Elected to the United States Schwarzman Scholar Class of 2023, I am one of 58 Americans studying for a fully-funded one-year master’s degree in Global Affairs at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. The President of Harvard wrote of the five graduating Harvard seniors to receive the award, “In honoring you, the selection committee honors all of Harvard.” With an acceptance rate comparable to and modeled after the Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, the Schwarzman Scholarship—founded in response to growing tensions between the U.S. and China—is "one of the most competitive and prestigious scholarships in the world."

Looking to start the Tsinghua-Peking Project on Existential Risk inspired by and as a counterpart to the Harvard-MIT Project on Existential Risk.

Information asymmetries in technology between China and the U.S.—left alone—will lead to (a) races to the bottom, (b) paranoia-fuelled risky decision-making, and (c) missed opportunities for complementary Sino-Western problem-solving. While in Beijing, I'm looking to start a podcast for unscripted, unedited, long-form conversations with China's technology leaders modelled after the Lex Fridman Podcast.

AI diplomacy between DeepMind/OpenAI and the Chinese government is required to avoid a race to the bottom where safety is sacrificed for speed creating an unaligned AI that threatens humanity. Visited the secret Loomis Lab in Tuxedo Park for inspo.

I'm helping to organize a new Harvard Belfer Seminar on AI co-led by Henry Kissinger and Graham Allison.

There are opportunities to pair complementary Western and Chinese strengths in the development and scaling of climate technologies: bio/green ammonia, offshore wind, nuclear fusion, perovskite solar cells, biology-inspired approaches to direct air capture, and more. But equally as crucial is exploring ways of expanding the scope and scale of U.S.-China governance dialogue on solar radiation management (SRM) stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). SRM-SAI recreates the global cooling effects of some stratovolcanic eruptions (e.g., Pinatubo, Krakatoa, Tambora) using high-altitude aircraft.

I will attend the June 2022 inaugural meeting of the Climate Overshoot Commission in Italy.

Looking to found OpenSolarGeo, a OpenAI-inspired entity to build a standby fleet of sulfate SAI-capable high-altitude drones on behalf of governments. Development of SAI capability should be insulated from government militarization and unconstrained by profit motive inherent to corporate structures.

Looking for ways to develop SpaceX-China relations in Beijing to (a) expedite the goal of becoming a two-planet species via Mars, and (b) avoid the Kessler Syndrome.

I was offered admission to Harvard at age 16 during junior year. I earned my BA (diplomacy/statecraft) and MA (China studies) in 4 years as a member of the first cohort of concurrent master's students. Grateful for the Blankfein Family's generous support.

Harvard graduate thesis U.S.-China-led Global Energy Diplomacy awarded the Fletcher Prize—the top thesis in Regional Studies—East Asia. Advised by incumbent U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns: "John is the most impressive student I have taught in his understanding of China." Supported by grants from the Harvard Institute of Politics and Harvard University Center for the Environment.

Harvard undergraduate thesis The Three-Body Problem: U.S.-China Technology Relations in the Age of Mitigating Climate Change, Making Life Multiplanetary, and Managing Artificial Intelligence advised by Graham Allison.

Researched elite Chinese political-diplomatic networks under the guidance of U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns through the Harvard College Research Program supported by the Worley-Drankowski Fund.

Master of ceremonies (主持人) of the annual Ivy League Chinese Spring Festival Gala

Recognized for my contributions to the geovisualization of American diplomacy:

Kissinger: “... you are the very first to use technology to render me a great kindness. My staff has walked me through the remarkable interface you have assembled on my travels as Secretary of State. It is a delightful resource for students and scholars of American foreign policy. I am amazed and grateful.”

Pompeo: "Your unique and informative world map is an invaluable contribution to the creation of a museum that will tell the story of American diplomacy like never before. Thank you for your remarkable work."

My work is being turned into a permanent exhibit at The National Museum of American Diplomacy in Washington, D.C. and by the Harvard American Secretaries of State Project to develop case studies on negotiation for Negotiation Lessons from American Secretaries of State taught at Harvard Law School.


I'm the co-founder and former chief of the Harvard Undergraduate Foreign Policy Initiative where I built an amazing team that:


founded the inaugural Harvard Undergraduate International Relations Scholars Program—the largest and most prestigious program of its kind with Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Steve Schwarzman, John Brennan, Robert O’Brien, Leon Panetta, Michelè Flournoy, and Tamir Pardo among 150 total guests mentoring 615 young leaders from 62 countries;

hosted Kent Walker, David Petraeus, John Bolton, Robert Gates, Wendy Sherman, H. R. McMaster, Nicholas Burns, Steve Hadley, William McRaven, Jared Cohen, Ben Rhodes, and Erik Prince for moderated conversations;

led hundreds of Harvard undergraduates in policy research for (and funded teams to travel and present at) entities that include: U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Space Force, U.S. Cyber Command, White House National Security Council, Facebook Misinformation & Content Policy, and foreign governments on all continents;

established the U.S.-China Young Leaders Dialogue between Harvard and a counterpart Chinese university;

grew funding from near-zero to ~quarter million USD.



Former CEO and Chairman of Google Eric Schmidt on the Harvard Undergraduate International Relations Scholars Program: "I really admire what you are trying to do here. This is exactly the kind of effort that I think is going to make the world a better place, and I could not say more supportive things about, collectively, the audience and the people you have assembled."

I worked for the Director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center to draft the joint communiqué of a U.S.-China Track II Dialogue led by Stephen Hadley and Fu Ying. Also published on Yang Jiechi & Wang Yi's visits to Europe and Sino-E3 relations.

Co-authored a State Department-commissioned report on Chinese tech policy with Rush Doshi (Biden White House National Security Council Director for China). Sponsored by the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Attended Beijing No. 80 High School (北京第八十中学) for senior year through the National Security Language Initiative sponsored by the U.S. Department of State in coordination with the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Education, and the Director of National Intelligence.

While in Beijing, I co-hosted the inaugural Ivy League Mainland China Summit at Stanford Center at Peking University, won the Beijing City Cultural Arts Festival by performing crosstalk (相声), was approached by CCTV to star in a national TV program featuring overseas Chinese, and (upon becoming an Eagle Scout) served as a West Asia District Youth Ambassador in the Boy Scouts of America Far East Council.