Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist; National Security Columnist, Slate; Best-Selling Author and Historian
Dive into the mind of Fred Kaplan, the masterful narrator who weaves decades of global turmoil and diplomatic intricacies into riveting tales that not only captivate but enlighten. Kaplan transforms the complex dance of world affairs into narratives as engaging as they are informative, making complicated matters of international relations accessible and intriguing. Step into his world, where history and prophecy converge, and discover the unseen forces shaping our lives and future.
The author of six critically renown books, he laces his writings and speeches with a storyteller’s flair. The New York Times hailed his latest book, on presidents, generals, and nuclear war, as “surprisingly entertaining.” James Fallows likened his style to that of Robert Caro and David Halberstam. John le Carré, the preeminent spy novelist, praised his chronicle of cyber war as “a book that grips, informs, and alarms.” Kaplan also brings to his topics a sense of history, explaining how some current crisis came about and evolved — and, from there, how it might spin out into the future.
What is Donald Trump’s notion of foreign policy, and how will it affect global politics over the next decade and beyond? Some see his MAGA slogan as “isolationist,” but that doesn’t explain his ambitions to absorb Greenland, the Panama Canal, and even Canada. Is he playing a “madman strategy,” tossing “bargaining chips” on the table, or is this real? Author-columnist Fred Kaplan explains these mysteries in a lively lecture linking insights about US history, its changing politics, the anarchy of the post-Cold War world, and Trump’s biography.
The New Nuclear Arms Race
China’s expanding nuclear arsenal, persistent Russian-American tensions, and the looming expiration of the last surviving arms-control treaties hold out the prospect of a new nuclear arms race, fiercer and more complicated than the last one. Columnist Fred Kaplan, author of two of the seminal books on nuclear matters, The Wizards of Armageddon and The Bomb, traces the roots of these new trends and proposes a way out of our deadliest traps.
AI And Modern War
Scientists are interweaving A.I. into weapons technology more quickly than generals and politicians can adjust their policies or even recognize their implications. Columnist Fred Kaplan (author of Dark Territory, one of the seminal histories of cyberwar) traces the evolution of these trends, peers out into the future, and explains how they might affect the nature of war—and the chances of peace.
The Baffling Turnaround in War, Peace, and Politics
For the past 50-plus years, Republicans have been the party of hawks, high defense budgets, and a keen concern for national security above all else, while Democrats were the party of doves, defense cuts, and opposition to intervention in foreign wars. Now their positions are very nearly reversed. Some of this is due to the rise of Donald Trump’s “America First” and “MAGA,” but the dynamics of this change are deeply rooted in social and economic changes over the past few decades. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fred Kaplan, who has been writing about national security for more than 40 years, examines these changes — and outlines how they might affect the 2024 elections and, subsequently, the planet.