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Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and director of the Security Studies Program M Taylor Fravel, CIS research affiliate George J Gilboy, and CIS principal research scientist and co-director of the Wargaming Lab at SSP Eric Heginbotham discuss the flawed estimates of China's annual defense spending and its widespread use in Congress, the media, and defense circles.

The Center is honored to announce that John Githongo has joined CIS as its prestigious Robert E Wilhelm fellow for the 2024-2025 academic year. Githongo is among the world's leading voices on the relationship between corrupt democracies, development, and poverty in the modern world. His many honors and awards include being selected by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the world’s 100 top global thinkers. He is regarded as a leading light in the Transparency movement--a global initiative focused on freeing the world of corruption.

Mihaela Papa, PhD, joined CIS on August 1, 2024, as both the director of research and as a principal research scientist. Papa comes to CIS from the Fletcher School’s Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Tufts University, where she was a senior fellow, co-founded and led the Rising Power Alliances project, and taught on sustainable development and global governance.

In June and July, the Global Diversity Lab hosted its second cohort of Pathways to Political Science Summer Research interns. Pathways@GDL is sponsored in partnership with the MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP) and funded by the Department of Political Science, the Center for International Studies and MIT-Africa.

Jim Walsh, SSP senior research associate, discusses tensions in the Middle East after the death of a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and a Hamas political leader in Iran. Both countries are blaming Israel for the attack. Concerns abound globally that an all-out war could occur in the region soon. The US is among those nations concerned, he says.