Ladies, and gentlemen:

This is a session on innovation, which usually means technological innovation, but first I will say something about policy innovation for peace and prosperity.

Let me explain why. When President Trump was inaugurated, he declared, and I quote, “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”

Instead, after his first 100 days, I encountered a picture worth a thousand words: the April 26 cover of The Economist magazine depicting a wounded American eagle and the caption: “Only 1,361 days to go.”

Last March, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance told the American Dynamism Summit, and I quote, “if you can make a product more cheaply, it’s far too easy to do that rather than to innovate.” His point seems to be that after 40 years of relying on globalization where, in his words, “the poor countries made the simpler things” using cheap labor, America now needs tariffs in order to, again, in his words, “protect our jobs and our industries from other countries.”

I hope that reason will prevail. Last May 8, President Trump reached a trade deal with the UK. But I’m still not so optimistic, and will remain that way until a number of definite trade deals have actually been reached. I realize now more than ever, that we need to consciously promote peace and shared prosperity.

In 1989 both Europe and Asia saw monumental events that offered a way out of the Cold War. In Europe, the Berlin Wall collapsed. In Asia, Vietnam ended its decade-old occupation of Cambodia. The Cold War looked set to end — if they innovated by winding down decades-old fears and frictions and building regional harmony.

ASEAN innovated; NATO did not. NATO continued its adversarial thinking and expanded geographically closer and closer to Russia, despite the 1990 assurance of America about “not one inch eastward.” By contrast, ASEAN accepted its feared adversary Vietnam as a member — the first among the Indochinese socialist nations to join. Ideological rivalry wound down in Southeast Asia; Europe remained divided into armed blocs, with war erupting in 2014 and 2022.

Going now to the traditional notion of innovation as technological advancement, I propose 3 areas to prioritize: (1) dissemination of innovation to the disadvantaged, (2) innovation to manage danger, and (3) innovation for discourse among nations and sectors.

The 1^st area is about sharing the light of innovation with the disadvantaged.

Our fundamental social problem is the growing worldwide gap between rich and poor. A 2017 paper by Jason Miklian and Kristian Hoelscher of the Peace Research Institute Oslo argued, and I quote:

“Broadly, traditional innovation focuses on middle- and high-income consumers, formal markets, and technology-forward processes that improve consumer welfare. Yet in under-emphasizing informal sectors, consumers, and beneficiaries, innovation has exacerbated inequalities between rich and poor, and overlooks some of the most pressing societal issues that innovation could help ameliorate.”

Miklian and Hoelscher then advocated “the emerging focus on ‘inclusive innovation’ – also labelled as ‘pro-poor’, ‘base-of-the pyramid’, ‘social’, ‘below-the-radar’ or ‘grassroots’ innovation [which] has created opportunities to fight corruption, encourage accountable democratic systems and public policy, promote grassroots mobilization and citizen engagement, and reduce local conflict.” [1]

Rather than rockets to Mars, nuclear weapons and weight-loss pills, the R&D should devise solutions for disaster risk reduction, response and recovery; food production hampered by global warming, prevention and cure of killer diseases prevalent in poor nations, cost-effective medical procedures, & ICT technology accessible & affordable for low-income nations and sectors.

A 2^nd priority innovation area involves risk and crisis management systems for dangers like climate change and pandemics. Technology for prevention, early warning, and rapid global coordinated response and recovery protects prosperity from the ravages of disastrous events, and also promotes peace by increasing collaboration and reducing recrimination. Covid-19 caused a worldwide economic slowdown because despite the 2003 SARS and 2014 MERS, the avian flu and the swine flu, only a tiny fraction of world public health aid went to epidemic prevention and response. No wonder when Covid struck, there were global shortages of even basic personal protection gear. Worse, because vaccine development was in the grip of a handful of industrial nations, poor nations were denied vaccines while rich nations got first crack at the jabs.

A 3^rd third priority is innovation to promote discourse among nations and sectors. Let’s talk before we shoot. Let’s enhance capabilities for strategic monitoring as when Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev joined hands to begin nuclear disarmament. AI can now better monitor social media exchanges and socio-economic and security conditions in conflict-prone areas so as to warn ahead about future strife. Innovation provides technologies also to communicate instantly and meaningfully to prevent the likely conflict.

Innovation can help promote open, transparent and culturally sensitive discourse between potential or actual enemies, but it can also do the opposite. The alteration of digitized images, videos and sound can enhance or deceive — for deep insights or deep fakes. Imagine hawkish militarists hacking their own nation’s satellite surveillance, then feeding false data to their leader to make it appear that a rival power is mobilizing forces. We’ve seen movies like that, but now it’s a plausible scenario.

Political will and public openness are needed to actually use these monitoring mechanisms and communications for peace. Peace-building organizations and media have a role to play to advance understanding between opposing groups by providing platforms where validated information from all sides are presented and by opening adversaries to each other’s situations and perspectives.

In conclusion, I underscore the crucial role played by media in bringing knowhow to the peoples of the world in terms we can understand, and helping democratize science, technology and innovation issues for affected communities to have their meaningful say.

In this media effort, one entity in our Asia-Pacific region is a key global player: the Australia-based Network for the Public Communication of Science and Technology.

To make innovation truly an effective tool for peace and prosperity, what we should do first and foremost is to share the light of knowledge even as we make it brighter and more beneficial to all. Thank you.