President Tharman Shanmugaratnam of the Republic of Singapore visited MIT on Tuesday, meeting campus leaders while receiving the Miriam Pozen Prize and delivering a lecture on fiscal policy at the MIT Sloan School of Management. 'We really have to re-orient fiscal policy and develop new fiscal compacts,' said Tharman in his remarks, referring to the budget policy challenges countries face at a time of expanding government debt. His talk, 'The Compacts We Need: Fiscal Choices and Risk-sharing for Sustained Prosperity,' was delivered before a capacity audience of students, faculty, administrators, and staff at MIT's Samberg Center. Tharman is a trained economist who for many years ran Singapore's central bank and has become a notable presence in global policymaking circles. Presenting a crisp summary of global trends, he observed that debt levels in major economies are at or beyond levels once regarded as unsustainable. 'There is no realistic solution to putting government debts back on a sustainable path other than having to make major adjustments to taxes and spending,' he said. However, he emphasized that his remarks were distinctly not 'a call for austerity.' Instead, as he outlined, well-considered public investment can reduce the need for additional spending and thus be fiscally sound over time....

Artificial intelligence can enhance decision-making and enable action with reduced risk and greater precision, making it a critical tool for national security. A new program offered jointly by the MIT departments of Mechanical Engineering (Course 2, MechE) and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Course 6, EECS) will provide breadth and depth in technical studies for naval officers, as well as a path for non-naval officers studying at MIT, to grow in their understanding of applied AI for naval and military applications. 'The potential for artificial intelligence is just starting to be fully realized. It's a tool that dramatically improves speed, efficiency, and decision-making with countless applications,' says Commander Christopher MacLean, MIT associate professor of the practice in mechanical engineering, naval construction, and engineering. 'AI is a force multiplier that can be used for data processing, decision support, unmanned and autonomous systems, cyber defense, logistics and supply chains, energy management, and many other fields.'...

Sometimes scandal or ineffectiveness is what fells a politician; if they survive those, term limits may get them anyway. But not even the most fearsome and durable leader escapes the eventual decay of their power. The towering Lyndon B. Johnson was forced to drop out of the 1968 presidential race, facing a tough Democratic primary; Margaret Thatcher's powerful reign ended with a Conservative mutiny; Mitch McConnell, once the wily master of the Senate, now finds himself an ostracized backbencher. Trump may have imagined he was immune. If so, he wasn't alone. The rules of political gravity, journalists have often declared, sometimes seem not to apply to him. He defied the Republican Party establishment to win the 2016 nomination. He beat the odds to defeat Hillary Clinton that fall. And although he was written off as finished following the 2020 election and his attempt to steal it, Trump completed the greatest comeback in American political history in 2024, easily eclipsing Richard Nixon's 1968 election....

McLaren Racing's championship resurgence offers a clear view into how leaders can rebuild a stalled organization. In this issue of the HBR Executive Agenda, editor at large Adi Ignatius writes about his recent interview with McLaren CEO Zak Brown, reflecting on the talent decisions and data-driven discipline that helped bring McLaren into the future....