Echoing Ian's comment, I'd appreciate if you could share more information about your background. I understand that you want to remain anonymous but maybe you could share how you're connected to folks on the transition team, potentially how influential you expect your recommendations to be, if there are any departments you have more or less influence in, etc. so folks can judge whether they want to expose all of this info to you.

Agreed, from the foreign policy folks I follow who focus on the region that one seems especially dangerous, especially if you care about stopping the usage of nuclear weapons which would be somewhat more likely in an India v. Pakistan conflict given it's likely Pakistan would lose a war waged with purely conventional weaponry

Because of the likelihood of it occurring or because the potential for human/economic damage or both? It also is concerning to me given that India would probably be somewhat more inclined to use nuclear weapons in a China v. India conflict than America would be (although who knows with the current admin), especially if Pakistan started making moves at the same time as India was focused on China. But I'm not sure why China would really push a conflict, that means they have to move huge amounts of men and materials to the west and potentially leave an opening on their coasts, plus they import huge amounts of energy products that flow past India that would surely get massively disrupted in the case of a conflict and don't have that strong of a blue water force projection capability as the US and others who would probably come to India's aid

No worries, I was just curious - I've tried to find data on things like projections of lives lost in combat between the US and China and can't find anything good (best I found was a Rand study from a few years ago but it didn't really give projections of actual deaths) so was curious if you had gotten your hands on that data to make your projections. Sorry for the misunderstanding, I had assumed China/US conflict but makes sense - probably anyone with nuclear capabilities who gets into a serious foreign entanglement will create an extremely dangerous situation for the world.

For the author, please correct me if I'm wrong, but the reference to Great Power Conflict is most likely the U.S. vs. China - is that right (just inferring based on the Graham Allison recommendation)? I'm curious if you a more in depth rationale or data available for this? Mostly, I'm curious about some other outcomes and how harmful they are - for instance, what happens if we avoid great power conflict but in doing so allow China to become the dominant world power and spread their authoritarian governance model even further than they do today? What are the expected deaths and the level of economic destruction of a conflict with China today? If the likelihood of a conflict is significantly high and the level of potential destruction continues to rise as China gains more and more military and economic capabilities, is it better to initiate a conflict early?

In the first paragraph you say "Effective Altruists are often not leftist, because leftist politics may be incorrect." Can you expand on what leftist politics are incorrect and how you judge what is correct or not?

Ditto on this - I went through the program and am working on tobacco policy, happy to chat with folks who want to ask about what it's like

There's an EA and Policy FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/450247668487258/

I second this - really interesting post and I would love to hear much more about this!

Just wanted to write that I've seen your comment, I'm on the road and don't have time to respond well now but will try in the next week or so.