Introduction and Contribution:

Wars have wide-ranging effects on the political attitudes and behaviors of citizens and elites. For example, European leaders were pressured to make democratic reforms and build large welfare states during World War II in order to stabilize their countries and encourage wartime sacrifice. After the 9/11 attacks and the initial Afghanistan invasion, George W. Bush’s approval ratings soared to 90%.

The Russo-Ukrainian War has been one of the defining wars of this century. Its consequences for the politics of both countries — such as Ukrainian national unity or the repression of Russian dissidents — are beginning to be understood. Yet it is less clear how the war has affected third-party states. In light of Russia’s imperial ambitions, as well as Ukraine’s need for international support to combat a regional hegemon, this is a pressing issue.

Leaders of third-party states have responded to the war in a range of ways, including imposing sanctions on Russia and mediating between the two countries. Wars also affect how rulers communicate with their citizens: they may be motivated to emphasize their shared connections with either warring party, their need for national self-reliance in a hostile international system, and so on.

In “Between wars and words,” Ana Paula Pellegrino, Benjamin R. Burnley, and Laia Balcells show that leaders of third-party states increased their nationalist rhetoric on X (formerly known as Twitter) after the invasion. The authors analyze over 10,000 tweets from the heads of 130 states both before and after the invasion, mapping these along a nationalist-cosmopolitan spectrum. The effects of Russia’s invasion on nationalist tweets were strongest among North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members and weaker among members of the pro-Russia Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

“Between wars and words” provides evidence that leaders react to wars in similar ways as do masses, whose sense of national identity tends to increase during periods of global uncertainty and conflict. As politicians increasingly use X to communicate, a more precise understanding of their tweets before and after major conflicts may help social scientists better understand their beliefs and threat perceptions. 

Methodology:

The authors collect tweets from the 14 days before and after the invasion using an unsupervised learning algorithm called GloVe. This process is diagrammed in Fig. 1 below. GloVe identifies relationships between words by analyzing how often they appear together, grouping together words with similar meanings. This enables the authors to code each tweet according to its topic and sentiment (e.g., positive vs. negative).
 

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To code the level of nationalism versus cosmopolitanism, the authors employ the Concept Mover’s Distance (CMD) approach. CMD measures how closely the words in each tweet align with sets of ‘anchor terms’ representing each concept, placing tweets along a continuum between the two. Briefly, nationalism refers to a set of beliefs about the reality and value of nations, the obligations that members of a nation have to one another, and the right of that nation to determine its political affairs, whether as its own state or within an existing state. By contrast, cosmopolitanism is the view that all humans, irrespective of their national memberships, ought to be seen as part of a single world (kosmos) community. Returning to CMD, nationalist tweets are those that align with anchor terms such as ‘pride, glory, patriot, forefathers, homeland,’ and ‘heritage.’ Cosmopolitan anchors include ‘cooperation, humanity, multilateral,’ and ‘universal.’ 

Importantly, nationalistic tweets need not bear an obvious relationship to (inter)national security — the authors hypothesize that Russia’s invasion merely increased nationalist rhetoric, not rhetoric of a specific kind. For example, 10 days after the invasion, Bolivian President Luis Alberto Arce Catacora tweeted, “In 2019, the glorious Alteño people once again showed us their courage and love for our country.” Conversely, 12 days prior to the invasion, Argentine President Alberto Fernández espoused several cosmopolitan sentiments when he tweeted: “With the logic of multilateralism, Argentina has discussed with Russia the possibility of deepening financial assistance and increasing bilateral investment and trade between the two countries.” 

Findings:

The authors show that Russia’s invasion did significantly increase nationalist rhetoric by third-party heads of state, whether or not one controls for topic and sentiment. As an example of this, consider Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer: Three days prior to the invasion, he tweeted, “Austria continues to rely on diplomacy and de-escalation to prevent war. The OSCE…is the appropriate framework.” On the day of the invasion, by contrast, Nehammer tweeted “I promise that I will do everything to protect the people who live in Austria.” Other international leaders, such as Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau, tweeted out more cosmopolitan statements about the importance of collectively pressuring Putin and respecting international law.
 

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Why might an international war prompt the leaders of third-party states to use more nationalist rhetoric? The authors provide a number of hypotheses. For one, wars lead to feelings of uncertainty, and nationalist rhetoric by elites can afford citizens a sense of safety. Third parties might also make nationalist statements to signal their support of (or opposition to) one of the belligerent parties; for example, “our proud nation will not stand idly by as Russia attacks Ukraine.”

Although the invasion increased nationalist discourse on average, these effects are driven primarily by the behavior of NATO members. This is likely because the alliance has historically taken a strong stand against Russian aggression. As mentioned above, CSTO members did not tweet in a more nationalistic way, nor did leaders of states with histories of territorial armed conflicts resembling the Russo-Ukrainian War.
 

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*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.

The deliberations yielded clear priorities for building trust through safeguards during this early phase of agentic development and adoption. Currently, participants favor AI agents for low-risk tasks, while expressing caution about high-stakes applications in medical or financial domains. In deliberation, participants indicated an openness to these higher-risk applications if provided safeguards around privacy or user control, such as requiring approval before finalizing an action.

The Forum also revealed support for culturally adaptive agents, with a preference for asking users about norms rather than making assumptions. Lastly, the discussions underscored the need for better public understanding of AI agents and their capabilities, pointing to the importance of transparency and education in fostering trust in these emerging technologies.

"The perspectives coming out of these initial deliberations underscore the importance of our key focus areas at Cohere: security, privacy, and safeguards,” said Joelle Pineau, Chief AI Officer at Cohere. “We look forward to continuing our work alongside other leaders to strengthen industry standards for this technology, particularly for enterprise agentic AI that works with sensitive data."

This pioneering forum sets a new standard for public participation in AI development. By seeking feedback directly from the public, combining expert knowledge, meaningful public dialogue, and cross-industry commitment, the Industry Wide Forum provides a key mechanism for ensuring that AI innovation is aligned with public values and expectations.

“Technology better serves people when it's grounded in their feedback and expectations,” said Rob Sherman, Meta’s Vice President, AI Policy & Deputy Chief Privacy Officer.  “This Forum reinforces how companies and researchers can collaborate to make sure AI agents are built to be responsive to the diverse needs of people who use them – not just at one company, but across the industry.”

Through Stanford’s established methodology and their facilitation of industry partners, the Industry-Wide Forum provides the public with the opportunity to engage deeply with complex technological issues and for AI companies to benefit from considered public perspectives in developing products that are responsive to public opinion. We hope this is the first step towards more collaboration among industry, academia, and the public to shape the future of AI in ways that benefit everyone.

“We have more industry partners joining our next forum later this year”, says Alice Siu, Associate Director of Stanford's Deliberative Democracy Lab. “The 2026 Industry-Wide Forum expands our discussion scope and further deepens our understanding of public attitudes towards AI agents. These deliberations will help ensure AI development remains aligned with societal values and expectations.”

Motivation & Overview

India’s services sector is internationally renowned and has helped propel the country’s economic growth. Indeed, in recent years, a majority of the value added to India’s GDP has been concentrated in services. Especially noteworthy are India’s software and computing services, which include large multinational conglomerates like Infosys and Tata Communications Services. 

Yet as Indian software has flourished, the growth of its computer hardware and manufacturing has been sluggish. Tellingly, India is still a net importer of hardware and other electronics. At first glance, this divergence is puzzling because both the software and hardware sectors should have benefited from India’s educated labor pool and infrastructure. How can these different sectoral outcomes be explained?
 

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Fig. 1: Electronics production value compared to software and software service revenues.
 

In “Comparing Advantages in India’s Computer Hardware and Software Sectors,” Dinsha Mistree and Rehana Mohammed offer an explanation in terms of state capacity to meet the different functional needs of each sector. Their account of India’s computing history emphasizes the inability of various state ministries and agencies to agree on policies that would benefit the hardware sector, such as tariffs. Meanwhile, cumbersome rulemaking procedures inherited from British colonialism impeded the state’s flexibility. Although this disadvantaged India’s hardware sector, its software sector needed comparatively less from the state, building instead on international networks and the efforts of individual agencies.

The authors provide a historically and theoretically rich account of the political forces shaping India’s economic rise. The paper not only compares distinct moments in Indian history but also draws parallels with other landmark cases, like South Korea’s 1980s industrial surge. Such a sector-based analysis could be fruitfully applied to understand why different industries succeed or lag in emerging economies. 

Different Sectors, Different Needs

In order to become competitive — both domestically and (especially) internationally — hardware manufacturers often need much from the state, what the authors call a “produce and protect regime.” This can include the construction of factories and the formation of state-owned industries (SOEs), as well as tariffs to reduce competition or labor laws that restrict union strikes. Perhaps most importantly, manufacturers need a state whose legislators and bureaucrats can coordinate with each other in response to market challenges. Such a regime is incompatible with excessive “red tape” or with the “capture” of regulators by narrow interest groups. Because customers tend to view manufactured goods as “substitutable” with each other, firms will face intense competition as regards price and quality.
 

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Fig. 2: Inter-agency coordination required for sectoral success.
 

The situation is very different for service providers, whose success depends on building strong relationships with customers. States are not essential to this process, even if their promotional efforts can be helpful. Coordination across government agencies is similarly less important, as just one agency could provide tax breaks or host promotional events that benefit service providers. Compared with manufacturing, customers tend to view services as less substitutable — they are more intangible and customizable, which renders competition less fierce. Understanding India’s computing history reveals that the state’s inability to meet hardware manufacturers’ needs severely constrained the sector’s growth. 

The History of Indian Computing

Although India inherited a convoluted bureaucracy from the British Raj, the future of its computing industry in the 1960s seemed promising: political elites in New Delhi supported a produce-and-protect regime, relevant agencies and SOEs were created, and foreign computing firms like IBM successfully operated in the country. 

Yet by the 1970s, some bureaucrats and union leaders feared that automation would threaten the federal government’s functioning and India’s employment levels, respectively. Strict controls in both the public and private sectors were thus adopted, for example, requiring trade unions — which took a strong anti-computer stance — to approve the introduction of computers in specific industries. The authors make special mention of India’s semiconductor industry. It arguably failed to develop due to lackluster government investment, the need for manufacturers to obtain multiple permits across agencies, decision makers ignoring recommendations from specialized panels, and so on.

Meanwhile, implementing protectionist policies proved challenging. For example, decisions to allow the importation of previously banned components required permission from multiple ministries and agencies. After India’s 1970s balance-of-payments crisis, international companies deemed inessential were forced to dilute their equity to 40% and take on an Indian partner. IBM then left the Indian market. At the same time, SOEs faced growing competition over government contracts and workers, owing to the growth of state-level SOEs.

The mid-1980s represented a partial turning point as Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister and liberalized the computing industry. Within weeks, Rajiv introduced a host of new policies and shifted the government’s focus from supporting public sector production to promoting private firms, which would no longer face manufacturing limits and would be eligible for duty exemptions. Changes to tariff rates and import limits would not require approval from multiple agencies. Meanwhile, international firms reengaged with Indian markets via the building of satellite links, facilitating cross-continental work, such as between Citibank employees in Mumbai and Santa Cruz.

However, this liberalizing period was undermined and partially reversed after 1989, when Rajiv’s Congress Party (INC) lost its legislative majority and public policy became considerably more fragmented. Anti-computerization forces, especially the powerful Indian trade unions, worked to stymie Rajiv’s reforms. Pro-market reformists were forced out of their positions in Indian bureaucracies. Rajiv was assassinated in 1991, after which Congress formed a minority government with computer advocate P. V. Narasimha Rao as PM. Yet all of this occurred at a delicate time, as India was at risk of defaulting and had almost completely exhausted its foreign exchange.

By the late 1990s, both the hardware and software sectors should have benefited from the rising global demand for computers, yet India’s history of poor state coordination hindered manufacturers. Meanwhile, software firms were able to take advantage of global opportunities given their comparatively limited needs from state actors and political networks — for example, helping European Union banks change their computer systems to Euros. Ultimately, the Indian state has powerfully shaped the fortunes of these different sectors.

*Research-in-Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.