Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Pulitzer-prize winning historian. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the SNF Agora Institute. She was a Washington Post columnist for more than fifteen years and a member of the editorial board. She is also the author of Iron Curtain, Gulag: A History, and Red Famine, all of which have appeared in more than two dozen translations, including all major European languages.
The 2026 Alfred Landecker Memorial Lecture is based on Anne Applebaum's new book Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. The book offers an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and what can be done to counter them. Ahead of the lecture, we spoke with Anne Applebaum about these challenges to democracy.
Your lecture will take place on Holocaust Memorial Day, a moment of remembrance and reflection. In your view, in what ways might this historical moment offer a starting point for understanding today’s challenges to democracy?
AA: We are at an inflection point, a moment when people all around us are discovering old ideas: ethnic nationalism, the philosophy of Carl Schmitt, the manipulation of fear and hatred. History does not repeat itself precisely, but there are echoes of the past in the present.
You write that democracies must adapt if they want to remain resilient. From your perspective, which areas should democratic societies focus on most urgently?
AA: Very soon, we must decide if we are going to shape surveillance technology, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, voice- or face-recognition systems, and other emerging technologies so that their inventors and their users remain accountable to democratic laws, as well as to principles of human rights and standards of transparency. We have already failed to regulate social media, with negative consequences for politics around the world. Failure to regulate AI before it distorts political conversations, just to take one obvious example, could have a catastrophic impact over time.
What key ideas do you hope will stay with your audience after the lecture?
AA: No nation is condemned forever to autocracy, just as no nation is guaranteed democracy. Autocracy is a political system, a way of structuring society, a means of organizing power. It is not a genetic trait. But democracies are political systems too, and they can degenerate if their citizens don't invest in keep them vibrant.
In Autocracy Inc., you describe how authoritarian leaders cooperate across borders. What aspect of this global collaboration do you believe is still most underestimated in public debate?
AA: The autocratic world and a part of the democratic world have created a shadow economy, one where taxes are unpaid, laws are broken and people and companies operate anonymously. This world of dark money influences politics and business everywhere. It's hard to report on, and hard to understand, but it's a central tool of autocratic influence.
Looking ahead, what do you see as one promising avenue for countering the influence of increasingly coordinated autocratic actors?
AA: Democracies should work, again in coalitions, to promote transparency, to create international standards, to ensure that autocracies don’t set the rules and shape the new technologies of the future.
About the Alfred Landecker Memorial Lecture
The Alfred Landecker Memorial Lecture, held annually by the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, takes place on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The lecture is a core element of our support at the University of Oxford, which focuses on the protection of democratic values, institutions, and good governance.
Date and time: 27 January 2026, 5:30–7:00 pm (GMT)
Location: Blavatnik School of Government and online
Admission: free
Registration: here.
The lecture will be followed by a discussion and a reception.