Penn Washington Summer Interns, Sarah Shahed and Alisa Shapiro, Reflect on the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law and Policy’s Summer Intern Event In June, we had the opportunity to attend a Tech Law and Policy Summer Intern Lunch hosted by the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law and Policy. The event was held in…
As technology advances, AI Chatbots are increasingly falling into the hands of younger generations. Nearly nine in ten kids ages 9 to 17 use or interact with AI, with roughly one in four doing so daily. Legislation has been proposed to implement guardrails to protect children from potential harms and abuses from this rapidly evolving…
This summer, Penn Medicine served as the official Medical Services Provider for the 2026 FIFA World Cup matches in Philadelphia. Here at Penn Washington, we were able to catch up with some of the Penn experts leading this effort to learn more about their work during this World Cup and its relevance for large event crisis management. “The…
The dissolution of USAID on July 1, 2025, marked an abrupt break in U.S. engagement abroad. In the aftermath, the opportunity to rethink the entire system is needed. The retreat of traditional donors and the rise of new development actors reflect that broader shift in global governance. The era of rapid globalization following the Cold…
The World Cup officially kicks off today, and soon 48 soccer (football) teams from around the world will begin their quest for the coveted title as World Champion, playing across three countries – the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Many in the U.S. foreign policy community are waiting with bated breath to see how this…
On May 27, Penn Washington partnered with the Penn Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratory for Healthy Aging (PennAITech) and Penn Nursing to examine the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to support aging and improve the quality of life of older adults and their families, including persons with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. PennAITech is a National Institute on Aging-funded initiative housed at Penn Nursing in partnership with Penn Medicine. Now celebrating…
Penn Washington Executive Director Celeste Wallander has a new piece in Foreign Affairs making the case that deterrence, the kind that kept a nuclear-armed Russia from expanding further into Europe for decades, is being dangerously under resourced right now. Drawing on her experience as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Wallander traces the…
On May 7-9, The Special Competitive Studies Project held its annual AI+ Expo, an event that has become widely recognized in D.C. for the depth and breadth of companies, universities, government officials, and diplomats engaged in the discussion and practice of AI. Beneath the flashy drone shows, walking robots, and multitudes of AI companies from startups…
In January 2025, Chinese startup DeepSeek released an AI model that appeared to match America’s best —built for a fraction of the cost using chips crippled by U.S. export controls. Whether DeepSeek truly matches OpenAI’s capabilities remains widely disputed, but the market’s verdict was immediate. The announcement wiped $600 billion from Nvidia’s market value in…
On March 25th, I attended the “Making AI Work for the People” panel hosted by Georgetown University’s Initiative on Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Citizenship (AIDC) and the Georgetown Democracy Initiative. The recent discourse from many universities about technology and ethics and governance were front and center at the popular Tech & Society week. I walked into the auditorium with a simple question: how can we move from theoretical…
