Parag Khanna

Khanna was born in Kanpur, India.[2] His childhood was spent between India and the United Arab Emirates before his family moved to New York City.[3] He earned a Bachelor of Science in International Affairs from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University,[4] and also a Master of Arts in Security Studies from Georgetown in 2005.[5] In 2010, he received his PhD in international relations from the London School of Economics.[6]

From 2000 to 2002, he worked at the World Economic Forum.[2] From 1999 to 2000, he was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.[7] From 2002 to 2005, he was a Global Governance Fellow at the Brookings Institution. From 2006 to 2012, he was a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation[5] in Washington, D.C.. From 2012 to 2018, Khanna was a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

His other affiliations include Richard von Weizsaecker Fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy in 2017, senior fellow of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (2012–2014), visiting fellow at LSE IDEAS (2011–2013),[8] and senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (2011–2013). distinguished visitor at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. In 2010, he became the first video-blogger for ForeignPolicy.com.[9] From 2008 to 2009, Parag was the host of "InnerView" on MTV.[10] Khanna has spoken at multiple TED conferences.[11]

In 2007, he served as a Senior Geopolitical Advisor to US Special Operations Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was also an adviser to the US National Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2030 program, which produced the "Alternative Worlds" report in 2014.[12]

Khanna's first book was The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order. In 2008, Khanna authored an essay adapted from this book in the New York Times Magazine titled "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony".[13]

In 2011, How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance, Khanna's sequel to The Second World.[14] In the book, he argues that the world is entering a “postmodern Middle Ages” in which global governance takes the form of “mega-diplomacy” among coalitions of public and private actors.[15]

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization, was the completion of Khanna's trilogy on world order.[16] The book argues that connectivity in the form of transportation, energy and communications infrastructure has brought about a "global network revolution" in which human civilization becomes reorganized according to cities and supply chains more than nations and borders.[17]

Parag Khanna is co-author with Ayesha Khanna, of Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization. The book presents how humanity is moving beyond the information revolution into a "Hybrid Age" in which technology is incorporated into all aspects of human life. It developed concepts such as "geotechnology" and "Technology Quotient (TQ)".[18]

In 2019, Khanna published the book The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict and Culture in the 21st Century, which focuses on the shift in global power location from the West to the continent Asia, and comments on the growing common identity among its collective nations.[19] Khanna examines the reemergence of an "Asian system" after the end of colonialism and Cold War, and how Asia's collective rise impacts geopolitics, economics, and culture has shifted away from US hegemony.[20]

His self-published books include Technocracy in America: Rise of the Info-State.

In 2011, The New Republic named him one of the "Most Over-Rated Thinkers" of the year, calling one of his books a "self-congratulatory anthology of clichés and platitudes".[21] In the same magazine a year later, Evgeny Morozov was strongly critical of Khanna: while reviewing Hybrid Reality, he described Khanna as an "intellectual impostor" possessed of "contempt for democracy and human rights", and criticised his admiration of authoritarian governments in China and Singapore.[22]

Khanna has participated in multiple TED conferences. In 2009 he gave a keynote talk at TED Global in Oxford, England on "Invisible Maps."[23] He was also a guest host of TED Global 2012, held in Edinburgh, Scotland, whose theme was "Radical Openness." He curated a session of speakers on the theme of "The Upside of Transparency" including Sanjay Pradhan, Beth Noveck, Heather Brooke, Marc Goodman and DeyanSudjic.[24] In 2016, he spoke at the main TED conference[25] held in Vancouver, Canada, on "how megacities are changing the map of the world.".[26]

Khanna was awarded the OECD Future Leaders Prize in 2002. In 2008, he was named one of Esquire's "75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century",[27] and featured in Wired magazine's "Smart List".[28]

Khanna has been honored as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and currently serves on the WEF's Global Agenda Council[29] on Geo-economics and advisory board of its Future of Urban Development Initiative. He has received research grants from the United Nations Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, and Ford Foundation.[30]

He has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, International Institute for Strategic Studies,[31] and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

• The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order, Random House, 2008. ISBN 1-4000-6508-9.
• How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance, Random House, 2011. ISBN 1-4000-6827-4.
• Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization, New York: Random House, 2016. ISBN 9780812988550, OCLC 962478258
• co-author with Ayesha Khanna, Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization, TED Books, 2012. ISBN 9781937382162
• The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict and Culture in the 21st Century, New York : Simon & Schuster, 2019. ISBN 9781501196263, OCLC 1083524788
• Technocracy in America: Rise of the Info-State. Kentucky : CreateSpace, 2017. ISBN 9780998232515, OCLC 985104616

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Parag Khanna at TED
• Review of "Hybrid Reality" by Evgeny Morozov
• Review of "Connectography" by Daniel W. Drezner