Authoritarian governments are now trying to ensure that the increasingly free flow of ideas and information through cyberspace fuels their economies without threatening their political power.

Berlin is a very edgy place, a very cosmopolitan place. It's a place where completely different ideas and cultures come together and clash in a very warm way. In a very warm-hearted way.

The developed world should neither shelter nor militarily destabilize authoritarian regimes unless those regimes represent an imminent threat to the national security of other states. Developed states should instead work to create the conditions most favorable for a closed regime's safe passage through the least stable segment of the J curve however and whenever the slide toward instability comes. And developed states should minimize the risk these states pose the rest of the world as their transition toward modernity begins.

I don't take things off. I either check things off or I add things.

Authoritarian governments are now trying to ensure that the increasingly free flow of ideas and information through cyberspace fuels their economies without threatening their political power.

In the nearer term, the likeliest source of risk is a conflict between China and the U.S. These are now the two largest economies in the world, and the combination of their economic interdependence, the sharp differences in their political and economic values, and the growing divergence in their interests makes this relationship potentially dangerous for everyone who might be affected by it - which means pretty much everyone.

I think political science is bad at prediction. We don't gaze into a crystal ball. I do not believe that we predict things.