Technology and Innovation

Rachel Brown is a research associate in Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Amid the flurry of press coverage surrounding President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States in September, his gift of a dawn redwood tree to be planted on the campus of the Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) program in Seattle received little attention. However, the GIX program, a collaboration between China’s prestigious Tsinghua University and the University of Washington, reflects a next step in China’s soft power strategy. Presenting a model for higher education has characterized global powers from nineteenth century Germany to the present day United States, and China now seems to be making a bid to promote its own educational model abroad. While over the past two decades, American and other foreign universities have flocked to establish campuses and centers in China, GIX will be the first outpost of a Chinese university in the United States. The GIX campus itself is still being built and designed, but when it opens in the fall of 2017, the school will host the second year of a dual degree program offering a master’s degree in technology innovation to approximately thirty students. There are plans to offer other programs and by 2025 to enroll 3,000 students. The initial program will cover the legal, technological, and entrepreneurial aspects of “Internet-connected devices,” playing to both Tsinghua’s strengths in business and computer science as well as the campus’ location in Seattle. Courses will be taught in English by faculty from both universities and the two universities will play equal roles in curriculum design, university administration, and admissions. GIX will be funded by a forty million dollar contribution from Microsoft as well as contributions from both Chinese and American companies. While GIX stands out as the first instance of a Chinese university establishing a physical presence in the United States, it fits into a pattern of recent initiatives to expand China’s global educational footprint. China’s domestic higher education system has been growing rapidly in both quantity and quality, and thus it is perhaps natural that the growth would continue into foreign markets. Affiliates of other Chinese universities have already been established in other nations including a campus of Soochow University in Laos, a branch of Xiamen University under construction in Malaysia, and a joint lab sponsored by Zhejiang University and Imperial College London in London. Chinese higher education has also internationalized in other ways. Central to the educational dimension of Chinese soft power have been Confucius Institutes, government-sponsored centers that promote Chinese language and culture abroad. Already, more than 480 Confucius Institutes operate in over 120 nations. Chinese universities also currently offer over one hundred online courses. Tsinghua University alone provides more than twenty online courses on the edX platform for massive open online courses. These classes include “China’s Perspective on Climate Change” and “Introduction to Mao Zedong Thought,” which has approximately 3,100 viewers. Courses such as these contribute both to the spread of Chinese views on certain topics and to raising the profile of Chinese institutions. But initial efforts to spread aspects of the Chinese education system globally have met resistance. Certain Confucius Institutes have triggered controversies surrounding academic freedom. Several universities in Canada and the United States, including the University of Chicago, decided not to renew Confucius Institutes at their schools, and the American Association of University Professors has argued for the closure of all American Confucius Institutes citing opaque contracts that lead universities to compromise their integrity. Not all of the online courses have been popular either, as some American students likened Tsinghua’s edX class on Mao Zedong Thought to propaganda. Similar controversies could also arise at GIX. While the leader of the project on the Chinese side, Zhang Tao, argues that one of the advantages of the collaboration is that Americans who hope to sell tech products in Asia will be exposed to Chinese preferences and business practices through courses with Chinese students and faculty, the program’s emphasis on technology also raises potential concerns. Particularly troubling are issues surrounding Internet censorship and intellectual property protection where practices in the two countries diverge sharply. Nevertheless, given the Chinese government’s commitment to expanding soft power through education, collaborations between Chinese and American universities on this side of the Pacific seem poised to spread.

This is a guest post by Allen Grane, research associate for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies program. The government of Kenya is tapping the country’s digital finance prowess to raise critical infrastructure funds. The National Treasury has teamed up with a local mobile money pioneer, Safaricom, to launch the so-called M-Akiba bond. It is the first government security carried exclusively on mobile phones. M-Akiba is a national economic solution that has the potential of filling-in for foreign investment. This is especially important in light of Standard & Poor’s recent lowering of Kenya’s credit rating outlook to negative due to depreciation of the Kenyan Shilling and a growing budget deficit. M-Akiba, like M-Pesa, which was developed in response to Kenya’s retail banking shortcomings, is another African tech-based solution to a regional finance challenge. This initiative is also significant in the aftermath of J.P. Morgan’s recent dropping of Nigeria from its local-currency emerging market bond index. That move could signal a waning of international interest in African bond markets, which have become more important to African government infrastructure financing over the last several years. Despite the continent’s rapid economic growth in the past decade, investors may be worried by the recent fall in commodity prices and China’s cooling economy, both of which are having secondary effects in Africa. In the midst of this potential downturn, African countries must find new ways to create investment. Kenya is seeking to do that with the M-Akiba bond, an original way to raise capital through its citizens while leveraging East Africa’s large, and ever-growing, mobile markets. Mobile platforms such as M-Pesa have been extremely successful in Kenya, where 75 percent of its citizens own cell phones and 60 percent of its population transact payments via M-Pesa. The Kenyan government argues that M-Akiba will not only help them tap into local investors for government bonds, but that it will allow more Kenyans to build personal savings (Akiba is the Swahili word for savings). M-Akiba lowers many of the hurdles to citizen investors purchasing government bonds. They no longer have to go through a financial intermediary (just their mobile phones) and the 3,000 Shillings ($29) entry price makes M-Akiba bonds more accessible than typical government bonds, priced at 50,000 Shillings (approximately $475). Similar to M-Pesa, which has become a leading example for digital payments providers around the world, the M-Akiba concept could become a model for developing economy government finance.

A dangerous ideological current is coursing through the intellectual circuit, a political conviction dressed up as an empirical theory. Its proponents argue that public funding of basic scientific research is, at best, a waste of money and, at worst, an actively counterproductive endeavor that crowds out the private sector’s innovative instincts. And the institutions in the crosshairs of these broadsides are U.S. research universities, the country’s most valuable assets in a global economy driven by innovation. A Backward Theory of Innovation Last week, Matt Ridley wrote in The Wall Journal that “the linear dogma so prevalent in the world of science and politics—that science drives innovation, which drives commerce—is mostly wrong. It misunderstands where innovation comes from. Indeed, it generally gets it backward.” He continues, “technological advances are driven by practical men who tinkered until they had better machines; abstract scientific rumination is the last thing they do.” That is, the private sector’s inventions drive research in basic science, not the other way around. Similarly, Lev Grossman’s Time Magazine cover article, an encomium to start-ups commercializing fusion reactors, quotes an entrepreneur disdainful of university research: “Fusion is in the end an application, right? The problem with fusion typically is that it’s driven by science, which means you take the small steps.”  Crystallizing this conception of methodically misguided public research seeking to understand basic science, Grossman asserts, “Understanding is all well and good, in an ideal world, but the real world is getting less ideal all the time. The real world needs clean power and lots of it.” This strain of virulent vitriol against basic scientific inquiry hit home over the weekend when I spoke with a champion of university research, Stanford University President John Hennessy. Mulling his legacy, President Hennessy glowed with pride, noting that Stanford can count more Nobel Laureates over his fifteen-year tenure than any other university. But he warned that uncertainty over future federal research support to universities poses a grave risk to the prolific advances that have helped Stanford fuel the Silicon Valley innovation engine. Indeed, as the figure below illustrates, federal spending on basic university research has declined in real terms since the one-time windfall of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package. And depending on the outcome of the 2016 election, further cuts could loom large. Source: National Science Foundation Nonlinear ≠ Linear in Reverse! Writing a timely rejoinder to Ridley in The Guardian, Jack Stilgoe concurs that innovation is nonlinear. But he correctly calls out Ridley for making the leap that just because basic science does not linearly advance innovation, the reverse must be true: namely, that private innovation must therefore drive basic science. Reality is considerably more complicated, and Ridley’s fantasy world of basic research following in the wake of private inventions is as simplistic as the linear model he derides. Innovation is, in fact, nonlinear. The path from basic science to commercial product can span decades, traverse disciplinary boundaries, and meander back and forth between academia and industry. Nevertheless, the causal role of university research is indisputable: it provides a theoretical framework and a body of empirical observations that constrain an otherwise intractably vast option space for innovation. Here’s a concrete example. In my field—solar power—hordes of chemists and materials engineers tweak the chemical compositions and production processes of semiconductors, hoping to make a solar material that converts more sunlight into electricity. In Ridley’s universe, privately funded scientists would iterate and see what works, making an evolutionary series of tweaks that make more and more efficient solar panels. Later on, university scientists can tinker away, trying to figure out why what worked actually worked. This is a monumentally foolish idea and, frankly, one of the reasons why so many solar start-ups went bust. I’ve worked in companies under pressure from investors to deliver results, and I’ve witnessed scientists taking shortcuts to improve device performance without understanding the underlying physics—in fact, I was guilty of doing this myself. We would run experiments without a clear theoretical reason, and our new devices wouldn’t behave better or worse but simply, differently. Lost in an unending wilderness of data without the compass of prior scholarship, we would invariably retrace our steps and bemoan the wasted effort.[1] By contrast, university research is obsessed with questions that start with why and only occasionally apply the test of so what? Now, this can be problematic, and I’ve written before that scientific curiosity alone is not sufficient to develop real-world clean energy technologies. For example, most performance  records for emerging solar power technologies—including perovskites, quantum dots, organics, etc.—are held by publicly funded universities and research laboratories. Absent practical product development, at which industry excels, to complement fundamental scientific inquiry, these technologies may languish in laboratories. But eliminating university research will ensure that those solar materials never see the light of day, rejecting a necessary condition for innovation because of its insufficiency. I worry that support for science, and clean energy research in particular, could fall victim to complacent confidence in the autonomous advances of innovation.  Speaking out forcefully in favor of expanded public research and development funding for clean energy, Bill Gates recently pronounced, “We need an energy miracle.” To get there, he advocates tripling government funding for basic energy research to $18 billion per year. Doing the opposite—cutting public funding for university research to give the private sector running room—will make any energy miracle a pipe dream. [1] Academic scholarship from the early 20th century continues to guide innovation in solar technology today. Researchers still design experiments, craft mathematical models, and troubleshoot puzzling results by falling back on the quantum theory of solids, which Bloch, Peierls, and Wilson established by the mid- 1930s in European research universities.

This post originally appeared on the Council on Foreign Relations Net Politics Blog and is written by Mailyn Fidler. Mailyn is a Marshall Scholar studying international relations at the University of Oxford. You can follow her on Twitter @mailynfidler. This September, African civil society, business, and government leaders gathered at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa to debate Internet issues at the African Internet Governance Forum. I attended the Forum to interview participants for research I am conducting on the African Union Convention on Cybersecurity and Data Protection. In the months before the global Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held this year in Brazil, most world regions host their own version of the forum to incubate positions to take at the global IGF. The IGF system was a compromise outcome of the UN-backed World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005, which sought to address inequalities in Internet infrastructure and governance between countries. Although important Internet-related issues are addressed at the forums, they have no binding decision-making power. The ten-year review of the outcomes of WSIS will happen this December, and the agenda of the African IGF largely mirrored issues that will also be addressed then, including Internet governance, Internet access, cybersecurity, and human rights online. The report from the African IGF is available here. The 2015 African IGF was marked by excitement about increased participation by high-level African government officials. In the past, only Nigerian and host country officials had attended. This year’s event in Addis saw high-level officials from South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria participate. Speakers noted this phenomenon repeatedly, excited by a sense that governments were taking the gathering, which held its first meeting in 2012, seriously and not writing it off as a civil society echo chamber. Despite their participation, the government representatives were not entirely supportive of the IGF’s guiding concept. IGFs are committed to multistakeholder ideals, giving equal voice to government, civil society, and business. The representatives expressed concern about this approach, stating the need to prioritize government views. Specifically, one representative raised concerns about a draft document prepared for the ten-year review of WSISoutcomes that endorsed multistakeholder principles. At the panel titled “Enhancing Multi-Stakeholder Cooperation,” a representative from the African Union repeated these concerns, drawing the biggest applause of the forum, trumping the clapping for a young Nigerian woman who challenged an Ethiopian bureaucrat over the questionable detention of bloggers and journalists. These reservations about multistakeholderism reflect the positions African states have taken on Internet governance in other forums. In perhaps the most prominent example, all but three African state attendees at the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) voted in favor of a proposal for updated International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) that would support a more government-centric Internet governance approach. Another hotly debated issue at the forum was the interplay between zero-rating and net neutrality. The prime zero-rating example is Facebook’s Internet.org, where the social media company works with providers to offer Facebook and select other websites at no cost to users. Attendees debated whether zero-rating was an appropriate approach to expanding Internet access in Africa. Human rights representatives championed the development as a boon for the least well off, while attendees from the African tech sector resisted it, concerned about having to compete with free Western services. Ebele Okobi, head of public policy for Facebook Africa, sought to highlight Facebook’s recent efforts to include more and locally developed websites on its free platform. Attendees also debated whether zero-rating violated the principle of net neutrality, and if, when, and how African states should legislate to preserve net neutrality. The first event I attended at the forum opened by urging attendees to remember, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” Concerns about making sure Africans are “at the table” resonated throughout the event. I spent coffee breaks with younger attendees, listening to their concerns that the structure and style of the event would resign the African IGF and African perspectives on these issues to obscurity. I watched civil society walk the fine line between welcoming increased government participation, which could give the forum increased seriousness, and resisting increased government influence, which could shut out crucial African voices. I watched the forum grapple with the disparity between the increased willingness and ability of African states to “be at the table” on Internet matters and the limitations the external world still places on African participation. At the same time, attendees also recognized that many African countries still must make huge strides in government, civil society, and technological capacity before having a consistent, firm, and informed seat at the table, despite incredible progress. A strong African voice on Internet matters at international events may come with decreased inclusiveness. The greater number of African government officials who attended the African IGF, gathered in the Chinese-built hall of the African Union, may well determine such a tradeoff is worth it.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post,  from October 1 to October 8, was compiled by Dara Jackson-Garrett. Evaluating Sweden’s “Feminist” Foreign Policy When Margot Wallström, Sweden’s foreign minister, took office last year, she announced that Sweden would pursue a “feminist” foreign policy under her leadership, which she described as a policy to stand “against the systematic and global subordination of women.” The policy has drawn international attention and resulted in severed ties between Saudi Arabia and Sweden, after Wallström criticized the Saudi government for its dismal human rights record and poor treatment of women. Sweden’s government notes that one of the primary goals of the policy is to ensure “that women and girls can enjoy their fundamental human rights [which] is both a duty within the framework of our international commitments, and a prerequisite for Sweden’s broader foreign policy goals on development, democracy, peace and security.” One Hundred Million Women to Receive Free Cell Phones by 2020 At the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting last week, Tata Communications and MasterCard announced a plan to empower women through technology by providing 25,000 women around the world with free cell phones, with the goal of reaching 100 million by 2020. The program will launch in India, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Guatemala. Improving women’s access to the Internet and to mobile phones is a critical priority: across the developing world, an estimated 300 million fewer women than men own a cell phone, and 200 million fewer women are online. Closing this gender gap could improve economic opportunities for women, connect them with literacy programs, improve maternal health, and reduce poverty. The Role of Women in the Self-Proclaimed Islamic State Recent analysis confirms the serious role women play in sustaining terrorist organizations. Women are an important part of the extremist group’s infrastructure: they are used to recruit fighters, keep current fighters happy, and create the next generation of militants. According to the Islamic State’s ideology, a woman’s role is to marry and have children; they are forbidden from fighting. As the Post notes, they are “usually drawn by romantic notions of supporting revolutionaries and living in a state that exalts their religion, [but] can quickly find themselves part of an institutionalized, near-assembly-line system to provide fighters with wives, sex, and children.”

On October 5, a native Chinese scientist, Tu Youyou, won the Nobel Prize in medicine for her role in developing an antimalarial drug that saves millions of lives in Africa and Asia. The award is considered a milestone in China’s history of science and technology as Tu is not only the first Chinese citizen but also the first Chinese-trained scientist ever to be awarded the most prestigious award in science. In fact, unlike other Chinese Nobel laureates in science, all of whom had overseas training, Tu had neither study nor research experience abroad. The most important research that led to the discovery of the medicine for which she was awarded the prize, artemisinin, was conducted in China. Surprised but exalted, many Chinese have attributed this prize to China’s scientific and technological (S&T) regime. Already, social media in China is flooded with discussions on who will be the next Chinese scientist to win the prize. But does this honor truly testify to the effectiveness of China’s S&T system? Since the early 1980s China has aggressively promoted research and development (R&D) as an integral part of its modernization agenda. By 2011, China had already become the second largest investor in R&D in the world. Between 2011 and 2015 the government invested more than $4.7 billion in medical science research alone. Currently, and for almost five years running, the volume of Chinese patent filing is the largest of any country of the world. With support from the government, Chinese scientists have independently developed about forty chemical drugs since 1986. Still, constrained by institutional, policy, and capacity factors, the country is struggling to become a true innovator—indeed, most of the so-called “independently developed” (zizhu chuangxin) drugs are copycat drugs from a clinical point of view. Furthermore, the pharmaceutical industry in China remains positioned at the lower end of the global supply chain as an exporter of active pharmaceutical ingredients rather than a formulator of innovative pharmaceutical products. This is in part caused by a research culture that remains bedeviled by inefficiency, corruption, and mismanagement problems. Among other things, the system has failed to develop an effective incentive structure that rejects mediocracy and recognizes truly innovative scientists. As a result, a Gresham’s Law-like system has developed where mediocracy is overvalued and innovation is hindered. For example, even though Tu was found to have played a critical role in artemisinin-based drug development, she was never an individual recipient of top science awards in China. She was several times nominated but rejected membership in the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences. Many Chinese scientists who participated in the project hold the belief that Tu was only one contributor and they too deserved a piece of the Nobel Prize. This might explain why Tu had earlier refused to share the original research data with a scientist who had wanted to promote her research. Much to the chagrin of the champions of the existing S&T system, the artemisinin-related research was primarily conducted not in the post-Mao era but in the early 1970s, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Does that mean that the Maoist S&T regime was superior to the current one (as some Maoists would contend)? An argument for “yes” would be as logically fallacious as saying that the Soviet system was better than its successor because the former produced more Nobel laureates than the post-Soviet one. Indeed, only two drugs—artemisinin and dimercaptosuccinic acid —developed in the Mao era were internationally recognized as innovative drugs. True, the development of artemisinin-based drugs was the result of a top secret mission ordered by Mao (“Project 523”), which itself demonstrated the advantages of a nationwide system that encouraged esprit de corps while effectively mobilizing available resources for R&D. Political turmoil, coupled with Mao’s anti-intellectualism and egalitarianism, nevertheless left little room for inspiration and innovation in other research fields. The emphasis on group contribution, for example, led to the elimination of individual authors’ names from all academic publications. Against this backdrop, serendipity rather than the system was more relevant to Tu’s discovery. Furthermore, Mao’s China cut itself off from the outside world, which forestalled international exchange and prevented groundbreaking discoveries from being introduced and marketed internationally. Indeed, foreign scientists did not learn about the discovery of artemisinin until December 1979; unable to independently break into international markets, China sold the international rights to market artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) to a Swiss company. This in part explains why even today ACTs made in China only account for 1 percent of the international market share. Having a native Chinese win the Nobel Prize in science has long been a Chinese dream. Just two years ago, China kicked off an ambitious program aiming to select 100 top scientists for extra support in order to compete for future Nobel Prizes. Winning the award by Tu appears to boost the confidence in a system where Tu is by no means a representative sample. National pride aside, the fact that Tu is an outlier only underscores the need for China to fundamentally revamp its S&T system.

Yesterday U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker co-convened, with their Indian counterparts External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Commerce and Industry Minister of State Nirmala Sitharaman, the new U.S.-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue (S&CD). India and the United States have been convening a strategic dialogue since 2010, so the change this year elevated discussion of economic and commercial issues to the cabinet level alongside the central matters of security and global diplomatic concerns. Economic issues were always part of the previous strategic dialogues with India—I staffed three of them from 2011 to 2013 so can attest—but in raising this set of bilateral issues to the cabinet level, and by including the commercial agencies on both sides, the new structure signals a higher level of importance for economic and commercial matters. It also, notably, revises the structure of the dialogue to parallel the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. That change was lost on no one, and Minister Swaraj expressly invoked it during the press conference which followed the dialogue. The U.S.-India economic relationship may be one-sixth the size of U.S.-China, but the dialogues now look similar. Based on the joint statement, joint press conference, and numerous fact sheets released following the dialogue, here’s a selective overview of what’s new—and what didn’t make it to the press releases—from the discussions. More talking: India and the United States agreed to formalize new consultations in several areas. (Some of these had taken place previously either at other levels, or without being officially institutionalized.) The U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken will lead a new “High Level Consultation” with India’s Foreign Secretary, S. Jaishankar. A new "Policy Planning Dialogue" will begin. Talk has begun about a new “Oceans Dialogue.” There will be a new “Track 1.5” (involving government as well as participants from outside government) on Internet and cyber issues. Diplomats from each country will spend time at each other’s training centers. There will be a new “joint work stream” on the ease of doing business. New areas of formal cooperation: Building on longstanding consultations on peacekeeping, and success in joint training for third countries in subjects like agriculture and technology, India and the United States will together train UN peacekeepers from six African countries. An agriculture biotechnology group has been set up to facilitate research in this area. There are plans for a formal memorandum of understanding on “Energy Security, Clean Energy, and Climate Change.” There’s a new memorandum of understanding to tackle wildlife trafficking, with a special mention of support for India’s Project Tiger anti-poaching effort. There’s a new private sector-led initiative focused on standards to help ease trade. More expansive public concern on terrorism: A separate joint declaration issued on countering terrorism highlights Washington and New Delhi’s shared terrorism concerns. Previously, language on combatting terrorism had been included in joint statements themselves, but admittedly given the several thousand words comprising such documents, it was just one part of many. The separate statement underscores shared worries about al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, D-Company, and the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The statement also condemns two recent terrorist attacks in India (in Gurdaspur and Udhampur). It also references “continuing efforts to finalize a bilateral agreement to expand intelligence sharing and terrorist watch-list information.” More activities on esoteric topics: It’s often surprising to read a roster of the U.S.-India cooperation underway that exists off the high-diplomacy radar screen. The areas of science and technology have long been the most quietly productive, and least controversial, parts of the U.S.-India relationship. Following the U.S. export control reforms of 2010, the kinds of technology cooperation permitted has expanded further, including in subjects like high-energy physics. A readthrough of the current bilateral cooperation includes references to launching U.S. components on Indian space launch vehicles; mental health; traditional medicine; work on a High-Intensity Superconducting Proton Accelerator; new research on Smart Grids; more joint research between Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory with the Bhabha Atomic Research Center and the Raja Ramanna Center for Advanced Technology; more monsoon and climate research in the Indian Ocean, plus “deep core samples of the seabed” analysis. There will be new health cooperation on environmental and occupational health, cancer, and antimicrobial resistance, building on joint work on rotavirus, Ebola, and other global health topics announced earlier this year. Commercially, a new exchange on “Technical Textiles” will be launched. What’s missing: Neither the joint statement nor the fact sheet on economic cooperation mentioned India’s interest in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum membership, something included in the January “Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region.” During the press conference, Minister Swaraj said that “Secretary Kerry and I agreed to work towards forming India’s membership of APEC” but similar statements appear nowhere else. On the long-pending bilateral investment treaty (BIT) process, the economic cooperation fact sheet merely references plans to “continue discussions to assess the prospects for a high standard BIT.” I am afraid this weak gruel provides little to suggest any near-term progress on this small but symbolic agreement. Also missing was any announcement of defense sales like those appearing in the press about the Indian military’s likely procurement of Boeing Apache and Chinook helicopters. These sales will likely be formally announced when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama meet next week. Commercial civil nuclear cooperation does not appear in the joint statement, the commercial and trade cooperation fact sheet, or the energy, climate, environment, and science cooperation document, either. Finally, though the joint declaration on counterterrorism includes reference to the “serious threat posed by ISIL/Da’esh,” I was struck by what transpired in the press conference. A journalist asked Secretary Kerry about developments in Syria and Russian military activity. Kerry’s answer, extending seven paragraphs on that section of the question, had no reference whatsoever to India—a reminder that despite deepening Indo-U.S. partnership in some parts of the world, that cooperation isn’t yet in some of the hottest hot spots for U.S. foreign policy. Resources Joint Statement on the First U.S.-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue Joint Press Conference with Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, and Indian Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman Joint Statement on the First U.S.-India CEO Forum U.S.-India Joint Declaration on Combatting Terrorism U.S.-India Cooperation, Aligned Across the Globe U.S.-India Commercial, Trade, and Economic Cooperation U.S.-India Energy & Climate, Environment, Science & Technology, and Health Cooperation U.S.-India Higher Education and Skills Development Cooperation Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa  

Brendan Howe is a professor at Ewha Womans University’s Graduate School of International Studies. From September 25 to 27, South Korean President Park Geun-hye will be attending the United Nations (UN) Development Summit in New York, where she will be giving the keynote address. Much of the summit will focus on the so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The SDGs are a set of proposals that look to build on two high profile international governance agendas: [1] international development cooperation, dominated since 2000 by the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set to expire at the end of 2015; and [2] twenty years of environmental cooperation since the landmark United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). In 2014, the UN General Assembly’s Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (OWG) forwarded a proposal for the SDGs to the Assembly, with intergovernmental negotiations on the post–2015 development agenda lasting from January to August 2015. Following the negotiations, a final document entitled “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” was prepared for adoption in the upcoming development summit. This conference marks an opportunity for South Korea to pursue areas of niche diplomacy in which the country has already had a major impact as a middle power. Middle powers such as South Korea lack the capacity to influence global discourse across every dimension of international governance. As such, to maximize their relevance, middle powers need to pursue “niche diplomacy,” concentrating resources in specific areas best able to generate returns worth having, rather than trying to cover the entire spectrum of international governance. Doing so allows middle powers to “punch above their weight.” To a great extent, middle power activism is about visibility on the international stage, but being a middle power is also about playing by the rules of the global normative consensus and demonstrating a willingness to be a good global citizen. Thus, conference diplomacy and agenda setting are also vital roles played by middle powers. Middle powers have greater capacity to influence international discourse and policy than small powers, but a more limited capacity for independent action than great powers. As noted in a recent Council on Foreign Relations book, Middle-Power Korea: Contributions to the Global Agenda, development cooperation has played a central role in South Korean policy initiatives aimed at influencing international governance, reflecting both the national interest and an operational niche within which South Korea can punch above its weight. Since joining the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1996 and the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in 2010, South Korea has worked assiduously to boost its aid and to contribute to global development efforts. By the time of the first DAC peer review of South Korea in 2012, the country had tripled its official development assistance over the preceding five years to $1,325 million per year. South Korea has also been active in international debates and global processes regarding global development. The country hosted the G20 summit in 2010 and played a leading role in expanding the G20 agenda to include development issues. During the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-4) at Busan in 2011, South Korea paved the way to enhance the partnership between DAC members and recipients. At the same time, the Republic of Korea has been at the forefront of “green growth” initiatives. President Lee Myung-bak founded the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) in 2010. The institute later evolved into a treaty-based international organization in 2012 at the Rio+20 Summit. In January of the same year, the GGGI, the OECD, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), and the World Bank signed a Memorandum of Understanding to formally launch the Green Growth Knowledge Platform (GGKP). The platform aims to enhance and expand efforts to identify and address major knowledge gaps in green growth theory and practice and help countries design and implement policies to move toward a green economy. This approach reflects that of the Knowledge Sharing Partnership (KSP) flagship program through which Seoul has endeavored to share South Korean experience and expertise and to export the South Korean development model since 2004. Hence, the upcoming UN Development Summit marks an opportunity for South Korea to continue its previously successful niche diplomacy and agenda-setting in these fields. At the same time, Seoul must be careful not to undermine its middle power diplomacy by pushing too hard in pursuing South Korea’s own national interests, failing to build sufficient consensus among the summit partners, having an inconsistent internal policy, or lacking coordination among Korean government agencies. For more on South Korea’s growing role in global development, please see Brendan Howe’s chapter in Middle-Power Korea: Contributions to the Global Agenda.

From New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to presidential candidates—policy makers and analysts have been talking about the “uberization” of the economy as if it were a new phenomenon. Uber, TaskRabbit, Instacart, AirBnB, and RelayRides are just a few of the companies that make up what is increasingly being called the “sharing economy” (or, relatedly, the “gig economy”), in which technology facilitates and monetizes the sharing of particular tasks (“gigs”), services, and goods. This emerging sector has become popular and controversial, with critics and proponents debating the trade-offs between the regulation of the formal economy, on the one hand, and the flexibility and innovation of these emerging sectors within the informal, less regulated economy, on the other. While New York City Mayor de Blasio tried (unsuccessfully) to reign in Uber’s expansion in the Big Apple this summer, the sharing economy has drawn comments more broadly from both democratic and republican presidential contenders. As a pioneer in what has been touted as a “new” economy, Uber itself has become iconic, as it has entered more than 60 markets (ranging from San Francisco to Berlin to Tokyo). According to Reuters in 2014, leaked financials indicated that the company was generating $200 million a year in revenue beyond what it pays to drivers. Meanwhile, Uber is in court fighting against drivers who want to be classified as “employees” – rather than contractors – and who want greater benefits that go along with being considered a regularly employee. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently criticized Uber for not giving workers benefits, commenting: “Many Americans are making extra money renting out a spare room, designing a website ... even driving their own car. This on-demand or so called ‘gig’ economy is creating exciting opportunities and unleashing innovation, but it’s also raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future.” Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, on the other hand, made a point of hailing an Uber in San Francisco this summer to demonstrate his support for the ride-sharing firm and the on-demand economy, in which app-driven services are seen as an example of unfettered market activity that is free of the intrusive, cumbersome hand of government regulation. The sharing economy began to grow in popularity during the financial crisis—a time when people were looking for new ways to both save and make money. Obtaining goods and services via the sharing economy has become cheaper and easier than traditional options. It has allowed renters and sellers to monetize sharing activities, like renting out a room, sharing a car ride, or selling personal shopping services, and created opportunities for people to supplement their income or stitch together a full-time income through part-time work. Yet, this emerging economy is essentially rooted in the informal sector and lacks government oversight and labor protections found in the formal economy. What is missed in the broader debate is that the conundrums posed by these trade-offs are not new. In fact, these dilemmas demonstrate what has been an old quandary experienced disproportionately by women. Around the world, women have long been a dominant force in the informal economy, and the sharing activities that are a part of the informal sector. Women run day care out of their homes, provide cleaning services to neighbors, and car pool to soccer and other after-school events. From nannies to domestic workers to soccer moms, women in the informal sector hold a range of paid and unpaid “jobs.” These jobs, like those in the growing sharing economy, are often unregulated and leave workers vulnerable. Women are easily exploited and can be as quickly fired as they are hired, lack formal work contracts, and do not have access to employee protections like health insurance. They are also often paid well below a livable wage–some are not even paid at all. What is new is that with new communication technologies and social media, entrepreneurs in the sharing and gig sectors can reach more customers – and more rapidly – than ever before, with a simple swipe of a smart phone. In the “new” sharing and gig economies, which are dominated by Silicon Valley start-ups, companies have resisted providing workers with many of the protections found in the formal economy including health insurance, retirement benefits, or a guaranteed wage. What lessons can we learn from the experiences of women around the world? Women working in the “informal economy” provide services and goods at a lower cost. This means that making a livable wage depends on how many jobs they can complete or how many clients they receive. Income and availability of work is less predictable, even as work schedules are more flexible. The risk is that clients and jobs can disappear quickly, leaving workers unemployed with none of the protections or stability of the formal economy. The informal economy – and the women who work in this sector – is an important but neglected part of the global economy. Economic activity from the informal sector is not included in common economic indicators like gross domestic product (GDP). The United Nation’s proposed post-2015 sustainable development goals #8 calls for a number of “practical and measurable targets” concerning labor protections as a way of achieving its aim to “promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full, and productive employment and decent work for all.” As the debate over the “uberization” of the economy continues in New York City and nationally in the U.S. presidential race, policy makers might look to the global debate – and the long experience of women in the informal sector – to determine how all workers can benefit from basic, humane labor protections, while consumers can continue to enjoy the advantages of greater cost-sharing, flexibility, and innovation which the informal, sharing, and gig economies provide.

Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, William Piekos,  Ariella Rotenberg, Ayumi Teraoka, and Gabriel Walker look at the top stories in Asia today. 1. China to embed Ministry of Public Security units in Internet companies. Cybersecurity police units will soon be posted within major Internet companies in China, in order to more quickly and effectively prevent criminal activities such as fraud, online theft, and rumormongering. The move is especially direct for a government that largely expects companies to comply with censorship regulations and already employs millions of microblog monitors. In recent years, China has tightened oversight over social media and websites in a push to rewrite the rules of the global Internet, and lawmakers are currently reviewing public comments to a new cybersecurity law that gives the government extensive ability to control the flow of online information. The announcement also comes at a time of tense relations between the United States and China over cybersecurity, after a determination by the Obama administration to retaliate for the recent Office of Personnel Management cyberattack, though not publicly attributed to Beijing. 2. Japan keeps its cool in response to United States spying allegations. WikiLeaks released documents last Friday alleging that the National Security Agency (NSA) had conducted surveillance on the phone lines of top officials in the Japanese government, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. According to the documents, the NSA was able to gather sensitive information about internal deliberations on trade issues and had been conducting the surveillance since 2006. Japan’s response has been muted, a direct contrast to similar cases in Germany, France, and Brazil, whose governments responded with outrage when it was revealed that the NSA had been collecting data on their leaders. The Abe Cabinet only called the allegations “deeply regrettable,” and Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Sadakazu Tanigaki said that leaders today need to make “statements on the assumption that wire-tapping does happen.” Although Abe asked U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to investigate the allegations, Japan may be seeking to downplay the spying issue because it is aiming to strengthen its alliance with the United States, and Abe is seeking to pass controversial security legislation by the end of September. 3. China’s central bank to regulate online finance. Last Friday, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) released draft regulations for Internet finance platforms, a $1.28 trillion industry of online payment and wealth management tools that’s been driven by the rapid growth of ecommerce in China in recent years. The proposed rules would cap payments at 5,000 RMB ($800) per day, prohibit peer-to-peer payments, and require users to register their real names to access the services. Instead, PBOC wants people to go through state-owned banks for online transactions, claiming this will be more secure for users. The rules are open for public comment until August 28. Chinese citizens have so far responded with outrage, and China’s Internet regulators may not be on board with the rules, either. 4. Pakistan’s military courts empowered to pass death sentences on civilians. On Wednesday, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that secret military courts are legal and permitted to sentence civilians to death. After Taliban gunmen massacred 134 children at an army-run school in December, Pakistan’s military courts were given the authority to put suspects on trial by way of a constitutional amendment passed in January. Advocates at human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch are critical of this decision by the Supreme Court and see it as further undermining the civilian justice system, which is already rife with corruption and delay. Chief Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk noted in his decision that the court did not have the constitutional power to strike down amendments made by the Pakistani Parliament but the military court decisions could be subject to judicial review in a normal court. 5. Apple loses top spot in China mobile market to Xiaomi. The Chinese technology company Xiaomi had the largest share of the Chinese smartphone market in the second quarter of 2015, displacing Apple from the top spot, which it had occupied for the preceding two quarters. Huawei, another Chinese firm, ranked second, while Apple ranked third. Although Xiaomi only began selling smartphones in 2011, it has grown rapidly through its use of social networks for advertising and online sales. The decline in Apple’s share was partially attributed to the recent launch of new products by both Xiaomi and Huawei, while Apple last released a new smartphone in October. China is the world’s largest market for smartphones. Recently, however, sales have begun to slow as many Chinese consumers already own smartphones. Bonus: A hard week for the baijiu industry in China. More than 5,300 bottles of baijiu, a fiery Chinese grain liquor, were confiscated by food safety officials in Liuzhou, Guangxi, after the bottles were found to have been laced with Sildenafil, better known as Viagra. The distillers claimed the baijiu had “health-preserving qualities.” “Reduces blood pressure, improves sleep,” proclaimed one label, while another claimed the liquor was made with “Chinese herbs.” Sales of Viagra increased 47 percent in China last year after a campaign by Pfizer to educate the public about erectile dysfunction.

by Ariella Rotenberg and Peng Di Ariella Rotenberg is a research associate in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Peng Di, a former intern for the global health program, also contributed to this post. Just this week, the Obama administration announced publicly that it would retaliate against China for coordinating a cyber attack that resulted in the theft of over twenty million American’s personal information. While attention in the public sphere is currently focused on the administration’s policy reversal, over the course of the past few weeks many technology fiends, finance experts, and cybersecurity analysts turned their attention to the potential buyout of the Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc. by Chinese company Tsinghua Unigroup. Micron’s signature product is a memory chip that stores data in cell phones and computers—but it also manufactures high-performance flash memory products that are necessary for a variety of quick data functions ranging from online advertising to airplane technology. Tsinghua Unigroup is a Chinese state-owned company and the investment arm of Tsinghua University (the alma mater of President Xi Jinping and former President Hu Jintao). Over the course of the past couple years, Unigroup has gone on more than one acquisition spree in the semiconductor industry, acquiring companies such as Spreadtrum and RDA, positioning itself as a powerhouse in the sector. As the dust settles after the initial offer for Micron, however, several obstacles remain for the successful purchase. If the deal were to go through, it would be the largest takeover of an American company by a Chinese one. The deal would give China the fifth-largest chipmaker by revenue and the ability to compete with industry leaders such as Samsung and SK Hynix Inc. The Chinese government has aimed for years to reduce or eliminate its dependence on foreign chip technology. Although Zhao Weiguo,  chairman of Unigroup, said that his strategy was not driven by political agenda, many find the statement hard to believe given the fact that Tsinghua Unigroup received 10 billion yuan from the Chinese State this past February earmarked for investment in chip companies. There is no doubt that such a deal is currently ringing alarm bells at the Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) that operates out of the U.S. Treasury Department—a panel that reviews foreign acquisitions of U.S. businesses and that the deal would face a long regulatory review should it reach final stages. It is a particularly prickly time for regulators when it comes to U.S. cybersecurity issues and the Chinese government given the recent buzz surrounding a large-scale cyber breach at the Office of Personnel Management that potentially hacked personal information of over 20 million Americans. The CFIUS review process has produced varied results in the past. In January 2014, it approved Chinese-based Lenovo Group Ltd.’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility LLC from Google Inc. That acquisition followed the 2013 landmark $4.7 billion acquisition by Shuanghui International of U.S. pork-processor Smithfield Foods—what was at the time the largest ever acquisition by a Chinese company of a U.S. company. However in 2011, due to so-called national security concerns, CFIUS blocked Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications company, from buying 3Leaf Systems. Past precedent unfortunately does not offer a clear indication of whether or not the Micron deal would be approved, although given the sensitivity of the semiconductor industry, bets are it would be shelved. The case of Tsinghua and Micron is representative of an increasing number of reviews by the CFIUS of Chinese investments as well as a general rise in Chinese foreign investment in the United States. According to the CFIUS annual report, the committee has reviewed more investments from China than from any other country (and has since 2012). The number of Chinese investments reviewed doubled between 2011 and 2012. This may be a result in the rise in sheer number of Chinese investments in the United States, and not necessarily a result of growing U.S. scrutiny of Chinese investment. Although it is likely a combination of the two. According to the recently-released Rhodium Group’s analysis, in the first half of 2015 Chinese firms spent a total of $6.4 billion on 88 foreign direct investment transactions in the United States. The employment impact of this foreign direct investment is enormous. Also according to Rhodium Group’s analysis, “the number of Americans employed by Chinese-owned subsidiaries has risen in tandem with recent growth in China’s U.S. investment…fewer than 2,000 12 years ago to more than 27,000 today.” Therefore, the impact of blocking Chinese foreign direct investment in the United States willy nilly for the so-called sake of cybersecurity could be somewhat of a double-edged sword insofar as it could hurt job-growth prospects. Indeed there are those who would question whether the United States uses national security as a thin veil to simply protect local companies from international competition. As Chinese investment continues to grow as the forecasters predict, so too will the potential number of Americans working for Chinese majority-holding companies. The United States certainly has an interest in approving Chinese foreign direct investment in U.S. companies for that reason, particularly if such companies are failing in American hands and have the potential for turnaround with Chinese investment. Especially as job growth remains a central measure of the health of the U.S. economy. That is, of course, if the acquisition is truly not a serious threat to national security. As we all know, the cybersecurity and resulting national security risks are very real—although most information regarding the reality of ongoing attacks remain tucked away under the purview of U.S. intelligence agencies and largely hidden from the view of the public. In other areas of national security, if a national actor was blatantly attempting to gain information personal in nature or of national security concern, the U.S. commercial interaction with that country would certainly suffer. The rules of the game when it comes to cybersecurity are, in this sense, mostly unwritten. It is in China’s interest, if state-owned companies are going to increasingly seek large acquisitions of U.S. companies, to do its part in increasing transparency regarding its goals, especially in areas of sensitive technology acquisitions. Knowing the reasonable concern of the U.S. government, Chinese state-owned businesses should enter into such offers with eyes wide open, ready to make a clear and believable case for why the acquisition is of exclusive commercial interest and will not be used in ways the U.S. government fears. Perhaps also on a larger scale, clearer and more accessible standards on technology transfer-related transactions may be necessary for future international trades. More available policy guidance would be helpful for companies and governments on both sides to use their judgment before actually make actions, therefore avoiding unnecessary losses and meanwhile maintain a fair market.

This is a guest post by Anna Bezruki, an intern for the Council on Foreign Relations Global Health Program. She studies biology at Bryn Mawr College. According to the final report on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) released earlier this month, more than a third of the world population (2.4 billion) is still without improved sanitation. The target to halve the global population without adequate toilets by 2015 has not been reached. Consequently, sanitation has been pushed on to the post-2015 sustainable development goals (SDGs). Although India is perhaps the most widely cited failure, accounting for roughly half of open defecation worldwide, it is at least making progress toward the SDG target. The same cannot be said for Nigeria. Lacking the political infrastructure to reform sanitation and faced with security and political concerns that overshadow development goals, Nigeria is struggling to reverse the trend. Unlike in India, where the percentage of people with access to a toilet shared by only one family increased by eighteen points between 1990 and 2012, that percentage declined in Nigeria from 37 to 28 percent. This incongruity is best illustrated by the fact that there are more than three times as many cell phones in Nigeria as people who have access to adequate toilets. This means thirty-nine million defecate outside, sixteen million more today than in 1990. Poor sanitation contributes to diarrheal diseases and malnutrition through fecal contamination of food and water. One gram of feces can contain one hundred parasite eggs, one million bacteria, and ten million viruses. Diarrheal diseases kill approximately 121,800 Nigerians, including 87,100 children under the age of five each year. Eighty-eight percent of those deaths are attributed to poor sanitation. Poor sanitation is thought to strain the immune system to the point that permanent stunting and other manifestations of malnutrition can result. More than 40 percent of Nigerian children under the age of five are stunted, and malnutrition is the underlying cause of death in more than 50 percent of the approximately 804,000 deaths annually in the same age range. The impact of inadequate toilets goes beyond hazardous exposure to feces. A survey conducted by WaterAid, a nonprofit organization focusing on providing safe water and sanitation access, in a Lagos slum revealed that the 69 percent of women and girls without access to toilets are at higher risk of verbal and physical harassment when they relieve themselves. The effects of poor sanitation are also costing Nigeria economically. The Nigerian Water and Sanitation Program estimates that poor sanitation costs the country at least three billion U.S. dollars each year in lost productivity and health care expenditures. While estimates vary, in 2011, Nigeria invested approximately $550 million, less than 0.1 percent of GDP, on sanitation, a number which has likely decreased since then. This is less than a quarter of the approximately $2.3 billion annually that would have been necessary to meet the MDG target. It will take more than money and infrastructure to fix Nigeria’s sanitation. Even if investments were to sufficiently rise, the lack of a single government entity with complete responsibility for sanitation within the government, as well as widespread corruption and a lack of community support, would likely hamper efforts. Providing latrines without first creating demand within the community has failed repeatedly, including in India, where latrines have been repurposed for extra storage. There are also other problems, like a treasury emptied by corruption and the war on Boko Haram, that top President Buhari’s agenda. While these are immediate threats that require intense focus, sanitation is an essential long-term investment that will help Nigeria grow.  

Amidst final negotiations over the Sustainable Development Goals, both private and public sector development funders are turning their attention to the gap between this ambitious agenda and available resources. Last week, government, business, and NGO representatives gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the Third Financing for Development Conference to devise ways to support this new development agenda. One proposal is to support innovation to fuel cost-effective approaches to development. On the eve of the Addis conference, I hosted a roundtable at the Council on Foreign Relations with a pioneer of development innovation: Ann Mei Chang, executive director of the Global Development Lab at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Launched in April 2014, the Global Development Lab is USAID’s newest entity, designed to fund breakthrough innovations to “accelerate development impact faster, cheaper, and more sustainably.” Such a broad mandate requires both flexibility and a willingness to fail—two characteristics not traditionally associated with government agencies. The Global Development Lab takes a venture capital-style approach to funding development. It crowdsources solutions from around the globe, including from individuals and organizations that have never before worked with USAID. The Lab makes high-risk, low-cost investments in projects, with the potential to increase funding for those that show promise. By experimenting and “failing small,” the Lab can take on more risk than the average government aid funder. Some have expressed skepticism about the power of innovation to accelerate development gains. Bill Gates, for example, has criticized models that emphasize tech innovations too heavily as potentially distracting from perpetual development challenges, such as a lack of sanitation infrastructure or access to basic health services. In fact, while the Global Development Lab does support projects that are technically advanced, some of the most successful initiatives simply improve upon common solutions and existing knowledge by permitting the flexibility to innovate. For example, in one Lab-funded project, the NGO Evidence Action explored how to enhance the uptake of chlorine to disinfect drinking water and prevent diarrhea, which is the cause of death for an estimated 760,000 children under five each year. Despite widespread acknowledgment of chlorine’s efficacy, uptake stands at less than ten percent around the world. In an attempt to improve this number, innovators from Evidence Action came up with an idea called the chlorine dispenser, a low cost machine installed in areas with community water services. With the push of a button, the dispenser distributes an appropriate amount of chlorine into a bucket or jerrican. This simple innovation has already had an outsized impact: in areas where it is operational, including Kenya, Malawi, and Uganda, it has increased the use of chlorine to nearly 50 percent. Other projects funded by the Lab stem from unlikely sources and test unexpected methods. One intervention dreamed up by a car mechanic in Argentina—called the Odón Device—became a potentially life-saving tool to assist with obstructed labor. The device, which is now in development at Becton, Dickinson and Company, features a plastic bag which inflates around the baby’s head in the womb and is pulled until it emerges. The innovator, Jorge Odón, first thought of the idea after watching a YouTube video that showed how to extract a cork stuck inside an empty wine bottle. This device is considered safer than vacuum assist and forceps, which are even more dangerous when used by inexperienced practitioners in low-resource settings. While these out-of-the-box ideas have the potential to accelerate development gains, one of the Lab’s greatest challenges is how to measure impact—particularly in areas such as democracy, human rights, and governance. The Lab is piloting sensors and mobile surveys in an attempt to obtain timely and gender-disaggregated data, but more work is certainly needed. Though the Lab is still a work in progress, its approach to innovation in development is a model to consider incorporating into the next stage of development funding.