Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/yIthWPC99bI

About this Event: Since the United States left the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, the Trump administration has pursued a maximum economic pressure campaign toward Iran. The U.S. use of sanctions has gone far beyond what previous administrations have done to try to change Iran's policies, targeting large swathes of the Iranian economy, high-ranking Iranian government officials, and threatening other countries if they do not curtail their own private sector's activities with Iran. The economic consequences of these measures, particularly for Iran's domestic economy, Iran's ability to procure food and medicine from abroad, and for Iran's flagship energy industry, have been profoundly disruptive. The U.S. economic pressure strategy has also had direct impacts on the global shipping and energy industries. To better understand the impacts of the current U.S. strategy toward Iran, Elizabeth Rosenberg will discuss how the Trump administration has used unprecedented economic coercion, and how U.S. partners and adversaries have responded. She will focus on what role sanctions are likely to play going forward and whether they will be used now as a form of deescalation or escalation in U.S.-Iran tensions, which are particularly heightened following the U.S. killing of Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani. 

About the Speaker: Elizabeth Rosenberg is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Energy, Economics, and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. In this capacity, she publishes and speaks on the national security and foreign policy implications of the use of sanctions and economic statecraft as well as energy market shifts. Current geographic areas of focus include Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, and Venezuela. She has testified before Congress on an array of banking and trade issues, and on energy geopolitics and markets topics. She is widely quoted by leading media outlets in the United States and abroad.

From May 2009 through September 2013, Ms. Rosenberg served as a Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, to the Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, and then to the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. In these senior roles, she helped to develop and implement financial and energy sanctions. Key initiatives she helped to oversee include the tightening of global sanctions on Iran, the launching of new, comprehensive sanctions against Libya and Syria and modification of Burma sanctions in step with normalization of diplomatic relations. She also helped to formulate anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist and counter-proliferation financing policy and oversee financial regulatory enforcement activities.

Prior to her service in the U.S. government Ms. Rosenberg was an energy policy correspondent at Argus Media in Washington D.C., analyzing U.S and Middle Eastern energy policy, regulation and trading. She spoke and published extensively on OPEC, strategic reserves, energy sanctions and national security policy, oil and natural gas investment and production, and renewable fuels.

Ms. Rosenberg received an MA in Near Eastern Studies from New York University and a BA in Politics and Religion from Oberlin College.

Outside CNAS, Elizabeth Rosenberg is providing exclusive advice on foreign policy and national security as an informal advisor to the Elizabeth Warren campaign.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/AJxhy6pf95U

About this Event: Rampant disinformation threatens democracy, security, and even public health worldwide. As malicious actors weaponize social media, societies worldwide are being challenged to find solutions. Technology and regulatory measures must be part of the solution but, especially in free societies, these solutions often fail to keep pace with rapidly evolving and escalating threats. Dr. Kristin Lord, President and CEO of IREX, an international non-profit organization focused on education and development, will argue that at a time when the cost of producing disinformation is effectively zero, building citizen resilience to misinformation and disinformation must also be part of the solution.

Dr. Lord will discuss concrete approaches to building citizen resilience to disinformation, and present and review data showing its impact. She will also highlight the research agenda needed to advance the field of media literacy if its interventions are to be effective. IREX’s own flagship media literacy program, “Learn to Discern” is currently operational in more than a dozen countries, including the US, and has demonstrated lasting behavior change in a rigorous evaluation. Such approaches can be an effective part of a counter-disinformation strategy – but only if they are urgently brought to scale.

About the Speaker: Kristin Lord is President and CEO of IREX, a global non-profit organization that promotes more just, prosperous, and inclusive societies by developing leaders, extending access to quality education and information, empowering youth, and supporting accountable governance and civic participation. She brings more than twenty years of experience in the fields of education, foreign policy, global development, and security and peacebuilding to this role. Prior to joining IREX in 2014, Dr. Lord served in leadership roles at the United States Institute of Peace, Center for a New American Security, Brookings Institution, and The George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. She also served at the U.S. Department of State and is currently a board member of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.

Join Stephen Stedman, Nathaniel Persily, the Cyber Policy Center, and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) in an enlightening exploration of the recent report, Protecting Electoral Integrity in the Digital Age, put out by the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age. Moderated by Kelly Born, Executive Director of the Cyber Policy Center.

More on the report:

• Q&A with Stephen Stedman, featured in the Stanford Report 
• Stephen Stedman in Conversation with Francis Fukuyama (YouTube)

Abstract:

New information and communication technologies (ICTs) pose difficult challenges for electoral integrity. In recent years foreign governments have used social media and the Internet to interfere in elections around the globe. Disinformation has been weaponized to discredit democratic institutions, sow societal distrust, and attack political candidates. Social media has proved a useful tool for extremist groups to send messages of hate and to incite violence. Democratic governments strain to respond to a revolution in political advertising brought about by ICTs. Electoral integrity has been at risk from attacks on the electoral process, and on the quality of democratic deliberation.

The relationship between the Internet, social media, elections, and democracy is complex, systemic, and unfolding. Our ability to assess some of the most important claims about social media is constrained by the unwillingness of the major platforms to share data with researchers. Nonetheless, we are confident about several important findings.

About the Speakers

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Professor Stedman served as a special adviser and assistant secretary general of the United Nations, where he helped to create the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission, the UN’s Peacebuilding Support Office, the UN’s Mediation Support Office, the Secretary’s General’s Policy Committee, and the UN’s counterterrorism strategy. During 2005 his office successfully negotiated General Assembly approval of the Responsibility to Protect. From 2010 to 2012, he directed the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, an international body mandated to promote and protect the integrity of elections worldwide.  Professor Stedman served as Chair of the Stanford Faculty Senate in 2018-2019. He and his wife Corinne Thomas are the Resident Fellows in Crothers, Stanford’s academic theme house for Global Citizenship. In 2018, Professor Stedman was awarded the Lloyd B. Dinkelspiel Award for outstanding service to undergraduate education at Stanford.

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Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication and FSI.  Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Persily taught at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and as a visiting professor at Harvard, NYU, Princeton, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Melbourne. Professor Persily’s scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law or what is sometimes called the “law of democracy,” which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, and New York, and as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration.

Also among the commissioners of the report were FSI's Alex Stamos, and Toomas Ilves.