Stanford senior Sarah Kunis said she and other CISAC honors students were introducing themselves to some senior White House advisors when President Barack Obama walked in the room.

“I couldn’t stop my jaw from dropping,” said Kunis. It was honor enough to have an hourlong  sit-down with National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Senior Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett, and Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco.

The CISAC Honors Students spend their senior year working on theses that focus on critical international security issues. They were eager to get the chance to talk to the three powerful Washington advisors.

The students had just been in the audience to hear Obama address a large Stanford and Silicon Valley gathering at the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection on Feb. 13. They were then taken to a conference room in the same auditorium where Obama spoke.

“I was surprised to see Susan Rice’s nameplate, so I thought she was who the invitation referred to, but there was an empty chair with no nameplate, between her and Jarrett,” recalled Patrick Cirenza, another CISAC honors student and a research assistant for retired U.S. Gen. Jim Mattis, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Then Obama walked in the room. The students were stunned – and nervous.

“I remember how sweaty my palms were,” said Cirenza. “I already had a visceral reaction seeing him at the podium so you can only imagine being in the same room with him. His presence fills the room.”

Taylor Grossman, another CISAC honors student whose thesis looks at the incentives and payoffs of warning the public about terrorist threats, said the conversation started off with Obama asking them whether they might consider careers that would protect the digital domain.

 

“But then we branched out and talked about a lot of different things,” she said. “The situation in Syria, public warning systems, education, the civil-military divide. It was really a whole range of issues.”

Before being joined by Jarrett and Rice, the students spoke with Cheri Caddy, director for cybersecurity outreach and integration in the National Security Council, for about an hour.

 

“We asked her pretty frank questions about cybersecurity, North Korea … defensive and offensive capabilities, and getting students interested in the field,” said Grossman. “She was quite candid and provided her own opinions.”

Grossman is a research assistant for CISAC Co-Director Amy Zegart, who is also a senior fellow at Hoover and garnered a shout-out from the president during his keynote address, thanking her for helping to convene the summit.

Jarrett talked to the students about sexual assault on campus. It was the second time the honors students had met the Stanford alumna; they first met her during their two-week Honors College in Washington, D.C. before the start of their senior year.

Obama initially directed the conversation, focusing on cybersecurity. He then opened it up for questions on any topic.

Cirenza told the president his honors thesis evaluates the analogy between earlier nuclear deterrence and the development of cyber deterrence today.

“I told him I thought we are in the 1950s nuclear stage now with regards to cyber-deterrence,” he said. The president disagreed.

“He said, ‘That’s interesting, but I don’t think it’s the case, since there are gradations with cyber wars whereas nuclear warfare is more black and white.’”

Grossman asked the president about the role of the National Terrorism Advisory System, which replaced the color-coded Homeland Security system, and whether he envisioned a scenario in which the government would have to use it.

“He and Lisa Monaco focused on specific warning systems, which was interesting to me,” she said.

The topic turned to Syria when the president noticed that Kunis had brought along a copy of U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power’s book, “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.”

“I asked why we are not intervening in Syria and why we are not fulfilling our Right to Protect (R2P) obligation,” said Kunis. “President Obama said that the situation there was heartbreaking and that everyone looked at the problem to figure out what we should do to stop the suffering, while evaluating our interests. We cannot intervene without having a plan for the future – and we can’t overthrow governments.”

Cirenza said Obama noted that there are routine calls to intervene in Syria, but few to intervene in other nations, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, where more than 5.4 million people have died from conflict-related causes since a civil war erupted in the central African nation in 1998.

President Obama also shared his view that he doesn't believe the United States would have been locked into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as long as it has if there were a mandatory national draft in place. He asked students what they thought of instituting such a draft.

Almost none thought it a good idea.

Overall, the students said, it was the most incredible day of their Stanford careers“It’s going to be hard to look forward to much else,” said Cirenza, who now has adjustments to make to his honors thesis. “Pretty much downhill from here. Thanks, Obama.” 

 

 

Joshua Alvarez is a 2012 Stanford graduate and was a CISAC honors student.

 

Herb Lin has a long agenda crafted from big ideas.

As CISAC’s inaugural senior research scholar for cyber policy and security, Lin intends to make Stanford the premier hub for academic research and public policy in an effort to protect the world’s computer networks against cyber attacks.

“When I was recruited, Stanford told me to think big. So I’m thinking big,” says Lin, who comes to Stanford from the National Research Council of the National Academies in Washington, D.C., where he was chief scientist at the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board.

“Part of my job is also to find a way to build cyber connections to other parts of the campus – law, medicine, the business school, engineering – so there are a variety of interesting possibilities that I’d like to tackle.”

Even before taking up his new role at Stanford last month, Lin worked with CISAC co-director Amy Zegart to convene a three-day boot camp that brought together Silicon Valley heavyweights and congressional staffers working on critical cyber legislation.

Lin wants to launch a policy journal devoted to research about cybersecurity. He hopes to construct the university’s first undergraduate courses about the foreign policy and economic implications of cybersecurity, as well as the risk analysis of cyberspace. He will represent Stanford's efforts in public commentaries, such as the one he wrote for The Wall Street Journal about how companies can ward off hackers.

And Lin was instrumental in facilitating the Feb. 12-13 White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford University. President Barack Obama addressed the summit, the first time a sitting U.S. president conducted business on the Stanford campus in 40 years.

“Obviously the president has a great bully pulpit here, and is highlighting the importance of cybersecurity on the national policy agenda,” said Lin. “We are particularly delighted that he’s come to Stanford – which is recognition of our role in advancing the cybersecurity interests of the nation.”

Lin, who took up his new role at CISAC in January and is also a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, plans to reach across campus to help the university establish a cohesive strategy for the intersection of cyber policy and international security.

 

 

“Cyber touches many facets of life,” said Lin, who has a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. “Some of us are interested in the implications of cyber for international security and foreign relations. Others focus on how protect the nation’s critical infrastructure. Still others are trying to develop tools that can be used to make better decisions about consumer protections. I’d like to bring all of that under one coherent theme.”

Lin also helped organize the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology workshop at Stanford on Feb. 12. The roundtable, which was in coordination with the White House summit, brought together chief technology and security executives to discuss the challenges of implementing consumer protection technologies in real-world conditions.

Lin moderated a panel at that workshop about academic research that has applications for consumer protections against cyber threats. Michael Daniel, special assistant to the president and cybersecurity coordinator at the White House, gave the keynote at the workshop.

Cybersecurity has become a priority for the Obama administration. The White House in October launched the BuySecure initiative, which includes reforms such as securing payment systems and preventing identity theft. Obama also spoke about cybersecurity in his State of the Union address on Jan. 20.

“No foreign nation, no hacker, should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets or invade the privacy of American families, especially our kids,’ Obama said.

Track II Diplomacy

Just as CISAC scholars have for decades been involved in Track II diplomacy in foreign policy, nuclear arms control, and counterinsurgency, Lin would like to see Stanford build on that by facilitating dialogue with other nations about ways to protect and defend their digital networks against cyber attacks and breaches.

“CISAC, as you know, has a long tradition of having nuclear dialogue with China and Russia, even during the coldest periods of the Cold War,” said Lin. “I’d like there to be a Track II diplomacy effort for cyber based here at Stanford, which many Chinese regard as the world’s No. 1 university.  That’s a very attractive platform from which a cyber dialog can be started and sustained.”

Finally, Lin intends to work with academics and scientists at Columbia University and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to establish a boot camp for scholars of international relations and political science who want to work on cyber issues.

Last August, Lin worked with Zegart – who is also a senior fellow and associate director for academic affairs at Hoover – to bring in two dozen senior congressional staffers for a rigorous boot camp that paired them with military, academic and technology experts working at the highest levels of cybersecurity.

The three-day camp drew such names at Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and Facebook’s Chief Information Officer Joe Sullivan. Many of the congressional staffers said it was the first time they’d had the chance to closely interact with the very tech executives for whom they are working on protections and legislation.

Stanford announced in November it had launched the Stanford Cyber Initiative with the support of a Hewlett Foundation grant of $15 million. The initiative will take an interdisciplinary approach to address the challenges raised by cyber technologies.

Michael McFaul, director of CISAC’s parent organization, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, said Stanford is poised to lead in the cyber arena.

“We have a tradition and an ability to do things in an interdisciplinary way,” said McFaul, a professor of political science and a senior fellow at Hoover.

“I think we’re uniquely qualified and uniquely placed to tackle all those here at Stanford, especially because we sit at the heart of Silicon Valley,” said McFaul, who was the U.S. ambassador to Russia for President Obama before returning to Stanford last year. “I expect to see Stanford become the leading institution in the world for addressing cybersecurity issues.”

Readers can learn more about Stanford University’s push into cybersecurity here.

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.