Hoover Institution
The Hoover Institution shares videos intended to encourage discussion, generate ideas, and disseminate information related to peace, the human condition, and the role of government.
The American Dream Is Weakening Where Competition and Mobility Are Blocked
In a Hoover Institution discussion moderated by Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle, economists John Cochrane, Valerie Ramey and Ross Levine argue that American prosperity has depended less on wealth itself than on institutions and habits that allow competition, risk-taking, mobility and disruption. They differ on emphasis — Cochrane stresses limits on government and regulatory failure, Levine competition joined to justice and stability, and Ramey education, culture and immigration — but converge on a warning that the American Dream weakens when schools fail, incumbents are protected, fiscal space erodes and politics stops doing routine maintenance.
Taiwanese Support for Self-Defense Is High but Conditional
Wen-Chin Wu, in a Hoover Institution talk drawing on multiple public-opinion surveys, argues that Taiwanese support for self-defense is high but conditional. He separates backing for national defense measures, including U.S. arms purchases, from personal willingness to fight or resist, and finds that both depend heavily on perceived threat from China, expectations of U.S. intervention, party identity, costs, and question wording. The result, in Wu’s account, is not a Taiwan that is either complacent or uniformly resolved, but a public that is “worried but cool” amid coercion and strategic ambiguity.
A Near-Death Vision Forced a Rationalist to Reconsider Consciousness
Sebastian Junger, speaking with Russ Roberts on EconTalk, recounts how a near-fatal ruptured aneurysm in 2020 forced him to confront an experience his atheism could not easily explain: the apparent presence of his dead father as he was close to death. Junger does not present the episode as proof of God or an afterlife, but argues that a serious rationalist should neither convert mystery into doctrine nor dismiss it because it violates prior assumptions. His account treats mortality as both a medical fact and a destabilizing encounter with consciousness, fear, and reverence.
Civic Education Must Balance Democratic Attachment With Liberal Inquiry
A Hoover Institution webinar with Melinda Zook, Joseph Knippenberg, Benjamin Storey and Dan Edelstein argues that civic education belongs within liberal education but cannot be treated as a neutral extension of it. The panelists frame the central problem as a tension between cultivating inquiry, skepticism and intellectual independence, and teaching students to understand and care for the constitutional republic in which they share political responsibility. Their institutional question is how universities can build that education through general education, civic-thought programs and existing departments without reducing civics to either indoctrination or another academic silo.
California’s Revenue Windfall Masks a Narrow and Mobile Tax Base
In a Hoover Institution California update, Bill Whalen and Lee Ohanian argue that the state’s newly balanced budget reflects another capital-gains windfall rather than a sounder fiscal model. They say California remains dependent on a narrow group of high-income, mobile taxpayers, with AI and possible IPOs offering more revenue upside while reinforcing the same volatility. The discussion extends that critique into state and Los Angeles politics, where they see unsettled Democratic fields and Spencer Pratt’s mayoral bid as symptoms of frustration with incumbent governance.
Iran Crisis Weakens U.S. Leverage Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit
Former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell argues in a conversation with Elizabeth Economy that the Iran crisis has weakened the U.S. position in Asia just as President Trump meets Xi Jinping in Beijing. Campbell says the conflict has diverted military capacity and political attention from the Indo-Pacific, exposed limits in allied support, and given China an opening to test U.S. commitments, especially on Taiwan. Economy shares his emphasis on allies but is less convinced that Beijing can convert U.S. disorder into lasting strategic advantage.
Wargames Need Policy Records to Become Usable Evidence
Hoover fellow Jacquelyn Schneider argues that wargames are useful to policymakers only when the record around them survives: who commissioned them, how participants interpreted them, and how their lessons entered later decisions. In a Hoover Institution discussion of its Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, Schneider uses the 1961 Berlin Crisis Game to show why the “outer game” can matter as much as the exercise itself, especially when crisis lessons are later carried into real decisions such as the Cuban Missile Crisis.
America Must Rebuild Defense Manufacturing to Arm Allies Against China
Anduril founder Palmer Luckey tells Peter Robinson that the United States should stop acting as “the world police” and instead become a far more capable “world gun store,” arming allies that are willing to fight for themselves. His case links defense procurement, autonomous weapons, manufacturing capacity, China, patents, and Silicon Valley culture into one argument: America cannot deter its rivals if it keeps rewarding slow weapons programs, outsourcing real engineering, and treating national loyalty as optional.
Supply-Chain Chokepoints Turn Cheap Inputs Into Geopolitical Leverage
In a Hoover Institution discussion with Steven Davis, trade policy experts Chad Bown and Soumaya Keynes argue that the real danger in cross-border supply chains is not import dependence in general, but concentrated control over inputs that firms cannot quickly replace. Bown points to China’s 2025 restrictions on rare earths, permanent magnets and Nexperia chips as cases where upstream chokepoints threatened auto production more effectively than reciprocal tariffs. Keynes cautions that governments need sharper vulnerability mapping, but that information alone will not make private firms pay the cost of resilience when cheaper, efficient supply chains remain available.
Student Disadvantage Raises Teachers’ Stress-Related Sick Leave in Swedish Schools
In a Hoover Institution presentation of an NBER paper, Krzysztof Karbownik argues that student composition should be treated as a workplace condition for teachers, not just a background feature of schools. Using Swedish register data on secondary teachers, the study finds that teachers in schools serving more disadvantaged students have higher rates of doctor-certified sick leave, especially for psychiatric and stress-related diagnoses, and that the pattern persists when comparing teachers to themselves as student cohorts change. Karbownik’s mechanism is classroom interaction—conflict, threats, lack of respect and poor climate—rather than workload or school management alone.
Renoir’s Cahen d’Anvers Portraits Became a Record of French Anti-Semitism
Catherine Ostler tells Andrew Roberts that the Dreyfus affair was not an isolated miscarriage of justice but the eruption of a France already “soaked in anti-Semitism.” Using the Cahen d’Anvers sisters, painted by Renoir as children and later scattered by conversion, war and deportation, she links the military frame-up of Alfred Dreyfus to the social world that first admitted wealthy Jewish families and then turned on them. The paintings, in her account, survive as evidence of both Belle Époque assimilation and the limits of that acceptance.
U.S.-China Diplomacy Can Manage Risk but Not Resolve the Systems Contest
At a Hoover Institution discussion on U.S. strategy toward China, Sarah Beran, Matt Turpin and Miles Yu argued that diplomacy with Beijing remains necessary but cannot resolve the deeper contest between the two countries. Beran framed the task as risk management through leader channels, alliances and domestic renewal; Turpin described a long hostile rivalry that will run through trade, technology and economic statecraft; and Yu said the problem is systemic incompatibility that Washington should confront more directly.
AI Makes Embodied Competence More Valuable, Not Less
Aled Maclean-Jones argues that Tom Cruise’s later action films are best read as studies in embodied competence: knowledge acquired through tools, risk, repetition and physical contact with the world. In conversation with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts, he uses Cruise’s stunts, household repair, navigation and childbirth to question a culture that treats usefulness as mainly intellectual — a question sharpened by AI systems that now operate in the same verbal and analytical domains as many knowledge workers.
Coal Company Towns Left a Legacy of Weak Government and Public Mistrust
Hoover fellow Elizabeth Elder argues in her book Company Towns that mistrust of government in former coal communities is rooted less in abstract anti-government ideology than in generations of local experience with weak, captured, or corrupt public institutions. In her account, coal companies often kept local governments small, blurred public authority with company power, and substituted private provision for public capacity. When coal declined, those towns were left not only with job losses but with governments many residents had little reason to see as competent, independent, or democratically accountable.
China Could Pressure Taiwan Into Submission Without Invading
In Defending Taiwan, Eyck Freymann argues that U.S. strategy is too narrowly focused on deterring a Chinese invasion and is underprepared for a gray-zone crisis that could isolate Taiwan without open war. Freymann’s case, developed in discussion with Hoover Institution participants including Philip Zelikow, is that Beijing’s most plausible path may be legal, commercial, and coercive control over Taiwan’s external ties. Deterrence, he argues, will require Washington and its allies to integrate military power with political discipline, economic planning, technological leverage, and diplomatic coordination before such a crisis begins.
Fellows Split Over Whether the Constitution Is Too Hard to Amend
At the first public taping of Hoover’s GoodFellows, John Cochrane, Niall Ferguson and H.R. McMaster used the Constitution as a text for argument rather than commemoration. Cochrane warned against treating it as scripture and stressed the civic “spirit” behind it, McMaster described an imperfect founding grounded in principles, and Ferguson stated a broad First Amendment position. Their clearest split came over amendment: Ferguson said the process no longer works in practice, while Cochrane argued its history shows it has sometimes been too available.
Trump-Xi Summit Prep Risks Leaving Security Flashpoints Off the Table
Sarah Beran, a former diplomat and national security official, argues that the Trump-Xi summit is being prepared through an economic channel that cannot handle the relationship’s highest-risk disputes. In conversation with Elizabeth Economy, Beran says the meeting may produce useful optics and limited trade progress, but without national-security preparation on cyber, Taiwan, arms control and military channels, it is unlikely to do more than briefly stabilize a relationship defined by recurring tension and mutual leverage.
Cuba’s Opposition Says Democratic Change Can Be Forced Within 12 Months
Cuban opposition leader Rosa María Payá tells H. R. McMaster that Cuba’s humanitarian collapse is also a political opening: the regime, she argues, survives by force, foreign patronage, military control of the economy, and regional repression, not by consent. In a Hoover Institution conversation, Payá says democratic change can be generated within 12 months if outside pressure on regime elites is paired with recognition of a prepared opposition alternative and direct support for Cubans demanding freedom.
Senior Officers Must Advise Privately and Execute Lawful Civilian Decisions
In a Hoover Institution discussion on civil-military relations, retired generals Joseph Dunford and Christopher Cavoli, with H.R. McMaster moderating, argued that the U.S. military’s democratic role depends on a hard boundary: senior officers give candid, private, nonpartisan advice; civilian leaders make policy; and the military carries out lawful orders. Their case was that this discipline is not Washington etiquette but a practical safeguard for the force, ensuring Americans are not sent into danger without an achievable political objective, clear risks, and accountable civilian decisions.
Indian High-Skilled Migration Fueled Silicon Valley and India’s IT Export Rise
Economist Gaurav Khanna argues that Indian high-skilled migration to the United States during the internet-era tech boom was not a simple case of brain drain. In his account, Indian programmers and computer scientists helped expand US technology production and innovation, while the prospect of migration, visa limits and return migration helped build India’s own skilled workforce and IT networks. The result, he says, was a “brain circulation” channel that contributed both to Silicon Valley’s growth and to India’s emergence as the world’s largest IT exporter.
Smart Boundaries Can Make Creative Work More Productive
In an EconTalk conversation with Russ Roberts, author David Epstein argues that creativity and productive work often depend less on open-ended freedom than on well-chosen constraints. Drawing on cases from Mendeleev’s periodic table to Isabel Allende’s writing rituals and the failure of General Magic, Epstein says boundaries can clarify priorities, block habitual shortcuts, and force the kind of search that abundance often prevents.
Free-Market Politics Must Be Rebuilt From First Principles
Daniel Hannan, the new director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, argues that Britain’s problem is not just bad policy but a lost understanding of the case for markets, trade and limited government. In a Hoover Institution conversation with Andrew Roberts, Hannan says free-market ideas must be rebuilt from first principles, especially among younger voters, because their core claims are counter-intuitive and no longer carried by political habit. His wider case links economic illiteracy to protectionism, legal and bureaucratic overreach, culture-war imports and a politics that denies scarcity and trade-offs.
Clinton’s Russia Policy Began With Cooperation, Not NATO Encirclement
Rose Gottemoeller, a former senior U.S. arms control official and NATO deputy secretary general, uses her book Security Through Cooperation to challenge the Kremlin’s account of post-Cold War U.S. policy toward Russia. In her telling, the Clinton administration’s first instinct was not encirclement through NATO enlargement but an effort to build a durable security, economic and political relationship with Moscow, rooted in nuclear risk reduction, space cooperation and practical diplomacy. That argument leads to a more conditional conclusion about the present: cooperation served U.S. security before, she says, but cannot be restored in full while Vladimir Putin remains in the Kremlin.
Economic Freedom, Not Managed Equality, Drives Growth
Former US senator Phil Gramm, in a Hoover Institution conversation with economist Jon Hartley, argues that America’s debates over inequality, poverty, deficits and financial crises are distorted by measures and narratives that leave out central facts. Drawing on his books and legislative career, Gramm makes the case that economic freedom, not directed investment or redistribution, has been the main source of US growth and mobility. He contends that official inequality statistics undercount transfers and taxes, that the 2008 crisis stemmed from housing policy rather than Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and that efforts to substitute government judgment for markets reliably fail.