About the topic: This talk examines the organizational roots of disaster.  Using the 2009 Fort Hood terrorist attack as a case study, she explores why the Defense Department and FBI were unable to stop a self-radicalizing terrorist within the Army who was openly espousing his beliefs, failing to perform his duties, and known, nearly a year before the attack, to be communicating with Anwar al-Aulaqi.  In publicly released investigations of the attack, much attention has been paid to political correctness and failures of individual leadership. She finds, by contrast, that fundamental aspects of organizational life -- the structure of organizations, the incentives influencing employees' choice of tasks, and the cultural norms that color "how things are done around here" --- played a crucial and overlooked role.  Organizational weaknesses, not human ones, were the root cause of disaster.

About the Speaker: Amy Zegart is an affiliated faculty member at CISAC and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.  Before coming to Stanford, she served as professor of public policy at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs and as a fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations.  She is the author of two award-winning books. Flawed by Design, which won the highest national dissertation award in political science, and Spying Blind, which won the National Academy of Public Administration’s Brownlow Book Award.

Zegart was featured by the National Journal as one of the ten most influential experts in intelligence reform.  Her commentary has been featured on national television and radio shows and in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.

About the topic: Given the increased threat of nuclear terrorism by non-state actors, current global mechanisms addressing nuclear security have revealed serious limitations. As a result, after President Obama’s speech in 2009 at Prague, the first Nuclear Security Summit Meeting was successfully held in Washington D.C. Based on its success, the second Nuclear Security Summit Meeting is scheduled to be held in March 2012 in Seoul, Korea. In addition to the ongoing issues, the Seoul Meeting will deal with new issues such as nuclear safety in reflection of the recent Fukushima accident. The meeting may also take on other issues such as the framework agreement, further institutionalization of the Nuclear Security Summit Meeting and sustainable financing. Ultimately, this process should reinforce the effectiveness of global efforts to tackle nuclear terrorism and related issues.

About the Speaker: Professor Suh-Yong Chung is an international expert on international governance and institution building. His recent research interests include governance building in global climate change, Northeast Asian environmental cooperation institution building and nuclear security governance building. Dr. Chung has recently participated in various national and international conferences and seminars on nuclear security, such as the ROK-US Nuclear Security Experts Dialogue, and the WMD Study Group Meeting of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP).

Dr. Chung is the Associate Professor of Division of International Studies of Korea University, an Adjunct Professor of The Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the General Secretary of CSCAP Korea. Dr. Suh-Yong Chung holds degrees in law and international relations from Seoul National University, the London School of Economics and Stanford Law School.

Aziz Huq earned his BA summa cum laude in International Studies and French from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1996 and his law degree from Columbia Law School in 2001, where he was awarded the John Ordronaux Prize. He clerked for Judge Robert D. Sack of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (2001–02) and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States (2003–04). After clerking he worked as Associate Counsel and then Director of the Liberty and National Security Project of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. He has also been a Senior Consultant Analyst for the International Crisis Group.

His research and teaching interests include constitutional law, national security and counterterrorism, federal jurisdiction, legislation, human rights, and comparative constitutional law.

Abstract

What forum should be employed to adjudicate the status of persons suspected of involvement in terrorism? Recent clashes between Congress and the President as to whether the status of terrorism suspects should be determined via Article III criminal process or military commissions have revived debate on this venue question. The problem is typically framed as a simple matter of law on the assumption that existing statutory and doctrinal rules already furnish dispositive guidance for sorting suspects between civilian and military venues. This article takes issue with that assumption. It argues that the choice of forum question can more profitably be understood as a problem of institutional design rather than a choice of law puzzle. A key institutional design decision that to date has been ignored is whether or when to create jurisdictional redundancy: When, that is, should overlapping jurisdictions vest the government with a choice of forums or an option to retry a suspect acquitted in an initial process? Such redundancy is currently pervasive. But conventional wisdom suggests that it both risks abuse and is needlessly costly. This Article demonstrates that jurisdictional redundancy has complex direct and indirect effects on the accuracy and cost of terrorism-related adjudication. It presents a comprehensive framework for analyzing jurisdictional redundancy by exploring how the latter influences error rates, system maintenance costs, externalities, information production, and incentives. Applying that framework, I suggest the current status quo of pervasive redundancy has surprising merit in contrast to two leading reform proposals.

Stewart Baker, a former policymaker at both the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security will talk about the latest concern in official Washington.  Putting cyberweapons in historical context, he'll describe how the United States and other countries are responding to the strategic challenge of cyberwar - and what it might mean for the future of the Internet.

Speaker Biography:

Stewart Baker is a partner in the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson.  He is the author of Skating on Stilts – Why We Aren’t Stopping Tomorrow’s Terrorism, a book on the security challenges posed by technology and the use of data in preventing terrorism.

From 2005 to 2009, he was the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. Stemming from his role at DHS, Mr. Baker has a deep background in the international implications of US security policy- such as disputes over US collection of data from international businesses.

Mr. Baker’s practice covers national security, electronic surveillance, law enforcement, export control, encryption, and related technology issues.

From 1992 to 1994, Mr. Baker was General Counsel of the National Security Agency, where he led NSA and interagency efforts to reform commercial encryption and computer security law and policy.