X marks the spot: This week’s TEDx TalksThe paradox of finding peace in a war zone, and a way to make aid more effective — by decentralizing it and thus speeding it up. Each week, TEDx chooses four of our favorite talks, highlighting just a few of the enlightening speakers from the TEDx community and its diverse constellation of ideas worth spreading. […]
War stories: Read Janine di Giovanni’s powerful coverage of conflicts around the worldJournalist Janine di Giovanni has covered wars in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Iraq and most recently in Syria — and, yet, she has noted that they all seem to begin in the same way. “This is how war starts—one day you’re living your ordinary life. You’re planning to go to a party, you’re […]
An uphill battle to reclaim “jihad”: A Q&A with Bobby GhoshTIME Editor-at-Large Bobby Ghosh covers global affairs and the Middle East. For five years he served as the magazine’s Baghdad bureau chief and, by the end of his tenure, was the longest serving print journalist in Iraq. Most recently Ghosh wrote a cover story on Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, arguably the most important man in […]
Playlist: 12 powerful talks on terrorismWith just over a month to go before the 2012 presidential election, eyes around the world are on the United States. Will Americans vote to give Barack Obama another four years in the White House, or will the country opt for a turnabout and vote Mitt Romney into office? The election may well come down […]
How can you help push for fair trade cell phones?Bandi Mbubi has conflicting feelings about his cell phone. On the one hand, Mbubi — who fled his native country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as a student activist fearing for his safety — has seen firsthand the ability of cell phones to connect people in the formerly cut-off part of the world. In […]
Investigating foreign fighter groups in Syria: A Q&A with Shyam Sankar and Brian FishmanShyam Sankar isn’t satisfied with the current state of data analysis. In his recent TEDTalk, “The rise of human-computer cooperation,” Sankar explained why we have a responsibility to create computer programs that drive human-centered decisions, rather than trying to supplant them with computer-centered data processing. In his talk, Sankar — the Director of Forward Deployed Engineering at […]
6 stunning photos from Giles DuleyWhen Giles Duley left behind life as a music and fashion photographer and began criss-crossing the globe, photographing forgotten people — those with mental illness, living on the streets, residing in refugee camps and surviving in the crossfire of war — he felt a certain level of separation from his subjects. But then something happened […]
8 great talks on war and peace“Walls don’t work,” James Stavridis declared at TEDGlobal 2012. A highly accomplished Navy Admiral, Stavridis recalls 20th-century phenomena like trench warfare and the Berlin Wall. “Instead of building walls for security, we need to build bridges.” In his brass-tacks talk, Stavridis lays down a vision of “open-source security,” which he defines as “connecting the international, […]
Only on the TED Blog: In The TED Lens, each Sunday a TED speaker offers a new look at the week’s big news stories. This week, political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita explains the negotiations currently taking place between the US, the UN and Iran, as Iran’s nuclear program is being called into question. This […]
Last week, Parag Khanna sat with the TED Blog to discuss no less than the political future of the world we live in. He works in the expansive field of geopolitics, and his TEDTalk discusses the history and future of some of the world’s most troubled states and the possibilities of a borderless world. In […]
On Friday, March 27, just as a surge of new deployments was being announced for Afghanistan, the TED Blog talked with military analyst P.W. Singer. Posted today, his TEDTalk discusses the use of robots in modern combat zones. In this interview, he applies his intensive knowledge of robotics and war to the situations the U.S. […]
It’s no secret that the world is on the alert for plans toward political and economic solvency. Strategic planner Thomas Barnett has released Great Powers: America and the World After Bush to address many of our most significant global crises. In a recent interview with Dan Hare, Barnett elaborated on the book, saying the US […]
Chris Anderson managed to sum up the mood at TED2009, and on Twitter, when he described P.W. Singer’s presentation on robots and war as “a bit frightening.” Here are some of your thoughts, as tweeted in recent minutes: Scary presentation. Democratization of technologies of warfare will be accessible to all, fallacy to think only nation […]
Inventor Dean Kamen gives a 5-minute talk about the extraordinary prosthetic arm he’s developing at the request of the US Department of Defense, to help the 1,600 “kids” who’ve come back from Iraq without an arm (and the two dozen who’ve lost both arms). Kamen’s commitment to using technology to solve problems, and his respect […]
Strategic planner Thomas P.M. Barnett has advised US leaders on national security since the end of the Cold War. In this bracingly honest — and very funny — talk, Barnett outlines a solution for the foundering US military: Break it in two. One half makes war, and the other half builds the peace that follows. […]
