Hudson Institute Events Podcast

Romania is intimately connected to the major infrastructure corridors shaping Southeast Europe and the Black Sea region, including the Three Seas Initiative, Vertical Gas Corridor, Middle Corridor, and Neptun Deep. These initiatives are indicative of the scale of investment underway as countries in this critical region build their future in the shadow of Russia’s war against Ukraine. 

Join Senior Fellow Matt Boyse and Minister of European Investments Dragoș Nicolae Pîslaru for a fireside conversation about how infrastructure investments are enhancing security and economic resilience in Romania and Southeast Europe.

The conflict between the United States, Israel, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is not over, but it is already shaping a new future for the Middle East. From commercial flows and energy exports to shifting diplomacy, the region is adjusting to Operation Epic Fury in ways that will open up new diplomatic and economic relations, enable alternative trade routes, and shuffle political relationships. What might these changes look like, and how lasting will they be?

Join Hudson Institute Distinguished Fellow Mike Gallagher for a fireside chat with Jared Cohen, president of global affairs at Goldman Sachs and co-head of the Goldman Sachs Global Institute, for a discussion on the future of the Persian Gulf.

In 2020, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo officially determined that China was committing genocide against the Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim communities. A new book, The Xinjiang Procedure, reports that, in addition to torture, gang rape, and involuntary sterilization and abortion, forced organ harvesting on an industrial scale is a heinous feature of this genocide.  For these reports about forced organ harvesting, its author Ethan Gutmann drove under cover to the Central Asian border region with China where he secretly interviewed former detainees of Xinjiang’s notorious concentration camps, where over a million, mostly Uyghurs, were detained. 

China’s organ transplant sector surged over the past twenty-five years, with the critical support of Western medical transplant training, joint research, technology, grants, and fellowships. Hundreds of Chinese transplant surgeons have been trained in American medical schools despite mounting reports of China’s forced organ harvesting and a failure to verify Beijing’s claims of a solely voluntary organ donor supply. To curb this, last year the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed HR 1503, the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act, which is now awaiting Senate consideration.

Join Nina Shea in a discussion with Ethan Gutmannand Congressman Chris Smith, the author of the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting bill.

Foreign-controlled telecommunications infrastructure and vulnerable global supply chains pose growing risks to the integrity and security of US communications networks. The Federal Communications Commission has taken steps to address these challenges over the past year. Efforts have focused on rooting out non-compliant overseas “bad labs” from the FCC’s equipment authorization program, accelerating the buildout of submarine cable systems, and mitigating risk from high-risk foreign components.

Marking the one-year anniversary of this initiative, this event will highlight the FCC’s progress and examine next steps to secure communications supply chains and mitigate emerging risks. Experts and policymakers will discuss how to close regulatory gaps, improve compliance, and build more resilient and trusted infrastructure.

Policymakers and business leaders are looking for signals about where the broader economy is headed as the US economy navigates rapid technological change, geopolitical risks, and a monetary outlook shaped by tensions between inflation and a cooling labor market. From the Trump administration’s efforts to reindustrialize key sectors of the American economy and reshape trade relationships to persistent pressures in housing and stubborn mortgage rates, the current outlook is also underscored by an increasingly uncertain geopolitical environment.

Please join Acting Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Pierre Yared for a conversation with Senior Fellow Tom Duesterberg on the first year of the Trump administration’s economic agenda and the key factors shaping the US economy’s outlook.