The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) hosted a deep dive into the topic of Chinese technology innovation and superpower competitiveness, but for the two experts on stage, the discussion doubled as a “Big Green” reunion.
Jennifer Lind, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, was the featured speaker for a CFR roundtable. Presiding over the event was Stuart Reid, a Senior Fellow and Associate Vice President at CFR and a Dartmouth ’08 Government major.
The discussion centered on the core thesis of Lind’s acclaimed new book, Autocracy 2.0: How China’s Rise Reinvented Tyranny (Cornell University Press, 2025).
In her remarks, Lind explored the question: “Has China Mastered the Authoritarian Dilemma?” Drawing from her research on “smart authoritarianism,” she challenged the long-held Western assumption that autocratic regimes are fundamentally incompatible with high-level technological innovation.
Lind’s talk is only the latest in a longtime, student-turned-colleague relationship. Over the years Reid, who rose up the ranks at Foreign Affairs where he worked as an editor for over a decade, kept in touch with Lind and his other former government professors by editing their many articles in the magazine. Reid has been back to Dartmouth multiple times to attend the Rosenwald Alumni Workshop, advising The Davidson Institute’s International affairs postdocs on the art of writing and pitching foreign policy essays, and most recently in January of 2024 to present on his book, “The Lumumba Plot.”
