At 90, William J. Perry has seen a lot in this world.

Maybe, in fact, too much. When it comes to nuclear warfare and annihilation, few people alive have contemplated such tragic outcomes quite like Perry, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), a former U.S. secretary of defense, and one of the world’s top nuclear weapons experts.

Perry, who becomes a nonagenarian on Oct. 11, has been called America’s “nuclear conscience.” He has sometimes referred to himself as a “prophet of doom,” and certainly not in a congratulatory sense, but more as a scientist on a mission. A brilliant mathematician who's worked with nearly every administration since Eisenhower, Perry's been up-close to nuclear weapons and near-miss crises for the last several decades.

Today, Perry is devoted to education on the subject of nuclear weapons – he understands exactly how much horror they would wreak on humanity and beyond.

And while no one would call Perry a crusader type (he is pragmatic, modest and private), there’s no doubt he’s on an energetic crusade for a nuclear-free world. Reaching young minds – those who will inherit the leadership of this world – is his calculus in the formula of world peace.

So, Perry reaches out in ways that resonant with youth. Last year created a series of virtual lectures, "Living at the Nuclear Brink," known as a MOOC, or massive open online course. His new online course, "The Threat of Nuclear Terrorism," launches Oct. 17.  

“Nuclear weapons may seem like 20th century history, but the choices we make about these weapons in the 21st century will decide your future in truly fundamental ways,” Perry wrote in the earlier course's introduction.

Conversations with conscience

An engineer and policy maker, Perry has academic affiliations that range widely across the Stanford campus. He is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus), a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He's always in demand for a panel discussion or speaker event.

On Nov. 1, he's the featured subject of a CISAC event, "A Conversation with William J. Perry: Assessing Nuclear Risk in a New Era." That talk will include a Perry discussion with CISAC co-director Amy Zegart and another panel discussion, led by CISAC co-director Rod Ewing, with scholars Siegfried Hecker, David Holloway and Scott Sagan.

Perry's been known to participate in “Ask Me Anything” chats on Reddit, a place popular with youth. He connects with all types of audiences, conveying in direct encounters the exact nature of the nuclear dangers now facing civilization, and what can be done to reduce those dangers. This mission to educate led him to write a memoir, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, all the while giving countless media interviews and delivering major speeches before major think tanks, nongovernmental organizations and policymakers.

One core Perry message is that U.S. foreign policies do not reflect the existing danger of nuclear threats -- the reason is that this risk isn’t widely recognized across society. And young people need to understand this dynamic that creates a distorted, too complacent view of a very real nuclear weapons problem throughout the world.

Perry, with the help of both his daughter, Robin Perry, his son, David Perry, granddaughter, Lisa Perry, and grandson Patrick Allen, established the William J. Perry Project, which informs the public about the role of nuclear weapons in today's world, while urging the elimination of these weapons.

It’s a family on a mission, and the Perrys believe the only way to avoid nuclear war is by directly contemplating the scenario in a personal, direct sense through learning and education.

"We're really just out there trying to reach a generation that isn't engaged on this issue right now," said Lisa Perry in an article on the Perry Project web site. She is the digital media manager for the project. "It's something we learned in history class. There was no conversation about what's happening now."

As her grandfather explained, "The dangers will never go away as long as we have nuclear weapons. But we should take every action to lower the dangers, and I think it can be done."

Early entrepreneurship days

Perry was born in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, in 1927, the year that Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo flight across the Atlantic.

As a child, Perry fell in love with math. Math for him represented analytical discipline and the beauty of overcoming challenge. By solving math problems, one can master not only numerical problems, but other seemingly all-too difficult challenges. The key, as Perry discovered, was breaking down the larger problem into smaller parts. This evolved complexity into simplicity, which is more easily understood. Perry went on to cultivate this problem-solving mindset the rest of his life.

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After his military service, Perry received his B.S. (1949) and M.A. (1950) degrees from Stanford, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Pennsylvania State University in 1957. He chose a career in defense electronics, and became one of the Silicon Valley’s early entrepreneurs, founding a company that pioneered digital technologies to analyze the Soviet nuclear missile arsenal. And so, he was often asked to counsel the federal government on national security.

In October 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, Perry received an urgent request from the U.S. government to help analyze U-2 photos of the Soviet installation of nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba. Perry later recollected that he thought the world could end during that crisis, and that those days might well be his last.

From 1977 to 1981 during the Carter administration, Perry served as the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, where he oversaw weapon systems and research. After leaving the Pentagon in 1981 to work in the private sector, Perry became a Stanford engineering professor and a co-director of the Preventive Defense Project at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

He was the co-director of CISAC from 1988 to 1993. Today, he is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor emeritus at Stanford, with a joint appointment at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the School of Engineering. He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton tapped Perry to become the 19th U.S. Secretary of Defense. However, it was not so easy for the White House to recruit him.

Perry treasured his privacy so much that he originally turned down the job of defense secretary. Only when Clinton and Al Gore assured him that his family’s privacy could be maintained, he finally accepted the offer. With the Cold War having ended a fear years earlier, he found it would become a historic time to serve as America’s defense secretary.

Years later he recalled standing with his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts as their teams destroyed missile silos in the former Soviet Union. By the end of the 1980s, Perry thought the world had survived the horrific prospect of nuclear annihilation – and that it was behind everyone, left in the ashes of the Cold War.

Not so fast. Welcome to 2017.

Beyond doomsday

Today, Perry believes, the world is arguably more dangerous than ever before. His view is supported by The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which announced in January 2017 that the Doomsday clock now stands at two-and-a-half minutes to midnight, suggesting that existential threats now pose a greater danger to humanity than they have at any time since the height of the Cold War.

In fact, in 2016, Perry warned that the Doomsday clock should stand at five minutes to midnight for nuclear war – but only one minute to midnight for the threat of nuclear terrorism. He said during that press conference that the clock now issued a “more dangerous, more ominous forecast than two thirds of the years during the Cold War.”

As a result, Perry’s profile has risen higher than ever as the world confronts increasingly unsettling nuclear threats like a war between the U.S. and North Korea, reckless nuclear rhetoric by state leaders, and the possibility that terrorists may use nukes.

On North Korea in particular, Perry has urged a return to deterrence on the part of the United States:

“The threat to use nuclear weapons has always been tied to deterrence or extended deterrence; historical U.S. policy is that the use of nuclear weapons would only be in response to the first use of nuclear weapons against the United States or an ally covered by our extended deterrence,” he said in a statement.

With North Korea, Perry notes that the U.S. should not make empty threats, because empty threats weaken America’s credibility and reduce the ability to actually take strong action. “As Theodore Roosevelt said, ‘Speak softly but carry a big stick,’” he said.

During the early Cold War, he said, when the Soviets used “shrill” language, U.S. presidents like Eisenhower merely responded in tempered, moderate tones. “Just as in those tense times, today’s crisis also calls for measured language,” Perry said.

On top of this, Perry said the U.S. and Russians seem to be “sleepwalking into this new nuclear arms race,” and that while a new Cold War and arms race may look different than the prior one in U.S.-Soviet history, they are both dangerous and “totally unnecessary.”

Whether on the North Korean peninsula or elsewhere, a miscalculation could be catastrophic, Perry warns. That’s one reason he joined other former "Cold Warriors" like George Schulz, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn to write an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in 2007. They argued that the goal of U.S. nuclear policy should be not merely the reduction and control of atomic arms, but the ultimate elimination of all nuclear weapons everywhere.

What type of world does Perry dream about in his brightest visions? One without nuclear weapons. He believes collective humanity must “delegitimize” nuclear war as an acceptable risk of modern civilization. A safer world, one that requires great purpose, persistence, and patience to make a reality, is possible, if people understand the threats and take action to reduce them, Perry has said.

“This global threat requires unified global action,” Perry wrote in July 2017 in support of a new United Nations treaty banning the use of nuclear weapons.

Education and knowledge – that’s how Perry believes humanity can safely evolve past its nuclear phase.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Colin Kahl, a top national security expert and veteran White House advisor, has been named to a new senior fellowship at Stanford.

Starting in January 2018, Kahl will be the inaugural Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow, an endowed faculty chair at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He will be affiliated with the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). 

Kahl most recently was an associate professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. From 2014 to 2017, he was deputy assistant to the U.S. president and national security advisor to the vice president. In that position, he served as a senior advisor to President Obama and Vice President Biden on all matters related to U.S. foreign policy and national security affairs, and represented the Office of the Vice President as a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee. 

Michael McFaul, director of FSI, said, “Professor Colin Kahl is a terrific hire for FSI and Stanford University as a whole. Very few scholars in the United States have both deep scholarly interests and credentials as well as experience and expertise in policymaking. Colin is that rare professor who truly bridges the gap between theory and policy. We are very lucky to have him at Stanford. "

Amy Zegart, co-director at CISAC, said, “Colin Kahl is a tremendous addition to CISAC in every way – a distinguished scholar and educator who has served in senior policy positions at one of the most challenging junctures in U.S. foreign policy. His wide-ranging work spans nuclear risk reduction, U.S. grand strategy, and Middle Eastern politics, and promises to enhance and enrich nearly everything we do at CISAC.”

Kahl said his Stanford plans include conducting research on a range of contemporary international security challenges, including writing a book examining American grand strategy in the Middle East after 9/11. He is also doing research on the implications of emerging technologies for strategic stability and nuclear rivalry. 

For Kahl, joining Stanford is both an intellectual opportunity and a homecoming of sorts.

“Stanford is one of the top universities in world,” Kahl wrote in an email, “with a diverse faculty in the social sciences and natural sciences working at the cutting edge of international affairs and national security. I can think of no better intellectual community to be part of. I also grew up in the Bay Area, so this is a great opportunity to come home.”

National, global security

Many of the issues dominating national security conversations over the past few decades continue to matter today, Kahl said.

“These include nuclear proliferation, threats from international terrorist organizations and other transnational actors, and the competition between the United States and rising global and regional powers,” he said.

Kahl noted that in a “globalized, hyper-connected world,” other critical issues are becoming increasingly important. This includes climate change and environmental sustainability, and the social, economic, and security implications of the digital revolution. It is time to for a scholarly examination of cyber, big data, robotics, A.I., autonomous systems, 3-D printing, and synthetic biology, for example.

“No university in the world is better positioned to help policy makers understand these challenges and craft creative solutions than Stanford,” he added.

From February 2009 to December 2011, Kahl was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East at the Pentagon. In this capacity, he served as the senior policy advisor to the U.S. defense secretary for Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, and six other countries in the Levant and Persian Gulf region.

In June 2011, Kahl was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. In 2007-2009 and 2012-2014, he was a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a nonpartisan Washington, DC-based think tank.

Publications, research

Kahl wrote the 2006 book, States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World, and has published articles in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, the Los Angeles Times, Middle East Policy, the New Republic, the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post, for example.

He has analyzed the causes and consequences of violent civil and ethnic conflict in developing countries, as well as U.S. intervention practices in those conflicts, with a particular focus on the Middle East.

From 2000 to 2007, Kahl was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. In 2005-2006, he served as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he worked on issues related to counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and responses to failed states.

Kahl received his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Michigan in 1993, and his doctorate in political science from Columbia University in 2000.

Donor background

The gift for the position was made by Christine and Steven F. Hazy in honor of their son, Steven C. Hazy, who was a CISAC honors student and is now a vice president at Aviation Capital Group, one of the largest commercial aircraft leasing firms in the world. A leader in the aviation industry, Steven F. is the founder of two Los Angeles-based air leasing companies.  In addition to many civic leadership roles in Los Angeles and Washington DC, Christine is a current Stanford trustee and former co-chair of The Stanford Challenge. 

It was CISAC core faculty member Scott D. Sagan's engaging and productive mentorship of their son that inspired the family to establish the new senior fellowship. Steven received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford in International Relations in 2004 and his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2011. Steven serves on the FSI Council.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

As the new deputy director for the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Harold Trinkunas will assume more day-to-day management duties of the center in addition to his research scholarship.

Trinkunas, who starts his new role Oct. 1, will provide additional oversight over CISAC’s core operations, from research and fellowships to administration and finance. He was previously CISAC’s associate director for research; he will continue to be a senior research scholar affiliated with the center.

In his new capacity, Trinkunas will work to ensure that CISAC remains on a sustainable footing as its faculty, scholars and fellows generate knowledge to build a safer world and educate the next generation of security experts. This will contribute to maintaining CISAC’s position as a global thought leader on meeting the most pressing challenges for international security and international cooperation.

CISAC’s associate director position for administration and finance will report to Trinkunas, who joined CISAC in September 2016. Previously, that position (under recruitment now) reported to CISAC’s co-directors.  

The new organizational structure brings CISAC into alignment with other centers at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. It will also allow co-directors Amy Zegart and Rod Ewing  to focus more time on CISAC’s external relationships – with CISAC supporters, policy makers and media. These are key audiences for the Center’s scholarly findings and education programs.

Zegart, CISAC co-director for the social sciences, said, "I couldn't be more delighted that Harold has agreed to become CISAC's deputy director. Creating this deputy director position will enable us to bring together longer-range strategic planning and day-to-day operations -- and Harold is ideally suited to the task, with deep experience in university administration at the Naval Postgraduate School, Brookings, and Stanford as well as an active and exciting scholarly research agenda."

Ewing, CISAC co-director for the sciences, said, “Harold’s expanded role in CISAC will allow for a better coordination of administrative and budgetary decisions on a day-to-day basis.  I certainly look forward to working with Harold as we continue to expand the impact of CISAC scholarship on policy issues.”

Management, research

Trinkunas joined CISAC last year from the Brookings Institution, where he was the Charles W. Robinson Chair and senior fellow as well as director of the Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy program.

“This is a great opportunity to work in collaborative ways with exceptional scholars around some very important international security challenges facing today’s world,” Trinkunas said then.

Born and raised in Venezuela, Trinkunas earned his doctorate in political science from Stanford in 1999; he was also a predoctoral fellow and later a visiting professor at CISAC.  His first exposure to CISAC took place when he served as a teaching assistant to Scott Sagan in 1992.

Through the years, CISAC has evolved and adjusted its focus to reflect the global security realities, Trinkunas said. Research at CISAC spans biosecurity and global health, terrorism, cybersecurity, governance, and nuclear risk and cooperation, among others.

Trinkunas said he enjoys the mentoring aspect of working with emerging scholars in the CISAC fellowship program, which he oversees.

Security, governance

Trinkunas’ most recent book, Aspirational Power: Brazil's Long Road to Global Influence, co-authored with David Mares of UC San Digo, was published last year by the Brookings Institution Press.  Aspirational Power was chosen as one of Foreign Affair’s “best books of 2016.”

Trinkunas studies the intersection of security and governance. In his research, he has examined civil-military relations, ungoverned spaces, terrorist financing, emerging power dynamics, and global governance.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Harold Trinkunas, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-8035, antanas@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) is proud to announce our three incoming fellows who will be joining us in the 2017-2018 academic year to develop their research, engage with faculty and tap into our diverse scholarly community. 

The pre- and postdoctoral program will provide fellows the time to focus on research and data analysis as they work to finalize and publish their dissertation research, while connecting with resident faculty and research staff at CDDRL. 

Fellows will present their research during our weekly research seminar series and an array of scholarly events and conferences.

Topics of the incoming cohort include policing and sectarian conflict in Iraq and Israel, global health and safety regulations and taxation in Southeast Asia.

Learn more in the Q&A below.

Hometown: Dunwoody, GA

Academic Institution: University of California San Diego

Discipline & Graduation Date:  Political Science, June 2017

Research Interests: Middle East Politics, sectarian conflict, policing and domestic security, comparative institutions

Dissertation Title: From the Bottom-Up: Policing and Sectarian Conflict in Divided Societies

What attracted you to the CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellowship program? I was drawn to the post-doctoral program at CDDRL by the broad range of experts at FSI and across the entire Stanford community. My research interests touch on a wide range of substantive and methodological issues, and I'm very excited to work with experts on a similarly broad range of areas. I was also attracted to CDDRL's focus on bridging the gap between academic scholarship and real-world policy applications.

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? My primary goal is to make progress in converting my dissertation, which is about policing and sectarian conflict in Iraq and Israel, into a publishable academic book. To this end, I intend to spend time honing my theoretical argument about the incentives and constraints generated by sectarian inclusiveness in the police and testing this argument using new and existing data. I also intend to continue progress on ongoing research on policing under low state legitimacy in the Philippines, and to lay the groundwork for follow-up research on the Iraqi police. 

Fun fact: During college, I rode a bicycle from Providence, RI to Seattle, WA

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Rebecca Louise Perlman

Hometown: Newton, MA

Academic Institution: Stanford University 

Discipline & Expected Graduation Date:  Political Science, 2018

Research interests: Regulation, Trade, International institutions

Dissertation Title: For Safety or Profit? The Determinants of Global Health and Safety Regulations

What attracted you to the CDDRL Pre-doctoral Fellowship program? CDDRL brings together an amazing group of scholars, with a diverse set of research interests. I was eager for the opportunity to work with and learn from these individuals, through workshops and day-to-day interactions. 

What do you hope to accomplish during your nine-month residency at the CDDRL? I'm looking forward to completing my dissertation and hopefully embarking on some collaborative projects with other CDDRL fellows and/or faculty.

Fun fact: I have a cat named Khaleesi.

A new biosecurity initiative at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) aims to identify and mitigate biological risks, both natural and man-made, and safeguard the future of the life sciences and associated technologies.

The initiative will be led by David A. Relman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and FSI. Relman, the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in the Departments of Medicine, and Microbiology & Immunology, has served as the science co-director at CISAC for the past four years. He will leave this position on Aug. 31 to lead the new initiative.

Michael McFaul, director and senior fellow at FSI, said, “With exceptional leadership skills, valuable experience and abundant energy, David Relman is ideally positioned to work with scholars from across campus who offer critical expertise in biosecurity. This is an exciting, challenging and important new initiative for FSI that is designed to protect public health from the many new risks now accelerating.”

Relman said the biosecurity initiative will seek to advance the beneficial applications of the life sciences while reducing the risks of misuse by promoting research, education and policy outreach in biological security. His CISAC leadership gives him the know-how to lead such a wide-ranging effort across diverse disciplines and communities.

Relman said, “The opportunity to serve as co-director at CISAC has been a wonderful experience, one that has afforded me the chance to get to know outstanding faculty and staff, their scholarship, and critical policy-relevant work, all of which I had not fully appreciated sitting across campus. This experience has made clear the unusual qualities of Stanford University, and the great people that work here. I am now greatly looking forward to this new opportunity at FSI.”

Biosecurity collaborations

During Relman’s term as CISAC’s science co-director from 2013-2017, he led an expansion of the transdisciplinary work in science and security to include biology, biological and other areas of engineering, medicine, and earth and environmental sciences.

The foundations for work in biological science, technology and security were established at CISAC, especially in the hiring of Megan Palmer, a senior research scholar at CISAC and FSI. Both Relman and Palmer worked together on engagements and discussions with a growing network of more than 20 faculty involved in biosecurity across Stanford.

Palmer said, “Stanford has an opportunity and imperative to advance security strategies for biological science and technology in a global age. Our faculty bring together expertise in areas including technology, policy, and ethics, and are deeply engaged in shaping future of biotechnology policy and practices.”

New insights, new risks

In his new post, Relman said he intends to build on this foundation by creating an initiative that consolidates and focuses activity in biosecurity, develops research and educational programs, attracts new resources, and looks outward at opportunities for policy impact and changing practices across the globe.

Relman said that “new capabilities and insights are reshaping important aspects of the life sciences and associated technologies, and are accompanied by a host of new risks.” If misused, whether by malice or accident, “they pose the potential for large-scale harm,” he noted.

Relman added that the initiative will bring together interest and expertise across the centers and programs of FSI in partnership with Schools and Departments across the university.

At FSI, CISAC will co-sponsor the biological security initiative, which will leverage Stanford expertise in the life sciences, engineering, law and policy.  Key partners will include Tim Stearns (biology), Drew Endy (bioengineering), Mildred Cho (bioethics), and Hank Greely (law), according to Relman. The biosecurity group will also partner with another new program at FSI in global health and conflict, which is led by Paul Wise, Frank Fukuyama, Steve Stedman, Steve Krasner, and others, he added.

Stanford’s School of Medicine and Department of Medicine will also co-sponsor the initiative, thanks to leadership from Lloyd Minor, Michele Barry and Robert Harrington. Relman looks forward to establishing similar relationships with other schools and departments, he said.

 “These partnerships are critical. I’m excited to work with a growing community both within and beyond Stanford towards the goal of a peaceful and prosperous world in the century of biology,” he said.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

David Relman, Center for International Security and Cooperation: relman@stanford.edu

Megan Palmer, Center for International Security and Cooperation:  mjpalmer@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Rod Ewing will serve as co-director of the sciences for Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Ewing, a mineralogist and materials scientist, is the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at CISAC and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He begins his new position on Sept. 1, following David Relman, the previous co-director for the sciences. Amy Zegart is the CISAC co-director for the social sciences.

Ewing, whose research is focused on the properties of nuclear materials, leads the Reset Nuclear Waste Policy program at CISAC. He describes the center as a unique organization that “explicitly acknowledges” the role of science and the social sciences in formulating policy. 

“CISAC is a rare opportunity for political and social scientists, historians and scientists and engineers to work together on solving pressing problems. The fact that we have two co-directors reflects a serious intent to integrate knowledge from the widest range of perspectives in order to find policy solutions to important problems,” he said.

Scholarship, research

Ewing is the author or co-author of more than 750 research publications and the editor or co-editor of 18 monographs, proceedings volumes or special issues of journals. He has published widely in mineralogy, geochemistry, materials science, nuclear materials, physics and chemistry in more than 100 different journals. Ewing was granted a patent for the development of a highly durable material for the immobilization of excess weapons plutonium. He is also a founding editor of the magazine, Elements. In 2015, he won the Roebling Medal, the highest award of the Mineralogical Society of America for scientific eminence.

“My work on nuclear waste started out with a focus on technical issues, but over several decades, I realized that technical solutions were not enough.  I now focus on trying to understand why institutions – universities, national laboratories and federal agencies – fail to arrive at the technical solutions. I have been surprised to learn how little science has been applied to the nuclear waste problem – and how social issues have dominated the outcome,” Ewing said.

Expertise, policy

In particular, Ewing seeks to understand why so little information from experts rise through an organization and change accepted ‘truths.’

“I first saw this when I was a soldier in Vietnam and continue to see the same problem in many other areas, that a disconnect exists between the on-the-ground reality and policy,” said Ewing who served in the U.S. Army as an interpreter of Vietnamese attached to the 25th Infantry Division from 1969 to 1970.

“At the very highest levels, policies seem to be based on a hunch or a bias rather than an analysis of the problem. I have always wondered why this is so common – as it often leads a country or organization down a wrong and often dangerous path,” he added.

Born in Abilene, Texas, Ewing attended Texas Christian University (B.S., 1968, summa cum laude) and graduate school at Stanford University (M.S., 1972; Ph.D., 1974). He began his academic career as an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico (1974) rising to the rank of Regents’ Professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences in 1993.

From 1997 to 2013, Ewing was a professor at the University of Michigan, and in 2014, he joined Stanford.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Rod Ewing, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-8641, rewing1@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

When it comes to cybersecurity, Stanford is the hot spot, especially if you work in national security.

On Aug. 18, officials from the U.S. military, National Security Agency, U.S. Cyber Command, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from countries known as the “Five Eyes,” attended cybersecurity discussions on campus. Most attendees were chief information officers. John Zangardi, the principal deputy chief information officer for the U.S. Department of Defense, led the group.

The "Five Eyes" refers to an alliance comprising the U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. These countries abide by an agreement for joint cooperation in signals intelligence, military intelligence, and human intelligence.

The event was held at the Hoover Institution, a co-sponsor along with Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, a center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Relations. Participants took part in two roundtables – the first one, “Geopolitical Perspectives,” provided a strategic overview of international security with Stanford’s William J. Perry (CISAC and the Hoover Institution), Michael McFaul (FSI and the Hoover Institution), Toomas Henrik Ilves (Hoover Institution), and Francis Fukuyama (the Hoover Institution and FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law).

The second discussion, the “Cyber Information Warfare Panel,” focused on cyber challenges with Amy Zegart (CISAC and the Hoover Institution), Herb Lin (CISAC and the Hoover Institution), John Villasenor (CISAC and the Hoover Institution), and Jay Healey (CISAC).