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The Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue has launched a new online initiative to educate government and business leaders—and the general public—on issues at the intersection of technology, national security and economic prosperity.
Established in 2021 and affiliated with Purdue University, the Krach Institute aims to educate policymakers, diplomats and others about key technologies and topics such as hypersonics, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
To that end, the institute last month launched the Tech Diplomacy Academy, an online education platform offering subscribers a series of one-hour courses led by Purdue faculty. The courses are asynchronous, meaning that they do not include any live sessions and students can view the classes on their own schedules.
The initial course lineup offers 17 classes, with four others listed as coming soon. Users must subscribe in order to access the classes, but the academy does offer one class, “Intro to Tech Diplomacy,” as a free trial.
Course offerings will continuously evolve so that they remain up-to-date, according to Michelle Giuda, the Krach Institute’s director. “We will continuously be building the course catalog and then updating the course catalog based on developments not just in technology, but in foreign policy and geopolitics as well,” she said.
Several of the Krach Institute’s key leaders, including Giuda, Purdue President Mung Chiang and Krach Institute namesake and board chairman Keith Krach, previously worked at the U.S. Department of State.
Giuda said the Krach Institute was established to help State Department employees get up to speed on critical technologies and their implications for national security and foreign policy.
“If you’re a diplomat, you have to have this fundamental knowledge,” Giuda said. “You don’t have to have a Ph.D, but you have to have some fundamental understanding of these technologies, the vocabulary around these technologies, in order to go develop the right national security strategies and engage in diplomacy around them.”
Giuda said the State Department has already signed on as the Tech Diplomacy Academy’s first user.
But the courses are also relevant to business leaders, she said. “What the tech diplomacy Academy seeks to do is help them and their employees, inform them with what are the geopolitical dynamics around those technologies, and around the role that their business plays, so they can understand what the opportunities are for their business and what the challenges might be.”
Subscription fees for the Tech Diplomacy Academy are $150 per person per month or $1,500 per person per year, with discounts available for groups of more than 10 users. Learn more here.
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