Think Tank Quickies (#333)

• Former DNI Avril Haines will be the next president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  She was formerly affiliated with the Brookings Institution.
• Hudson Institute Executive Vice President Joel Scanlon will become the think tank's new President and CEO, replacing John Walters. 
• Angel Cabrera has been named as the next president and CEO of the Aspen Institute.  He is currently president of the Georgia Institute of Technology. 
• Mr. Aaron Lukas, who worked as an analyst at the Cato Institute, was initially named to serve as the acting director of national intelligence after Tulsi Gabbard stepped down. 
• The Truman National Security Project is facing deepening staffing and financial woes.
• Persuaded that his loneliness was symptomatic of a national malady, David Brooks started a nonprofit through the Aspen Institute, called "Weave: The Social Fabric Project," which aims to strengthen community in towns and cities nationwide.
• Helen Toner is now the permanent executive director of Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET).  She was previously the interim director. 
• Can Mike Pence's think tank lead Reaganites out of the wilderness? 
• How Florida's taxpayers are funding a largely conservative think tank for Latin America. 
• 12 influential Israeli think tanks. 
• Should there be temporary think tanks? 

40 Experts Secretly Meet at PIIE to Game Out How to Avoid an AI Apocalypse

Here is more from the Wall Street Journal:

Inside a glass-encased building in downtown Washington, D.C., this past week, a group of experts hunkered down to strategize how to avoid the AI apocalypse that many doomsayers predict.

They were some 40 leading thinkers in economics, technology and public policy, and they had come to the Peterson Institute for International Economics to contemplate a vision of U.S. society in 2030. Provided with workbooks, easel pads and Sharpies, they arrived ready to game out responses to some of AI’s biggest risks—to jobs, the economy, political stability.

The event was arranged by Windfall Trust, a nonprofit devoted to heading off AI’s economic disruption by developing potential policy responses. It has been running scenario-planning exercises like this in cities around the world to catalyze proactive strategies for confronting an AI-driven future. 

 

Over the years, think tanks have run numerous "war games" and crisis simulations on a variety of topics and scenarios.  A number of think tanks even have programs dedicated to the topic, such as the Hoover Institution, which has a Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative.

China Arrests American Think Tank Chief

Here is more from CBS:

China has arrested an American citizen for alleged espionage, the country's government confirmed Friday, identifying the man as a political analyst for a policy think tank focused on neighboring Myanmar.

U Min Zin, a founder of the Institute for Strategy and Policy Myanmar, or ISP-M, has faced "criminal compulsory measures," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said during a briefing on Friday.

Authorities are holding him on suspicion "of engaging in espionage and endangering China's national security," Lin said, without providing further details.

The ISP-M says it researches political, resource and conflict dynamics in Myanmar, which was plunged into civil war by a 2021 military coup. 

 

U Min Zin was arrested on June 3 at Kunming Airport in the Yunnan province of China.  ISP-M is based in the Northern Thai city of Chang Mai.

Think Tank Quickies (#332)

• Brookings launches institution-wide effort to generate recommendations for sharpening America's edge in competition with China. 
• RAND Corp. report: On the Extinction Risk of Artificial Intelligence. 
• Mike Needham, former CEO of Heritage Action for America, has been promoted to White House deputy national security adviser.  Dan Holler, Sec. Marco Rubio's chief of staff at the State Department, will take Needham's job as counselor and serve as acting director of policy planning. 
• Senior Democrats are rebooting an influential foreign policy group (National Security Action) to help potential 2028 presidential candidates and bring together national security specialists who could staff the next Democratic administration.  Maher Bitar will lead NSA, which was founded in 2018.
• The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is discouraging its employees from online betting platforms.  "I strongly recommend that colleagues eschew participation in prediction markets, especially on matters of politics, world affairs, and other topics on which Carnegie provides expertise," Carnegie Senior Vice President Daniel Baer wrote in an April 2026 email to staff.
• The Inclusive Abundance Initiative is among several groups that is part of the growing center-left "Abundance" movement assembling a 2028 policy agenda targeting regulations it believes hurt Democrats' efforts on healthcare, housing, energy, and more. 
• A number of potential Democratic presidential candidates got to test-drive their policy prescriptions for the party at the Center for American Progress' 2026 Ideas Conference on May 19.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, and Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) are among the headliners that CAP is brought back after a 3-year hiatus. 
• James Baker, the former head of DoD's Office of Net Assessment, often referred to as the "Pentagon's Think Tank," is joining AI company Anthropic as a strategist-in-residence. 
• Think tanks have defeated democracy. 
• Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (GCRI): "A nonpartisan think tank that analyzes the risk of events that could significantly harm or even destroy human civilization at the global scale."

Five Eyes Warns of China Threat to Think Tankers

Members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance warned in a bulletin that China's military intelligence services are using Western online job platforms - including LinkedIn, Indeed, and Upwork - to lure Five Eyes nationals with access to sensitive information.

"These actors use an aggressive online recruitment strategy whereby intelligence officers or their affiliates pose as employees of private consultancies, think tanks, or human resources (HR) firms, and place online job advertisements for foreign policy and defense analysts (or similar)," the group said. 

Those being targeted include "persons with either indirect or peripheral access to government information, e.g. academics, journalists, freelance writers, think tank employees, or anyone with links to defense, security, policy, and economic sectors," it added. 

The Five Eyes countries consist of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States. 

Think Tank Quickies (#331)

• President Trump says the Cato Institute hates him.
• Donald J. Trump vs. the think tanks. 
• Inside the hidden world of think tanks. 
• RAND re-ups at Pentagon City tower with big plans to expand grad school. 
• Robert O'Brien and Ely Ratner are the inaugural co-chairs of the new US Taiwan Task Force.  The initiative, launched under the DC-based Global Taiwan Institute think tank, will undertake a "comprehensive review of US-Taiwan-relations and provide actionable recommendations for decision-makers in both Washington and Taipei," according to the institute. 
• Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) asks Senate witnesses to swear their think tanks don't take Mexican drug cartel money.
• Paul Dans, an architect of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, recently pulled out of the South Caroline Senate race against Lindsey Graham. 
• Viktor Orban's beloved conservative think tank, MCC Brussels, faces a fight for its life. 
• Is this the end of the golden age of Chinese think tanks with star ex-officials? 
• Egypt's Rania Al-Mashat plans to launch a coalition of regional think tanks.