suffered a neg ative impact as a result of the pandemic, particularly due to lockdowns and travel bans. Some countries, such as Argentina, suffered a similar fate as Guatemala; from March 19, 2020 to July 17, 2020, Argen tina had a complete lockdown, like China and Guatemala. After July 17, restrictions

gentina. Regardless, as Rojas states, there are still many factors that must be taken into account when determining whether keeping the country open would have been a good move for Argentina or if it would have caused even more deaths and infections. These include factors such as proximity or remoteness to the equator, the type of climate, the type of food, and the average age of the population, among other things. Additionally, in the height of the lockdown, the government could not afford to issue money to the people, as its macroeconomic instability would generate more inflation.

with few resources and a large portion of the population living under the poverty line, like Guatemala. According to the World Bank, 59.3% of the Guatema lan population lives below the poverty line, and 23% lives in extreme poverty. Guatemala’s indigenous population, often living in rural areas, are acutely affected, with 79% of indigenous people in Guatemala living in poverty. This was the ultimate reason why Guatemala could not maintain its lockdown; many people needed to work in order to survive. In Dr. Cabrera’s words, “In rural areas of Gua temala, Covid was not the problem. The problem is food, the problem is poverty.” More wealthy countries like Australia and New Zealand instituted strict lockdowns, but were able to prolong these lockdowns or implement one even after one had been previously lifted because of the financial stability and resources that these countries have. New Zealand, Australia, and many other countries were able to provide their citizens with welfare checks in order to ensure that people could maintain their current standard of living. Guatemala did not have the resources to provide its citizens with money, and therefore the lockdown had to be lifted once people could no longer afford to continue living without work. After the lockdown was lifted, Covid 19 spread boundlessly all throughout the country, and Guatemala struggled with attending to all these people and trying to limit the spread of Covid 19 from there.

Regardless of countries’ limited pan

were gradually lifted; more businesses were opened, and soon there was more economic activity taking place. However, masks and social distancing were put in place in order to compensate for the re laxation of the lockdown. The restrictions on borders were soon relaxed as well.

In March 2021, Argentina opened its borders to new destinations, and now it is finally opening up to foreigners for travel and visiting purposes. According to Roberto Rojas, an economist who works as an executive for a large water and sani

However, in Argentina, it was the middle class that was the most affected. Rojas asserts, “We have around 8 million people living on public assistance in a population of 45 million, and public assistance was maintained (but not increased). An analysis says that those people had [economic] pressure, but it was not so strong. The real pressure in Argentina came from the middle class that is usually, for example, a dentist who has an office, lives very well, earns a lot of money in dollars and pesos, travels, and suddenly was forced to be eight, nine months without working, with which he went from having a very good income to having zero income. And the only

tation distributor in Buenos Aires known as aBsa (Aguas Bonaerense Sociedad Anónima), Argentina’s macroeconomic issues, high inflation, and external debts made opening the country a necessity for many people. One reason cited in support of this notion is that neighbor ing countries, like Brazil, had almost the same number of deaths but kept their country much more open (with less strict lockdown and travel restrictions) than Ar

program there was for that middle class, which is very broad in Argentina, was a program of a [one-time] subsidized credit of 150,000 pesos. That is nothing—it is approximately 1,500 dollars at the official exchange rate.” Thus, in Argen tina, like in China, Guatemala, and the United States, the government “lacks the channels to reach [the vulnerable population] accurately and efficiently,” as Dr. Chen explains. However, China,

...countries with much stronger economies could afford to implement lockdown measures for extended periods of time, unlike Argentina, and especially unlike Guatemala.

“In rural areas of Guatemala, COVID was not the problem. The problem is food, the problem is poverty.”

the United States, and other European countries with much stronger economies could afford to implement lockdown measures for extended periods of time, unlike Argentina, and especially unlike Guatemala. According to Dr. Chen, “If you have a big market like China has, then Zero Covid Policies may not be so bad because you still have a domestic economy ongoing, people have to have jobs, although the growth rate is reduced. But for many small countries it may become an issue, even for New Zealand because they rely on tourism.” Dr. Chen suggested a potentially better alternative to shutting down entire countries due to Covid 19 and similar pandemics that in

of the devil, a sign of the Antichrist.” For this reason, these people living in rural areas, which make up a significant portion of the Guatemalan population, are refusing to get vaccinated. A lot of this can be attributed not only to religion but to lack of education. According to UNesCo, only 81 29% of the population is literate, and there has been a growing trend in the number of out-of-school ad olescents. 33% of indigenous adults, who make up the majority of people living in rural areas of Guatemala, cannot read or write. However, in the neighboring country of Costa Rica, the literacy rate is at 97.9%. Connecting this to the amount

ic failed to reach many populations, spe cifically minority groups and those living under the poverty line. Perhaps policy makers had the right intentions during the pandemic, but their responses reflect the long-standing inherent corruption and injustice that characterize these govern ments and continue to the present day.

Camila Otero is a first-year in Saybrook College and can be reached at camila.otero@yale.edu.

volves targeted travel restrictions: “Future policy design may utilize the history of economic activities and human migration data to model which city pairs need to be restricted and how many restrictions need to be imposed.” For example, these may include restrictions for cities in the epi center of the pandemic (ie. Wuhan and nearby cities) and those that are major transportation hubs with strong links to the epicenter (ie. Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou).

Similar to how many countries expe rienced issues with the economy and con taining the spread of the disease, many countries encountered obstacles with vac cine distribution. Mixed messaging from religious authorities throughout the pan demic have confused people on whether or not to get the vaccine. Dr. Marco Cabrera explained that about 48% of the Guatemalan population is Catholic, and this group has only recently begun to get vaccinated because of the Pope’s announcement to get the vaccine for the sake of humanity. In rural areas, however, there are small Christian churches that exist with essentially no rules or author ity. Here, Dr. Cabrera said, “the pastors are saying that the vaccines are the mark

of people vaccinated, in Guatemala only a striking 25% of the population is vac cinated, and in Costa Rica 70 75% of the population is vaccinated. These numbers indicate a potential correlation between literacy rates and vaccination rates, and indicate the urgency in which Guatema la needs to address this issue and place education reform higher on its agenda. In many countries, those living below the poverty line have seen the devastating effects of the pandemic, risking the pos sibility of contracting Covid 19 and their lives in order to put food on the table for themselves and their families.

No country responded perfectly to the pandemic, but some responded better than others. It is disheartening to see that some countries, with all of the resources right at their fingertips, such as the United States, still managed to fail so horrendously in containing the disease and caring for their populations from the onset. Meanwhile, many other countries either had the resources and acted prop erly, or did not have the resources and tried the best they could to attempt to limit the disastrous effects of the pandem ic. However, it is clear that policies put in place to help people during the pandem

Here, Dr. Cabrera said, “the pastors are saying that the vaccines are the mark of the devil, a sign of the Antichrist.”

cyberspace

by Adam McPhail

iN NovemBer 2013, a group of hackers dubbed X1 gained access to the networks of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), obtaining manuals and infor mation regarding the general IT system architecture. Later in 2014, having realized foreign agents had hacked into their systems, OPM planned a “big bang,” hoping to boot the cyber attack ers out of their system. However, only weeks before the scheduled system reset, a group named X2 installed malware that gave them a backdoor into the OPM, evading the big bang. Even worse, this time the hackers accessed sensitive, per sonal OPM files. With 5.6 million sets of fingerprints stolen and 22 million people affected, the 2014 2015 OPM data breach revealed a new front in the ever-changing nature of conflict: cyberwar. The incident

of International Law, Professor Hatha way worked as the Special Counsel to the General Counsel for National Security Law, offering legal advice to the Secre tary and Deputy Secretary of Defense. To attain this position, Professor Hathaway endured a rigorous series of documents and security vetting, eventually receiv ing SCI (sensitive compartmentalized information) access, the highest level of security clearance. Professor Hathaway finished her work with the Department of Defense in 2015, returning to Yale academia and law professorship with an award honoring excellence to boot.

Since 2014, public perception of cyberattacks has increased and morphed into a more expansive definition. The rapid development and pervasiveness of technology plus the recent 2020 Solar

broaden its overview of cybersecurity. In 2007, the United States formed the National Protection and Programs Di rectorate (NPPd), a subsection of the De partment of Homeland Security (DHS) designed to coordinate efforts across government agencies to prevent attacks and threats on critical infrastructure, in cluding both physical and cyber attacks. Later, in 2018, the United States elevated cybersecurity to its own agency under the supervision of the DHS, founding the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa). Its goals are wide-ranging, seeking to curb cyberattacks from sophis ticated actors and nation-states attempt ing to steal information, money, or intel ligence; suspend government services; or to disrupt physical infrastructure.

President Biden has emphasized

Cybersecurity no longer merely affects one’s personal information; it encompasses the entire foundations of government and democracy.

permeated the United States government and culture at large, signaling that a new era of national security was not merely accelerating towards them at a frighten ing pace; rather, it had already smacked them in the face, leaving them dazed and unprepared.

Among those affected was Yale Law School Professor Oona Hathaway. “They got the Operation of Personnel Manage ment files, which includes my personal in formation, all the forms I filled out to get my security clearance,” Hathaway said to the Globalist. “So it is my social security number, all my financial information, all my personal contacts abroad. They now have all that stuff and they have that not just on me, but everybody who applied for top secret clearance in that period.”

In 2014, Hathaway began to work for the United States government. The Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor

winds and Microsoft hacks have only further exposed the American public to the wide-ranging effects and forms of cyberattacks. Cybersecurity no longer merely affects one’s personal information; it encompasses the entire foundations of government and democracy. It is a fundamental pillar of American national security. But just how prepared the United States is for this new era of international relations has been a point of contention among scholars, who reference unprece dented challenges such as the difficulties of tracing cyber-belligerents to states, a lack of a legal framework, and the complex confluence of private and public actors.

United States Cybersecurity Infrastructure

Over the past decades, the United States government has attempted to

that cybersecurity will be one of his administration’s top priorities. However, even Cisa admits that it is notably hard to secure cyberspace.

Adapting legal framework to trace cyber-belligerents back to states

First, actors committing cyberattacks can work in anonymity and operate from any space in the world. Perhaps the most obvious to the American public, it makes attribution incredibly difficult for the United States government. Even if one were able to acquire the identity of the foreign actor—which in and of itself is extremely difficult—it is hard to discern where the actor is physically. Further still, it is challenging to know whether they are working on behalf of the government, for another country, a non-political organiza tion, or simply of their own accord. The

inability to assign blame and punishment for these unlawful actions has embold ened actors, making them more ambi tious in their cyberattacks.

The complexity of this issue has led many international legal and political questions to remain unsolved. For exam ple, because cyberspace enables foreign hackers to be shrouded in anonymity, many countries encourage actors within or outside of their state to work on their behalf to conduct cyberattacks on other foreign governments. The government knows it will be difficult to confirm whether or not they are responsible because actors not affiliated with the state carry out the cyberattack. The govern ment still realizes its desire, whether they want to accrue information or disrupt systems within another country, with a lower risk of “getting caught.” How does the international community ensure that governments do not actively encourage private actors to work on their behalf, giving them, as Professor Hathaway remarked, “a wink and a nod?”

Currently, the international expec tation is that countries uphold a “due diligence requirement” against actors in their state. “States are responsible to engage in due diligence to ensure that actors within their territory are not posing a threat to actors outside their territory,” Professor Hathaway noted. She added that, of course, governments do not need to be aware of every actor in their state. “You are not strictly liable for the fact that some private actor goes and does bad things in other places, but you are supposed to take basic measures to try and address the possibility of private actors within your country taking actions that are going to have an impact outside your territory,” Hathaway said. If govern ments discover actors committing illegal actions they must prosecute them to the fullest extent of their domestic law in their own courtrooms. However, coun tries have no incentive to prosecute their citizens if their nefarious cyberattacks aid the government’s geopolitical interests.

Additionally, states must follow what is known as the “law of state responsi bility.” Officially adopted by the United Nations in 2001, article 1 states, “Every internationally wrongful act of a State entails the international responsibility

of that State.” In other words, if a state breaches international law then they are responsible for it and they must take on the consequences. Additionally, article 11 reads, “Conduct which is not attributable to a State under the preceding articles shall nevertheless be considered an act of that State under international law if and to the extent that the State acknowledges and adopts the conduct in question as its own.” In abstruse legal language, the article states that if there are individuals within a country breaking international law and their once-independent actions are so helpful to the government that the government supports and adopts their acts, then the state in question, not just the individual actors, violates internation al law. “Generally speaking, the law of state responsibility of states being respon sible for the actions of non-state actors requires an awful lot of close connection between the state and the non-state to hold them directly liable for the actions of non-state actors,” Professor Hatha way solemnly said. It is already tough to cite the law of state responsibility to hold states accountable for individual actors working implicitly on their behalf. Cyberspace only amplifies this challenge because it is increasingly difficult to link cyber actors, shrouded in anonymity and secrecy and potentially located in another country entirely, back to a government. “The international legal rules governing the behavior of states that work and operate through non-state actor groups, be it cyber, or be it conflict zones, is not a particularly well developed area of law,” Hathaway lamented. As technology and its geopolitical implications continue to develop, international law regulating this interplay struggles to keep up. One can imagine that this ambiguity will only intensify as cyberattacks become an in creasingly prevalent issue in international relations.

Cyber-deterrence

So, if the United States cannot use the international legal system to deter other countries or actors from using cyberattacks, what other deterrence methods does the United States have?

Professor Edward “Ted” Wittenstein teaches classes concerning law, cyberse

curity, and foreign policy at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Previously, he worked in the United States Depart ment of Defense, Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Office of the Director of Na tional Intelligence, and the Department of State. “The enforcement challenge is rather significant because there is no common understanding and transnation al law about these forms of malicious cy ber activity,” Professor Wittenstein said. Instead, Professor Wittenstein stated that the United States has other tools in its arsenal, including levying economic sanc tions, using military activity, or enacting intelligence offenses designed to manip ulate, degrade, or destroy the capabilities of these malicious actors.

However, none of these strategies are without their faults. The United States has utilized economic sanctions as a means of deterrence or punishment in many political realms. For cyber space specifically, the United States has levied economic sanctions on actors from various countries, including Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China. But there is a large body of academic literature debating the effectiveness of economic sanctions concerning cyber deterrence, especially against actors closely connected, either politically or strategically, to the state. High-profile individuals can evade economic sanctions via the international banking system and clandestine offshore money accounts. Without significant cultural and diplo matic pressure, economic sanctions alone do not significantly alter state actions. Intelligence responses are also tricky to carry out and states risk engaging in a tit-for-tat with other countries, heighten ing tensions by continually reducing the others’ intelligence capabilities. It is a difficult balance to strike. “In some ways, a little bit of espionage is actually kind of good in the international system because you want each state to have a little bit of insight to what the other is up to, other wise when they are doing something, you might see it as very threatening,” Pro fessor Hathaway said. An integral part of international relations theory, what was formerly a “little bit of espionage” before the technological era is amplified

immensely in the cyber context. Previous ly, one could not physically accrue a sig nificant amount of information without an extensive and detailed spy network. But cyberattacks allow states to obtain massive amounts of information without the past physical restraints. How much data accumulation is too much espionage and ought to prompt retaliation? Military response is often expensive and can cause the loss of human life. While it may be odd to visualize now, a future where tra ditional “surface” military activities arise in response to cyberattacks is likely. One must wonder if this fascinating conflu ence between traditional, material surface actions and cyber-surface events will mark international relations in the rest of the 21st century.

The confluence between the public and private sectors

Additionally, the United States has to grapple with the complex links between the public and private sectors in cyberspace. For more material, surface examples of infrastructure, the United States government can physically repair and improve, say, bridges, roads, and canals because they are part of the public sector and the government has over sight over them. In contrast, bolstering “cyberinfrastructure” is significantly more complicated because much of the United States government relies on private-sector products and applications. For example, take the recent Solarwinds hack that affected executive agencies such as the Pentagon, the Treasury, and, ironically, the Department of Homeland Security, which contains Cisa. Russian hackers modified code in Solarwinds’ monitoring system Orion, gaining access to com puter operating systems via a seemingly inconspicuous Trojan horse-like update. In many government agencies’ computer systems, Orion was linked to individual Microsoft 365 accounts, thus giving hackers access to their emails and all the information within them. This type of cyberattack is called a “supply chain attack,” and it is emblematic of a bigger cybersecurity problem for the American government. Supply chain attacks do not target computer systems directly. Instead, they infect more vulnerable software used

in these systems. Thus, the United States government relies on private sector com panies to maintain sound cybersecurity because they are using their products.

If the US government wishes to bolster its security systems, it not only needs to survey and strengthen its own operating systems, it also must push private compa nies whose products they use to improve the security of their software, adding an extra layer of complexity and difficulty.

Steps forward

However, the United States govern ment and the international community are taking steps to combat the issues sur rounding anonymity, cyber-deterrence, and cyberspace supply chains.

While there is no perfect solution for acquiring the identity of anonymous cyberattackers, there are efforts to define and outline the legality of cyberattacks and cybercrime. Namely, on June 29, 2021, the Russian government submitted an outline to the United Nations titled “United Nations Convention on Coun tering the Use of Information and Com munications Technologies for Criminal Purposes.” While more geared towards cybercrime, the document expands the number of definitions of cybercrime from nine to twenty-three. Moreover, it calls for states to bolster their domestic laws relating to cybercrime and cyberattacks. It even supports more robust systems for extraditing hackers for punishment.

Additionally, the Biden adminis tration has placed a greater emphasis on cybersecurity. On July 29, 2021, President Biden signed the National Security Memorandum on “Improving Cybersecurity for Critical Infrastructure Control Systems,” ordering Cisa to estab lish a clear set of cyber priorities and to strengthen the cybersecurity systems that protect physical surface infrastructure sectors. Also, the Biden administration has ramped up cyber deterrence efforts. When President Biden met with Rus sian President Vladimir Putin on June 16, 2021, he raised the issue of cyberat tacks. Biden asserted that there ought to be certain areas of the United States government that are off-limits to foreign cyber-meddling, namely, the sixteen areas of critical infrastructure outlined by Cisa

Furthermore, over the past ten years, the United States has levied many eco nomic sanctions in response to cyberat tacks. Notably, the Biden administration has used a larger proportion of its eco nomic sanctions to punish foreign cyber actors and to promote its cybersecurity. By using multiple avenues of diploma cy and economic sanctions, the United States government is taking measures to strengthen its cybersecurity, and thus its national security too. Cisa has created partnerships with several private sector organizations in an attempt to foster greater cooperation, aiming to establish what companies ought to do to ensure that those using their servers - including and excluding the United States govern ment - are secure.

However, as the United States marches into the 21st century, these difficulties will only become more and more complex. While it is challenging to keep up with the many technological advances, the United States and the in ternational community must take greater measures to combat the opaqueness of cyberspace and the actors that work in it. As the surface of national security changes, the United States government must take additional prophylactic, not merely reactionary, measures to ensure that government operating systems and the data of American citizens are secure. Both are imperative in bolstering our national security.

Adam McPhail is a first-year in Trumbull College and can be reached at adam.mcphail@yale.edu.

The New Silk Road:

by Simona Hausleitner

today, traveliNg from the bustling port city of Shanghai to the crumbling ruins of the Acropolis in Athens takes less than a day by plane. A thousand years ago, however, the journey from China to Europe was not quite so simple: Western traders hoping to bring back luxury items like porcelain, spices, and precious met als—as well as diplomats inspired by tales of the Great Khan’s Imperial Palace—had to take a perilous route through the steppes and grassland terrains of Eurasia to get to the shining beacon of unfamil iarity that was China. This route became known as the “Silk Road,” a term coined in 1877 by German geographer Ferdi nand von Richthofen to describe the net work of trade routes connecting the Far East with the Middle East and Europe. These routes facilitated the exchange of a huge volume of goods between East and West; caravans filled with everything from string beans and pomegranates to leopards and cinnamon journeyed across the mountainous regions of Asia. At the 2017 opening ceremony of the Belt and Road Forum for International Coopera tion in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jin ping1 gave a keynote speech describing

The importance of the Silk Road has persisted through time as a monument to the intercultural exchange of knowledge and ideas. In a similar spirit of openness and mutual benefit, China unveiled a new undertaking of massive proportions, aptly nicknamed “The New Silk Road,” in 2013. Whereas previous foreign invest ment efforts have typically been highly decentralized, this initiative consolidated China’s diversified projects in Eurasia, Latin America, and Africa under a single umbrella, thus marking a fundamental shift in the way world powers conduct economic activity.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is China’s plan for economic integration across the East and West, facilitated by a land “belt” running from China through out much of South and Central Asia into Europe, and a maritime “road” linking coastal Chinese cities with ports in Africa and the Mediterranean. According to recent data, 140 countries have signed on,2 accounting for a third of world trade and more than 60 percent of the global population.3 Over the past few years, the BRI has even scaled up to include Latin America and the Caribbean within its

enhance scientific and technological advancement through cooperation across countries, critics view the BRI as a way for China to accumulate geopolitical influence through economic expansion. In addition, scholars in the United States and abroad have drawn attention to the BRI’s lack of transparency, damaging environmental impacts, and predatory lending, raising concerns about unsus tainable debt and high development costs. In response to these criticisms, Chinese President Xi Jinping has reaffirmed the country’s commitment to implement green practices4 and to work with partner nations in developing more sustainable plans for building infrastruc ture. Recent years have seen significant structural readjustment of the BRI, ranging from anti-corruption campaigns to partnerships with major multinational financial institutions. Yet, the question remains: do the relative benefits of the Belt and Road Initiative outweigh its potential harms? And is this policy primarily a form of neo-imperialism meant to expand China’s geopolitical hegemony, or is it a project that will spur development in poorer countries by bringing them into the global economy?

how “the ancient silk routes spanned the valleys of the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus and Ganges, and the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers. They connected the birthplaces of the Egyp tian, Babylonian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations as well as the lands of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam and [the] homes of people of different nation alities and races. These routes enabled people of various civilizations, religions, and races to interact with and embrace each other with open minds. In the course of exchange, they fostered a spirit of mutual respect and were engaged in a common endeavor to pursue prosperity.”

purview. Key components of the project include building a 12,000 kilometer railway from London to China, creating a highway system throughout much of Southern Asia, and instituting a pipeline that would end up transporting about fifty-five billion cubic meters of gas annu ally from the Middle East to China. A far cry from the communist policies of Mao Zedong’s People’s Republic, the BRI has been praised as a step towards enhanc ing international collaboration through the establishment of an open economy. While proponents of the BRI discuss its potential to increase global trade, lift millions of people out of poverty, and

Ultimately, this is a difficult question to answer, mainly because it necessitates the consideration of how the Belt and Road Initiative is conceptualized and implemented in each country, as well as which interests are driving this implemen tation. This article seeks to clarify and analyze some of the more contentious issues surrounding the Belt and Road Initiative, while also evaluating how a project of this magnitude will change the global socio-political landscape for years to come.

The BRI in Practice

China’s rise to the forefront of a free-market, globalized economy over the past decades has been accompanied by a record amount of financing, both for public and private sector projects, in countries around the world. As part of the BRI, China provides loans to host countries for the purpose of building infrastructure like roads, railways, ports, and electric grids. Studies show that 42 countries have debt exposure to China exceeding 10 percent of their GDP, and many more are defaulting on their loans

These routes enabled people of vari ous civilizations, religions, and races to interact with and embrace each other with open minds.

Map of China’s Belt and Road Initiative

or suffering from economic fragility.

The World Bank maintains extensive databases on global debt and publishes an annual report on debt in developing countries. David Malpass, president of the World Bank Group, remarks: “One notable thing is how hugely the amount of debt has shifted towards China being the creditor. . .in 2000 there was a major shift to the point where China alone makes up some 60% of the total official credit of the world today.” This has major implications for future relations between China and the rest of the globe, as mod ern power dynamics are based heavily on the flow of money from one country to another.

Dr. Cecilia Han Stringer, a senior researcher with the Global China Ini tiative at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, gives insight into the financial mechanism by which the lending process occurs: “It’s helpful to think about China’s overseas finance in terms of public and private finance. Public finance means loans coming from

the Chinese Development Banks, which are the China Development Bank and the China Export Import Bank. They operate domestically, but they also provide major loans for overseas development.” She elaborates that the advantage of this type of development finance is that Chinese banks are often able to deliver funds much more rapidly than local banks in host countries, meaning that infrastructure projects can occur more efficiently. Dr. Stringer remarks that the second major type of financing is private, meaning that either “commercial banks, like the Bank of China, lend money for overseas development,” or Chinese companies invest their assets and “may go directly overseas and provide equity, or foreign direct investment” to the host countries. While public financing is subject to bureaucratic regulation by Chinese agencies, such as the Ministry of Commerce and the NdrC (National Development and Reform Commission), which have oversight processes and reg ulations for loan amounts, Dr. Stringer

maintains that private finance is more of a ‘black box.’ The lack of transparency in these lending processes is a major concern raised by other countries and multinational institutions. Mr. Malpass elaborates on how China has kept some of its dealings under wraps: “since 2014, China has started putting non-disclosure clauses into all of its loan contracts. . .And so that makes it very hard for [the public] to know what the interest rate is, how many years they have to repay the loan, or what the terms and conditions of the contract are.”

Specifically, with regard to the BRI, some national leaders have accused China of engaging in a strategy known as “debt-trap diplomacy,” which involves deliberate over-lending, thereby lur ing countries into unsustainable loan agreements. After the borrowing country begins to experience financial hardship resulting from unpaid debt, China can seize assets, thus expanding its economic and political power in other regions.

Despite these criticisms, however,

there has not been sufficient evidence to indicate predatory lending on Chi na’s part. In Malaysia and Sri Lanka, the most frequently cited ‘victims’ of debt trap diplomacy,5 BRI projects were initiated mainly by the host governments, and growing financial instability resulted from local corruption and the misallo cation of funds rather than high-interest loans. Dr. Stringer agrees, explaining that “a lot of research is really indicating that this debt-trap diplomacy, as it’s called, is not actually an intentional strategy on China’s part in order to gain more

complaints of structural inefficiencies, wasteful spending, and low profitability, the BRI has had tangible impacts in the fields of science, technology, health, and economic growth. In recent years, China has implemented the Program for China-Africa Cooperation on Poverty Reduction and Public Welfare, signed an agreement with the WHO on health cooperation, trained thousands of pro fessionals in public health management and disease prevention, and launched the China-South Asia science and technology partnership programs.6 Beyond these

Some national leaders have accused China of engaging in a strategy known as “debt-trap diplomacy,” which involves deliberate overlending, thereby luring countries into unsustainable loan agreements.

economic control over countries that it cooperates with. The primary reasons that China has set for itself in promoting the Belt and Road Initiative are more around cooperation, development and expand ing markets.”

Clearly, this issue is complex and multifaceted, with many opposing viewpoints—some argue that China is focused on building geopolitical power by trapping poor countries in a cycle of debt repayment, while others promote the idea that China is looking to facilitate commerce and trading opportunities while still getting a return on investment. One area that China could improve upon is transparency; by consolidating and clarifying its interest rates and lending practices, China could reduce some of the backlash it has faced from the inter national community.

Impact on Local Communities

In evaluating the impacts of the BRI, it is important to analyze how its policies directly affect the local com munities in host countries. Despite

programs, “the main economic bene fits of the Belt and Road Initiative are transferred through local infrastructure development,” says Dr. Stringer. “The average person in a host country can have better roads, better railways, and a more stable electricity supply.” Some might argue that these actions are self-serving, and that China is simply doing them to expand its economic and political control over regions throughout Africa and Latin America. Projects like infra structure development, the construction of power grids, and the establishment of new trade routes between previously disconnected regions bring to mind the Age of Imperialism, specifically how European countries would assume power in ‘Third World’ nations under the guise of improving the economy, all the while exploiting these poorer nations for their own benefit. However, there is a key difference between neocolonialism and the Belt and Road Initiative: recipient countries play a crucial role in shaping the projects of the BRI, since China cannot force sovereign nations to accept

their involvement.7 Thus, the BRI is built through a series of compromises and bilateral agreements, rather than from unilateral decision-making by the Chinese government. In contrast, neocolonial ism is based on a more unequal power dynamic, where the host country often has no means of resisting geopolitical takeover by another nation. Jingjing Zhang, director of the Transnational Environmental Accountability Project, explains that “The impact of investment aid depends on two factors: the host country’s government and the manage ment and legal requirements for financ ing. First, it is necessary that the regime can guarantee that benefits are actually transferred to host countries. Second, countries must require business entities to conduct their due diligence and evaluate social impacts of new projects.” Though China plays the dominant hand in terms of financing capabilities, the long-term impact of investment projects may be more closely related to the political and economic conditions of the host country.

There has been resistance. Dr. Stringer highlights the “mixed reactions” of host countries: “I think oftentimes, national governments are really enthusi astic about cooperation with China and being able to access additional sources of capital. But local communities may see it as encroaching and changing their local area, and they may not welcome that.

I think there’s a lot of hostility towards China in particular, because it does feel like neo-imperialism to a lot of communi ties where they’re seeing Chinese com panies and Chinese workers come in and really transform the landscape. For exam ple, there are mega projects in the power plant development sector, such as the Myitsone Dam in Myanmar, or the Lamu Coal Plant in Kenya, where local com munities have really mobilized resistance and successfully delayed these projects.”

She also discusses how the relative speed with which Chinese firms have engaged in land transformation may lead to some communities, especially in areas where raw materials are sourced or where devel opment is occurring, to have difficulty adapting to these large-scale changes.

Ms. Zhang further elaborates on China’s frequent “lack of understanding of host countries’ culture and laws,” explaining how “Chinese companies take advantage

of weak regulatory systems and violate indigenous communities’ land rights. In extreme cases, Chinese companies have used armed force to protect their property, which shows disregard for the locals’ constitutional rights, specifically in countries like Ecuador and Peru.”

Overall, the relative harms and benefits of China’s involvement must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis: whereas some regions could immensely profit from the establishment of better maritime trade routes and a more stable power supply, structural inefficiency and local corruption might make bilateral cooperation unsustainable in other areas.

BRI and the Environment

As the climate justice movement progressively becomes more important in the public and political sphere, it has become increasingly necessary to assess the environmental impacts of develop ment projects like the BRI. Although the BRI has tremendous potential to trans form the economic landscape of countries across the world, it carries the very real threat of leaving environmental damage in its wake.

Some of the BRI’s main corridors pass through areas deemed ‘ecologi cally sensitive,’ and the construction of thousands of miles of roads and rail ways could critically endanger the plant and animal ecosystems native to the region.8 Along with wildlife and habitat disruption, the BRI has been linked to unsustainable land use, harmful mineral extraction, the destruction of biodiver sity, water quality problems, and indus trial pollution. Another major concern is that China is using the BRI as a funnel to export its fossil fuel-based economy9 to developing nations. Political pres sure at home could lead some Chinese policymakers to support the sale of unsustainable coal technology abroad, contributing to the production of more greenhouse gas emissions for generations to come.

Recent years have shown a strong effort on China’s part to increase the sustainability of its ventures while reduc ing its investment in power sources like coal, oil, and natural gas. Dr. Stringer discusses how international pressure and the desire to support environmen tally friendly projects has pushed China

to implement new policies regarding the environment: “Some of our recent research from the GDP Center has high lighted the potential for ‘debt for nature’ or ‘debt for climate’ swaps with China, where countries that have high indebted ness to China can apply for debt relief in exchange for mitigating environmental destruction, protecting local habitats, or preserving biodiversity.”

She also explains the importance of

China reaffirming its commitment to limiting environmental harms by meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and significantly reducing investment in coal and oil. With the increased focus on environmentalism, however, it is unlikely that China will be able to continue on its current track as the world’s leading producer of coal if it wants to continue making deals with developing countries, many of whom are aspiring leaders in the

a comparative approach when analyzing Chinese development, since develop ment as a whole usually cannot proceed without some environmental damage occurring due to landscape transfor mation. Dr. Stringer remarks: “My past research looked at the CO2 emissions intensity of power plants that are using Chinese contractors versus those that are using local contractors or contractors from other countries. And what I found was that the power plants with Chinese involvement actually had lower emissions intensity, indicating that they had higher quality technology relative to those other countries. So for some sectors, especially electric power development, or high speed rail, China has developed the technological edge from building up their own domestic industry in these sectors, and is able to take that technol ogy overseas.”

Clearly, the environmental issue is a divisive one, and China’s lack of transpar ency toward the international community has compounded the difficulty of evalu ating the BRI’s impact on the landscapes of developing countries. The concept of a “green Belt and Road Initiative” has emerged over the past few years, with

world of green, low-emissions technology. Ms. Zhang agrees with this perspective, noting that even if China makes progress towards reducing coal mining, “manu facturing, bauxite mining, oil refineries, and mineral extractions still contribute to substantial environmental damage.”

Future Implications

When we look back on the question of the Belt and Road Initiative’s relative benefits and harms, it is clear that there is no simple answer; rather, a complex interplay of economic, environmental, and political considerations must be taken into account. Fearful Western lead ers will likely always see China’s actions as an intentional power grab meant to increase its geopolitical influence. While there is an element of financial depen dency whenever China extends a line of credit to developing countries, it remains unclear whether this is simply an aspect of the lender-borrower dynamic or an intentional move on China’s part. As to whether the Belt and Road Initiative is an extension of neo-imperialism or an altruistic humanitarian investment, it is clear that the motivations behind China’s actions must be weighed against

Some of the BRI’s main corridors pass through areas deemed ‘ecologically sensitive,’ and the construction of thousands of miles of roads and railways could critically endanger the plant and animal ecosystems native to the region.

outcomes, especially in terms of poverty reduction, economic development, envi ronmental damage, and expanded trade capacity in countries around the world.

Xi Jinping’s manifesto that “China will never close its open door to the out side world, and the country welcomes all other nations to ride on the ‘tailwind’ of its development” is telling for the future. Regardless of whether China’s under lying motive is geopolitical dominance or international cooperation, the Belt and Road Initiative will remain a hotly debated topic for years to come.

Simona Hausleitner is a first-year in Branford College and can be reached at simona.hausleitner@yale.edu.

Endnotes

1 “Full Text of President Xi’s Speech at Opening of Belt and Road Forum.” Xinhua, http://www.xinhuanet.com//en glish/2017 05/14/c_136282982.htm.

2 Wang, Christoph N. “China Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Investment Report H1 202.” Green Finance & Development Center, 26 Oct. 2021, https://greenfdc.org/ china-belt-and-road-initiative-bri-investmentreport-h1 2021/.

3 “Belt and Road Initiative.” World Bank, https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/region al-integration/brief/belt-and-road-initiative.

4 Perlez, Jane. “China Retools Vast Global Building Push Criticized as Bloated and Predatory.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 25 Apr. 2019, https://www. nytimes.com/2019/04/25/business/chi na-belt-and-road-infrastructure.html.

5 Lee Jones Reader in International Politics. “Debunking the Myth of ‘Debt-Trap Diplo macy’.” Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank, 14 Dec. 2020, https://

www.chathamhouse.org/2020/08/debunk ing-myth-debt-trap-diplomacy.

6 “What Are the Benefits of Belt and Road Initiative?” Xinhua Silk Road - Belt and Road Portal, China’s Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Website, https://en.imsilkroad.com/p/314276.html.

7 Hameiri, Shahar. “Debunking the Myth of China’s ‘Debt-Trap Diplomacy.’” The Inter preter, The Interpreter, 17 May 2021, https:// www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/de bunking-myth-china-s-debt-trap-diplomacy.

8 Environmental and Energy Study Insti tute (EESI). “Exploring the Environmental Repercussions of China’s Belt and Road Ini tiative.” EESI, https://www.eesi.org/articles/ view/exploring-the-environmental-repercus sions-of-chinas-belt-and-road-initiativ.

9 Spiegel, Jan Ellen. “The Potential Climate Consequences of China’s Belt and Roads Initiative “ Yale Climate Connections.” Yale Climate Connections, 1 Apr. 2021, https:// yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/02/ the-potential-climate-consequences-of-chi nas-belt-and-roads-initiative/.

The Case for Irish Unification

by Dylan Gunn

i’m UP atoP my family’s land, in county Monaghan, Ireland—the land of hills. Wet and a little chilly—Ireland usually is. Growing up, no adventure compared to the hours spent romping around in the fields and climbing the forest’s trees. It’s about 9:30 but the sun lingers, a finger or so above the west ern horizon—gold on green, a sliver of cloud splits the center. My father points to the churches that break the hills and the people of their parishes—our friends and family. But perhaps more lies in the unseen. Somewhere, between the bookends of our hills, about 4 miles out, lies a dotted lie—invisible to my eyes.

a much more touristy and serene part of the country. He’s a Garda, an Irish cop. When he was first assigned to Monaghan, his family despaired. Policing near the border was a dangerous job: you could be the target of Republican and Unionist paramilitaries alike. Perhaps worse, you had to pick up the often literal pieces of their brutality—responding to the bombings and fetching blackened bodies from the bogs. Niall Gunn, my father: at the age of 9 got his first taste of the violence that has long marked his home. He nearly lost his life in a car bombing— one that many tie to the British security apparatus. But as luck would have it, the

She snakes through the steads, devoid of rhyme and reason; cuts the countryside as she cuts the lives of some thousands short. The border.

She snakes through the steads, devoid of rhyme and reason; cuts the countryside as she cuts the lives of some thousands short. The border. She stands for the still ongoing 800 years of imperialism and oppression inflicted upon my people.

I do not live in Ireland anymore and I likely will never again. For people like me, the Irish diaspora, reunification is endlessly appealing. For one, the many Irish who make their new home off the island do so in some part because of the imperialism the border stands for. Whether it be manufactured famine, political conflict, or economic despair, there’s a certain universality at the source of our exodus. But further, upon leaving, our relationship gradually drifts into the realm of abstraction, as we become disconnected from the everyday lived realities of Irish people. We will not have to deal with the complications a political restructuring of Ireland would require, so we can offer uncritical support.

Everyone in Monaghan has their story, subject to expected nuance, but all tying back to the border. Kieran Moore, my uncle: he’s originally from Galway,

Christmas tree caught the shrapnel and glass. Many of his countrymen—friends— were not as lucky, cut down by British bombs and guns, or caught up in the failed, often perverse fight to get them out.

The violence rightfully grabs the headlines but the problems run far deeper. By any metric the Republic of Ireland is a successful, wealthy, and modern nation, the legacy of British rule has left her Northern counterpart far worse off. By some estimations, the Republic is now 2.5 times wealthier per capita than the North; the gulf between East and West Germany was only 1 6 times. This is reflected in every quality of life measurement: the North boasts an 8 percent higher poverty rate, three times the suicide rate, and over 1.5 years lower life expectancy. Much of this blame falls on the explicit actions of British gov ernance—which long preferred to treat the region as a source of cheap indus trial labor. But the economic damage of imperialism and border stretches North and South alike. While atop our hill I can see no signs of the border, the

same cannot be said for the impersonal forces of market factors and govern ment policy. As Matt Carthy, a Teacha Dala for Monaghan-Cavan (analogous to American Congressmen) explained to me, thanks to the border many have come to see the counties on either side of her edge as representing the end of their respective entities, and correspondingly pushing them to the periphery of the economic and political conversation. Despite harboring many urban centers on either side, only one rail line crosses the border and the motorways aren’t much better. Crossing on any route other than Dublin-Belfast (the cross-border largest cities) requires tracing meandering and inefficient roads—not the most conducive to economic prosperity. Most intuitively, Carthy observes the current economic and bureaucratic layout of the island is grossly inefficient. Despite a popu lation of only 6 8 million people, the island bears two distinct health services, education services, transport networks, and economic development agencies; the redundancy of this is bad enough, but it’s compounded by a sense of competition that often inhibits the cooperation needed for success.

An even more severe consequence of partition is the complexity and chaos wrought on Northern Irish politics. Since the signing of the Good Friday agree ment, which brought an end to the afore mentioned mass violence dubbed “The Troubles”, in 1998 there has been relative peace in the region. Sectarian killings and flare-ups in tension are not unheard of, but the situation is incomparable to the large-scale social conflict that marked previous generations. However, stability is never guaranteed under the status quo, and politically, it is currently far from the case. The Northern Ireland government is split between Unionist and Republican parties that often put cooperation on the backburner. Correspondingly, over the last twenty years, Northern Ireland has been marked by incessant periods of gov ernment collapse. Most notably a poorly thought out Renewable Energy initiative snowballed into over 1000 days without government between 2017 and 2020. A region simply cannot succeed—or even function—with such a chaotic political climate. While since January 2020, Northern Ireland has enjoyed an existent

government, the British government’s recent threats to nix the Northern Ireland agreement could result in yet another col lapse, or even worse. Ultimately, it is this ambiguity and the possibility for escala tion that seems to hold over the region’s present and future political situation, a concoction that historically rendered vio lence a viable choice to the proponents of Republicanism and Unionism.

In light of these myriad problems, the actions of radical sectarians—Repub lican and Unionist alike—work to make

services in the North and the public sec tor accounts for a large swath of employ ment. With a potential sudden loss of jobs and government funding, a United Ireland might suffer a rocky start. But, td Carthy astutely observed a reunified Ireland would be a honeypot for inter national goodwill and support. Despite never having an empire (let alone a state until 100 years ago) the Irish people and their culture have become loved as under dogs all around the world; many might think it would be nice to see them “win.”

the situation worse for all involved. However, Ireland is now presented with a historic opportunity for peaceful change and betterment. While the Republic has long polled overwhelmingly in support of reunification, over 40% (and rising) of the North now follow suit. Every year Irish Catholics—who support reunifica tion—become a higher percentage of the North’s population. Further, Northern Ireland voted against Brexit and its cataclysmic unfolding seems to be proving that judgment right. This means that reunification is now also being viewed from the nonsectarian lens as a way to reverse Brexit and reenter the eU. I believe this is not simply the best choice for the people of Ireland, but the only way to resolve the issues of past and present and foster a prosperous future for all the island’s inhabitants. No other solution—not that there are any seriously proposed—has the same potential for eco nomic growth, ensuring political stability, and finally ending sectarian violence and the dangerous culture it fosters.

Reunification could provide an unprecedented and miraculous boost to the economy of Northern Ireland and the border region. While proof of the status quo’s failings is easy to find, many supporters of reunification fear that it would entail economic complications. They’re certainly not without cause: the UK currently funds expensive social

The eU (and other organizations and countries) would likely want to support the new entity—treating its success as demonstrative of the power of peace and world order. In conjunction with widely predicted increases in trade—the natural conclusion of finally ending trade-hostile uncertainty—the longer-term economic growth sounds promising. Further, given the Northern counties would play a far

While these feelings still exist in signifi cant ways, they are held in check by the Peace Agreement. Nevertheless, a certain precarity will always hold over this peace as long as the status quo holds: the root question of reunification and imperialism is unanswered. Finally concluding this saga of history through a referendum resulting in favor of a United Ireland would give a final definite answer to this historical question. While some observers believe that in the leadup to a conten tious referendum, Unionists may feel threatened and turn towards violence, this is quite unlikely. For the Unionist population to be led to violence, there must be some aim to achieve. But these referendums are guaranteed under international law: local violence will be unlikely to stop it, and perhaps further prove the necessity of rule of law. Further, given the British government’s weakened status since the 1990s, they are not in the position to oppose these conclusions— especially not through violence. Follow ing a referendum guaranteed under the agreement and international law, it seems the only conclusion would be for the Unionist population to accept the result and adapt to a curious new role in Irish politics. This is all to say that the chance of reunification being met with wide spread violence is very unlikely.

larger role in the new Irish government than they currently do in the UK, they could be more successful in assuring this growth benefits those who need it most. Historically, political ambiguity has created violence; and now it similarly fosters anxiety. I hope that reunification would provide closure and end this uncertainty. Both Unionists and Republi can forces were inspired to fight by causes they considered achievable—although not strictly through the ballot box.

I do not mince words when I say that the chief problem in the border region is the lingering effects of imperial ism. Reunification being the final end to this struggle against imperialism, would indeed ensure that violence could never again flair up. But it is important that this peace and conclusion comes through a referendum, implicitly chastising the often toxic legacy of Republicanism. The ideology has driven people to do terrible things, commonly hurting the

“If I could guarantee a United Ireland by killing someone, I would do it in a heartbeat. But the people we’re killing, they don’t deserve to die.”

Historically, political ambiguity has created violence; and now it similarly fosters anxiety.

people they claim to protect. The ira and adjacent Republican paramilitaries were responsible for most of the deaths during the troubles—some 400 of which were Irish Catholics themselves, and countless other protestant civilians with no stake in the conflict. My parents can vividly recount the schooling of their childhoods and the seemingly harmless songs latent with praise for murder. But this culture, that raised generations on the belief that violence was the way, has left scars. My grandfather and uncle spent my parents’ wedding in jail. Why? Because a “family friend” of ours—who was involved with the Republican Militant groups—hid armaments on our land against our knowledge. And my uncle, despite being cleared of all charges, was denied a visa to bring his kids to Disneyland because of this. My dad further recounts a visit he made to a friend in Long Kesh—a prison in Northern Ireland—when his friend told him: “if I could guarantee a United Ireland by killing someone, I would do it in a heartbeat. But the people we’re

killing, they don’t deserve to die.”

Reunification is not perfect: 800 years of exploitation and complication simply cannot be fixed in a day. The reality will be complicated and difficult. Even on the economic front, it will likely take years for cross-border cooperation to provide material improvements to the lives of Irish people. And the political considerations will always carry some risk of upsetting the balance or encroaching on unionists’ sense of security. But failure to act would simply leave the people helpless in the face of a clearly broken status quo or risk plunging them back into a violent past. But the reuniting of Ireland would fundamentally be a tale of hope and inspiration—a tale of how elec tions, not violence, brought peace and prosperity. Finally gone would be the forces that killed friends and family, and anew would come the United Ireland, a symbol to the world.

Dylan Gunn is a first-year in Pauli Murray College and can be reached at dylan.gunn@yale.edu.

Irish Country Road by Sophia Durney, 2015

Forever in Flux:

The Demographics of Healthcare Workers

Amidst an Uncertain Pandemic

for most ameriCaNs, the last eighteen months of pandemic life have seemed to stretch on forever; our normal days and routines upended by quarantine require ments, travel restrictions, and on-again, off-again lockdowns. The pandemic’s initial effects in Spring of 2020 were significant: panic-buying and toilet paper hoarding, at-home workouts and dreaded Zoom calls. The following summer was marginally more hopeful, with decreased cases enabling outdoor get-togethers. However, the virus came back with renewed ferocity in the fall, forcing stu dents to either return to school in person full-time (some wearing masks, some not) or learn completely online, opening up a schism between wealthy and low-in come students. Finally, the world got the ultimate Christmas gift: vaccinations. Since then, we’ve been living in a state of “in-between” as officials juggle bipartisan desires to reopen with still lagging vac cination rates, especially in areas with a more politically conservative population.

But for one distinct group of people, the last eighteen months have been a particularly punishing slog through the depths of human suffering and resilience. While working themselves to the bone and putting their own lives at risk, rough ly 9 8 million patient-facing American healthcare workers now have to manage their own decisions to be vaccinated while struggling with the moral and ethical pitfalls of caring for acutely ill unvaccinated people. These two chal lenges have produced stark demographic changes in an already overburdened sys tem. The last year and half has been the ultimate stress test for this demographic dynamic, with one researcher noting that we may continue to see an even wider shift in the workforce as workers who are vaccinated and tired of caring for

unvaccinated patients shift away from patient-facing work while those that are unvaccinated leave facilities with vaccina tion mandates.

For Peyton Wilson, pandemic care was one of the first steps in her nursing career. Working as a traveling nurse on the West Coast, Wilson described her time living out of a locked-down hotel and caring for acutely ill Covid 19 pa tients as incredibly stressful and difficult.

“There were no breaks. We didn’t have the time or staff to take breaks, and we’d be in full gear for hours and hours. A lot of the patients didn’t get the care they would be getting now or should be getting because we were so busy and overrun and overworked. It was the bare minimum to keep these people alive, which was sad in a lot of ways. You couldn’t give the care you wanted and the care you were used to giving. It was just whatever you could do to make it work

by Anabel Moore

and make it through the day.”

Though the crisis of the pandemic in America isn’t as significant now as it was then, the country is now facing a crisis of polarization, in which individual de cisions to be vaccinated or unvaccinated are the difference between a overwhelmed healthcare system and a stable, relatively calm hospital environment.

Dr. Ivette Motola, assistant direc tor of the University of Miami Gordon Center for Simulation and Innovation in Medical Education, described the difference in how healthcare workers are perceived between the beginning of the pandemic and now. According to Motola, back in the spring of 2020, the public in Little Havana would hit pots at 8 Pm, clapping for and cheering on their healthcare heroes.

“It felt like those were so many of the reasons you go into medicine you really want to help people and want them to

Healthcare workers prepare to transport a Covid-19 positive patient at Kootenai Health regional medical center in Coeur d’Alene, Indiana. October 2021

get better. That carried folks for a while. But when the backlash came, it really im pacted healthcare workers and emergency physicians who were on the front lines. When there was this whole backlash that doctors are making up that people are dy ing from Covid when it’s not really Covid and the mis and disinformation it’s really hard.”

There is no more representative ex ample of the “tale of two Americas” than the current Covid 19 outlook in Miami, Florida and New Haven, Connecticut. With many Covid 19 regulations based on political ideology, Motola noted that “the politicization of this pandemic is one of the biggest travesties I can think of in a long time. It’s just been really unfortu nate.” Florida, while not the state with the lowest overall vaccination rate in the country, has only 59% of its total pop ulation fully vaccinated. Additionally, Governor Ron DeSantis has for months refused to enact a statewide mask man date, even going so far as to ban mask mandates in schools. In late summer 2021, the state of Florida saw its highest single-day positive test rate, leaving hos pitals overwhelmed and having to turn even non-Covid patients away, reporting oxygen shortages and a lack of intensive care unit beds.

Conversely, the state of Connecticut has seen a markedly different Covid re sponse: with the highest vaccination rate in the country (70.1%) and many cities still requiring mask-wearing or proof of vaccination, local hospitals are operating relatively normally, not facing the acutely overwhelming patient load that has sent hospitals into overdrive in other parts of the country.

This dichotomy exemplifies how the pandemic is no longer a crisis for many areas of the country that have taken the necessary and relevant public health pre cautions to protect their citizens, while it remains a substantial threat for those that haven’t. With increasing polarization surrounding the decision to be vaccinat ed, so too are the state of hospitals and healthcare workers. But unlike March of 2020, healthcare workers now have much more agency in regards to where and on whom they practice medicine.

Dr. Rohit Sangal, Assistant Pro fessor of Emergency Medicine and

Associate Medical Director of the Yale University-New Haven adult emergency department is an expert in healthcare administration during the pandemic and commented on this newfound practi tioner agency.

“There are a lot of healthcare workers deciding to leave their current jobs be cause they don’t want to get vaccinated. Those people are going to places that have low vaccination rates where maybe those mandates don’t exist and getting a job there. People who are vaccinated go to higher vaccination areas and people who aren’t vaccinated are going to lower vaccination areas, almost to be with peo ple who they consider to be like-minded.”

Wilson described her experience with healthcare workers and their vac cination decisions: “I’ve heard a lot of stories of workers who choose to not get the vaccine and who are fired from their jobs they’ve worked for fifteen years, and it’s causing a big divide with us. In the beginning of the pandemic, it used to be us versus the virus, and now it’s us versus each other. We aren’t banded together anymore.”

Not even the incentive of high salaries in the healthcare field is enough to fully offset these challenges, as we’ve seen in the dramatic shortage of health care workers. During her time early in the pandemic, Wilson explained that “the turnover rate was high. We were working long hours, and there was a lot of death, things we couldn’t control or do anything

general mindset as: “there is something to protect people, so why would I risk myself when someone else isn’t protect ing themselves?”

Throughout the course of the pandemic, broader sentiments about public health guidance have been disproportionately impacted by fake news and misinforma tion, ranging from early Centers for Dis ease Control guidance stating that masks were not helpful in preventing the spread of disease to far-right conspiracy theories hawking “miracle treatments” such as hydroxychloroquine. But when vaccina tions first came out, this misinformation took a violently dramatic turn, with individuals refusing vaccination because they believed outlandish theories such as the government implanting people with tracking chips through vaccination. With the internet, social media, and far-right politicians fanning the flames of fake news, tech giants have cracked down on sources that overtly spread misinforma tion, issuing bans on content that doesn’t clearly lay out the facts of vaccination: that it is safe, effective, and necessary to protect our communities and get us back to the normal state of life that we so desperately desire.

“When you talk to patients and ask if they are vaccinated, ask where they get their concerns and information, you end up spending a lot of time just trying to counsel people on why their underlying beliefs aren’t true. That’s challenging,” Sangal notes.

about. There’s one month on the con tract, and a lot of people could not stay that month. They’d leave after a week.” This burnout, compounded by the moral conundrums of caring for unvaccinated people, has left many healthcare profes sionals stepping back from the clinical setting and reapplying their skill sets in more administrative or managerial roles. Sangal describes this specific group’s

It is likely that a portion of soci ety will never choose to be vaccinated, regardless of incentive or even obliga tion, decreasing the probability that the United States will reach herd immunity. This in turn increases the likelihood that the coronavirus will become endemic, with new strains emerging and requiring vaccinations every few years. In other words, the world won’t be returning to

"In the beginning of the pandemic, it used to be us versus the virus, and now it’s us versus each other. We aren’t banded together anymore."

normal anytime soon. As a consequence, it’s likely that our healthcare system will have to adapt in order to meet the chang ing demands of the virus.

Adaptation has been a key word in our fight against Covid 19. In an effort to prevent unnecessary contact between healthcare professionals and the larger public, many hospitals and networks de voted time and resources towards advanc ing their telehealth operations, a shift that “would have taken maybe five or ten years to learn that we’ve now learned in two years,” according to Sangal.

America’s healthcare infrastructure underwent a “massive stress test,” accord ing to Sangal, who noted that “with large healthcare institutions, it’s really easy for things to fall into silos, for departments to operate independently of each other. The pandemic made us realize that we can make massive structural changes to provide care.”

Healthcare systems in particular had to move quickly to adapt to the pro longed nature of the pandemic. Sangal notes that “there is a good amount [of information available] in the world of crisis management and how organiza tions respond, less so in the realm of how to respond to a prolonged crisis such as the pandemic. Things like car accidents, trauma, stroke, cardiac arrest: these tend to affect a small number of patients. You have a small influx of individuals who are very sick and require a lot of your attention and emotional engagement, but there’s an end point at which their care is done. Maybe they go to the operating room, maybe you stabilize them, maybe they’re able to go home. There’s an end point.” Having co-authored a well-publi cized study at Yale on the effects of group dynamics on the overall mental health and decision-making of healthcare work ers, Sangal notes that “burnout [in the healthcare profession] is already really high: how does the effect of Covid com pound an already burnt-out workforce?”

Motola expanded on the idea of burnout, describing the evolution of how doctors and the systems they work in perceive burnout and self-care.

“With the pandemic, being sick and not being allowed to come into work it’s about the first time I ever heard that. We’ve had people with IV pumps going,

and the idea that ‘I’m an emergency medicine doctor and I can work through everything, I can scale that mountain no matter what’ our own health and well-being, both mental and physical, has never come first. Back when I was in training, there was awareness of trying to do fun things together, but now there’s been research done on what’s effective. Those programs existed before the pandemic, and trying to implement them during the pandemic is variable depend ing on the reality of what’s going on in the hospital during those peaks. You can talk about it, but is it really happening?"

The results of Sangal’s study, led by Leslie A. Curry, M.P.H., P.h.D., shows that healthcare workers who identified with a team had decreased overall stress levels, indicating that identifying or showing solidarity with others who are in the same situation improves overall well-being. Sangal notes that “when someone really sick with Covid comes in [to Yale-New Haven Hospital], it’s really nice to see us all come together and really do our team-based care well. They come in on the ambulance, they’re requiring extra oxygen, and you can go in with no hesitation, start the IVs, stabilize the airways, and really fall back on the great clinical training that everyone has. When you get over that initial hump of oh my goodness, someone might have Covid, we fall back on that core value of good patient care.”

It is heartening to think that the good patient care, public displays of bravery by healthcare professionals, and increased prevalence of public health ini tiatives has inspired a new generation of healthcare workers to join the workforce. Sangal notes that “the next generation of healthcare workers certainly may have an increased sense of purpose, as they were doing this training right when the pandemic was happening. They may have decided to enter or join emergency medi cine specifically for that sense of purpose of wanting to care for someone.”

Wilson added that there is no doubt that new healthcare workers are going to find a place where they are wanted and needed. “Being needed in a field you’re working in is huge, and so is feeling that support and appreciation.”

This influx of new workers will en

counter a system vastly different from the one which existed prior to the pandemic. Given all of the uncertainty surrounding the virus in relation to hospital manage ment the massive, system-wide ramifica tions of public safety measures, decreased revenue and increased operational costs, PPE shortages, and most notably capaci ty overload—America’s healthcare system will never be the same, perhaps for the better. Well-known for its operational inefficiencies, tangled insurance setup, and crossed wires, America’s healthcare system doesn’t stack up to healthcare systems in other developed nations. According to recent data from the Com monwealth Fund, before the pandemic the US spent more on healthcare as a share of the economy yet had the lowest life expectancy and highest suicide rates amongst the 11 Organization for Eco nomic Co-Operation and Development (oeCd) countries.

There is certainly immense room for our system to grow and it will inevitably face a multitude of challenges for years to come. While it is certainly perplexing that many of our healthcare workers, many of whom have years of training in the sciences, choose to reject science and decline the vaccine, advances in hospi tal-based organizational development and the sudden surge in those wishing to don scrubs or a white jacket are reasons for hope indicating something good may indeed have come out of these incredibly trying and exhausting past 18 months.

Anabel Moore is a first-year in Branford College and can be reached at anabel.moore@yale.edu.

Blockchain, Robots, and

Mars: Where do University Students Start?

by Axel de Vernou

What do sPaCe tourism, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence (ai) have in com mon? This semester, Yale College is not offering an introductory course dedicated solely to any of them. While these topics may be covered in certain high-level engineering or finance courses, students, especially first-years, have very limited exposure to them in the classroom. Yet these topics are constantly heralded as “the future” of our world—revolutionary processes that are shaping our under standing of human society and identity.

If colleges are meant to prepare stu dents to tackle the world’s greatest issues, then it has never been more difficult for them to carry out their responsibility.

Ideas and topics that seemed far-fetched a week ago can rise to relevance in the blink of an eye. The world is changing rapidly, and with that comes significant pressure for today’s college students. Universities like Yale, however, have not updated their course lists each semester

almost inevitable for students pursuing majors in economics, political science, environmental studies, and even his tory or the humanities to encounter the technology in their studies. Data, which drives the development of ai, pervades contemporary society. Consequently, individuals in almost every industry have had to rely on quantitative analysis to uncover new trends or describe previ ously inexplicable processes.

How can students, whether deeply intrigued by specific technologies or apprehensive of how ai will intersect with their studies, keep up with the mind-blowing pace of digital and robotic developments? Dr. Priyadarshini Panda, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, manages the Intelligent Computing Lab for this very purpose. While she offers a course on neural networks every fall semester, it is primar ily intended for experienced graduate stu dents. The Lab, on the other hand, fulfills

on the web. . . without having a proper machine or the knowledge to install [advanced] toolkits,” said Dr. Panda. She cited Coursera and freely accessible YouTube videos from ai enthusiasts and academics as excellent resources for stu dents to begin immersing themselves in the world of ai in a self-paced manner.

Students may in fact find indepen dent exploration of ai more effective than learning in the classroom, no matter what discipline they are hoping to pursue. Political science, for instance, increasingly relies on ai models to predict election trends; doctors and sociologists use ai to predict vaccine efficacy; and students looking at agriculture or sustainable development need to learn about ai as it continues to automate these indus tries. “Learning a bit of data science or ai through these Coursera courses is an alternative way for you to pick up a new topic without being under the radar of grading and you can take it up at your own pace,” said Dr. Panda.

However, it may be challenging for students to find time to add courses. For students who appreciate a more struc tured way of exploring a subject and who want to immerse themselves in a commu nity of equally curious individuals, stu dent clubs and organizations are a useful alternative. first at Yale (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Tech nology) is an example of one such club that seeks to inspire the next generation of college students leaning toward stem careers.

to reflect the unrelenting pace of global developments, leaving extracurricular organizations responsible for picking up the slack.

Students interested in fields such as space tourism, crypto, and ai must now constantly be on the lookout for accessi ble research, online courses, groups, and initiatives to stay informed about trends in the industry. Each of these three fields have worked to democratize information for aspiring students.

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Fifteen years ago, the overwhelming majority of Yale students matriculated without ever having interacted with any form of ai. Nowadays, it is quite the opposite. stem majors will unquestion ably run into ai at some point, and it is

the key role of encouraging Yale College students to explore their passions in a supportive space before moving into the workforce or on to graduate-level classes.

After joining the Lab, “students wouldn’t be very surprised by the ter minology in [graduate] classes. It helps them to get that little bit of research insight,” said Dr. Panda. “If undergradu ates find the work useful and both of us feel like there is a sort of synergy, we take up a project together.”

Before even considering the Lab, however, there are a variety of resources available to students that can turn their surface-level knowledge into more funda mental understanding without necessi tating any kind of hands-on expertise.

“Today, if you want to do a Python-based application, you can do it on your own

Despite the accessibility of program ming platforms and websites online, the team component of first at Yale is invaluable, said Miriam Huerta ‘23, Trea surer of the organization. Students build robots together, and on the side, “profes sional engineers mentor students. . . and you get to ask them for help and learn from them,” which encourages a mix of collaboration and self-paced learning. College students hoping to best prepare themselves for the rapid expansion of ai, which can be an intimidating subject, should endeavor to find a community with whom to share their discoveries.

“What’s most common, at least at Yale, is people come in wanting to do stem and end up switching out of it,” Miriam observed. first at Yale takes a hands-on

“If colleges are meant to prepare students to tackle the world’s greatest issues, then it has never been more difficult for them to carry out their responsibility.”

approach that improves engagement compared to the college’s theoretical introductory classes.

Space Tourism

The balance between independent research and finding communities within student organizations applies to space tourism and crypto as well. While ai has occasionally made headlines in the past few years when a technology company has made a breakthrough innovation, the same cannot be said about space tourism.

Until recently, the idea of traveling into space was foreign to citizens across the United States. But now, business leaders and professors recognizing the speed of this new trend are launching their own initiatives to catch students up and spark an interest in this emerging industry. Members of Yale’s community who have little exposure to such a new topic can take advantage of new resources appear ing across the country.

Dylan Taylor, Chairman and Ceo of Voyager Space, has worked assidu ously to support the space industry by investing in private companies, sharing research with news organizations, and promoting education in the field. “I think the biggest misconception is that

more people to space has translated to Space for Humanity’s Citizen Astronaut Program and the company New Space, which is part of Voyager Space. The former aims to give ordinary people the opportunity to travel into space and learn about how the industry is evolving. Yale students can also use Space for Human ity’s website to find out which organi zations and advisory boards are most involved in the topics that interest them.

Not only do Mr. Taylor’s initiatives enable college students to engage with space tourism, but they also encourage a deeper understanding of the history and future trajectory of the field. With the news constantly heralding individuals like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos for their expeditions into space and highlighting the new frontiers that have been opened to humankind, college students will need to immerse themselves in the field instead of just learning basic facts.

Dr. Robert Goehlich, one of the first professors to offer a rigorous class on space tourism to students across the world, values this philosophy in his teaching approach. As a space tourism expert and adjunct assistant professor at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Universi ty’s Worldwide Campus, he worked with

different roles within the space tourism market, ranging from operations man agers, to the marketing team, and, of course, to the tourist. Students from across the world—whether from Yale or any other university—can Zoom into it virtually, collaborate with other thinkers, solve complex problems, and analyze cur rent trends in the industry. Dr. Goehlich started with this approach in 2003 when he developed and taught the first space tourism course as a visiting professor at Keio University in Yokohama, Japan. Since then, he has maintained his strategy of building scenarios and team meetings into the curriculum.

His overall goal is to clear miscon ceptions that students may have about such a nascent industry while converting their surface-level knowledge to deeper comprehension. “Space tourism is a field where reality, hoaxes, and science fiction are mixed up in such a way that it makes [it] difficult to distinguish between reality and wishes. The ‘wish’ is to start tomorrow at large-scale, but the ‘reality’ is the existing challenges and the smaller step-by-step successes,” explained Dr. Goehlich. Distinguishing between what is currently feasible and what ambitions engineers and politicians have is an essential part of truly grasping the impli cations of space tourism.

the current ‘space race’ has no impact on everyday citizens,” said Mr. Taylor. “I’d argue the opposite—as more and more people go to space, whether it’s Richard Branson or your next door neighbor, it not only inspires other people to want to become astronauts, but [also] motivates companies to make flights and technol ogy cheaper and more accessible.”

For Mr. Taylor, this desire to bring

their College of Business to construct a course that places students in the shoes of those who are pioneering the growth of space tourism. “Teaching a class means for me. . .also listening to the students’ opinions and having interactive activities, rather than ‘teaching’ the subject as a monologue,” explained Dr. Goehlich.

How exactly does he do this? First, the class tasks students with playing

The methodology of exploration explained in the ai section above holds true for space tourism, as well. While Dr. Goehlich’s course seeks to expand the reach of space tourism instruction to stu dents across the world, it may be difficult for students to add an extra class to their already-busy schedules. Thus, Dr. Goeh lich also launched a Space Tourism Fund last year to support student learning by providing access to textbooks, encourag ing discussions about learned material, and providing a budget to eligible partic ipants to use creatively. His course and fund aim at a similar objective: teaching students about the “safe operation of the spaceships, an environmentally friendly operation, and having a profitable opera tion that is economically viable.”

To learn about all available options for programs and courses, college stu dents will have to sacrifice time to do the scouting. These hours of research pay off if the program or course that is ulti mately chosen aligns with their interest

“As more and more people go to space, whether it’s Richard Branson or your next door neighbor, it [...] motivates companies to make flights and technology cheaper and more accessible.”

and provides an enriching experience. The overwhelming part of the equation is the sheer quantity of resources and potential opportunities that appear after a Google search, forcing students to constantly filter their results and abandon many alternatives. Notwithstanding, one can never go wrong by settling on an initiative, such as Dr. Goehlich’s course, which stresses real-world application and immersion into an industry of choice.

Crypto

The final member of this trio that occupies a great space in the news cycle but is poorly understood by many college students is cryptocurrency. Memes, hype, and celebrity influence have superficially informed many people about crypto while overlooking the fundamentals of the revolutionary technology.

Professor Sarah Hammer, Managing Director of the Stevens Center for Inno vation in Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, is try ing to change that. Hammer co-teaches

a Wharton online class available to anybody through Coursera that intro duces students to digital currencies and the basics of crypto. While she started her career in investment and portfolio management, she soon realized that cryptocurrency would reform the way we think about financial infrastructure. The technology currently used to clear and settle trades as well as today’s regulatory framework are outdated, according to Hammer. Crypto would replace a system that often allows for credit exposure and slow transactions with a decentralized, rapid mechanism of sending money. “Crypto has many features which obvi ously are different from many financial instruments, and we need to study them,” said Hammer.

To that end, Hammer participated in a congressional hearing earlier this year to make the case that crypto needs to be studied and considered in its entirety before rushing to regulate it. We have to “understand the technology. . .the way it is being used, and get data on the size of

the markets and where the risks are,” said Hammer. If crypto is predicted to over ride traditional financial instruments and centralized banks in favor of an organized blockchain, more students will need to take on the research Hammer described.

Fortunately, launching oneself into the intricacies of crypto and space tourism takes less time than might be expected. “Part of what makes crypto unique is that it is such a fast-moving space. If a student has motivation to get involved, they can get up to speed very quickly and. . . they will not be behind other people,” said Hammer. “A student who is motivated can get ahead of the curve—all they have to do is reach out and learn.”

One dilemma that comes with independent online research, however, is the process of avoiding fallacious data or facts that seem credible. Indeed, Professor Joseph Bonneau of New York University warned that misinformation is rampant with respect to crypto. “There are a lot of people doing [crypto] to try to make money. In some cases there is some bad behavior—people pushing ideas behind coins they have a financial stake in, or people muddying the waters trying to make it sound like their version of something is new and better when it’s really just a copy of something else.”

To steer clear from conflicts of interest and unfounded research, students should start by consulting academic resources that rely on information pro vided by professors. After grasping the fundamentals of crypto, students can then successfully distinguish misleading from explanatory articles or videos. To help with that process, Bonneau co-authored a textbook titled Bitcoin and Cryptocur rency Technologies, one of the first of its kind, in 2016. It is accompanied by a Princeton Coursera course based on the material in the textbook. To democratize the research that Bonneau and his co-au thors assembled, there is a free unedited version online. “The book is pretty widely used and I’ve talked to many people who read it outside of any formal class to get into the space,” said Bonneau.

In terms of classes, Hammer believes that a lot of work can still be done. “Uni versities need to offer more courses about fintech and blockchain,” she said. Ideally, Hammer would want to see more classes

Messier 16 (The Eagle Nebula) from NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

that are “cross-disciplinary in nature [with] more practitioners speaking in the classroom,” so that students can visual ize how crypto fits into the economic, political, and social developments of our time. To address this shortcoming, UPenn students in the Bitcoin Laboratory are actively reaching out to other schools to harness student talent in different com munities with varying experiences. “The best innovation is coming from students,” said Hammer. Yale students should keep this in mind when founding and joining different organizations—their work has the potential to contribute significantly to the field they choose to pursue. This type of involvement will encourage the transi tion from surface-level to well-ingrained knowledge as students gain exposure to a new industry.

cleared up is quite simple,” said Shankara Abineni ‘25, who plans to focus on the intersection between ai and econom ics while at Yale. Luis Halvorssen ‘25, who plans to participate in yUaa (Yale Undergraduate Aeronautics Association) and yUdi (Yale Undergraduate Diversi fied Investments), echoed this sentiment. “There is plenty of accessible information on the internet, but a. . .class or profes sor would definitely help in making that individual effort much easier.” Miriam explained that before adding new classes, the current selection needs to be updated. “Introductory classes could definitely be improved,” she said.

Perhaps students would benefit most from curation of content. Joey Guardino, who will study astrophysics as a first-year at Columbia University after his gap

organize his research instead of having to sift through the infinite number of new discoveries published online.

If Yale and its peer institutions hope to prepare their students for the transformational changes that will define the future, they will need to react more quickly to economic, political, and tech nological shifts by introducing classes that support student learning. ai, crypto, and space tourism are just three examples of industries that may completely revolu tionize our understanding of the world, and it is the responsibility of today’s insti tutions to channel expert-driven informa tion to a classroom environment. In the meantime, as students wait, an abundance of Coursera classes and online research tools are readily available. The challenge at hand is filtering through all the content to ensure that the most accurate and well-researched resources serve as the foundation for your understanding.

Axel de Vernou is a first-year in Saybrook College and can be reached at axel.devernou@yale.edu.

Student Perspectives

To acquire a better understanding of ai, space tourism, and crypto, students will need to introduce a mix of online learning and research into their sched ules. By taking a sufficient amount of time to find the right resource, whether it be a virtual course or a comprehensive textbook, college students can make sense of the issues that frequently appear on the news with little in-depth explo ration. Even so, students seem to agree that the university needs to respond more diligently to quick shifts in crucial industries.

“With online resources, you lack the ability to ask related questions and spend a lot of time just looking for the right information that relates to your goals. With university classes, all of the learning is structured, and getting doubts

year, believes that there is a wealth of precise and helpful information available online—so much so that it becomes over whelming. Some examples of resources he follows include the astrophysics and astronomy tab on Apple News, Universe Today, Nasa, SpaceNews, SpaceFlight Insider, Air & Space Magazine, and Sci entific American.

But students cannot feasibly juggle all of these sites with their coursework. Joey’s solution has been turning to more specific, curated resources. “I pay for a subscription called Brilliant, which is an online organization that creates a vast collection of courses by award-win ning professors and researchers for mathematics, physics—including astron omy—computer science, finance, and so much more,” said Joey. With all of this information in one place, Joey can better

If crypto is predicted to override traditional financial instruments and centralized banks in favor of an organized blockchain, more students will need to take on the research Hammer described.

The Yale-NUS Closure's Unanswered Questions

by David Bloom

oN the thUrsday afternoon of August 25, every student at Yale-NUS College got an email telling them about a surprise town hall taking place the next day. Friday classes were cancelled. Yale-NUS had al ready told students they’d be announcing some changes to their core curriculum, so when Suman P., a first-year at Yale-NUS, got the email, she said that she “didn’t think much of it.” Simultaneously, the National University of Singapore (NUS), announced its own town hall for students enrolled in the University Scholars Pro gramme (USP), a selective interdisciplin ary program within NUS.

Did these town halls just happen to be scheduled at the same time? Rumors began to circulate that the joint town halls might announce some “interesting” new program involving USP and YaleNUS. No one seemed to know what this new development would be. Yale-NUS was Yale’s only major foreign partnership, and Yale had never contributed money from its own endowment to Yale-NUS. This is why, for years, Yale-NUS students wondered whether Yale would pull out, leaving its Singaporean offshoot on its own. These surprise town halls made those rumors hum just a little bit louder.

That Friday morning, just ten minutes before the town hall began, a fraction of Yale-NUS students opened their phones, laptops, or tablets and were greeted with press reports—NUS was shutting down Yale-NUS college and merging it with the University Scholars Programme to create a new college, un affiliated with Yale. If these reports were to be believed, in four years, the Class of 2025 would be the last group of people on Earth to receive Yale-NUS diplomas.

The interval between the release of

those news reports and the start of the town hall was, for Suman, “the most confusing ten minutes of my life.” She didn’t want to believe that Yale-NUS was shutting down, but sources as varied as the Yale Daily New, mainstream Singa porean papers like the Straits Times, and even a press release from Yale repeated the message in unison. The town hall confirmed that NUS had indeed decided to shut down Yale-NUS college, ending the college’s ten-year-long project to bring liberal arts education to Asia. To understand why, we need to revisit 2011, when Yale University and the National University of Singapore announced plans to jointly establish Yale-NUS College.

In the announcement, Yale described Yale-NUS as “Singapore’s first liberal arts college, and the first with a full residen tial college model, integrating living and learning.” From the beginning, Yale-NUS occupied a liminal space between being a fully independent institution and the subordinate offspring of its two parent universities. As an autonomous college, Yale-NUS designed its own core curric ulum that “synthesize[d] Western and Asian perspectives,” in the words of a 2011 Yale press release. At the same time, Yale-NUS lacks control over its own Board of Governors; Yale nominates half of the board members, NUS another half, and Singapore’s Ministry of Educa tion confirms every nominee. Still, YaleNUS began with lofty ambitions to, in the words of the 2011 press release, “serve as a catalyst for innovation in liberal arts” and educate “leaders.”

In 2021, even following the closure, Yale administrators were confident that Yale-NUS was living up to its ambitions. When I interviewed Pericles Lewis, Yale’s

Vice President for Global Strategy and Yale-NUS’ first president, he said that Yale-NUS “exceeded expectations” in terms of attracting talented students and faculty. In his statement on the shutdown, Yale President Peter Salovey maintained that Yale-NUS was “a unique and remarkable living and learning experience in Singapore.” Both Salovey and Lewis expressed that they wished Yale-NUS could continue. It was NUS, not Yale, that pulled the plug. Indeed, in the statement, Salovey says that NUS President Tan Eng Chye “informed [him] of NUS’s intention” to shut down YaleNUS, rather than raising the idea and giving Yale a chance to address NUS’s concerns. The closure revealed that Yale and NUS’s views on Yale-NUS were greatly divergent. And yet, both universi ties were faced with the same facts: both knew that Yale-NUS was falling behind in its capital fundraising goals. They agreed that Yale-NUS’s policy of academ ic freedom would go beyond what NUS itself allowed. Both universities played a role in writing Yale-NUS’s curriculum. If Yale and NUS agree on the facts, their disagreement must come from someplace deeper: they had different goals or values in mind when they founded Yale-NUS, which they now cannot reconcile.

In 2020, for every student admitted to Yale-NUS, twenty-two other students were rejected. This year, Singaporean students at Yale-NUS will each be billed $20,500 in tuition fees. In comparison, students at NUS’s College of Humanities and Sciences will pay only $8,200. It’s not surprising that many NUS students view Yale-NUS as an elitist institution that only offers its liberal arts educa tion to a select few. In a speech to the

Singaporean Parliament, Minister of Education Chan Chun Sing claimed that merging Yale-NUS and USP into the ‘New College’ would “allow us to scale this experience to many more students, in part or in full, across the NUS.” It makes sense for NUS to give more weight to considerations of socioeconomic access than Yale does. NUS is a public univer sity and the Ministry of Education is a Singaporean government agency. For the Singaporean government, the value of education may be closely tied to pragmat ic considerations like its potential to spur social mobility and economic growth. Yale is private, and may be less focused on the material benefits of education. From Yale’s perspective, Yale-NUS’s low admission rate may have been a sign of prestige and desirability and its high operating costs an acceptable price to pay for a world-class liberal arts education. Yale-NUS’s difficulties in raising endow ment funds may have been the shock that triggered an earthquake, but the faultlines between Yale and NUS’s priorities existed from the beginning.

However, the financial walls around Yale-NUS may not be as high as they seem at first glance. Ben Goh, a YaleNUS student in the Class of 2022, said that Yale-NUS’s “extremely generous” financial aid for Singaporean students drew him to apply. In his first year, he received a 97% subsidy and paid a grand total of $600 in tuition fees. Ben’s experience was not unusual: Yale-NUS doesn’t consider whether Singaporean students can afford to pay the full tuition fee when deciding whom to admit. Once a student is admitted, Yale-NUS guarantees that they will meet that student’s financial need. As a low-income student, once Ben had made it through the admissions office, Yale-NUS turned out to be even cheap er than NUS.

This inclusivity extends to YaleNUS’s student culture and curriculum. Ben has a hearing disorder, which occasionally causes ringing in his ears that makes it hard to hear. Yale-NUS’s Covid 19 regulations mandate that pro fessors stay at least five meters away from each other in classes. In another college, this could have been a serious barrier to Ben’s ability to hear and learn from his

professors. But Yale-NUS accommo dated by giving him a mic that he asks people to use when he is having trouble hearing. As a Residential Advisor, Ben ran a session on inclusion for students with learning disabilities. First-years with attention disorders, eye-sight deficiencies, and hearing problems were all directed to the appropriate accommodations.

When I asked her about Yale-NUS’s culture, Suman P.’s first response was that Yale-NUS “was a safe space in Singapore for people from minority groups, [queer students], even international students.” Both through its formal policies and norms, Yale-NUS genuinely attempts to give students from every marginalized or disadvantaged group the support they need to succeed.

It seems to me that there are two different metrics we could use to judge whether Yale-NUS is truly accessi ble: first, equity and second, the sheer number of available seats. By equity, I mean whether Yale-NUS tries to give all students the resources they need to succeed in the liberal arts, regardless of their identities, backgrounds, or disabil ities. Yale-NUS is evidently equitable;

the playing field between wealthier and poorer applicants. But at the end of the day, only a small and lucky fraction of applicants gets accepted. In this way, Yale-NUS is both pluralistic and exclu sive, both culturally diverse and elite. This disjunction between aspiring for equal opportunity and strictly limiting the number of students who are actually accepted is a feature, not a bug, of the liberal arts.

A liberal arts education, and spe cifically Yale’s flavor of the liberal arts, comes with a resource tradeoff. When I asked Professor Lewis about the liberal arts, he emphasized the importance of “small classes” and “active learning in the sense of seminars and interactive discus sion.” When class sizes are smaller, the University has to spend more money on hiring professors, lecturers, and teach ing fellows per student. Encouraging students to explore beyond their fields of interest means that students take longer to gain the same level of specialization as their peers in other educational systems, and thus they must spend more resources to obtain their degree. The broader a cur riculum and the more niche its offerings,

low-income students from Singapore are not discriminated against because the application process is need-blind. Once a student with a learning disability gets in, accommodations are made to ensure they learn effectively.

But providing equity isn’t the same as making education accessible to many people. Sure, Yale-NUS tries to level

the more expensive it gets.

This dynamic was at play at YaleNUS. According to NUS President Tan Eng Chye, “Yale-NUS operates with a ratio of 8 students to 1 faculty member –compared to more than 12 to 1 in the USP, and 17 to 1 in the rest of NUS.” It is likely that, per student enrolled, Yale-NUS was more expensive than either the University

This disjunction between aspiring for equal opportunity and strictly limiting the number of students who are actually accepted is a feature, not a bug, of the liberal arts.

Scholars Programme or NUS. Many YaleNUS students are keenly aware of this tension. Ben himself noted that because of “resource constraints,” NUS has fewer professors per student and a greater focus on lecture over discussion-based classes than Yale-NUS does. Given these high costs, it’s not surprising that Yale-NUS only admits 250 students a year.

While we can read Yale-NUS’s closure as a clash between NUS and Yale’s visions of accessibility, NUS’s explanation of why it closed Yale-NUS and how the New College will solve Yale-NUS’s supposed deficiencies has been amorphous and even contradictory at times. Yale-NUS students are skep tical of whether NUS is sincere about expanding access to the liberal arts. For instance, the New College is set to admit 500 students a year, only ten more than Yale-NUS and USP’s enrollment of 490. Ben chuckled as he told me “I’m not really sure what expansion there is.” This belies NUS’s argument that merg ing Yale-NUS with USP would increase access to interdisciplinary education. Moreover, NUS seems unable to decide whether Yale-NUS’s fundraising woes were a primary cause for the shutdown. In a September 11 statement about the

would benefit from “economies of scale.” But it is hard to believe that increasing the student population from 490 to 500 will bring significant economies of scale.

NUS’s contradictory messaging hints at an uncomfortable truth: NUS might have an ulterior motive for shut ting Yale-NUS down—they just won’t admit it publicly. Charles Bailyn, YaleNUS’s first Dean of Faculty has suggest ed that NUS wanted to close Yale-NUS so that it could admit fewer international students and more Singaporean students. Yale and Yale-NUS faculty members in the past have raised concerns about YaleNUS’s support for free speech, particu larly given the Singaporean government’s history of controlling speech. One can imagine that NUS would hesitate to claim that the cause for their closure of Yale-NUS was to discriminate against foreign students or to censor campus speech. It is impossible to verify which of the various possibilities was the real reason why NUS pulled the plug, but it is disheartening that we can’t discount nativ ism or authoritarianism as possible causes.

Minutes after NUS administra tors surprised Yale-NUS students with the news that their college would be shutting down, anguished screams of

"We're grieving the loss of the community."

merger, NUS President Tan Eng Chye focused on the the high cost of running Yale-NUS, noting that “Since I became President in 2018, Yale-NUS’s finances have weighed heavily on my mind.” In a speech to Parliament just two days later, Singapore’s Minister of Education Chan Chung Sing said exactly the opposite: that the main reason NUS closed YaleNUS was not its cost, but rather to pivot NUS toward “interdisciplinary learning.” Indeed, according to Minister Chan, the New College will retain “a residential component, small-group teaching, a com mon curriculum, and an immersive ex perience,” the very things that President Chye said caused high costs at Yale-NUS. Minister Chan said that the New College

students could be heard emanating from residential colleges. Currently enrolled Yale-NUS students will all graduate and receive their degrees. There are not likely to be cuts to Yale-NUS’s resources in the transition period between now and 2025. So where does this anguish come from? In his last three years at Yale-NUS, Ben advised first-years at his residential college, debated competitively for YaleNUS, and threw the History Society’s first ever Halloween party. Like many of his peers, Ben improved and enriched the Yale-NUS community. Now, Ben says that “We’re grieving the loss of the community.” Yale-NUS students are also hurt by what they see as the opaque and disrespectful way that NUS has treated

the community. Some Yale-NUS stu dents learned about the closure of their school through the Yale Daily News, before NUS told them. NUS still hasn’t fully explained why they chose to close Yale-NUS. This has left a sour taste in the community’s mouth. Their college isn’t just closing—NUS yanked it from under their feet without telling them why, leav ing students dizzy with confusion.

The Yale-NUS closure raises far more questions than it answers. We may never know what NUS’s real motivation for shutting Yale-NUS down was, and it’s still too early to judge Yale-NUS’s successor, the New College. The YaleNUS closure cannot be distilled into a nice, self-contained story because it forces us to choose between two good things: an expansive liberal arts curriculum and a curriculum that schools can provide to the majority of prospective students. It is precisely because of this difficult tradeoff that NUS and Yale have an obligation to speak about it openly, to explain why they chose one goal and not the other, or to tell us how they plan to reconcile the two. It’s unfortunate that NUS didn’t use the Yale-NUS closure as an opportunity to have this conversation.

David Bloom is a first-year in Timothy Dwight College and can be reached at david.bloom@yale.edu.

The End of the World: The Imminence and Art of the Doomsday Clock

by Raina Sparks

the last shreds of light fade into a confused, chaotic darkness. The Earth reaches its twilight, and the end is near. A brutal and unforgiving end to human kind and the environment as we know it is perhaps inevitable at some point. Only a few questions remain: When will the end occur? Will it be a natural product of changing environmental conditions or directly of our own making? The Dooms day Clock, moderated by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists since 1947, explores these very questions. Consisting of a sim ple black clock outline with two hands and dots that denote hours, the clock is a symbolic representation of how closely humanity is situated to the destruction of humankind. It denotes proximity to “midnight,” representing the end of most living beings and the world in its current era. Each year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scien tists decides where those arms should be most accurately placed, having evaluated the state of global proximity to crisis.

Because the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was created in response to the United States bombings of Hiroshima

mostly painted peaceful landscapes. The request to create a minimalist symbol of approaching disaster for the newsletter cover contrasted with the rest of her work in both technique and message. Professor Joanna Fiduccia, who teaches the course “Art of Crisis” at Yale, lends insight into Langsdorf’s creative process. Langsdorf faced numerous restrictions: she could only use three colors, so “the symbol would have to be graphic.” She contemplated a piece centering uranium and eventually decided on the motif of the clock, a classic approach for thinking about end times. The Doomsday Clock, while a highly relevant guide for think tanks and politicians nearly 75 years after its creation, is at its core a piece of art. Langsdorf in particular faced the difficult task of reconciling states of peace and chaos in her work. “Langsdorf’s landscapes are contemplative works that solicit much calmer modes of attention,” Fiduccia elaborates. “She clearly rec ognized, however, that for something like the Clock, where the real goal... is to make people feel warned, something much more immediate is necessary.”

to an audience familiar with themes like Armageddon,judgement day, and be yond. Even the Vikings have a version of the reckoning story, Ragnarök, in which all Viking gods are defeated and killed by demons and giants. The common lesson of these myths is that total reckoning inevitably results in disaster and the end of humankind due to our own folly. “Midnight” also relates to the exploration of doom by capitalism, a popular theme for visual artists in the past few centuries.

Fiduccia notes that, for example, a gath ering storm is often deployed in religious paintings in the 19th century to ponder the impacts of industrial capitalism. In English painter J.M.W. Turner’s works, a roiling, approaching dark sky can seem religious in its fearsomeness but it is often clearly coming from an urban space like trains or factories. Doom as a theme is easily recognizable: dread of impending death shapes the human experience, and that dark, ultimate end transfers easily to the larger sphere of human existence. Unlike individual death, however, the timeline for the end of humanity is one that humans have the agency to decide. A central feature of the Clock is that it measures human destruction by our own making. One cannot stop the marching of time towards the individual end, but as a collective we do have the power to turn back the Clock.

and Nagasaki, the majority of historical clock settings have reflected the evalua tion of a nuclear threat. In 2007, howev er, climate change was incorporated as well to reflect the changing landscape of danger. At first, the clock was set seven minutes to midnight. The furthest it has ever been is seventeen minutes to mid night, after the Strategic Arms Reduc tion Treaty following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It now stands at just 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to that disastrous final second.

The Clock debuted in 1947 as a newsletter circulated among physicists working on the Manhattan Project. Its creator was Martyl Langsdorf, artist and wife of one of the physicists, who

Ultimately, despite her dedication to natural landscapes, Langsdorf is remem bered for a piece centering fear and con flict that she created during a time of war.

It is easy to question whether the symbolism of the Clock is defeatist in nature. Should we focus on the alarming proximity to midnight or the capacity for change in those precious 100 seconds left before the end? Fiduccia further explores the symbolism of “midnight” as a concept introduced to the public. “Midnight in the Clock’s context is the end of times and the critical hour, but in older christological timelines, the origin of creation and the end of the judgement might meet at midnight.” The symbolism of the Doomsday Clock thus caters well

The Doomsday Clock in the modern era focuses on two key areas in which human technology breeds destruction: nuclear proliferation and climate change. Fiduccia argues that it is impossible to separate the two threats, as making a climate less inhabitable increases the chances of total warfare and vice versa. Proliferation and climate change intersect to map the probability of a cataclysmic end, and so the two must be focus areas in any attempt to redeem time as the Clock moves forth.

Lauren Sukin, an Editorial Fellow for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, studies the threat of nuclear weapons to international security. “States with nuclear weapons have a disproportionate amount of global influence,” she explains. “Their nuclear capabilities only cement the power that allowed them to acquire the weapons in the first place.

Nuclear weapons are also a reaction

Consisting of a simple black clock outline with two hands and dots that denote hours, the clock is a symbolic representation of how closely humanity is situated to the destruction of humankind.

to security threats: states develop nuclear weapons in response to changing interna tional security threats. It’s important to pay attention to states that may perceive strong nuclear threats to their existence and think about what we can do to try to prevent that from happening.”

American nuclear policy does not seem to actively support disarma ment, but rather to support a system of benign protection and deterrence to other powers. Insofar as this tactic of the US remains, the existential nature of the nuclear threat will likely never be eliminated. American policy thus limits positive progress in the Clock’s evalua tion of the nuclear threat. This limit to the goal of disarmament cements the ethical imperative of the US to prevent the further use of nuclear power. The US is the only country to deploy nuclear weapons in conflict against an adversary, and the effects of that were devastating. Sukin argues that the US therefore has an obligation to ensure it does not happen again. The US now stands at an intersection of reconciling with past harms and mitigating future ones. More over, it faces the dilemma of using its immense military power to fend off total war without further impinging on the autonomy of the nations it must protect. This dilemma highlights the reality that the Doomsday Clock does not implicate an equal burden of action to all nations and actors. It was created because of destruction caused by the US (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and it mandates action from the US and other similarly industri alized and powerful nations because they have the capacity to cause the greatest harm through either nuclear weapons or environmental destruction.

The other path to destruction considered by the Doomsday Clock is environmental catastrophe. Professor Kenneth Gillingham of the Yale School of the Environment explains the statisti cal modeling of the likelihood of various degrees of climate change. The current model operates in the form of a bell curve, with only benign climate impacts on one (unlikely) end, and severe end-ofthe-world impacts on the other. Severe outcomes would translate into a surface temperature increase of six degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, which

would greatly increase climate sensitivity and subsequently raise the probability of severe damage.

Gillingham emphasizes that al though the doomsday scenario is cer tainly one to take seriously, it is equally and perhaps more important to consider the variety of intermediate scenarios that carry the highest likelihood. He person ally worries more about the average types of outcomes, because they still lead to powerful, lasting damages including a rise in sea levels, floods, and storms, as well as forced migration and spread of diseases. These changes are in fact already taking place. One potential harm of centering the Doomsday Clock is that it conceptualizes doom as a binary concept that exists as a future possibility, when doom is actively manifesting itself for many people that have lost their homes due to rising sea levels or forest fires. To consider doom as a single event is to negate their lived experience, and so it is important to include marginalized peo ples already experiencing the impacts of climate change in any conversation about doom for humanity as a whole.

In fact, that larger, looming doom is difficult even to conceptualize. Gilling ham elaborates that “it’s those tail events [doomsday destruction] that are hard to quantify [and envision], but they are very real.” It would take adaptation to survive extreme scenarios. Humans now do sur vive in the middle of deserts and tundras in a variety of temperature and precip itation ranges. Gillingham notes that, however, “there’s a tiny probability that the earth becomes truly uninhabitable.”

It is unlikely that doom will manifest itself suddenly or unexpectedly; the path to doom, if doom occurs, will be paved with many little dooms, and countless instances of human ingenuity and adap tation to survive what is just short of the unsurvivable.

The biblical Armageddon imagery of total war against a red sky as the world descends into total doom is difficult to conceptualize as a concrete set of events, but runs parallel to possible disaster scenarios in the modern era. To explore one Doomsday hypothetical: climate change makes vast regions of the world uninhabitable. The refugee crisis increases exponentially; xenophobia

rages, borders are tightened, and millions are left in a chaotic lurch. Insurgent groups continue to grow, and the US engages in and escalates the conflict with the Taliban and isil. There is an upset to the delicate balance of nuclear restraint, perhaps with North Korea developing a warhead and launching it into a remote region in a demonstration of power. The US, alarmed, responds by launching an exponentially more destructive missile at Pyongyang and wipes out millions. There is no longer any deterrent factor to maintain the balance of power as it currently exists. Tension erupts and most major military powers deploy nuclear and other weapons in a desperate attempt to save themselves. Nations without military power are left to perish in the fallout, and nations with it become direct targets. There is no longer a hospitable environment for humanity to continue to exist as a species, and in fact most current species are wiped out collaterally. Only hardy insects and well-adapted deep-sea creatures live on unharmed. The human era is over, and Earth reinvents itself once again, as it has done many times over the past four and a half billion years.

Is this end inevitable? Will runaway capitalism push the climate past a point of redemption? Should we as humans resign ourselves to the demise of our species? Should we avoid having children in fear of the reality they will face in fifty years? These are philosophical questions as well as practical ones, and they touch on the back-and-forth tug between hope and nihilism that characterizes the human dilemma in any era. The theme of crisis is as timeless as it is current; it is one pondered by visual artists and econ omists alike.

The Doomsday Clock is therefore an elegant dovetail of multiple disciplines attempting to grapple with the question of whether technological advancement will elevate us or spell our demise. It forces us to confront the optimism and desperation within ourselves, to take immediate action or resign ourselves entirely as the seconds tick on. Only one conclusion is evident: resignation pro duces no outcome but midnight. Hope is necessary to turn back time.

Raina Sparks is a first-year in Ezra Stiles College and can be reached at raina.sparks@yale.edu.