The Big Story

Welcome to the policy world’s equivalent of a magazine cover story. These recurring features from the Atlantic Council’s top experts weave foundational research and analysis on deeply relevant issues with groundbreaking findings, narrative flair, and cutting-edge digital storytelling to advance policy debates, set agendas, and make for unforgettable reads.

Report

Jan 4, 2022

After the insurrection: How domestic extremists adapted and evolved after the January 6 US Capitol attack

By Jared Holt

This report by the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) provides an overview and analysis of the shifts observed in domestic extremist movements since the 2021 Capitol attack.

Elections Rule of Law

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series

Dec 21, 2021

Welcome to 2030: Three visions of what the world could look like in ten years

By Anca Agachi, Mathew Burrows

Well into the 2020s, COVID-19 will cast a long shadow over communities, workplaces, markets, battlefields, and negotiating rooms. But even as the centrifugal forces driving the world away from multilateralism and toward multipolarity accelerate, the future is not fixed. We humans have agency in shaping it.

Climate Change & Climate Action Coronavirus

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series

Dec 21, 2021

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in 2022

By Peter Engelke

Because it receives little attention in the press, the snow leopard does not appear significant enough to warrant much scrutiny as a driver of change and shaper of the future. Yet just like the real cat in the wild, the figurative snow leopard is something that could sneak up and vividly remind us that it exists.

Climate Change & Climate Action Coronavirus

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series

Dec 21, 2021

Global Foresight 2022

The inaugural edition of a new annual report from the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, home for the last decade to one of the world’s premier strategic foresight shops.

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series

Dec 21, 2021

The top twelve risks and opportunities for 2022

By Mathew Burrows, Robert A. Manning

With ongoing vaccination challenges in much of the world and the worrying emergence of the Omicron variant, along with supply bottlenecks plus rising inflation and debt, the pandemic continues to exert its relentless push and pull on a beleaguered world.

Climate Change & Climate Action Conflict

The Big Story

Oct 5, 2021

The 2021 Economic Scorecard: How China stacks up with the US and its allies

By Josh Lipsky

With China, the story is never so simple. The truth is that China still hasn’t decided which direction its economy is ultimately headed. And we need a credible way to track its trajectory.

China Economy & Business

COP26

Aug 31, 2021

Heat is killing us—and the economy too

Most people know the knock-on effects of global warming by now: rising sea levels, mass extinction of plants and wildlife, worsening floods, fires, and hurricanes. But heat itself is too often overlooked as a destructive force in its own right.

Climate Change & Climate Action Resilience

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series

Jan 28, 2021

The Longer Telegram: Toward a new American China strategy

By Anonymous

China presents the most important challenge to the United States in the twenty-first century. To address this challenge, the United States urgently needs "an integrated, operational, and bipartisan national strategy."

China