by Editor BGF | Mar 1, 2026 | World Leader for Peace and Security, News, World Leaders in AIWS Award Updates
Following reports circulating internationally about a major turning point in Iran’s leadership, Professor Judea Pearl (UCLA)—the pioneer of Causal Inference and the 2020 AIWS World Leader Award recipient—posted on X that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei had died, linking to reporting from the Times of Israel.
In moments of regime transition, the greatest danger is acting on emotion, rumor, and short-term correlation—rather than on causal reality. Causal Inference offers a disciplined approach: map the drivers of instability and target the highest-leverage interventions that reduce violence and increase legitimacy. AIWS adds the moral foundation: reconciliation and love—without hatred, without hostility—guided by human dignity, trust, transparency, and accountability.
BGF recommends an “AIWS Transition Package” for a New Iran, built on four causal priorities:
- Legitimacy before power: Establish a time-limited National Transitional Council with broad representation (women, youth, provinces, minorities, experts) and a clear timetable for constitutional reform and elections. This reduces the “legitimacy vacuum → factional conflict” pathway.
- A No Hostility Doctrine: Iran’s new leadership should clearly announce: no hostility toward the United States, Israel, or any country, and commit to resolving disputes through diplomacy and international law. This breaks the cycle “hostility → isolation → economic collapse → radicalization.”
- 100-day stabilization: Protect essential services—electricity, water, hospitals, banking, food supply—and launch immediate transparency on budgets and procurement. Stabilizing daily life prevents social breakdown.
- Truth, reconciliation, and rule of law: Avoid revenge cycles. Create lawful accountability for grave crimes, while prioritizing national reconciliation and equal citizenship.
Finally, BGF encourages the U.S., Israel, and allied partners to support a stable transition through a structured “Friends of a New Iran” pathway—humanitarian support, technical assistance for elections and anti-corruption systems, and step-by-step normalization tied to verifiable reforms.
In the AI Age, peace is not idealism—it is risk management. A New Iran can be built by combining causal reasoning with AIWS values: reconciliation, dignity, trust, and a future without hostility.
by Editor BGF | Mar 1, 2026 | News
For decades, Iran’s strategy of prolonged hostility and confrontation with the United States and Israel has produced painful consequences: heightened regional tensions, cycles of sanctions and isolation, constrained economic opportunity, and persistent insecurity that ultimately burdens ordinary people most. The lesson is clear: hatred and hostility do not create sustainable security; they prolong crisis and narrow a nation’s future.
In the AI Age, strategies rooted in hostility become even more dangerous. Artificial intelligence accelerates decision-making, amplifies information operations, expands cyber conflict, and can intensify misperception at unprecedented speed. In such an environment, even small incidents can escalate rapidly into major crises—faster, deeper, and harder to control than in previous eras. That is why every nation must build a new foundation for security and prosperity: Reconciliation and love—without hatred, without hostility.
This is a core value of the AI World Society (AIWS). AIWS calls on societies to replace hostility with dialogue, empathy, and cooperation; to build trust rather than fear; and to pursue shared prosperity rather than zero-sum confrontation. AIWS affirms a simple principle: powerful technology must be guided by values even more powerful—human dignity, compassion, moral responsibility, and long-term stewardship.
BGF-AIWS Family urges national leaders, especially in regions of conflict, to adopt reconciliation as a national strategy, to treat love and compassion as a civic and cultural foundation, and to make non-hostility a new measure of strength in the AI Age. Only on such a foundation can AI become a force for peace, development, and sustainable security for all humanity.
by Editor BGF | Mar 1, 2026 | News, Shaping Futures
The AI references in the State of the Union underscore a practical truth: AI is becoming infrastructure for all infrastructure—tied to data centers, electricity, supply chains, and the ability to deploy capabilities at national scale. This focus is realistic. To lead in the AI Age, a country must build AI infrastructure: compute, power, networks, data capacity, and talent—because these determine speed, innovation, and competitiveness.
But speed alone is not enough. As AI increasingly shapes economies, societies, security, and public confidence, we must build a second pillar alongside physical infrastructure: trust infrastructure, anchored in Trust Infrastructure Laws. This is central to the AI World Society (AIWS) framework: creating standards and verification mechanisms so AI can be deployed as fast and as effectively as possible, while remaining safe, transparent, accountable, and grounded in human dignity.
The key lesson is not to choose one over the other. We need both “Infrastructure Pledges” and “Trust Infrastructure Laws.”
- “Infrastructure pledges” can mobilize investment, accelerate deployment, and expand capability.
- “Trust infrastructure laws” provide the guardrails that protect citizens’ rights, reduce systemic risk, and preserve democratic legitimacy.
Under the AIWS principle, the optimal balance is: open, enabling conditions that build the foundation for the fastest and most effective AI applications—guided by humanity’s highest values. That requires governance that accelerates innovation while ensuring accountability: transparent scope of deployment, auditability and traceability, risk evaluations and incident reporting, privacy and data protections, and independent oversight for high-stakes uses.
In the AI Age, national strength will be measured by two capabilities: the ability to build infrastructure that accelerates progress, and the ability to build trust infrastructure that protects values. When both pillars stand together, AI can truly become a force for prosperity, peace, and human-centered development.
by Editor BGF | Mar 1, 2026 | Shinzo Abe Initiative for Peace and Security, News
Boston Global Forum (BGF) congratulates Yasuhide Nakayama, BGF’s Representative in Japan, on his re-election to Japan’s House of Representatives on February 8, returning to the Diet via the Kinki proportional representation block.
Mr. Nakayama’s re-election comes at a pivotal moment for Japan as it navigates a rapidly changing geopolitical and technological landscape. The Kinki PR block—covering the Kansai region—remains one of Japan’s most influential electoral blocs, and Mr. Nakayama’s return reinforces the presence of experienced national-security and foreign-policy leadership in the Diet.
BGF also recognizes Mr. Nakayama’s continuing role as BGF Representative in Japan, reflecting his long-standing engagement in international cooperation and democratic partnerships.
Following the election, BGF notes that Mr. Nakayama has taken on an expanded leadership portfolio within the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) as Director of the Global South—a strategic arena that will be increasingly decisive in the AI Age. As competition and cooperation over AI standards, digital infrastructure, trusted supply chains, and human-centered governance intensify, Japan’s relationships with developing nations will help shape whether the next global technological order is grounded in openness, trust, and shared prosperity.
In BGF’s view, this Global South portfolio positions Mr. Nakayama to help shape a new phase of Japanese diplomacy—one that treats the Global South not as a peripheral priority, but as a central partner in building trusted AI ecosystems, education and skills cooperation, resilient cyber and digital infrastructure, and inclusive economic development.
by Editor BGF | Mar 1, 2026 | News
In the AI age, national power is no longer determined only by military strength or traditional economic capacity. It increasingly depends on technological capability—especially advanced AI models, data, compute, and the ability to deploy systems at scale. This shift raises a foundational question: who ultimately decides how AI is used in matters of national destiny—governments or private companies? This question is central to the themes of “America at 250: A Beacon for the AI Age”—and to the future of democratic leadership in an era when AI becomes “infrastructure for all infrastructure.”
In practice, governments cannot move as fast as private firms in frontier AI innovation. Companies excel at attracting talent, iterating quickly, raising capital, and deploying products at global scale. For that reason, allowing private companies the freedom to innovate is essential. Excessive control can slow down national competitiveness and prevent breakthroughs that benefit society.
Yet freedom to innovate cannot mean that private actors gain private sovereignty over decisions that affect national defense and security. If companies hold strategic AI capabilities and operate with full autonomy—without structured cooperation with the state—then these companies become a powerful force that can shape a nation’s security posture without democratic accountability. The risk is not only technological. It is institutional: loss of coordination, unclear responsibility, reduced transparency, and weakened legitimacy—especially in crisis situations when national security requires reliable, timely cooperation.
The solution is not to replace private innovation with state control, nor to allow corporate autonomy to override public authority. What is needed is a modern partnership model: companies lead innovation, while governments retain sovereign decision-making in defense and high-stakes national security matters—supported by clear trust mechanisms that enable cooperation. This is precisely the kind of “architect role” democratic nations must embrace at America’s 250th: not only building capability, but also building the governance and trust structures that keep capability aligned with constitutional values.
This requires a practical framework: a public–private AI compact, minimum trust clauses in government contracts (scope limits, auditability, incident reporting, and enforceable remedies), independent oversight where feasible, and a firm principle of human-in-command for high-consequence decisions. In other words, governments should not “outsource” sovereign responsibility—and companies should not stand apart from the state when AI becomes infrastructure for national security.
In the AI era, a strong nation is one that combines the speed and creativity of the private sector with the legitimacy and accountability of democratic governance—ensuring that AI advances peace, prosperity, and sustainable security.
