Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, & Mosbacher Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. Views expressed are purely my own.
Stanford University
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Venezuela has the right and the need to return to democracy. Having forcibly removed its authoritarian ruler, we have an obligation to help the country achieve this outcome. Here are my thoughts on how this can happen. LARRY DIAMOND: ¿Cómo construir una democracia que pueda sobrevivir? youtu.be/_LBSIiPiD40?si=bTR3… via @YouTube
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This is one of the most important social media threads of our time. Deep thanks to Coxon for sounding the alarm bell. We need to press for joint US-China management of this existential threat before it is too late.
I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. More thoughts below.
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The US has a vital interest in ensuring that Taiwan’s democracy remains secur and able to determine its own future. Here is why. Trump-Xi: Why Taiwan Can't Be on the Menu – A Conversation With Larry Di... youtu.be/c7M6zEEvEPM?si=KlMC… via @YouTube
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Taiwan has the will and is rapidly increasing and modernizing its defense investments to enhance its means to deter and rebuff the PRC military threat. Cynical dismissals of Taiwan’s security as a lost cause are not only morally reprehensible but analytically lazy and deeply contrary to the US national interest.
It’s a mistake to assume that #Taiwan doesn’t have the will to defend itself. With more investment, better equipment, tougher training & realistic exercises, the will has never been stronger.
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Father of the Constitution: Larry Diamond on James Madison. How he speaks to us today on the need to constrain the abuse of power and transcend the polarization of factions. thefreedomfrequency.org/p/fa…
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Great piece on the Administration’s bankrupt posture in Venezuela. The U.S. Is Losing Venezuela open.substack.com/pub/bariwe…
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The momentum of the war is turning in Ukraine’s favor. “Renewing U.S. support now could help bring about Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat that both deserve,” writes David Kramer in this excellent piece in The Dispatch. thedispatch.com/article/ukra…
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Sadly, xenophobia and scapegoating are global phenomenon, and the virulent anti-immigrant form of it is now gripping South Africa. But the country is fortunate to have courageous intellectuals calling it back to its democratic principles. One of the best of these, Professor Jonathan Jansen, pushes back eloquently in this stunning op-ed: news24.com/opinions/columnis….
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This is clearly a must read.
Just started reading Dr. Shoshan Haran’s gripping book ``Mission in Captivity.’’ bit.ly/4vtCmy1 It will make a great play one day. It’s the story of how Hamas gunmen on October 7, 2023, killed her husband, sister, and brother-in-law in Kibbutz Be’eri. Then they kidnapped Haran into Gaza with her daughter, two grandchildren, sister in-law and niece. For 50 days, ten people -- six hostages and four captors -- lived together in a tiny, sealed room. Oh my, what they learned about each other.
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Nick Stephanopoulos on the Court’s disastrous Calais decision: “I see Callais as a catastrophe from a democratic perspective. Minority representation is a fundamental democratic value, especially in a racially and ethnically diverse country with severely racially polarized voting…. we’re about to see the biggest drop in minority representation since at least the late nineteenth century, possibly ever.” open.substack.com/pub/michae…
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A moving account by my Hoover colleague Rowena He of her struggle to recover and defend historical memory in China. I am so grateful to the Hoover Institution for preserving the memory of Lin Zhao. Hope in Darkness: Teaching Lin Zhao in Hong Kong thefreedomfrequency.org/p/ho…
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How about Donald Trump? In any case, there are so many uplifting lessons in this victory for democracy, for Hungary, and for Europe. The most important one, for all the democracy skeptics out there: Do not yield to populism, cynicism, or despair. Democracy is a better bet because of its capacity for self-correction.
Putin keeps losing his allies around world— Assad in Syria, Maduro in Venezuela, Khamenei in Iran, and now Orban in Hungary.
What Putin friend is next to fall?
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Hungarian PM Viktor Orban's breathtaking electoral defeat is one of the most significant gaings for liberal democracy in the past decade. His regime was the archetype of a right-wing authoritarian populism that claimed to be simply "illiberal" but was in fact undemocratic as well. It became an inspiration and a source of support for similar authoritarian populist parties and movements around the world. Both Putin and Trump have suffered serious geopolitical setbacks with Orbán's defeat. Authoritarian populist rulers like Erdogan in Turkey and even Narendra Modi in India should take note. Assaults on civil liberties and the rule of law produce corruption and misrule. Eventually, the people rebel at the polls or on the streets. /1
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Magyar and his Tisza party will face enormous challenges in governing, as Orbán and his Fidesz party have spent 16 years stacking the judiciary and civil service, controlling the media, gerrymandering electoral districts, and amending the constitution to create a "competitive authoritarian" regime. But fortunately Tisza appears to have won the necessary 2/3 majority in parliament to amend the constitution, and they will need to use that wisely and forthrightly to restore democracy. /4
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Orbán might have fallen sooner if the EU had moved more expeditiously to stop subsidizing his corruption and misrule. It was only in this more recent term (2022-26) that the EU finally lost its patience and started withholding funding. Lesson to all democracies: Don't subsidize autocracy and bad government. The EU can now make a difference by releasing to new Magyar government the billions of Euros in funding it has withheld, and by resolving to take a tougher line against creeping autocracy in the future. /5
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It is difficult to overstate the global significance of Orbán's massive, stunning defeat after 16 years in power. His was the paradigmatic case of right-wing authoritarian populism, becoming ever-more undemocratic, arrogant, and corrupt. It is not only Orbán that lost today, but Putin, Trump and foes of liberal democracy worldwide. Erdogan, Modi, and others should take note.
nytimes.com/2026/04/12/world…
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Contrary to prevailing assumptions (and authoritarian aspirations) promoting democracy is not a dying or hopeless mission for the U.S. Here is why it remains an imperative, and how we can build it back better in the years to come. notus.org/perspectives/how-p…
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426 - Corruption Consumes the Globe, and Overwhelms Washington open.substack.com/pub/robert…
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