Machine Learning for Peace

1. Awareness: data on what’s happening recently with higher frequency
   • Mass scraping online news + ML to track 20 civic and 22 RAI events
   • Interactive data dashboards
     
     
2. Planning: predictive analytics for strategic decisions
   • Forecasting domestic political event + Civic Space Early Warning System
   • Forecasting Russian and Chinese foreign influence activity

Resurgent Authoritarian Influence

Objectives:

1. Detect foreign authoritarian influence events
2. Identify historical patterns in influence
3. Predict where and when influence is likely to occur
4. Track how RAI influences civic space

Introducing RAI Events

Introducing RAI Events

Introducing Civic Space Events

Data Production

Output: Monthly data

• 57 countries
• 2012 - last month

Awareness: RAI event detection

Nicaragua: Chinese Influence Index

Awareness: RAI event detection

Planning: Forecasting events

Nicaragua: Chinese Influence Index

Describing RAI: Spheres

1. Russian influence is more concentrated in a geographic sphere of influence
2. Spheres of influence are shifting over time
3. Russia has dramatically expanded its sphere in recent years, challenging China’s dominance

Describing RAI: Spheres

Describing RAI: Spheres

Describing RAI: Spheres

Describing RAI: Tools

• Economic Power is the most prevalent theme
• Beginning in 2022, Diplomacy increases dramatically in places where Russia’s influence grew

Describing RAI: Tools

Describing RAI: Tools

Describing RAI: Tools

Did Russia Signal Invasion?

Did Russia Signal Invasion?

Activities & Extensions

• Current status
  • Project built under the 2018-23 INSPIRES mechanism
  • Development has focused on civic space tools (CSEWS, semi-weekly reports, mailing list)
  • Partially funded through DRG’s SEGA task order
• Under development:
  • Beginning to track RAI forecast performance
  • Integrating LLM-generated summaries
  • Extracting new events/info from text

Did Russia Signal Invasion?

Did Russia Signal Invasion?

Genuine increase or increased salience?

1. Reporting comes from local sources
2. Chinese influence increases shortly after Russian influence
3. Surge is concentrated in ‘Diplomatic Influence’ events
4. Surge began shortly before February 2023 for most countries

Underlying Data: Crawlers vs Custom Scraping

Data Production

• Sourcing urls gives incomplete capture, inaccurate metadata
• Lexis Nexis has less linguistic diversity, sporadic coverage

Awareness: RAI event detection