In the 25th anniversary edition of The Journal of Democracy, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond reflects on the current democratic recession and why this trend is so troubling.

Diamond, who serves as the founding co-editor of The Journal of Democracy, argues that the world is in a mild but protracted democratic recession, which raises alarm due to the rate of democratic failures and where they are occurring. In surveying global empirical trends, Diamond cites 25 breakdowns of democracy since 2000 that were not the cause of military coups but rather the slow erosion of democratic rights and procedures.

Another worrisome trend for Diamond is the declining freedom in a number of countries and regions since 2005. This is most notable in Africa where corruption and the abuse of power are leading to the decline of the rule of law and political rights across the region. It is also affecting countries of global strategic importance with large populations and economic influence– from Taiwan to Mexico – and leading to the resurgence of authoritarianism in Russia and China. Diamond also looks to the U.S. where the dysfunction and breakdown of American democracy sets a bad precedent for the rest of the world. 

Diamond concludes on an optimistic note, stressing that strong public support for democracy may reverse many of these troubling trends and help sustain longer-term democratic progress.

From left to right: Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Hertie School of Governance (Berlin); Marc Plattner, National Endowment for Democracy; Larry Diamond, Stanford University; Steven Levitsky, Harvard University; and Lucan Way, University of Toronto.

Stanford will welcome President Barack Obama to the campus Friday, Feb. 13, where he will address the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection.  The president will join top-level government officials, corporate CEOs and Stanford faculty members who will gather to discuss pressing issues at the all-day summit organized by the White House.

President Obama is expected to deliver the keynote remarks at the event, which will be held in Memorial Auditorium and in the Cemex Auditorium at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The invitation-only event will not be open to the public, but Stanford students can register for a lottery to obtain tickets.  Stanford faculty, students and staff members currently researching cyber-related issues have been invited to take part in panels and conversations.

The summit will be Webcast live in its entirety here for those unable to attend in person, and more details will be posted at WhiteHouse.gov/CyberSummit.

The event will mark the first time that a sitting U.S. President has made public remarks at Stanford since 1975, when then President Gerald Ford dedicated the Crown Quadrangle at the Stanford Law School. President Herbert Hoover addressed students at Stanford in 1932, and President Theodore Roosevelt spoke at Stanford in 1903.  President Bill Clinton was a visitor to campus during his presidency, but in his private capacity as a Stanford parent to daughter Chelsea Clinton.

The campus community can expect further information about parking and transportation changes as a result of the president's visit as event details are finalized.

President Obama announced the full-day White House cyber summit during a Jan. 13 speech and said "It's going to bring everybody together – industry, tech companies, law enforcement, consumer and privacy advocates, law professors who are specialists in the field, as well as students – to make sure that we work through these issues in a public, transparent fashion."

From increasing cybersecurity information sharing to improving adoption of more secure payment technologies, topics listed by the White House that the summit will address:

• Public-Private Collaboration on Cybersecurity;

• Improving Cybersecurity Practices at Consumer-Oriented Businesses and Organizations;

• Promoting More Secure Payment Technologies;

• Cybersecurity Information Sharing;

• International Law Enforcement Cooperation on Cybersecurity;

• Improving Authentication: Moving Beyond the Password.

The White House summit is also the next step in the President's BuySecure Initiative, which was launched in November 2014, and will help advance national efforts the government has led over the last two years with executive orders on consumer financial protection and critical cybersecurity infrastructure.

Stanford announced a major Cyber Initiative in November that will apply broad campus expertise to the diverse challenges cyber-technologies pose for virtually every facet of our personal, governmental and economic lives. Funded with a $15 million grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Stanford Cyber Initiative draws upon Stanford's experience with multi-disciplinary, university-wide initiatives to focus research on the core themes of trustworthiness, governance and the unexpected impacts of technological change.

While the agenda for the White House summit has not yet been finalized, among the Stanford faculty members and researchers invited to participate are Amy Zegart, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; Stanford Law Professor George Triantis, who chairs the Cyber Initiative; John Mitchell, vice provost for teaching and learning and professor of computer science; and Herb Lin, senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at CISAC and a Hoover research fellow. Stanford President John Hennessy is slated to open the summit and will have the honor of introducing President Obama.

Stanford is preparing for a significant media attendance for the event, and coverage is expected by major television networks and more than 200 journalists from around the world. 

Students interested in registering for the student ticket lottery can consult the Stanford Ticket Office website for further information Monday.  Registration will close Tuesday at 11:59 p.m.

We will be updating this social media story about the summit:

Sarah Mendelson, senior adviser and director of the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) spoke about how human rights scholars and practitioners can push back on closing space around civil society for the Stanford Program on Human Rights’ Winter Speaker Series U.S Human Rights NGOs and International Human Rights on January 21, 2015.

Mendelson, having previously worked as an activist, academic, and government official, addressed the Stanford audience from multiple perspectives about the relationship between U.S governmental agencies and domestic and international NGOs. She emphasized the lack of alignment in the research emerging from academics and policymakers, stressing the need to close the gap between universities and government. Mendelson proposes that public opinion survey instruments be deployed to test the efficacy of NGO work in the field, and that universities, governments and NGOs collaborate in developing these instruments.

There was a great deal of overlap in the issues that Mendelson addressed and those addressed by Douglas Rutzen on January 7, 2015. Both described the alarming movement of governments to close space around civil society, stating that the trend has now extended far beyond Russia to become a global phenomenon. Mendelson probed the audience with challenging reflections on the potential negative consequences of the Silicon Valley open agenda approach towards data transparency, demonstrating how governments view the increased connectivity as a threat to their sovereignty. Therefore, there is a link between the need for transparent, accountable governments on one hand, and closing of civic space on the other, a paradox that is activating dangerous tensions between governments and their citizenry.

Helen Stacy, director of the Program on Human Rights, followed Mendelson’s talk with questions on the legitimacy of NGOs; the extent to which NGOs are held accountable for their work; and the moral soundness of public opinion. Mendelson responded and concluded with the ultimate need for more powerful data to provide legitimacy for NGOs and for policy to be driven by evidence. Questions from the audience included how ethics tie into international development work, the proper toolset for doing due diligence on an NGO as a potential place of work, and the connection between innovation and humanitarianism.

Dana Phelps, Program Associate, Program on Human Rights

The United States has thrust itself and the world into the era of cyber warfare, Kim Zetter, an award-winning cybersecurity journalist for WIRED magazine, told a Stanford audience. Zetter discussed her book “Countdown to Zero Day,” which details the discovery and unraveling of Stuxnet, the world’s first cyber weapon. 

Stuxnet was the name given to a highly complex digital malware that targeted, and physically damaged, Iran’s clandestine nuclear program from 2007 until its cover was blown in 2010 by computer security researchers. The malware targeted the computer systems controlling physical infrastructure such as centrifuges and gas valves.

Reports following its discovery attributed the creation and deployment of Stuxnet to the United States and Israel. The New York Times quoted anonymous U.S. officials claiming responsibility for Stuxnet. 

Zetter began reporting on the cyber weapon in 2010.

“When the first news came out, I didn’t think much of it,” Zetter told a CISAC seminar on Monday. The title of her book refers to a “zero-day attack," which exploits a previously unknown vulnerability in a computer application or operating system.

“Watching the Symantec researchers unravel Stuxnet, I knew what fascinated me was the process and brilliance of the researchers. The detective story is what pulled me in.” 

Zetter’s book follows computer security researchers from around the world as they discover and disassemble Stuxnet over the course of months, much longer than any time spent on typical malware. The realization that Stuxnet was the world’s first cyber weapon sent shock waves throughout the tech community, yet did not create as much of a stir in mainstream society. 

“It’s funny because a lot of people still don’t know Stuxnet or haven’t even heard of it,” Zetter said. “The recent vandalization of Sony seems to have finally gotten people’s attention. It was not a case of true cyber warefare, but I'm glad that my book came out right before it happened because its perception as a nation-state attack has led to interest in all nation-state attacks, including Stuxnet. The Snowden leaks also put cyber warfare on the map.” 

“Countdown to Zero” also places Stuxnet in political context. The first version of Stuxnet was built and unleashed by the Bush administration in 2007, according to Zetter. Iran accelerated its enrichment process in 2008, leading to fears it would have enough uranium to build a bomb by 2010. President Barack Obama inherited the program; he not only continued it,but accelerated it. Another, more aggressive version of Stuxnet was unleashed in June 2009 and again in 2010. Obama gave the order to unleash Stuxnet while publicly demanding Iran to open itself up to negotiations. 

The effectiveness of the world’s first cyber weapon remains a subject of debate. The most optimistic assessment of Stuxnet is that it delayed and slowed Iran’s uranium development enough to dissuade Israel from unilaterally striking the country, and it afforded time for intelligence and diplomatic efforts. Stuxnet contributed to dissension and frustration among the upper ranks of Iran’s government (the head of Iran’s nuclear program was replaced) and bought time for harsh economic sanctions to impact the Iranian public.

“Stuxnet actually had very little effect on Iran’s nuclear program,” said Zetter. “It was premature, it could have had a much bigger effect had the attackers waited.” Iran still made a net gain in their uranium stockpile while being attacked and they are updating their centrifuges, which would make Stuxnet obsolete.

The more unsettling parts of Zetter’s book catalog security vulnerabilities in America’s public infrastructure, which could easily be victim to a Stuxnet-style attack, and consider the implications of the era Stuxnet heralded. For example, in 2001 hackers attacked California ISO, a nonprofit corporation that manages the transmission system for moving electricity throughout most of California. More recently, Zetter writes, in 2011 a security research team “penetrated the remote-access system for a Southern California water plant and was able to take control of equipment the facility used for adding chemicals to drinking water.”

The Obama administration has publicly announced that shoring up infrastructure security is a top priority. Zetter finds this ironic, because unleashing Stuxnet has opened the U.S. up to attacks using the same malware.

“When you launch a cyber weapon, you don’t just send the weapon to your enemies, you send the intellectual property that created it and the ability to launch the weapon back against you,” writes Zetter. “Marcus Ranum, one of the early innovators of the computer firewall, called Stuxnet ‘a stone thrown by people who live in a glass house.’”

More broadly, Stuxnet heralded an era of cyber warfare that could prove to be more destructive than the nuclear era. For Zetter there is also irony to the use of cyber weapons to combat nuclear weapons. She quotes Kennette Benedict, the executive director of the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,” pointing out, “that the first acknowledged military use of cyber warfare is ostensibly to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. A new age of mass destruction will begin in an effort to close a chapter from the first age of mass destruction.” 

Zetter has similar fears.

“The U.S. lost the moral high ground from where it could tell other countries to not use digital weapons to resolve disputes,” Zetter said. “No one has been killed by a cyber attack, but I think it’s only a matter of time.”

Joshua Alvarez was a 2012 CISAC Honors Student. 

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When we consider national security, we typically think of protecting our borders, securing data and preventing disease and conflict. Winning wars.

The U.S. military is increasingly thinking about the final frontier as the last stand for strategic defense.

“Space is no longer the sanctuary it was 30 years ago; it is becoming increasingly congested, contested and competitive,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, commander of the 14th Air Force and the Joint Functional Component Command for Space, within the U.S. Strategic Command.

“Our ultimate goal is to promote the safe and responsible use of space while we execute our mission of supporting the war-fighter through delivering space capabilities,” said Raymond, who recently invited a dozen scholars from CISAC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies to Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Raymond visited CISAC last year to open a dialogue on policy and strategy among Stanford scholars and the U.S. Strategic Command, one of nine unified commands in the Department of Defense. Raymond’s mandate includes space surveillance and control.

CISAC has had a long partnership with USSTRATCOM headquarters in Omaha, Neb., with fellows visiting officers there each year. Raymond is now looking to Stanford for a policy partnership with his commanders at the Air Force base on the California coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“To continue to be the best in this business we have to constantly assess our current policies and operations while always keeping an eye toward future challenges,” Raymond said. “This is where a relationship with CISAC is invaluable. I saw this as a phenomenal opportunity to provide the fellows insight into the real-world challenges we are facing in the space domain – and to help support, stimulate and develop their academic pursuits.”

CISAC Co-Directors Amy Zegart and David Relman are taking the general up on the proposal. Zegart led the delegation that toured the Joint Space Operations Center and then held senior-level policy and strategy talks with two dozen officers and NASA officials.

The off-the-record talks were lively and frank. The sessions focused on foreign counter-space threats, space policy efforts with China and Russia, the growing problem of space debris and the policy debate over the use of cube satellites.

“We naturally think about national security challenges on land, under water, in the air, and even in cyberspace,” said Zegart, who is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. “But space is playing an increasingly vital role in international security, whether it's the 23,000 pieces of debris the U.S. tracks every day that could hit vital satellites, or deliberate moves by some nations to develop counter-space capabilities. In many ways, space really is the final frontier in the international security landscape.”

Space Debris

The Joint Space Operations Center currently tracks 23,000 objects in orbit; only 1,400 of which are active payloads. Another estimated 500,000 pieces of orbital debris are too small to track. Events such as the Chinese anti-satellite missile test in 2007 and the Iridium-Cosmos collision in 2009 produced thousands of pieces of debris at already congested altitudes.

 

European Space Agency

 

“Debris in space, particularly at lower orbits, travels upwards of 17,000 mph and presents a significant danger to space assets,” Raymond said. “Last year alone, satellites operators around the world executed 121 collision-avoidance maneuvers to avoid hitting debris.”

The participants also discussed the fine balance of militarily protecting space systems against disruption, while allowing the open use of space in a globally connected economy.

U.S. Strategic Commander Admiral Cecil B. Haney spent a day at CISAC and Hoover last year and touched on the importance of space in the nation's 21st century deterrence program. He recently told a House Armed Services subcommittee that China space capabilities are now threatening U.S. strategic satellite systems. He noted Beijing conducted a test of a missile-fire, anti-satellite kill vehicle as recently as last summer.

As more countries develop space capabilities, the problem will grow, the admiral said, according to a Department of Defense news release on Feb. 6.

North Korea has been busy upgrading launch facilities, Haney said, and Iran just successfully launched a satellite into orbit after a string of failures.

Countries also are working to take away America’s strategic advantage in space, Haney said, with China and Russia warranting the most attention.

“Both countries have advanced directed-energy capabilities that could be used to track or blind satellites, disrupting key operations, and both have demonstrated the ability to perform complex maneuvers in space,” he said. Multiple countries already are frequently using military jamming capabilities designed to interfere with satellite communications and global positioning systems.

Rod Ewing, a senior FSI fellow and Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at CISAC, said after the meeting at Vandenberg that it was important to keep dialogue open with other nations about joint space operations and agreements.

“Of particular interest to me was the intersection of space command issues with those of the space programs of other countries,” Ewing said, “particularly the effort to keep track of space debris.”

U.S. Strategic Command currently has more than 50 Space Situational Awareness data-sharing agreements with partner nations, intergovernmental organizations and commercial entities worldwide. The most recent one was signed with the European Space Agency to provide the ESA with more timely and better data about satellite positions and radio-frequency details for planned orbit maneuvers.

Stephen Krasner, a senior fellow at FSI and a professor of international relations, is working on a paper about governance in space for the European Space Policy Institute and traveled with the Stanford group. He said few Americans realize how much the United States contributes to making the benefits of space available to all.

“The work of the space operations center and U.S. Strategic Command – in particular its tracking of all objects in space above 10cm and its commitment to notify all states of potential collisions – is one more example of the exceptional capacity of the American military and the contributions that the United States makes to providing global public goods.”

CubeSats: The democratization of space and proliferation of debris

Another space conundrum is the rapid growth of 3-pound satellites called CubeSats. Cal Poly and Stanford University developed specifications for the cube-shaped satellites to help graduate students perform space experiments and exploration.

There currently are some 160 CubeSats in space; another 2,000 to 2,750 are expected to launch by 2020. They are built to remain in orbit for more than 25 year, before falling back to Earth. Since 2005, the nanosatellites have been involved in more than 360,000 close approaches of less than 5 kilometers with other orbiting objects, according to a study by the University of Southampton.

“Last year alone over 100 cubesats were launched into orbit,” Raymond said. “This trend is stressing our ability to have domain awareness.”

 

 

Climate Satellite Launch

Raymond had invited the Stanford group to observe the launch of a NASA satellite that is collecting data to provide the most accurate high-resolution maps of soil moisture ever obtained. The three-year Soil Moisture Active Passive mission will map soil moisture around the world.

Though the launch was scrubbed the day the Stanford group visited, due to high winds, it went off two days later and the climate satellite is currently in orbit.

NASA is running a smart Twitter campaign @NASASMAP, which follows the work of the first Earth-observing satellite designed to collect data on saturated ground for climate scientists, weather forecasters, agricultural and water resource managers, disease and prevention experts, as well as emergency planners and policymakers.

“High-resolution, space-based measurements of soil moisture will give scientists a new capability to observe and predict natural hazards of extreme weather, climate change, floods and droughts, and will help reduce uncertainties in our understanding of Earth’s water, energy and carbon cycles,” Raymond said.

Matthew Daniels was a predoctoral fellow at CISAC last year and is now an engineer at NASA’s Ames Research Center who studies new mission concept for Earth-orbit satellites. He contributed greatly to the closed-door talks.

“I think it’s really important for engineers outside the U.S. government to talk to military and national security leaders about space projects," said Daniels, who helped create NASA-DARPA partnerships on new space projects.

“National security space projects are facing some big decisions in the years ahead,” Daniels said, such as whether to keep building the large, consolidated satellites or move some capabilities toward smaller distributed systems.

“These are decisions that involve a combination of physics, engineering, military choices and national policy," he said. “So I think it’s really important for groups like CISAC to come and have conversations with the military leadership."

Stanford political science professor Scott Sagan, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has been honored with a prestigious award from the National Academy of Sciences for his pioneering work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation.

“Sagan's work has become an integral part of the nuclear debate in the United States and overseas,” the NAS said in a statement. “He has shown, for example, that a government's decision to pursue nuclear weapons can be prompted not only by national security concerns but also because of domestic political interests, parochial bureaucratic infighting, or concerns about international prestige.”

The William and Katherine Estes Award recognizes research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances the understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war. Sagan and other NAS award winners will be honored in a ceremony on April 26 during the academy’s 152nd annual meeting.

The academy noted that Sagan has developed theories about why different types of political regimes behave differently once they acquire “the bomb.”

“Sagan and his colleagues have also investigated U.S. public attitudes about nuclear weapons and found that few Americans actually believe that there is a taboo against their use in conflicts,” the NAS said. “The possession of nuclear weapons also raises the risk of nuclear weapons accidents, and Sagan has shown that even though there has never been an accidental nuclear war, there have been many more close-calls and near-accidents than was previously known.”

Sagan and co-authors Daryl G. Press and Benjamin A. Valentino, examined the taboos, traditions and non-use of nuclear weapons in this article in the American Political Science Review. He continues to work on an original survey experiment that examines the public attitudes about the “unthinkable” use of the nuclear bomb.

Siegfried Hecker – one of the world’s leading experts on plutonium science and a senior fellow at FSI – said that he has learned greatly from Sagan over the years as colleagues and former co-directors of CISAC. The two represent the center’s foundational spirit of combing the social and hard sciences to build a safer world.  

“The beauty of Scott’s work is that he has combined rigorous political science thinking with a practical knowledge of the limits of humans and organizations to deal with the complexities and dangers of nuclear weapons,” Hecker said. “Scott’s work has convinced me that there is real science in the political science of nuclear weapons. It is appropriate that this honor comes from the National Academy of Sciences.”

Sagan said he is honored to follow in the footsteps of previous recipients of the William and Katherine Estes Award, calling them “some of my intellectual heroes.”

Among those who have won the award are Thomas C. Schelling, Alexander L. George, Robert Jervis, Robert Powell and Graham Allison.

Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, called Sagan's honor a "well-deserved recognition of a scholar who has illuminated the intersection of organizational behavior and nuclear danger."

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science and provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.