The Weekly Leaf
This week, Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was reported to be on board a plane that crashed in Russia, leaders from the BRICS nations met in Johannesburg and agreed to admit six additional member states, and India became the first nation to land a spacecraft on the south pole of the moon.
Read more below.
Revisit the 2023 Aspen Security Forum
This Week's Content Highlights
Features from the Aspen Strategy Group Members
Mark T. Esper interviewed by Yin Khvat for Taiwan Talks: “U.S. Policy Does Not Accept Chinese Sovereignty Over Taiwan”
Peter Feaver for Smerconish.com: “Not Their Battle: It’s Time to Pull the Military Out of America’s Culture Wars”
Susan Glasser interviewed by Alex Wagner for MSNBC: “'Revenge Served Cold' Suspected in Plane Crash Death of Putin Warlord”
David Ignatius for The Washington Post: “The Space Force Needs to Get Bigger”
Anja Manuel interviewed by Christian Fraser for the BBC about the reported death of Prigozhin
Meghan O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff for The Ezra Klein Show: “What Happens When Great Power Conflict and Climate Action Collide?”
David Petraeus and Fredrick Kagan for The Washington Post: "Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Might Yet Surprise Critics"
Dan Sullivan for The National Review: “The Incredible Life and Legacy of James Buckley”
Lawrence H. Summers, David Ignatius, Sebastian Mallaby, Catherine Rampell, Max Boot, Josh Rogin, and Keith B. Richburg for The Washington Post: “What Just Happened: Storm Clouds Loom for China’s Economy”
Rising Leaders in the News
Marcus Coleman ('23) interviewed by Mike Emanuel for Fox News: "FEMA Official Issues Warning on Hurricane Hilary as Southern California Braces for Impact"
Tweet of the Week
Things to Know
Content Relevant to Aspen Security Forum Discussions
Pat Gelsinger and Chris Miller for Intel: "Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and ‘Chip War’ Author Chris Miller Talk Semiconductors"
Kristalina Georgieva for Foreign Affairs: "The Price of Fragmentation: Why the Global Economy Isn’t Ready for the Shocks Ahead"
Christo Grozev quoted by Gabriel Gavin et al. for POLITICO: “Wagner Boss Prigozhin Killed In Jet Crash In Russia”
Sumayya Ismail for Al Jazeera: "‘A Wall of BRICS’: The Significance of Adding Six New Members to the Bloc"
Michael Kugelman for Foreign Policy: “India’s Moon Landing Is a Big Geopolitical Step”
Jason Matheny for The Washington Post: "Here’s a Simple Way to Regulate Powerful AI Models"
Arati Prabhakar interviewed by Matt O'Brian for the AP: “White House Science Adviser Calls for More Safeguards Against Artificial Intelligence Risks”
Alec Russell for the Financial Times: “The à La Carte World: Our New Geopolitical Order”
Linda Thomas-Greenfield quoted by Daphne Psaledakis for Reuters: “U.S. Imposing Sanctions Over Forced Deportation, Transfer of Ukraine Children”
From the Archives
Revisit our conversation with the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
from the 2023 Aspen Security Forum.
William Burns, Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Moderator: Mary Louise Kelly, Co-Host, All Things Considered, NPR
Book of the Week
By Bill Browder
“When Bill Browder’s young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in a Moscow jail, Browder made it his life’s mission to go after his killers and make sure they faced justice. The first step of that mission was to uncover who was behind the $230 million tax refund scheme that Magnitsky was killed over. As Browder and his team tracked the money as it flowed out of Russia through the Baltics and Cyprus and on to Western Europe and the Americas, they were shocked to discover that Vladimir Putin himself was a beneficiary of the crime.
As law enforcement agencies began freezing the money, Putin retaliated. He and his cronies set up honey traps, hired process servers to chase Browder through cities, murdered more of his Russian allies, and enlisted some of the top lawyers and politicians in America to bring him down. Putin will stop at nothing to protect his money. As Freezing Order reveals, it was Browder’s campaign to expose Putin’s corruption that prompted Russia’s intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. At once a financial caper, an international adventure, and a passionate plea for justice, Freezing Order is a stirring morality tale about how one man can take on one of the most ruthless villains in the world—and win.”
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