Follow the link for a full transcript of "Global Threats: What's at Stake and What We Can Do About It."

Reform the Electoral College |  Didi Kuo

One of the major problems people feel right now in American politics is that their voices aren’t heard. We live in what my colleague Francis Fukuyama calls a "vetocracy," meaning there are a lot of veto points in our system.

In a lot of other democratic institutional configurations, you have rule by the majority. But in the United States, we have an institutional configuration that allows a very small group — for example, 15 people in the House of Representatives — to hold up government in various ways. We see this in dramatic examples on the national level, but it also trickles down to the local level where you see it in issues like permitting hold-ups.

Reforming the Electoral College would be a very direct way of changing that vetocracy. The United States is one of the only advanced democracies that has this indirect system of elections. If all the votes counted equally and all the presidential candidates had to treat all of us the same and respond to us equally in all 50 states, it would do a lot to show the power of the popular vote and realign us more closely to the principle of majoritarianism that we should seek in our institutions.

Allow Taiwan to License Weapons Production |  Larry Diamond

My recommendation is deterrence, deterrence, deterrence. It is not inevitable that the People's Republic of China is going to launch an all-out military assault on Taiwan. But if the United States does not do more to make that a costly decision, the likelihood it will happen are exponentially higher.

Deterrence works. The United States deterred the Soviet Union from moving against West Berlin and much of Europe for decades. But it only works if you have a superior force.

To that end, the United States needs to pre-position more military force in the region. There's now a $12 billion backlog of weapons that Taiwan has ordered and paid for but hasn't received yet. That’s because the American defense production system is completely broken. This is the same reason why we can’t get weapons to Ukraine at the pace we need there.

This issue could be fixed, at least in part, if we licensed the production of some of these weapon systems directly to Taiwan. Their ability to build plants and produce these systems is much more agile than our own, and so licensing the rights to production would dramatically increase the deterrence factor against China, in addition to deepening our cooperation with allies throughout the region.

Pursue Climate Mitigation AND Adaptation |  Marshall Burke

There are three things we can do in response to climate change: we can mitigate, we can adapt, or we can suffer. We’re off to a good start, but we have decades of long slog ahead of us to get that right. And it's not just us; even if we do a good job, we depend on other countries to also do a good job. The Biden administration has already been engaged on some of that front, but there’s more work to do there.

And even with our best efforts, we are not going to be able to move as fast as we want or mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as we need to avoid climate change. So, we're going to have to live with some climate change, which means adaptation. And if we can't adapt, then we're going to suffer. 

The key point is that we are very poorly adapted to today's climate, much less the climate we're going to have 30 or 50 years from now. The West Coast and California are prime examples of this. There have been monumental wildfire seasons there the last few years, and there are significant negative health impacts from smoke exposure. I see it in my own home, even as someone who studies this and should know better and do more to reduce those risks.

The point is, we're really poorly adapted to the current climate, and things are going to get a lot worse. We need to focus on mitigation; it’s still really important and we need to get it done. But at the same time, we need to figure out how to adapt and live with the changing climate that we're going to experience.

Weapons for Ukraine, Sanctions on Russia |  Michael McFaul

When I was in Kyiv this September, I had a chance to meet with President Zelenskyy, and he pointed out an absolutely crazy reality. Companies in the United States and Europe are still making tens of thousands of dollars in profits from selling various technologies that ultimately end up in Russia. It’s getting in through places like Hong Kong and Kazakhstan and Belarus and Georgia, and it allows Russia to keep waging its horrific war.

At the same time, the United States is spending millions of dollars to arm Ukraine with systems to shoot down the Russian rockets that were built using the components they got from the West. That’s completely illogical, bad policy. I know it’s hard to control technology, but we have to find a better way than what we’re doing right now. If you're an American taxpayer, that is your money being wasted.

That means more and better weapons for Ukraine, faster. And that means more and better sanctions on Russia, faster. That is the way to speed the end of this war.

Be Confident in America |  Amichai Magen

Just a few short years ago, we were all talking about the decline of the United States. I think that is far from inevitable. People speak about the 20th century as the “American Century.” The 21st century can also be the American Century. It's in our hands.

Be bullish on America. Be confident in America. Rediscover the spirit of America for adaptation and innovation and entrepreneurship. We need to wake up from the break we’ve taken from history in the post-Cold War era and rally once again in our spirit, our research, and our intellect.

We need to find new solution structures to the great challenges of our era: environmental challenges, AI, biotechnological challenges, nuclear challenges. And we can do it. China is on the verge of demographic decline and economic decline. Russia is a very dangerous international actor, but it is not a global superpower. We must reinvent the institutions and the alliances that we need for the 21st century in order to make sure that we continue a journey towards greater peace and prosperity for all of mankind.

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What does this poll show about the American public and our political and civic discourse that the headlines miss?

Diamond: Over and over (this is now our third "America in One Room"), we find that ordinary Americans are hungry for thoughtful and civil discussions with their fellow citizens about the issues we face. And it is possible to have these discussions if you set good conditions and ensure that everyone has access to the same body of balanced and objective information, with a fair presentation of the pro and con arguments for each proposal. Americans do narrow their differences when they can deliberate in this way. But more than that — and quite stunning to us — they also became more hopeful about American democracy. The percentage of Americans who say they are satisfied with the way democracy is working in the US increased from 27% before deliberation to 45% after. And satisfaction among Republicans doubled — from 24% to 50%.

Siu: Headlines often lead with how polarized our society is, but what they fail to tell us is that if people had the opportunity to engage with diverse others, people are capable of having respectful conversations. In fact, after deliberation, agreement with the statement 'I respect their point of view though it is different from mine' increased from 57 to 75%. Among Democrats, this percentage increased from 49 to 73%, and among Republicans, this increased from 73 to 84%. The headlines amplify the perceived polarization in our society, but what it misses is how deliberation can bring our society together in a respectful way.

Fishkin: Dialogue across differences can activate the fundamental values of our democracy and show the way for constructive solutions. The increased support for ranked choice voting and for non-partisan redistricting commissions was particularly noteworthy.

What implications might this installment of A1R have for the 2024 U.S. presidential election and democratic reform initiatives on the ballot?

Fishkin: This project identifies practical reforms that have a claim on the values and concerns of the American public if they focus on the issues. I think it can be invoked for non-partisan redistricting commissions, for ranked-choice voting in various contexts, for ethics reform of the Supreme Court, and a host of other issues.

Diamond: It may not have much impact on the 2024 presidential election, but it will give momentum to reformers who are working to expand voting rights, ensure a more transparent non-partisan administration of elections, and institute Ranked Choice Voting and related electoral reforms. I think our results show that people can be persuaded, even across party lines, and it points to certain types of reforms that are more broadly appealing than others. As we analyze the transcripts of the discussions, we will also learn what kinds of arguments resonated with voters and which did not.

Siu: One of the striking results from this installment of A1R is people's concerns about voting accessibility. From restoring voting rights to citizens with felony convictions to strengthening federal standards for election machines and requirements for reporting security incidents, we hope that policymakers see the priorities that registered voters have for ensuring that our elections are fair and transparent.

How can this research be used to help reduce polarization moving forward and create meaningful change in our public dialogues?

Siu: This installment of A1R, along with the previous A1R Deliberative Polls, have shown that deliberation can, in fact, reduce political and affective polarization. We must all understand that for our society and for any society around the world, listening to each other, whether we agree or disagree, is really not an option. 

Diamond: We now have a second major demonstration in the US of the dramatic utility of the Stanford Online Deliberation Platform, developed by Stanford Professor Ashish Goel and his Crowdsourced Democracy Team. This was the second "America in One Room" to deploy this platform very successfully. When people can deliberate online, it cuts costs dramatically, and yet still, it brings about reductions in polarization and constructive changes in public opinion on many issues. Now the challenge is to figure out how we can scale up deliberation to much larger numbers of Americans and apply the tool to a wider range of issues in jurisdictions across the US as well as globally. International demand for the framework and tools of the Deliberative Democracy Lab keeps growing.

Fishkin: With our technology, we have hopes of spreading this kind of dialogue. I was struck that Republicans, Democrats, and Independents all supported fostering deliberation on contentious topics.