Commentary / World Dec 1, 2021

What’s worst about omicron so far is the uncertainty

How should the world respond to omicron? We just have to wait as there is information that we don’t yet have. And for many, the waiting itself is the problem.

Commentary / World Nov 5, 2021

Climate change will kill national sovereignty as we know it

In a world where all countries collectively face the planetary emergency of global warming, sovereignty is simply no longer a tenable concept.

Commentary / World Nov 3, 2021

How Russia and Belarus are weaponizing migration

Belarus has been flying refugees from various points in the Middle East — Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria — then herding them toward neighboring countries that are members of the European Union.

Commentary / World Jul 14, 2021

Nord Stream 2 will overshadow U.S.-German relations for years

Called Nord Stream 2 and more than 90% finished, it doubles the amount of gas Russia can export directly under the Baltic Sea to northwestern Europe.

Commentary / World May 1, 2021

Science shows why simplifying is hard and complicating is easy

Spotting solutions that are simple and elegant, in other words, requires mental effort or what the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman calls slow as opposed to fast thinking.

Commentary / World Apr 5, 2021

What’s better in a pandemic: federalism or a central state?

How, in a pandemic, do you balance regional autonomy and flexible local responses with national coordination and coherence?

Commentary / World Mar 25, 2021

We must start planning for a permanent pandemic

SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), protean and elusive as it is, may become our permanent enemy, like the flu but worse.

Commentary / World Feb 19, 2021

Smell in the time of COVID-19

Smell, as much of the world is discovering in the pandemic, has long been our most underrated sense.

Commentary / World Feb 7, 2021

The risk of nuclear cataclysm is increasing

To make the global matrix even more complex, there are seven other nuclear powers to consider. Of these North Korea appears most unhinged. But China is the most ambitious.

Commentary / World Jan 13, 2021

mRNA vaccines could vanquish COVID-19 today, cancer tomorrow

Therein lies mRNA’s bigger promise: It can tell our cells to make whatever protein we want. That includes the antigens of many other diseases besides COVID-19.