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National security scholars participate in MOOC on South Asia

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Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar, FSI Senior Fellow Siegfried Hecker, and CISAC Senior Fellow Scott Sagan are part of a group of 80 national security experts included in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) focused on the prospects for peace and security in South Asia.

The MOOC, titled Nuclear South Asia: A Guide to India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, is an inaugural course in a series produced by the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. It is free to enroll and can be taken anytime and at any pace from a digital device.

Learn more about the MOOC.

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A mock-up of a missile is carried on a truck at a campaign rally in Islamabad, Pakistan, Feb. 16, 2008.
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A Conversation with General Michael Hayden

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About the Event: In conversation with Philip Taubman, General Hayden will discuss intelligence and cybersecurity challenges the United States faces in combatting terrorism, dealing with North Korea, Iran and Russia, and will assess President Trump’s relations with the U.S. intelligence community. 

About the Speaker: General Michael Hayden is a retired four-star general who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency when the course of world events was changing at a rapid rate. As head of the country’s premier intelligence agencies, he was on the frontline of global change, the war on terrorism and the growing cyber challenge. He understands the dangers, risks, and potential rewards of the political, economic, and security situations facing us. General Hayden dissects political situations in hot spots around the world, analyzing the tumultuous global environment and what it all means for Americans and America’s interests. He speaks on the delicate balance between liberty and security in intelligence work, as well the potential benefits and dangers associated with the cyber domain. As the former head of two multi-billion dollar enterprises, he can also address the challenges of managing complex organizations in times of stress and risk, and the need to develop effective internal and external communications.

In addition to leading CIA and NSA, General Hayden was the country’s first principal deputy director of national intelligence and the highest-ranking military intelligence officer in the country.  In all of these jobs, he worked to put a human face on American intelligence, explaining to the American people the role of espionage in protecting both American security and American liberty.  Hayden also served as commander of the Air Intelligence Agency and Director of the Joint Command and Control Warfare Center and served in senior staff positions at the Pentagon, at U.S. European Command, at the National Security Council, and the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria. He was also the deputy chief of staff for the United Nations Command and U.S. Forces in South Korea.

Hayden has been a frequent expert and commentator on major news outlets and in top publications, valued for his expertise on intelligence matters like cyber security, government surveillance, geopolitics, and more. He was featured in the HBO documentary Manhunt, which looked at espionage through the eyes of the insiders who led the secret war against Osama bin Laden, and in Showtime’s The Spymasters, a detailed look at the directors of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Hayden is currently a principal at the Chertoff Group and a distinguished visiting professor at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government. He is on the board of directors of Motorola Solutions and serves on a variety of other boards and consultancies. In 2013, the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) awarded Hayden the 29th annual William Oliver Baker Award.  General Hayden is also the first recipient of the Helms Award presented by the CIA Officers’ Memorial Foundation.  In 2014 he was the inaugural Humanitas visiting professor in intelligence studies at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.  His recent memoir, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, has been a New York Times best-seller and was recently selected as one of the 100 most notable books of 2016.

Philip Taubman is Adjunct Professor at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is also the former Moscow and Washington Bureau Chief, and Deputy Editorial Page Editor, of The New York Times. Philip Taubman served as a reporter and editor at The New York Times for thirty years, specializing in national security coverage. He is author of Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America’s Space Espionage, and The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb. He is working on a biography of George P. Shultz, the former secretary of state.

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Michael Hayden Former director, CIA, NSA
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The continuation of policy by other means: asymmetric warfare via the ballot box

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About the event: In his talk Toomas Hendrik Ilves will discuss how various digital tools have been used in democracies in Europe and the US in an attempt to disrupt and affect elections outcomes. These are new approaches, meant if not to alter electoral outcomes then at least to sow discord and seem in some instances to have been successful. Methods used include hacking into political parties' servers and “doxxing” embarrassing hacked materials; disseminating via “bots” false stories that have occasionally gone viral; as well highly granular big data analyses to target voters with ads specifically tailored to their profiles as culled from social media.

These methods and tactics have been employed in the U.S, French, and Dutch elections; cyber-break-ins into the Bundestag and German political think tanks suggest they will play a role in the upcoming German parliamentary elections. Perpetrated by an authoritarian government, they are asymmetric: without a free media environment they are immune to such tacts even if democracies were to even try to respond in kind. What democracies have experienced in the past several years will force them to adapt to a new environment with the realization that there are many ways for an adversary to change a nations policies.

About the Speaker: Toomas Hendrik Ilves was born on December 26, 1953, to an Estonian family living in Stockholm, Sweden. He was educated in the United States, receiving a degree from Columbia University in 1976 and a master's degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978.

In 1984 he moved to Munich, Germany, to work at the office of Radio Free Europe, first as a researcher and foreign policy analyst and later as the head of the Estonian Desk.

From 1993 to 1996 Ilves served in Washington as the ambassador of the Republic of Estonia to the United States and Canada. During this time, he launched the Tiger Leap Initiative to computerize and connect all Estonian schools online with Education Minister Jaak Aaviksoo. He then served as minister of foreign affairs from 1996 to 1998. After a brief period as chairman of the North Atlantic Institute in 1998, he was again appointed minister of foreign affairs, serving until 2002.

From 2002 to 2004, Ilves was a member of the Estonian Parliament and in 2004 he was elected a member of the European Parliament, where he was vice-president of the Foreign Affairs Committee. As a MEP, he initiated the Baltic Sea Strategy that was later implemented as official regional policy of the European Union.

Ilves was elected president of the Republic of Estonia in 2006. He was re-elected for a second term in office in 2011.

During his presidency, Ilves has been appointed to serve in several high positions in the field of ICT in the European Union. He served as chairman of the EU Task Force on eHealth from 2011 to 2012 and was chairman of the European Cloud Partnership Steering Board at the invitation of the European Commission from 2012 to 2014. In 2013 he chaired the High-Level Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms convened by ICANN. From 2014 to 2015 Ilves was the co-chair of the advisory panel of the World Bank's World Development Report 2016 "Digital Dividends" and was also the chair of World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Cyber Security beginning in June 2014.

Starting from 2016, Ilves co-chairs The World Economic Forum working group The Global Futures Council on Blockchain Technology. In 2017 he joined Stanford University as a Bernard and Susan Liautaud Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

President Ilves has published many essays and articles in Estonian and English on numerous topics ranging from Estonian language, history, and literature to global foreign and security policy and cyber security. His books include essay collections in Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, Hungarian, and Russian.

His international awards and honorary degrees include Knight of Freedom Award by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation (2016), the Aspen Prague Award by the Aspen Institute (2015), the Freedom Award by the Atlantic Council (2014) and the NDI Democracy Award by the National Democratic Institute (2013). His Honorary Degrees include an Honorary Degree from St. Olaf College, US (2014), an Honorary Degree from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland (2010), and an Honorary Degree from Tbilisi University, Georgia (2007).

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Stanford experts offer policy proposals, insights on US-Asia relations

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Stanford scholars are encouraging the new administration to consider steps to alleviate the uncertainty and anxiety felt by countries in East Asia about U.S. intentions toward the region.

President Donald Trump’s anti-China rhetoric during his campaign and his recent withdrawal of the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership have contributed to the unease in the region, which is drifting in ways that are unfavorable for American interests, they said.

Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) recently published a 27-page report with recommendations on topics of trade and defense that would improve relations between the U.S. and Asian countries. The report, co-authored by eight Stanford scholars, is aimed to help shape U.S. policies in the region.

“The advent of any new administration provides an opportunity to reassess policy approaches,” wrote Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Shorenstein center. “A new mandate exists, and it is our hope that that mandate will be used wisely by the new administration.”

Trade and defense

The biggest trade concern for experts in the region is President Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and his intention to focus on bilateral agreements instead of multinational pacts.

The agreement, which bound 12 countries in the region by a set of international trade and investment rules, had problems, Stanford scholars said. For example, some have criticized the treaty for not requiring full compliance with international labor standards for all the participating countries. Also, the rules of origin, which were supposed to give preferential treatment to countries in the TPP, were deemed to be weak by many, allowing goods produced outside the TPP to receive benefits.

But it would not be wise or efficient for the U.S. to start negotiations from scratch in the region because the U.S. withdrawal from the agreement, which was touted as a model for the 21st century, already has hurt its credibility with other Asian countries, said Takeo Hoshi, director of the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Center. In addition, Asian countries view the idea of bilateral agreements as an attempt to force trade deals on them that disproportionately benefit the U.S., he said.

“The TPP was not perfect and many problems remain, but they are not removed by abandoning the TPP,” Hoshi wrote in the report. “Completely abandoning the TPP could hurt not only the U.S. economy but also erode U.S. leadership in Asia.”

Hoshi said the U.S. should rely on aspects of TPP that are consistent with the current U.S. trade policy when creating new bilateral agreements, while maintaining and improving existing free trade agreements with other Asian countries.

Another immediate concern for scholars is the maintenance of security and stability in the region.

“The region is unsettled because of uncertainty about us,” said Thomas Fingar, a Shorenstein APARC fellow. “The U.S. has long served as the guarantor of prosperity and security in the region but Asians are no longer convinced that we have the will or ability to do so. This has real consequences … It’s not simply because they are already beginning to act as if we intend to play a less active or positive role.”

If China’s national power and economy continue to expand, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain stability in the region if the U.S. does not continue to play a constructive role. Possible dangers include escalation of tensions between China and the U.S. or its allies following accidents or tactical encounters near areas over which China claims sovereignty.

In the report, scholars recommend a comprehensive review of security in the region to make sure military plans are in place that prioritize management of a possible collapse of North Korea or a sudden military strike coming from the country. Other priorities should include peaceful resolution of China-Taiwan differences and ensuring military access in the South China Sea and East China Sea, wrote Karl Eikenberry, director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative at the Shorenstein Center.

“The United States also should engage in a more long-range, exploratory strategic dialogue, first with allies and partners, and then with Beijing, to identify potential areas of mutual interest that can help prevent the unintended escalation of conflicts and reduce already dangerous levels of misperception and mistrust on both sides,” Eikenberry wrote.

China is key

Maintaining a peaceful, productive relationship with China should be of the utmost importance for the U.S., according to the Stanford scholars.

“Managing America’s multifaceted relationship with China is arguably the most consequential foreign policy challenge facing the new administration,” Fingar said.

Although President Trump’s anti-China rhetoric during his campaign made Asian countries anxious about the future, China has been criticized by many American leaders before. Ten previous U.S. presidents were critical of China during their campaigns, but once they assumed office, their tone changed and they adopted a more pragmatic view of U.S. interests in the area, Fingar wrote.

However, while in the past China’s political moves have been predictable for the most part, now that its economy is slowing, the country is increasingly relying on social control and nationalism to reinforce regime legitimacy. This makes China less predictable, according to Fingar.

But the scholars say that there are several opportunities to approach the relationship with China in a way that is beneficial for the U.S. and the rest of the region.

One such opportunity would be for the U.S. to declare its willingness to join China’s newly created Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which was formed in early 2016 to support construction projects in the Asia-Pacific region. This would be an “any outcome we win” opportunity that would showcase the U.S. desire to cooperate with China and help establish the region’s confidence in the U.S., Fingar said.

The new administration should also consider pushing for a quick completion of a Bilateral Investment Treaty with China – something that two previous U.S. administrations were not able to achieve. Creating this agreement would help protect things that are important to the U.S. businesses and reassure the willingness of the U.S. to deepen its relationship with China, according to Fingar.

“In my view, how we’re going to establish or reestablish relations with China is key,” Shin said. “Will there be more tension? That’s really important. This affects not only the U.S., but also our allies in the region.”

Alex Shashkevich is a writer for the Stanford News Service.

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Navy officers wait dockside as a Chinese Navy warship, escorting the arrival of the USS Curtis Wilbur, arrives at Qingdao port.
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Inside the CIA: A Conversation with Michael Morell

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This event is at maximum capacity. We thank you for your interest and regret that we cannot accept more registrations.

- This event is part of the Robert G. Wesson Lectures Series -

About the Event: Michael Morell, Former Deputy Director and twice Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, will be interviewed by Amy Zegart, CISAC Co-director and Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Audience members will have an opportunity to ask questions after the interview. 

About the Speaker: Michael Morell, the former Acting Director and Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is the Wesson Lecturer at the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Center for International Security and Cooperation for 2017. He is one of our nation’s leading national security professionals, with extensive experience in intelligence and foreign policy.  He has been at the center of our nation’s fight against terrorism, its work to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and its efforts to respond to trends that are altering the international landscape—including the Arab Spring, the rise of China, and the cyber threat.  Politico has called Michael the “Bob Gates of his generation.”

During his 33-year career at CIA, Michael served as Deputy Director for over three years, a job in which he managed the Agency’s day-to-day operations, represented the Agency at the White House and Congress, and maintained the Agency’s relationships with intelligence services and foreign leaders around the world.  Michael also served twice as Acting Director, leading CIA when Leon Panetta was named Secretary of Defense and again after David Petraeus left government.

Michael’s senior assignments at CIA also included serving for two years as the Director of Intelligence, the Agency’s top analyst, and for two years as Executive Director, the CIA’s top administrator—managing human resources, the budget, security, and information technology for an agency the size of a Fortune 200 firm.

Michael has been a witness to history on multiple occasions.  He is the only person who was both with President Bush on September 11th, when al-Qaida burst into the American consciousness, and with President Obama on May 1st, when Bin Laden was brought to justice.  Michael played a major role in the Bin Laden operation.

Michael is known inside CIA for his leadership.  He inspired individuals and work units to perform beyond expectations.  He mentored most of the Agency’s current senior leadership team, including a significant number of women and minorities.  When he departed CIA, thousands of officers wrote Michael notes of thanks.

Michael is the recipient of many awards.  He received the Presidential Rank Award for exceptional performance – the nation’s highest honor for civilian service.  He also received the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, CIA’s highest award, for his role in the Bin Laden operation.  Michael is also the recipient of the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, and the Department of Defense Service Medal.    

Today, Michael is involved in a wide range of activities.  He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company; Senior Counselor to Washington’s fastest growing consulting firm, Beacon Global Strategies; and a consultant to a number of private sector entities.  He is the Chairman of the Board of one of those entities – Culpeper National Security Solutions, a subsidiary of DynCorp International.

Much of what Michael does today is tied to national security.  Until recently, he was a senior national security contributor for CBS News.  He is a frequent guest on the Charlie Rose Show discussing national security issues.  He is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government; a Senior Fellow at West Point’s Center on Combatting Terrorism; a resident fellow this fall at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, a member of the Aspen Institute’s Homeland Security Group, which advises the Secretary of Homeland Security on national security issues; a member of the Board of Director’s of the Atlantic Council, a member of the Advisory Board to the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Terrorism, and a member of the Atlantic Council’s advisory group to its study on the future of the Middle East.  He served as a Member of President Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology.

Michael is the author of the New York Times bestseller on CIA’s nearly 20-year fight against al Qa`ida.  The title of the book is “The Great War of Our Time:  An Insider’s Account of the CIA’s Fight Against Terrorism – From al Qaida to ISIS.”  It was published in May 2015.

Michael is a native of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, and he maintains close ties to northeast Ohio.  His father and mother—who taught him hard work, the pursuit of excellence, and humility—were an autoworker and a homemaker.  Michael is a first-generation college student, earning a B.A. summa cum laude in economics from the University of Akron.  He also earned an M.A. in economics from Georgetown University.  

Michael is involved with charities associated with supporting the families of fallen soldiers and intelligence officers.

 

Inside the CIA: A Conversation with Michael Morell
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Michael Morell Former director Central Intelligence Agency
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The Digital Dimension

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Abstract: This presentation is adapted from two book chapters.  The first one published in 2007 is “Transforming U.S. Intelligence: The Digital Dimension” and the second chapter published in 2009 is “Vaults, Mirrors and Masks: Rediscovering US Counterintelligence - Counterintelligence Too Narrowly Practiced.”  Additionally, material from recent DSB and NSB studies is included:  “Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat” and “A Review of U.S. Navy Cyber Defense Capabilities”.  Communications technologies have transformed the way information is created, stored, processed, viewed, and transmitted. But the same technologies have provided our adversaries with the tools for attacking and exploiting our infrastructure and military systems. The U.S. has long operated under the assumption that our critical systems would be secure if we applied current Information Assurance (IA) practices. The reality is that a sophisticated offense easily outmatches the capability of a defensive organization to protect its critical Information Technology (IT) systems.  This briefing attempts to convey the rationale behind this assertion. The presentation represents my views and is specifically not intended to represent the views of any organization with which I’m affiliated.

About the Speaker: Mr. Gosler is a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.  He is engaged in various DOD and Intelligence Community advisory boards such as the Defense Science Board.

His previous experience includes a 33 year career (1979-2013) at Sandia National Laboratories. His early contributions included red-teaming both cryptographic and nuclear weapon systems.  In 1989, he served as Sandia’s first Visiting Scientist to NSA.  In 1993, he established and directed the Vulnerability Assessments Program. From 1996-2001, he was on a Special Leave of Absence from Sandia.  After returning to Sandia, he became Sandia’s sixth lab Fellow.

In 1996, he entered the Senior Intelligence Service at CIA as the Director of the Clandestine Information Technology Office.  This office integrated targeting, analysis, technology development, and technical/human operations.

Additionally, he served as a Naval Reserve Officer from 1975-2003. 

His awards include: Lockheed Martin’s NOVA award, National Intelligence Medal of Achievement, DONOVAN award, Intelligence Medal of Merit, Director of Central Intelligence Director’s award, and the Legion of Merit.

Mr. Gosler earned a BS degree in Physics/Mathematics and a MS degree in Mathematics.

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Jim Gosler Senior Fellow Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Seminars

Sources of variation in under-5 mortality across sub-Saharan Africa: a spatial analysis

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The ongoing decline in under-5 mortality ranks among the most significant public and population health successes of the past 30 years. Deaths of children under the age of 5 years have fallen from nearly 13 million per year in 1990 to less than 6 million per year in 2015, even as the world's under-5 population grew by nearly 100 million children. However, the amount of variability underlying this broad global progress is substantial. On a regional level, east Asia and the Pacific have surpassed the Millennium Development Goal target of a two-thirds reduction in under-5 mortality rate between 1990 and 2015, whereas sub-Saharan Africa has had only a 24% decline over the same period. Large differences in progress are also evident within sub-Saharan Africa, where mortality rates have declined by more than 70% from 1990 to 2015 in some countries and increased in others; in 2015, the mortality rate in some countries was more than three times that in others.

What explains this remarkable variation in progress against under-5 mortality? Answering this question requires understanding of where the main sources of variation in mortality lie. One view that is implicit in the way that mortality rates are tracked and targeted is that national policies and conditions drive first-order changes in under-5 mortality. This country-level focus is justified by research that emphasises the role of institutional factors in explaining variation in mortality—factors such as universal health coverage, women's education, and the effectiveness of national health systems. It is argued that these factors, which vary measurably at the country level, fundamentally shape the ability of individuals and communities to affect more proximate causes of child death such as malaria and diarrhoeal disease.

An alternate view has focused on exploring the importance of subnational variation in the distribution of disease. In the USA, studies on the geographical distribution of health care and mortality have been influential for targeting of resources and policy design. Similar studies in developing regions have shown the substantial variability in the distribution and changes of important health outcomes such HIV, malaria, and schistosomiasis—information that can then be used to improve the targeting of interventions. Nevertheless, the relative contribution of within-country and between-country differences in explaining under-5 mortality remains unknown. Improved understanding of the relative contribution of national and sub-national factors could provide insight into the drivers of mortality levels and declines in mortality, as well as improve the targeting of interventions to the areas where they are most needed.

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The Lancet Global Health
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Sam Heft-Neal
Eran Bendavid
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Global Intelligence Oversight: Governing Security in the Twenty-First Century

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Abstract: In a world that is increasingly unstable, intelligence services like the American CIA and the United Kingdom's MI6 exist to deliver security. Whether the challenge involves terrorism, cyber-security, or the renewed specter of great power conflict, intelligence agencies mitigate threats and provide decisional advantage to national leaders. But empowered intelligence services require adequate supervision and oversight, which must be about more than the narrow (if still precarious) task of ensuring the legality of covert operations and surveillance activities. 

Global Intelligence Oversight is a comparative investigation of how democratic countries can govern their intelligence services so that they are effective, but operate within frameworks that are acceptable to their people in an interconnected world. The book demonstrates how the institutions that oversee intelligence agencies participate in the protection of national security while safeguarding civil liberties, balancing among competing national interests, and building public trust in inherently secret activities. It does so by analyzing the role of courts and independent oversight bodies as they operate in countries with robust constitutional frameworks and powerful intelligence services. The book also illuminates a new transnational oversight dynamic that is shaping and constraining security services in new ways. It describes how global technology companies and litigation in transnational forums constitute a new form of oversight whose contours are still undefined. As rapid changes in technology bring the world closer together, these forces will complement their more traditional counterparts in ensuring that intelligence activities remain effective, legitimate, and sustainable. To purchase the book, please click here.

About the Speakers: Samuel J. Rascoff is an expert in national security law, and serves as faculty director of the Center on Law and Security. Named a Carnegie Scholar in 2009, Rascoff came to the Law School from the New York City Police Department, where, as director of intelligence analysis, he created and led a team responsible for assessing the terrorist threat to the city. A graduate of Harvard summa cum laude, Oxford with first class honors, and Yale Law School, Rascoff previously served as a law clerk to US Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and to Judge Pierre N. Leval of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He was also a special assistant with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and an associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Rascoff’s publications include “Presidential Intelligence” (Harvard Law Review); “Counterterrorism and New Deterrence” (NYU Law Review); “Establishing Official Islam? The Law and Strategy of Counter-Radicalization” (Stanford Law Review); “Domesticating Intelligence” (Southern California Law Review), and “The Law of Homegrown (Counter-) Terrorism” (Texas Law Review).

Zachary K. Goldman is the Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security and an Adjunct Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. Previously, Zachary served as a Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the U.S. Department of Defense, and as a policy advisor in the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, where he was the subject matter expert on terrorist financing in the Arabian Peninsula and Iran sanctions. In the private sector, he was a litigator at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York.

Zachary is the co-editor of Global Intelligence Oversight: Governing Security in the Twenty-First Century, an edited volume on comparative approaches to intelligence oversight, published by Oxford University Press.  He has testified before Congress and has published on national security strategy, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, and financial sanctions in outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times Chinese, the South China Morning Post, Political Science Quarterly, Cold War History, The Atlantic, The Diplomat, The National Interest, and others.

Zachary is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and a member of the Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security. He received his JD from New York University School of Law, his Masters in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and his BA from Harvard University.

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Samuel J. Rascoff Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Center on Law and Security New York University School of Law
Zachary K. Goldman Executive Director, Center on Law and Security New York University School of Law
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Deadly Truck Attack on French Riviera a New Twist on an Old Terror Tactic

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When a Tunisian-born man drove a 19-ton rented truck into a crowd of revelers celebrating France’s national holiday in the Mediterranean town of Nice last week, killing 84 people and injuring hundreds more, it was a deadly new example of an old terrorist tactic of turning vehicles into weapons, according to Stanford experts.

French authorities identified the man behind the wheel as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old immigrant from Tunisia who had lived in France since around 2005 and had been working as a delivery driver. Police shot him dead on the scene.

Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), said the fact that Bouhlel already had a commercial driver’s license gave him easy access to his weapon of choice.

“It was just unfortunate that he was somebody who already drove big trucks,” said Crenshaw.

“He did not have to go do something special, like train for a pilot’s license in the way that the 911 hijackers did, in order to acquire the means to kill people.”

Vehicles as tools of terror

Crenshaw said there had been around 30 incidents worldwide since 1994 where terrorists used vehicles as their primary weapon in attacks on civilians (not including car and truck bombs where explosives were used). Crenshaw noted that not all those vehicle attacks caused casualties.

If you include assaults on police and military targets, there have been more than 155 attacks where a vehicle has been used as a weapon in the way the truck was used in Nice, with over 75 of those attacks occurring in just the last three years, according to data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START).

However, the exceptionally high number of casualties puts the attack in Nice in a league of its own. Most of the vehicle attacks on police and military only result in one or two casualties at a checkpoint or other hard target.

Stanford terrorism expert and former U.S. Special Forces Colonel Joe Felter said he was concerned that the attack in Nice “lowered the threshold” for aspiring terrorists who would be motivated to carry out copycat attacks.

“This was a disturbingly effective attack,” said Felter, a senior research scholar at CISAC.

“The message for would-be terrorists is that you don’t have to become a bomb maker to successfully execute a mass casualty attack. With a driver’s license and a credit card you can weaponize a rental truck.”

A challenge for law enforcement

Former CISAC fellow Terrence Peterson said it would be particularly difficult for law enforcement agencies to prevent terrorists from gaining access to vehicles.

“The types of people who would show up on other lists…like the no-fly list, are not going to show up when they rent a car,” said Peterson.

“A car is such a mundane object. How do you control using an everyday object for a terrorist attack? It’s nearly impossible.”

Al Qaeda had previously advocated using pickup trucks to target civilians, in the “Open Source Jihad” section of its propaganda magazine “Inspire.”

“The idea is to use a pickup truck as a mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah,” according to a translation on the Web site MEMRI Cyber and Jihad Lab, which tracks jihadist postings online.

The article also advised would-be terrorists to, “pick your location and timing carefully. Go for the most crowded locations. Narrower spots are also better because it gives less chance for the people to run away…Therefore, it is important to study your path of operation before hand.”

French prosecutors said that Bouhlel carried out surveillance of the Promenade des Anglais prior to his attack there, and that he conducted online research into the mass shootings in Orlando and Dallas.

Murky motivations

It is still unclear what motivated Bouhlel. He had a history of domestic violence, psychological problems and money troubles, according to media reports. Acquaintances said the divorced father of three was not an outwardly religious Muslim. He reportedly drank alcohol, used drugs, ate pork and had sexual encounters with other men, all of which are forbidden under strict interpretations of Islam.

However, French authorities have suggested that he may have undergone a rapid conversion to radical Islam. And a Web site affiliated with the terror group ISIS has claimed Bouhlel as “a soldier of the Islamic State.”

[[{"fid":"223450","view_mode":"crop_870xauto","fields":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"A reproduction of the picture on the residence permit of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the man who rammed his truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on July 14.","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"A reproduction of the picture on the residence permit of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the man who rammed his truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on July 14.","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"A reproduction of the picture on the residence permit of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the man who rammed his truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on July 14.","field_credit[und][0][value]":"AFP/Getty Images","field_caption[und][0][value]":"A reproduction of the picture on the residence permit of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the man who rammed his truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on July 14.","field_related_image_aspect[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto"},"type":"media","attributes":{"alt":"A reproduction of the picture on the residence permit of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the man who rammed his truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on July 14.","title":"A reproduction of the picture on the residence permit of Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the man who rammed his truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on July 14.","width":"870","style":"width: 250px; height: 362px; float: right; margin-left: 15px","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto"}}]]“It's plausible that the message of ISIS resonated with him as a Muslim immigrant living on the fringes of society, which would be consistent with my research team’s finding that people who feel “culturally homeless” experience a lack of purpose in their lives, which, in turn, is associated with stronger support for fundamentalist groups and causes,” said Sarah Lyons-Padilla, a Stanford research scientist in the Department of Psychology’s Center for Social Psychological Answers to Real-World Questions who’s studying the marginalization of Muslim immigrants at risk for radicalization.

The apocalyptic ideology of jihadist groups like the Islamic State (also known as “Daesh”) could be particularly appealing to “petty criminals, psychologically deranged or otherwise lost souls” such as Bouhlel, said David Laitin, James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins professor of Political Science.

“Spurred by Salafist propaganda, these recruits can work privately, away from any institutional connection with Daesh, to cause horror,” Laitin said.

“And many police forces are out of touch with vulnerable populations and are slow to identify potential recruits.”

"Confrontation is unavoidable"

Regardless of Bouhlel’s motivation, his attack would likely bolster the anti-immigrant agenda of France’s far-right political parties such as the National Front, which advocate policies such as closing the borders, exiting the European Union and deporting bi-nationals with links to Islamist groups, said Cécile Alduy, associate professor of French and an affiliated faculty member with the Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

“The attacks will only strengthen the feeling that the political elites in power failed, and that the National Front “told us so” and are the only ones left to trust,” Alduy said.

Patrick Calvar, the head of France’s counter-terrorism intelligence agency DGSI, warned earlier this year that the recent series of terror attacks on French soil could trigger “inter-ethnic clashes” between far-right vigilante groups and Muslims living in France.

“One or two more terrorist attacks” and “the confrontation [between the two sides] is unavoidable,” said Calvar.

Alduy said she feared the shift in French public opinion could make Calvar’s prediction more likely.

“An opinion poll…in March 2015 put “sadness” as the primary feeling that respondents identified with following the Charlie Hebdo attacks,” Alduy said.

“After the November attacks, it was “anger”, with “hatred” following closely for over 60% of them. Now what will it be?”

 

Hero Image
Police officers and rescue workers stand near the truck that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove into a crowd leaving a fireworks display in the French Riviera town of Nice on July 14, 2016, killing at least 84 people.
Police officers and rescue workers stand near the truck that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove into a crowd leaving a fireworks display in the French Riviera town of Nice on July 14, 2016, killing at least 84 people.
VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images
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