*For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

*For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

About the Event: In January 2017 and again during his presidential campaign, then-Vice President Biden said that “I believe that the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring—and, if necessary, retaliating against—a nuclear attack.” The Biden Administration is now undertaking its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), in which it is possible that the United States would, for the first time, formally adopt such a “sole purpose” or perhaps even “no first use” policy for its nuclear weapons. Yet some former government officials, as well as press accounts, have publicly reported that the possibility of a biological weapons attack that might cause casualties comparable to a nuclear attack blocked the adoption of a no-first-use or a sole-purpose policy in previous administrations’ NPRs. Should it do so again? I will present a technical and policy analysis of this question, with the aspiration of helping to bring systematic attention to this issue in the ongoing Nuclear Posture Review.

About the Speaker: Christopher Chyba is a professor of astrophysical sciences and international affairs at Princeton University, and past director of the Program on Science and Global Security. As an associate professor of geological sciences at Stanford University before coming to Princeton, he co-directed the Center for International Security and Cooperation and held the Sagan Chair at the SETI Institute. He has been a Marshall Scholar and a MacArthur Fellow.

During President Clinton’s first term, Chyba served on the staffs of the National Security Council and Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, entering as a White House Fellow. He served for a decade as a member of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on International Security and Arms Control, and on President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) from April 2009 through January 2017, on which he co-chaired the working groups on antibiotic resistance and on biodefense. In late 2020 to early 2021, Chyba served on the national security and foreign policy team for the Biden-Harris transition. His current policy-relevant research focuses on possible pathways to nuclear weapons use (for the past two years, he has co-chaired a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on this topic), nonproliferation and strategic arms control issues, and biodefense -- including as a member of the OPCAST pandemic response group. 

Chyba's scientific research ranges across planetary science and exobiology, as well as work in classical electrodynamics. His published work has included dynamical modeling of the Neptune-Triton system, the role of impacts on the origin of life on Earth, the Tunguska atmospheric explosion and planetary defense, radar, seismic, and magnetometer sounding of Europa's ice shell, bioenergetic models for possible ecosystems on Europa, electromagnetic heating of planetary satellites, and planetary protection. 

For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

(Stanford faculty, visiting scholars, staff, fellows, and students only)

Seminar Recording

About the Event: We consider how the U.S. news media reports on international affairs. Analyzing ≈40 million news articles published between 2010 and 2020, we explore whether the American news media report differently on various international affairs topics based on partisan leanings. We then analyze ≈25 million articles published by top online news sites to determine whether collective reporting shows disparities between the level of attention afforded major global issues and objective measures of their human costs (e.g. numbers of individuals killed). We find that left- and right-leaning news outlets tend to report on international affairs at similar rates but differ significantly in their likelihood of referencing particular issues. We find further strong evidence that the frequency of reporting on the international issues we study tracks only modestly with their associated human costs. Given evidence U.S. public and policymakers dependence on news reports for foreign affairs information, our findings raise fundamental questions about the influence of these reporting biases.

Draft Paper

About the Speakers: Andrew Shaver is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Merced. He is a CISAC affiliate and a former postdoctoral research fellow within Stanford’s political science department. He is the founding director of the Political Violence Lab and focuses broadly on contemporary sub-state conflict. His research appears in outlets including the American Political Science Review, American Economic Review, Annual Review of Sociology, and Journal of Politics. Dr. Shaver has served in different foreign affairs/national security positions within the U.S. Government. He completed his PhD in Public Affairs at Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs.

Amarpreet Kaur is a recent graduate of University of California, Merced with a bachelor in Public Health and a minor in Political science. Kaur has been working the lab for a year under the guidance of Professor Shaver. Kaur has aspirations to go on and get a PhD in Health Policy.

Robert Kraemer is a graduate student of data science at the University of Denver. Prior to this, Kraemer earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has been working in the Political Violence Lab with Professor Shaver for over a year, developing his research and analytic skills.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

About the Event: How do rising powers like China manage to build power in international systems dominated by one or more established great powers? International relations theory provides some answers, but most assume emulation of successful approaches. This paper leverages the established business literature on how new companies gain market share in markets dominated by established companies to develop a new theory of power accumulation. I argue that only under very narrow circumstances can rising powers build power and influence through emulation. Instead, China has built enough power over the past 25 years to be considered a great power competitor by doing things differently. Specifically, it exploits US blind spots, maneuvers in areas of strategic uncertainty and engages in entrepreneurial actions. I demonstrate that Chinese military strategy exhibits these components in its responses to key pillars of US foreign policy strategy like global power projection, foreign military intervention, and in conventional and nuclear posture decisions. The findings have significant implications for great power competition as well as for power transition theory.

About the Speaker: Oriana Skylar Mastro is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University where her research focuses on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination, and coercive diplomacy. She is also Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an inaugural Wilson Center China Fellow. She continues to serve in the United States Air Force Reserve for which she works as a strategic planner at INDOPACOM. For her contributions to U.S. strategy in Asia, she won the Individual Reservist of the Year Award in 2016. She has published widely, including in Foreign Affairs, International Security, International Studies Review, Journal of Strategic Studies, The Washington Quarterly, The National Interest, Survival, and Asian Security. Her book, The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime, (Cornell University Press, 2019) won the 2020 American Political Science Association International Security Section Best Book by an Untenured Faculty Member. She holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University. Her publications and other commentary can be found on twitter @osmastro and www.orianaskylarmastro.com.

For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

(Stanford faculty, visiting scholars, staff, fellows, and students only)

Seminar Recording

About the Event: There is never a good time for a pandemic but Covid-19 may have hit at the worst possible moment. In the decade before the virus, China had grown more dictatorial and assertive; populist nationalists held power in the United States, India, and Brazil; geopolitical tensions heightened—not just between China and the United States but also within the west; and the very notion of an objective truth was increasingly called into question. In Aftershocks, Colin Kahl and Tom Wright draw on interviews with officials from around the world to document how the world responded, or failed to respond, to a global crisis in an age of rivalry and nationalism. They shed new light on China’s lack of cooperation with the international community, how the Trump administration failed to rally an international coalition to deal with the pandemic, how Covid-19 brought the EU close to collapse, the role of central banks in averting a financial crisis, and the impact on the developing world. They also provide a pathway for how the world can prepare for the next pandemic. 

Purchase Book

About the Speaker: Thomas Wright is the Director for the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow at the Strobe Talbott Center for Strategy, Security, and Technology at the Brookings Institution. He is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a non-resident senior fellow at the Lowy Institute. His latest book, co-authored with Colin Kahl, is Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order (St Martin’s Press, 2021). He is also the author of All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21^st Century and the Future of American Power (Yale University Press 2017).

For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

Seminar Recording                                                                                           

About the Event: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was founded in 1988 to provide scientific background for the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since then, it has released six major assessment reports. The Sixth Assessment, released in August 2021, prompted the UN Secretary-General to call it a “code red for humanity.”

As one of 234 Lead Authors of the IPCC Sixth Assessment’s physical science report, I will present some of its main conclusions. We’ll dive below the level of headline statements to examine some major scientific innovations since the last IPCC report in 2013. I’ll talk about my personal experience of the 3-year assessment process, including the most intensive peer review in the history of science; here I will also talk about the significance and the future of peer review in general. Finally, I’ll showcase some tools this new report provides for policy analysis at the regional scale, and discuss its implications for international and global security.

About the Speaker: Paul N. Edwards is William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Director of the Program on Science, Technology & Society at Stanford University. and Professor of Information and History (Emeritus) at the University of Michigan. Edwards is the author of A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010), The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (MIT Press, 1996) and co-editor of Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (MIT Press, 2001), as well as other books and numerous articles. He edits the MIT Press book series, Infrastructures, and co-directs the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative. Edwards served as one of 234 lead authors for the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Working Group I), released in August 2021.