The terrorist shootings in Paris have brought a new round of attention to issues of immigration, political polarization, religious discrimination and threats to global security. Scholars at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies are following the developments and talking about the attacks.

Cécile Alduy, is an associate professor of French literature writing a book on France’s far-right National Front political party and is an affiliated faculty member of FSI’s Europe Center. She is in Paris, where she wrote an opinion piece for Al Jazeera America and spoke with KQED’s Forum. 

David Laitin is a professor of political science and also an affiliated faculty member of The Europe Center as well as FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. His co-authored book, Why Muslim Integration Fails: An Inquiry in Christian-Heritage Societies, examines Muslim disadvantages and discrimination in Europe.

Christophe Crombez is a consulting professor at TEC specializing in European Union politics. And Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at FSI and CISAC, is an expert on political terrorism.

How are Parisians reacting to the tragedy?

Alduy: The mood here is of grief, disgust, anger, and fear. We were all in a state of shock: a sense of disbelief and horror, as if we had entered a surreal time-space where what we hear from the news happening in far away places—Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria—had been suddenly catapulted here, on our streets, in our everyday. The shock has given way to mourning. Lots of crying, swallowed tears and heavy hearts. But there’s also revolt and determination to not let that get to us and to not let it succeed in reviving internal wounds.

I was surprised by the spontaneous quiet demonstrations and collective mourning happening all over France: that people would go out rather than hide in spite of the fact that two heavy armed gunmen were on the loose. It was such a naturally humane, human, compassionate response. It was a real consolation to witness this getting together, this flame of humanity and solidarity braving the fear and silencing the silencers.  

What can we say about the brothers who allegedly carried out the attack?

Crenshaw: Apparently they are French citizens of Algerian immigrant origin, who had moved into the orbit of French jihadist networks some years ago. They were both known to French and American authorities, just as the 7/7 London bombers were known to the British police.  One had spent time in a French prison for his association with a jihadist network that sent young men to fight in Iraq, and the other is said to have recently trained in Yemen.  In that case, he would almost certainly have come into contact with operatives of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (known as AQAP).  AQAP is an extremely dangerous organization in Yemen and abroad.  The U.S. has regarded it as a number one threat for some time – this is the group that sent the infamous Christmas or underwear bomber on a flight to Detroit in 2009.  Its chief ideologue, the American Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed in an American drone strike in 2012. The fact that the terrorists were two brothers also brings to mind the case of the Tsarnaev brothers and the Boston Marathon bombing.  

What are the cultural and societal implications of the shooting?

Alduy: The event highlights a menace that had been rampant, and duly acknowledged by the French government: that of French-born radicalized Muslims going to Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq to be trained as jihadist and then coming back to conduct terrorist attacks on French soil (this was already the case for Mohammed Merah, but he was not part of an Al-Qaeda cell and acted all alone, as did the man who attacked the Jewish Museum in Bruxells). The cultural and societal implication is that we are now talking of being a country at war, with al-Qaida recruiting among us our potential enemies. In other words, France has to come to terms with the fact that its own values, its own political system, and its own people have been shot execution style in the name of the jihad by our own children.

Explain the extent to which Muslims are disenfranchised and discriminated against in France.

Laitin: Our book documents that Muslims, just for being Muslims, face rather significant discrimination in the French labor market. We sent out CVs to employers, comparing two identically qualified applicants, one named Khadija Diouf and the other Marie Diouf. Both were from Senegalese backgrounds but were French citizens and well educated. Marie received a significantly larger number of “call backs.” From a survey, we know that controlling for race, for gender, and for education, Muslims from one of the two Senegalese language communities we study have much lower household income than matched Christians. We connect this finding to that of the discrimination in the labor market. In our book, we search for the reasons that sustain discrimination against Muslims in France. Here we find that the rooted French population prefers not to have Muslims in their midst, and not to have a lot of Muslims in their midst. Tokens are O.K.

Meanwhile, Muslims exhibit norms concerning gender and concerning public displays of religious devotion that are threatening to the norms of the rooted French. We therefore see a joint responsibility of both the French and the immigrant Muslim communities in sustaining what we call a “discriminatory equilibrium”.

Can these shootings be attributed to those inherent tensions?

Laitin: There is no evidence that this discriminatory equilibrium is in any way responsible for the horrendous criminal behavior exhibited in the offices of Charlie Hebdo. There is a viral cult that is attractive to a small minority of young Muslims inducing them to behavior that is inhuman. The sources of this cult are manifold, but it would be outrageous to attribute it to the difficulties that Muslims face in fully integrating into France.

How will the shootings affect the standing of right-leaning political parties that have been gaining traction?

Crombez: I think the shootings in Paris will provide a further boost to the electoral prospects of France's extreme-right, anti-immigrant party, the National Front. Opinion polls in recent months already showed that it could emerge as France's largest political party at the departmental elections in March – as far as vote share is concerned – and that the Front's candidate for the Presidency in 2017 is likely to make it into, but lose, the second round run-off with the candidate of the moderate right, as was the case in 2002. The shootings will only have improved the Front's chances. Even if the election results are consistent with the polls taken prior to the shootings, and the Front doesn't do even better than the polls predicted, the dramatic results are likely to be attributed to the shootings.

And the long-term political fallout?

Crombez: The effects will reverberate throughout Europe. But as time passes and the shootings become but a distant memory, the effects will disappear. I would draw a parallel here with what happened after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan in 2011. In the following months Green parties did very well in elections in Europe at various levels, but after a year or so that effect seems to have dissipated. I would expect this to be the case with the shootings also, except if there are more such incidents to follow.

Sony Pictures Entertainment was set to release a satirical comedy, “The Interview,” in late 2014, but a cyberattack hit the organization that leaked corporate information, leading the company to initially pull the film and opening up a string of theories over who was behind the attack and how to respond.

Speculation began to mount as a clearer picture of the unprecedented hacking, both comprehensive and large in size, began to emerge. The breach is thought to be retribution for Sony’s production of the film, which carries a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Then, a threat was directed at movie theaters and moviegoers planning to screen and see “The Interview.” The message warned those against involvement ahead of the film’s Dec. 25 opening, indicating a “bitter fate” and alluding to the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

An unknown group, The Guardians of Peace “GOP,” claimed responsibility for the cyberattack. Media and those familiar with North Korea began to point blame on the country, which had already publicly condemned the film last June and has a history of cybercrime. Responding to accusations, top North Korean leadership rejected any involvement in the attack.

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The White House responded as Sony canceled the film’s New York premiere and said it would discontinue distribution. Following his year-end press conference, President Barack Obama condemned the hacking, citing the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s conclusion that North Korea was behind the attack. The President said the United States would respond “proportionally,” and on Jan. 2, signed an Executive Order that put into action a series of sanctions imposed by the Department of the Treasury.

David Straub, a Korea expert at Stanford University, answered questions about the Sony hacking and its policy implications for the United States and North-South Korean relations. Straub is the associate director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He formerly served as the State Department’s Korean affairs director.

What do we know about the Sony hacking? Who’s responsible?

Based on many types of evidence, including confidential information, U.S. government officials appear to be quite confident that North Korea did in fact conduct this operation. There’s still some disagreement in the media and among tech experts over who is responsible. They’ve cited a number of reasons but the main one is that the FBI’s official statement attributing the attack to North Korea provided evidence that they believe is far from conclusive. I myself am not a technical expert, but based upon my following North Korea for many years – the attack strikes me as being very likely to have been a North Korean operation. The FBI statement noted that the Sony attack is similar to an attack that the North Koreans conducted against South Korean banks and media outlets in March 2013. In that attack, many South Korean banks had their hard drives completely wiped clean. It was a hugely destructive attack and very similar to what happened to Sony.

Does North Korea’s response to the Sony hack coincide with past behavior?

In addition to the 2013 South Korean bank cyberattack, the North Koreans apparently sank a South Korean naval vessel in 2010, killing 46 sailors. In both instances, the North Koreans denied that they did it, expressed outrage over being accused, demanded that the South Koreans produce proof, said that they could prove that they didn’t do it, and then requested that the South Koreans conduct a joint investigation. These same demands are being made in response to the U.S. blaming Pyongyang for the Sony cyberattack. It couldn’t be more similar. More generally, the North Korean regime is very calculating. They know they can’t win an outright military confrontation with South Korea, much less the United States, so what they do is try to find a weak link and go after it in a way in which they have plausible deniability – a situation where it’s very difficult for the attacked party to prove who did it.

Describe North Korea’s hacking capabilities.

North Korea is a very secretive country, so it’s hard to be completely certain of their cyber capabilities. However, according to many accounts, the North Korean government has established professional hacking schools and units over the years, resulting in hundreds if not thousands of trained hackers. North Korea has engaged in a number of attacks in the past, the most prominent one was the attack on South Korean banks in March 2013. But also, a few years ago, North Korea conducted less sophisticated attacks on major U.S. government websites.

Why would they conduct an attack?

The North Koreans appear to have both the capability and the motivation to attack Sony. The nation’s entire political system rests on a cult of personality – now a cult of family, actually – that began with the founder of the regime, Kim Il-sung, and extends to his grandson today, leader Kim Jong-un, who has been in power since Dec. 2011. It’s the only thing holding the political system together at this point. The cult of personality is so strong that any direct criticism of the top leader is something that North Koreans will compete among each other to reject. From this standpoint, it seems very likely that they would feel they had to prevent the showing of a movie that features an assassination of Kim Jong-un. And, the hackers had plenty of time to prepare for and implement the attack because everyone knew well ahead of when the movie would be released.

The United States placed new financial sanctions on North Korea. What impact will the sanctions have?

President Obama made it clear that the U.S. government would respond at a time, in a place, and in a manner of its own choosing. Not all measures taken would be made public. So far, the first publically announced measure was the President’s Executive Order on Jan. 2 imposing additional sanctions on a number of North Korean agencies and officials. This in itself is unlikely to have major consequences because most of those entities were already sanctioned. But, the Executive Order states that the sanctions are being implemented not only because of the cyberattack against Sony, but more generally because of North Korea’s actions and policies, including its serious human rights abuses. So in a sense, the North Koreans got the United States to expand its reasons for sanctioning them.

President Obama addresses the Sony hacking, saying the United States will "respond proportionally," at his year-end press briefing on Dec. 19.

President Obama addresses the Sony hacking at his year-end press briefing on Dec. 19. Photo credit: WhiteHouse.gov

What other steps will the United States likely take?

President Obama left open the possibility that North Korea might be returned to the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list, from which the nation was removed in 2008. I think it was a mistake to remove North Korea from that list in the first place. It was done to promote progress on the nuclear talks, which eventually failed, and ignored a number of terroristic actions that North Korea has committed in recent years. Another possibility, which is being pushed by Republicans in Congress, is to increase financial sanctions that mirror the type that were successfully implemented in Iran.

How will the U.S. response influence cybersecurity policy going forward?

The attack on Sony is a huge wakeup call to American businesses, and even to the U.S. government. It’s the first attack of this size on a company located in the United States. It got tremendous profile in the media and the President has been personally engaged in responding. Nearly everyone has heard about it, so U.S. companies are now going to be focused much more on cybersecurity because it has exposed some potential vulnerabilities – a “if North Korea can do it, presumably others can too” mentality. Moreover, if an attack can be executed on a film company, it could also be done to other businesses and even to elements of U.S. critical infrastructure.

How do you view North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s possible offer to meet with South Korean leadership this year?

Kim Jong-un said that he was open to the possibility of a summit with South Korea in his annual New Year’s address, although he made no specific proposal. He made clear that the summit would be conditional on actions to be taken in advance by South Korea. Among these, Kim demanded ending U.S.-South Korean military exercises and halting the flow of propaganda-filled balloons sent over the border into the North by non-governmental activist groups in the South. Moreover, North Korea has a history of expanding its conditions later, without any warning. So, I think one has to be skeptical. The signal is unfortunately less likely to be a sincere effort toward real, sustained dialogue, and more likely to be a North Korean propaganda effort devised to confuse, divert and divide international public opinion. That said, South Korea has acted entirely appropriately in welcoming the signal and reiterating its own offer of high-level talks. Let’s hope for the best.

David Straub also participated in an interview with Public Radio International on Jan. 1 about the prospect for North-South talks, the audio can be accessed on the PRI website.

On December 2, CDDRL Research Associate Kharis Templeman and Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) Distinguished Fellow Thomas Fingar spoke about Taiwan’s recent local elections, which were a major defeat for the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and President Ma Ying-jeou. They were joined by Dennis Weng, a visiting assistant professor of political science at Wesleyan University, and Winnie Lin, a Stanford junior and research assistant for the Taiwan Democracy Project. The event was hosted by the Taiwan Democracy Project at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Templeman opened the roundtable by describing the “historic nature” of the November 29th elections. For the first time, all elected local officials in Taiwan from the mayor of Taipei down to rural village leaders - more than 11,000 positions in total - were chosen at the same time. In the highest-profile votes for mayors and county executives, the KMT suffered a drubbing. The ruling party's loss to an independent in Taipei was widely anticipated, but KMT candidates in central and southern Taiwan also were defeated badly in races that were expected to be competitive, and several more were upset in former party strongholds in northern counties and cities. The main beneficiary of the ruling party's troubles was the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which picked up seven local executive seats and made significant gains in local councils as well.

President Ma Ying-jeou attends a news conference in Taipei January 12, 2012.

According to Templeman, the election results were clearly tied to the ruling party’s poor image. President Ma, who until the election loss doubled as the KMT party chairman, had approval ratings in the teens for much of the past two years, and he struggled to win support for his policy initiatives even from members of his own party caucus in the legislature. The central government was also beset by a series of crises in recent months, including student-led protests against a trade agreement with China, a pipeline explosion in the southern city of Kaohsiung, and a wide-ranging food quality scandal. The resulting damage to the KMT party brand "nationalized" the elections and led to a consistent swing in support away from the party across races that normally turn on more local issues.

Weng took on the question of why pre-election polls were so dramatically wrong in several races. Election telephone polls in Taiwan are taken quite frequently and usually provide reliable forecasts of election outcomes, yet in this election they were sometimes off by 20 points or more. Weng highlighted the youth vote as a possible explanation: Voters under 40 were significantly more anti-KMT than other generations and might have turned out at a higher rate than expected. Because young voters are disproportionately likely to have cell phones and not land lines, telephone polls have a hard time capturing a representative sample of this subset of the electorate. In the past, these problems were muted, but they might have been large enough in this election to throw off the polls.

Lin, a Taiwanese citizen who returned to Taipei to vote, then gave the audience a first-hand account of the political currents in Taiwan during the days around the election. The high-profile Taipei mayor’s race stood out both for the fact that the KMT’s main opponent was an independent, Ko Wen-je, rather than an official nominee of the DPP, and for Ko’s unconventional campaign strategy. Ko produced no television ads and eschewed buying billboard ads or producing campaign flags, instead directing much of his campaign efforts to online outreach and playing up his "non-partisan" background. Lin emphasized the effectiveness of this social networking strategy in raising interest and support among her own friends and colleagues.

The panel concluded with a look at the impact the election results might have on cross-Strait relations. Fingar, a former State Department official and past chairman of the National Intelligence Council, suggested that authorities in Beijing were “disappointed, but not surprised” by the election results, which greatly strengthened the position of the pro-independence DPP. From past experience, Beijing has learned not to try to influence the outcome of elections in Taiwan, and despite its historical antipathy toward the DPP, it is prepared to deal with the party's representatives and even a potential DPP presidential administration in 2016 as "legitimate political actors" in cross-Strait relations. Chinese policy towards Taiwan is unlikely to be affected much in the short run by the KMT’s defeat, although Beijing might also interpret the result as a signal that Taiwanese voters have not yet gotten enough economic gains out of the cross-Strait relationship. More troubling from the Chinese leadership's perspective is that the vote was held at all: Taiwan's local polls reinforce that elections are "not ill-suited for all people who speak Chinese,” and the kinds of practical complaints about governance and corruption that contributed to the KMT’s defeat are also pervasive in mainland China.      

National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael Rogers told a Stanford University audience during a rare visit to Silicon Valley that his greatest concern today is that the nation is not yet prepared to defend against a major cyber terrorist attack.

He said the growing rift among the signals intelligence agency, tech companies and civil liberties organizations over the shifting boundaries of privacy rights and secret surveillance is weakening the nation’s resolve.

“We have yet to be able to come to a broad policy and legal consensus about how we deal with some of the legal issues in cyber now,” said Rogers, who took over the leadership of the embattled intelligence agency in April.

The admiral, wearing military dress, spoke to some 300 Stanford students, faculty and tech executives in an event sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the Hoover Institution.

Watch the Rogers talk in this video:

His wide-ranging talk on Monday – in which he appealed to Stanford students to consider a career at the intelligence agency – came on the eve of a hearing by a federal appeals court investigating whether the NSA’s surveillance program violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches. The Justice Department argues that collecting phone data is of overriding importance to national security.

The NSA, whose mission is to prevent foreign adversaries from getting their hands on classified national security data, has come under fire since NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed last year the extent of the government’s electronic surveillance programs. The former CIA system administrator leaked documents to journalists that revealed global surveillance programs with the cooperation of some telecommunications companies and European governments.

One of those journalists was Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, who received dozens of top-secret documents from Snowden when he traveled to Moscow to meet him. Gellman, who shared the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for his reporting on the Snowden materials and the NSA, will address a Stanford audience on Nov. 17^th as part of the university’s “Security Conundrum” lecture series.

Rogers indicated that until a consensus is reached on government surveillance, the United Sates is vulnerable to attack.

“Is it going to take a crisis to wake us up and say, `Man, how did we get here?’” he asked. “I don’t want to be at the end of another 9/11 commission asking how we got here.”

Rogers said the government is backing a bill known as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which would allow tech firms and the U.S. government to share cyber threats captured through Internet data. The bill was introduced to the Senate in July but has not yet been voted on by the full Senate. Opponents of the bill say it would only give the NSA enhanced spying powers.

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Rogers called the proposed legislation critical. “Without it, cyber becomes a huge cost for us as a nation.”

Rogers said he knows Americans’ trust in their government is dismal.

“We have a fairly limited faith in Washington and there is incredible frustration over the mechanisms of our government, whether it be the legal framework, the courts, the Congress,” he said. “It’s hard to achieve a political consensus when we’re losing faith in many of the mechanisms.”

And still, he called on Stanford students – namely the engineering and computer science majors who were in the audience – to come work for him. While acknowledging that the NSA could not match the salaries of Google, Yahoo and Facebook, he said they could do something worthwhile for their nation.

“If we’re going to make this about money – we don’t stand a chance,” Rogers said.

But, he added, “We’ll give you an opportunity to dedicate yourself to something that is bigger than you: service to the nation.”

Rogers said young recruits would be given great responsibility at an early stage in their careers. And, they’d get to play real-world spy games. “We’re going to give you the opportunity to do stuff you can’t legally do anywhere else,” he said.

Not all students in the audience were ready to sign up.

Thu-an Pham, a sophomore who has yet to declare her major, said after listening to the talk that she’s concerned that NSA surveillance is curbing innovation.

"I'm worried about the impact of surveillance on the culture of innovation,” she said. “Glenn Greenwald gave a recent TED Talk on the importance of privacy. He showed that people alter their behavior to conform to norms and expectations if they suspect they are under surveillance, which stifles individuality and free-thinking.”

Pham also said she’s concerned about the possibility of American officials “outsourcing illegal tasks to other governments.”

The National Journal reported last week that the NSA has given broad access to British intelligence to Americans’ telephone calls and Internet traffic, leading civil liberties activists to accuse the agency of trying to circumvent the Fourth Amendment.

Amy Zegart, CISAC’s co-director and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, moderated the one-hour talk and Q&A in Encina Hall.  

Zegart, an intelligence expert, noted tech firms are tightening encryption standards to prevent government spying on their customers.

Google and Yahoo are working on tools to encrypt their email systems and Apple and Google just announced its mobile operating systems would eventually be encrypted by default. Government officials have warned that the tech firms could be aiding criminals and terrorists with these tougher encryption standards; FBI Director James Comey suggested Silicon Valley build encryption with a backdoor for the U.S. government to spy on potential terrorists.

“Industry is very concerned about evidence of the NSA undermining encryption standards. If the NSA were to find a way through encryption standards, how do you weigh the right thing to do?” Zegart asked.

“Let there be no doubt that a fundamentally strong Internet is in the best interest of the nation,” Rogers replied. “When you find vulnerabilities, we are going to share them; the default mechanism is that we’re going to share the vulnerabilities.”

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CISAC Affiliate Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, asked Rogers to answer to disclosures by Snowden that the NSA secretly broke into communications on Yahoo and Google servers overseas.

“We do not use any foreign partners as a vehicle to overcome and bypass U.S. law,” Rogers replied. “When we partner with our Five Eyes teammates, we remind them that we have specific requirements that we must meet.”

The Five Eyes refers to an intelligence alliance of the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand to share signals intelligence.

Rogers conceded the Department of Defense no longer drives technical innovation, so the government will have to increasingly rely on the brainpower of Silicon Valley. He pledged to visit every six months and build partnerships with tech firms.

But he emphasized that national security could not be left to the technologists.

“It is unrealistic to expect the private sector to withstand the actions of nation-states,” Rogers said. “I think it is also unrealistic to expect the government to deal with this all by itself. We have got to create those partnerships that enable us to actually share information and insight in a real-time basis.”

Former CISAC Honors Student Joshua Alvarez contributed to this story.