Previous Training
2026
The 2026 Summer Training focused on The Transformation of Conflict: Responding to an Age of New Vulnerabilities. Great power conflict is back, and the battlefield has expanded dramatically. How can nations adapt to new types of warfare such as AI-powered autonomous weapons, cyberattacks and disinformation? As trade is increasingly weaponized, will the threat of economic peril dictate security arrangements? How will the UN and other international institutions adapt to this new landscape? Does international law still function in an age of unilateralism? Do we need to revisit long-accepted notions of sovereignty to fight back?
2026 Kent Program Panel Discussions
2025
The theme of the 2025 training was Early Warning: The Race to Forecast Conflict in an Era of Rapid Change. What sense can we make of a world in which the pace of change keeps accelerating? As the effects of climate change threaten to provoke cascading crises in international relations, can the concurrent breathtaking leaps in technological capacity keep pace? How deeply should governments, civil society and business invest in trying to anticipate the conflicts of the future before they occur, and what systems can be put in place to absorb less predictable shocks?
2025 Kent Program Panel Discussions
2024
The theme of the 2024 training was Technology and Conflict: Anticipating Change for Better and for Worse, recognizing that technological breakthroughs will change thelandscape of conflict in unpredictable ways. Advances in remote warfare, the manipulation of information, and artificial intelligence presage a multiplicity of possible paths, contingent on the relative level of diffusion of these technologies. What choices can governments, civil society and the businesses responsible for the development of these technologies make in concert to harness technology as a catalyst for peace while countering its latent potential to spread conflict?