Memos to the President

Leopoldo López is a Venezuelan political leader and human rights advocate who spent over six years as a political prisoner of the Maduro regime, before escaping Venezuela in 2020. He currently serves as co-founder of the World Liberty Congress, uniting pro-democracy movements against authoritarianism worldwide.

Félix Maradiaga is a Nicaraguan academic, human rights defender, and former presidential candidate who was arbitrarily imprisoned for 611 days before being exiled by the Ortega regime. He is President of the Foundation for the Freedom of Nicaragua, and is also the current president of the World Liberty Congress.

Host Ylli Bajraktari & SCSP's Joe Wang sat down with López and Maradiaga for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of democracy across Latin America and beyond. The conversation covered four major themes:

Venezuela's Uncertain Transition: López breaks down what's changed since Maduro's capture — and what hasn't. He walks through the Trump administration's three-phase stabilization, economic recovery, and political transition plan, the upcoming August 1st negotiations, and why the recent earthquake exposed the true scale of state collapse.

The Authoritarian Network: Both guests unpack how Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Russia, China, and Iran actively support one another — and why toppling one node in that network has ripple effects across the others.

Nicaragua and the Road Ahead: Maradiaga assesses Ortega's weakening grip on power, including his recent refusal to hold elections, and what a "fourth wave of democratization" could look like across the Western Hemisphere.

AI as a Tool for Freedom: Both leaders discuss how the World Liberty Congress is equipping pro-democracy activists worldwide with sovereign AI tools, the risks of authoritarian regimes weaponizing AI, and why expanding uncensored global internet access may be the single most powerful tool for freedom movements going forward.

Watch more episodes of Memos to the President on our YouTube channel.

00:00 – Introduction

00:51 – Venezuela's Uncertain Transition

05:09 – The Earthquake and State Collapse

09:22 – What the U.S. Should Do Next

11:02 – Félix Maradiaga Introduces the World Liberty Congress

17:03 – The Situation in Iran

21:05 – Nicaragua's Weakening Regime

23:20 – The Authoritarian Network Across the Region

30:35 – AI as a Tool for Freedom

37:23 – Global Internet Access as the Path Forward

Check out their conversation on the SCSP YouTube channel!
Memos to the President Podcast is a product of the Special Competitive Studies Project.

In Tokyo, SCSP President Ylli Bajraktari and VP for Global Affairs Joe Wang sat down with Taro KONO — former Foreign Minister, Defense Minister, and Digital Minister of Japan, and one of the most influential figures in the LDP — for a wide-ranging conversation on Japan’s place in a rapidly shifting world.

The conversation covered four major themes shaping Japan’s strategic future:

The Geopolitical Landscape: Kono traces how China’s rise changed everything — from its WTO accession to its island-building in the South China Sea — and why Japan will need more than just the U.S.-Japan security treaty alone to guarantee stability in East Asia.

Trump, Beijing, and the Alliance: Kono offers a candid assessment of Trump’s Beijing visit, which may have embolded Xi to act more aggressively against Japan and others in the Indo-Pacific, and why coordinated allied policy vis-à-vis China is urgently needed.

Japan’s Defense Transformation: From increasing defense spending and building a robust domestic defense industry, Kono lays out the path Japan must take to shoulder more of its own security burden.

AI, Autonomy, and Japan’s Digital Future: Kono reflects on his time as Digital Minister, Japan’s demographic crisis driving AI adoption in government, the rise of drone warfare, and why Japan sees a “quad plus” technology alliance as the realistic path forward.

Check out their conversation on the SCSP YouTube channel!
Memos to the President Podcast is a product of the Special Competitive Studies Project.

In Tokyo, SCSP President Ylli Bajraktari and Vice President for Global Partnerships Joe Wang sat down with Mr. Shigeru Kitamura, former National Security Advisor of Japan and one of the most respected voices in Japanese national security and intelligence.

The conversation covers four major themes shaping the future of the US-Japan alliance and the broader international order.

G7 and the Fragmentation of the World Order: Kitamura breaks down why the Évian G7's real achievement was recognizing that democracies must fuse security, technology, energy, finance, supply chains, and values into one strategic framework. His verdict on China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea's shared instinct to exploit the seams of open societies — and why the free world is resilient, but not yet fast enough.

The Evolving U.S.-Japan Alliance: From a regional defense arrangement to a genuinely global strategic partnership. Kitamura details Japan's historic shift toward counterstrike capabilities and active cyber defense, and explains why the deepest change underway is psychological, Japan finally treating economic security as national security.

Countering Beijing's Revisionist Ambitions: A four-pillar framework for confronting China's long-term strategic objectives, covering military deterrence, economic deterrence, technology protection, and coalition-building across the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

Weapons of Economic Coercion: Kitamura goes deep on the vulnerabilities facing critical infrastructure, ports, grids, telecom, undersea cables — and the risks posed by predatory M&A and unprotected AI talent and compute. He lays out a vision for a Japan-US division of labor built on Japan's manufacturing strength and America's scale and capital.

A candid, in-depth conversation with one of the architects of modern Japanese national security strategy.

Check out their conversation on the SCSP YouTube channel!
Memos to the President Podcast is a product of the Special Competitive Studies Project.

On the margins of the India-US Forum in New Delhi, SCSP President Ylli Bajraktari sat down for a new episode of Memos to the President with S. Krishnan, Secretary of India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), alongside SCSP Senior Advisor Dr. Sameer Lalwani. 

Secretary Krishnan is leading one of the most transformative tech efforts in the world today. As the architect of India's digital future, he is steering a $10 billion semiconductor strategy and deploying 40,000 GPUs to local innovators at a third of global market cost. 

The conversation focused on three core strategic pillars: 

1. India's Vision for AI: How India is leveraging a mix of sovereign and open-source models to rapidly scale its domestic ecosystem — and why India's comparative advantage lies in the application layer, not the frontier model race. 

2. Taking the US-India Tech Relationship to the Next Level: Moving beyond the status quo to focus on the real opportunities ahead — specifically how the two nations can collaborate to navigate a world beyond Pax Sinica. 

3. India's Global Tech Ambitions: How India is positioning itself as a diversified, democratic alternative in global semiconductor supply chains and a trusted tech partner for the Global South. 

The global tech landscape is shifting rapidly, and New Delhi is right at the center of it.

Check out their conversation on the SCSP YouTube channel!
Memos to the President Podcast is a product of the Special Competitive Studies Project.

In this episode of Memos to the President, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang discusses the shift from retrieval-based computing to a generative paradigm driven by human intent. Huang argues that the U.S. must lead the "five-layer cake" of AI to trigger a massive re-industrialization that brings high-skilled manufacturing back to the West. He counters fears of job displacement, explaining that AI automates specific tasks while increasing the demand for the human purpose of innovation. The conversation also explores the rise of "Physical AI," predicting that reasoning-capable robotaxis and humanoid robots will become mainstream within the next three years.

Key Discussion Points:

The "Five-Layer Cake" of AI: Huang outlines the essential structure of the new AI industry: Energy, Chips, Infrastructure, Models, and Adoption. He emphasizes that the United States must lead in every layer to maintain global economic and technological leadership.

Re-industrializing America: A call to action for the U.S. to become a manufacturing nation again. Huang discusses NVIDIA's commitment of half a trillion dollars to bring the supply chain back to the West, creating high-skilled manufacturing jobs through chip plants and AI factories.

The Future of Labor: Addressing the fear that AI will destroy jobs, Huang argues that while AI automates tasks (like coding or reading scans), it does not replace the purpose of a job (innovation and problem-solving). He shares how AI is actually increasing the demand for software engineers and radiologists by supercharging their productivity.

Physical AI and Robotics: The "next wave" of AI is moving from digital chatbots to the physical world. Huang predicts the rise of thinking robotaxis and humanoid robots within the next few years as breakthroughs in reasoning and mechatronics converge.

Global Policy & China: Jensen discusses the strategic necessity of maintaining American technology exports. He argues that conceding a market the size of China may be counterproductive and stresses the importance of keeping the "American tech stack" as the global standard.

Open Source & Safety: Why open-source technology is critical for national security. Huang explains how open shell environments and sandboxing can protect data privacy while allowing enterprise and government agencies to adopt AI safely.

Check out their conversation on the SCSP YouTube channel!
Memos to the President Podcast is a product of the Special Competitive Studies Project.