David Hafemeister is a physics professor at California Polytechnic State University, but this academic year he's at Stanford University studying ways to keep the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty viable for the U.S. Senate to consider ratifying. Jonathan Farley, a professor in the mathematics and computer science deparment at the University of the West Indies, is here this year as well, conducting a mathematical analysis of counterterrorism operations. They are among seven science fellows now visiting the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford.

With fellowships in the sciences and social sciences, CISAC, directed by political science Professor Scott Sagan, brings top scholars to campus to find solutions to complex international problems.

This year's fellows "are a select and exciting set of scholars doing innovative work on important issues of international security--which now includes homeland security," said Lynn Eden, CISAC's associate director for research. "All of us at CISAC are very much looking forward to having our new crew on board."

The other CISAC science fellows are:

• Manas Baveja and Yifan Liu, both doctoral candidates at the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford, who use mathematical models to study homeland security;
• Chaim Braun of Altos Management Partners, who is working on a United Nations nuclear energy project;
• Belkis Cabrera-Palmer, a physics doctoral candidate from Syracuse University, who is studying nuclear energy issues in Latin America; and
• Sonja Schmid, a lecturer in Stanford's Science, Technology and Society Program, who is working on a book aimed at understanding the decisions that produced and sustained the civilian nuclear energy program in the Soviet Union from the 1950s through the 1980s.

Charles Perrow, professor emeritus of sociology from Yale University, is among seven pre- and postdoctoral fellows in social science disciplines who are also visiting CISAC. Perrow is working on a project to reduce homeland security vulnerabilities. CISAC's other postdoctoral social science fellows are:

• Tarak Barkawi, a lecturer at the Centre for International Studies at the University of Cambridge in England, who is examining why small wars have big consequences, and
• Alex Montgomery, a doctoral candidate in political science at Stanford, whose project deals with U.S. post-Cold War nuclear counterproliferation strategies.

CISAC's predoctoral fellows in social science are:

• Dara Cohen, a doctoral candidate in political science at Stanford, who will examine the efficacy of post-9/11 domestic security legislation;
• Matthew Rojansky, a law student at Stanford, whose project explores the legitimacy of international institutions and legal instruments in the war on terror;
• Jacob Shapiro, a doctoral candidate in political science at Stanford, whose project looks at the organizational consequences of terrorist motivation; and
• Jessica Stanton, a doctoral candidate in political science at Columbia University, who is examining compliance with international laws of war during civil war.

CISAC also is hosting Robert Carlin of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, a visiting scholar whose project addresses U.S.-North Korea relations, and Laura Donohue, who is writing a book, Counterterrorism and the Death of Liberalism, while completing a law degree at Stanford Law School. Patrick Roberts, who comes to Stanford from the University of Virginia, where he earned a doctorate in politics, will examine bureaucratic autonomy and homeland security reorganization.

Despite a late start, Pakistan's information technology entrepreneurs and the government are hoping to make it big in the global marketplace for outsourcing of IT-enabled services. How have other countries succeeded and where does Pakistan stand?

Naween A. Mangi spoke from New York to Ron Hira, professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and Rafiq Dossani, senior research scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.

Software exports, call centres and medical transcription firms have become all the rage over the last three years. Young entrepreneurs are returning after years spent working at major tech firms in the US to start up their own ventures and the government is forecasting that IT will be the next big thing in Pakistan's economy.

So far, the numbers tell a less-than-compelling story. In 2004, although the software and IT enabled services business was worth $300 million, (including hardware the figure is $600 million), exports and outsourcing made up for just $33 million of that. By comparison, India logged $12.8 billion in software and services exports in 2004.

Still, the Pakistan Software Export Board, a federal body set up to promote outsourcing, forecasts that the business will grow by at least 45 per cent annually for the next five years. A lot of that growth will come from call centres and business process outsourcing which last year made up one-fourth of total exports. In the next ten years, the PSEB aims to be at the top of the class of tier two global IT companies.

But as experts and practitioners agree, Pakistan will need more than ambitious aims to meet that goal. Prof Ron Hira, whose new book Outsourcing America assesses the impact on the US job market, says the outsourcing industry is set for rapid growth in the next few years and if done right, developing countries like Pakistan could benefit from the boom.

Hira is an expert who has testified before the US Congress on the implications of outsourcing. "Pakistan isn't on the map yet," he says. "India dominates what most people think about [when it comes to outsourcing]."

Rafiq Dossani, an expert on outsourcing and a senior research scholar at Stanford University says there are several reasons for that. First, is the poor quality of infrastructure.

"When the Internet tanked recently, that created a really bad perception that the country has not thought through even the most rudimentary aspects," Dossani says. "Deregulation in this area is too limited." He says that while voice services have benefited from the deregulation, data services are still uncompetitive.

He says there are too many stumbling blocks since bandwidth is more expensive than in other countries. "The costs are outrageous at four or five times what they should be," he says.

Dossani identifies the thin segment of English speakers as a second hurdle in the way of a flourishing outsourcing industry in Pakistan. "Of the 30 per cent of the population that lives in urban Pakistan, one tenth speak English that's good enough to work at a call centre," he says. "And of those five million or so, only about one million are available to come into this field as the rest are working elsewhere."

Then, he says poor marketing also holds the industry back. "You just don't see the trade body [in Pakistan] working like India's Nasscom to project a positive image," he says. "The Pakistani diaspora has done well and there is a great need to better use that network."

He forecasts that the outsourcing business in Pakistan can be at least $1 billion in size but says this is only possible if alliances are formed with countries like India and China.

"The Philippines has done well by understanding that it cannot reach critical mass on its own and therefore forming alliances and pitching themselves as a second location to offset country risk," he says. Dossani also says Pakistan has the advantage of a highly skilled group of entrepreneurs which "is the reason why the tiny industry does exist."

Hira adds that since Pakistan entered into the industry late, playing catch up is an inevitable need. However, the sector can take advantage of the circumstances in other countries. "India has done a lot of things right," he says. "They have been successful at not just attracting foreign investment but also building their own companies and leveraging the large Indian diaspora," Hira says.

"India is also so talked about that people are comfortable doing business there. But since wages are rising, Pakistan can use that as an entry point." He says that while countries like India have accumulated critical mass and scale, others are distinguishing themselves in different ways.

Eastern European wages are slightly higher than Pakistan and companies in that region have specialized in near-shoring by targeting the European market. Russia, meantime, is aiming at the U.S. market in both services and manufacturing while the Philippines and Malaysia are targeting services.

"The question really is how you separate yourself from the pack," Hira says. "You can compete on price to a certain extent but you have to offer something more to distinguish yourself."

He says U.S. companies are now moving from pilot stage outsourcing to full deployment which indicates both the success of the pilot projects and the rapid growth that is likely to come in the outsourcing market for the next few years. "There will continue to be a backlash from U.S. workers, but by and large there has not been any real policy movement to restrict outsourcing so there is still a large opportunity," he says.

Hira admits that the extent to which a growing outsourcing industry ties into the broader economy in terms of job creation remains unclear but he says, other advantages emerge. "In India, for example, it remains unclear that they've been able to link the benefits [from outsourcing] back in, but the big benefit is that they have created world class management which can then move into other sectors."

Therefore, Hira recommends that Pakistan take a long-term vision not for the next three or five years but for the next two decades. "Right now you can try to pick up the low hanging fruit and absorb the excess demand but don't just think about attracting the individual company to come [to Pakistan]," he says. "Think about how this will fit into the larger set of skills for your country so that you can differentiate yourself much later down the road."

The attacks of September 11, 2001, and the U.S. invasion that followed have thrown Afghanistan from the periphery to the center of international affairs. Prior to these events, Americans knew very little about Afghanistan and its history, culture, and politics. This lack of knowledge highlights the need to inform the U.S. public about Afghanistan, as it appears that the Central Asian country will be central to U.S. foreign policy and international affairs for many years to come.

SIIS's Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), which serves as a bridge between the Institute and schools across the nation, is working to address this need by developing a curriculum unit on democracy-building in Afghanistan for advanced high school and community college students. SPICE's Eric Kramon, a master's student in international and comparative education, who received his BA from Stanford in 2004 in political science and history, is developing the curriculum unit with support from faculty and staff from Stanford's Center for Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies. Using a documentary film and a variety of engaging activities, the curriculum unit will provide students with an understanding of contemporary Afghan politics, the process of creating a new constitution for Afghanistan, and the complexities of democracy-building.

The curriculum is being developed around a documentary originally aired on PBS's Wide Angle entitled Afghanistan: Hell of a Nation, directed and produced by Tamara Gould. CDDRL fellow J. Alexander Thier served as the project advisor for the documentary, which follows Afghanistan's recent constitution-making process. The collaboration between SPICE and the filmmakers will enhance the pedagogical power of the curriculum and will facilitate more widespread understanding of contemporary Afghan political issues. According to Gould, Our goal in making Hell of a Nation was to bring the political drama unfolding in Afghanistan to life. Working with SPICE will allow us to reach the classroom with our film in ways that are far more effective than a national broadcast. Through SPICE, teachers will be able to use this curriculum to teach thousands of students more about Afghanistan, its new constitution, and the process of creating a democracy. This partnership between the filmmakers and SPICE is a win-win for us, and for teachers and students across the country.

For over five years the war in Chechnya has occupied a central and neuralgic place in Vladimir Putin's political agenda. In unleashing a renewed military campaign in September 1999-abrogating the cease-fire agreement that had terminated the earlier 1994-1996 war launched by then president Boris Yeltsin-President Putin sought to win American and Western acquiescence in, if not support for, Russia's military campaign by framing the conflict as a war on international terrorism.

However, far from extinguishing the conflict, or confining it within the territory of Chechnya, these policies have contributed to the spread of violence and instability far beyond the borders of the Chechen republic. Instead of pursuing strategies that would address the larger socioeconomic crisis of the predominantly Muslim regions of the Northern Caucasus, marginalize extremists, and win broad support from the population of the region, the brutality of Russian military forces and their local allies in the war in Chechnya and the repressive actions of the security services in neighboring republics have fanned the flames of hostility to Moscow and created conditions for the spread of radical Islamist ideologies and the recruitment of new adherents across the Northern Caucasus.

President Putin has treated the problems facing Russia as a product of state "weakness" and has called for strengthening Russia's unity and state power in response. Ostensibly in order to better combat terrorism, he has introduced a series of measures aimed at strengthening Russia's political unity and executive power at the expense of political pluralism, freedom of information, and civil society development. But by weakening or undermining Russia's fragile and weakly developed system of institutional checks and balances on central power, and reducing the transparency and accountability of official behavior, these policies may well be exacerbating rather than mitigating the challenges facing Russia today.

What began as a secular conflict over the political status of Chechnya has progressively been transformed into a wider struggle involving more radical fighters from other Muslim republics with an avowedly Islamist agenda that now threatens to destabilize the broader region of the Northern Caucasus. The past few years have also seen a rising tide of terrorist actions directed against local authorities and security services in other republics of the Northern Caucasus as well as against the Russian government and population more broadly, including terrorist acts aimed at targets in the city of Moscow itself.

From the dramatic seizure of some 800 hostages in a Moscow theater in October

2002, in which 129 hostages died from the effects of a lethal gas used by Russian security services in a bungled rescue operation, to the September 2004 horrific siege of an elementary school in Beslan, Southern Ossetia, in which over 300 civilians died-over half of them children-these episodes have not only challenged the official assertions that the war could be confined to Chechnya alone but have dramatized the inability of the Russian government to adequately protect the security of its population.

The inept and chaotic handling of many of these terrorist attacks has brought into stark relief the poor performance of the security services, the incompetence of local officials, serious intelligence failures, and above all widespread official corruption. In the Beslan episode, to take just one example, the siege was carried out by some thirty-two terrorists, of several different nationalities, who were apparently able to bribe their way across a series of checkpoints to enter the republic and to utilize weapons and explosives stored on the site beforehand. The local authorities and the federal security services proved incapable of coordinating their actions to control the situation, and the Moscow-appointed president of the republic proved completely inept. Indeed, the most courageous and effective actor was Ruslan Aushev, the former president of Ingushetia, a figure removed from power by Moscow for resisting pressure for more coercive policies.

The Putin government has used these events to justify a series of measures which

are ostensibly intended to more effectively combat terrorism but which appear to

have little relation to the real terrorist threat. First, it has refused to seek a political solution to the conflict in Chechnya and has deliberately sought to undermine possible negotiations or international mediation and to delegitimize potential negotiating partners by demonizing a broad array of Chechen political figures within the country and abroad as "terrorists."

Conflating Chechen resistance with international terrorism, President Putin has explicitly refused to distinguish between more moderate figures and extremists and has exaggerated their ties to international terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda.

Domestically, the Russian government has used security concerns to justify ever greater restrictions on freedom of information, on civil rights, and on the role of nongovernmental organizations, particularly those engaged in the defense of human rights. The military and the organs of law enforcement have been given an ever freer hand, rarely if ever held accountable for their abusive behavior and atrocities against civilians.

Refugee camps in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia were closed and the international non-governmental organizations providing medical care and humanitarian assistance to refugees there were compelled to depart. The mass media have largely lost their independence and editors and journalists have been dismissed or attacked for expressing critical views.

A whole series of measures aimed at further centralization of political power and the strengthening of the executive branch have eroded the already fragile elements of federalism and separation of powers in the Russian political system. The autonomy and political influence of regions and republics has been sharply reduced. Parliament, now dominated by a single pro-presidential party, no longer acts as an independent check on executive power, and liberal political parties and their leaders have been marginalized. Most recently, the popular election of regional governors was abolished in favor of their appointment by Moscow, and a discussion is now under way of bringing even local government under tighter central control by eliminating the election of mayors as well.

Moreover, a high proportion of President Putin's appointees to key positions in

the regions are drawn from the military and security services, selected for their presumed loyalty to the president but often lacking political skills or understanding of local conditions. But the substitution of appointed for elected officials does not necessarily guarantee either loyalty or competence.

In the absence of a competitive party system in which political parties help create a web of ties between the central government and local populations, Putin's centralizing measures could well widen the chasm between state and society.

This growing emphasis on centralization, unity, repression, and secrecy is arguably exacerbating rather than mitigating the problems and making state power even more dysfunctional. In Chechnya and in the broader Caucasus region the brutality as well as the corruption of Russian military and security forces and their local allies-and their extensive reliance on torture, mass roundups, indiscriminate executions, disappearances of civilians, and simple extortion-has embittered many toward Moscow and made it increasingly difficult to win "hearts and minds" and build popular support. Indeed, the lack of transparency, and the difficulty of holding Russian officials accountable for abusive behavior, has led unprecedented numbers of Russian citizens frustrated by the unresponsiveness of their own government to seek redress at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Lacking a positive agenda for ameliorating socioeconomic conditions in the Northern Caucasus, the expanding operations of security forces across the Northern Caucasus, the closure of mosques, and the wave of often indiscriminate arrests have served to drive Islam underground and facilitated the spread of extremist ideologies. Without a coherent and sustained program of economic development that would create employment, housing, and education and offer alternative opportunities to an impoverished and alienated population, particularly young males, and absent a serious effort to eliminate corruption, these trends are likely to worsen.

Russia under Putin is facing a somber future.

Ten years ago, on January 25, 1995, Russian early-warning radars detected a scientific rocket launched from Norway. Details of what followed have never been officially disclosed, but the detection apparently generated an alarm that made its way to the Russian political leadership. The nuclear forces' command-and-control system worked exactly as it was supposed to, stopping the alert without launching an attack, but the accident vividly demonstrated the dangers inherent in the launchon-warning posture of nuclear forces.

The Soviet Union and the United States are the only nuclear states to have implemented launch-on-warning, a combination of early-warning systems to detect a missile attack and command-and-control systems that can launch a retaliatory strike while the aggressor's missiles are in flight. The United States and Russia have preserved this capability as an option for using their strategic nuclear weapons.

The dangers of this rapid-response nuclear posture are widely recognized, but the United States and Russia have nevertheless failed to address this issue. Reducing the level of readiness, known as de-alerting, has not come to the forefront of the U.S.-Russian agenda. One of the reasons for this is their reluctance to enter into new arms control agreements, which are thought to be necessary for a coordinated action in this area. Careful examination of the arguments for de-alerting, though, suggests that there are a number of steps that the United States and Russia could and should take unilaterally.

Discussion of launch-on-warning dangers usually concentrates on the decline of Russian early-warning and command-and-control systems. As a result, most de-alerting measures proposed on the U.S. side are seen primarily as a way to create incentives for Russia to reciprocate. But this perspective overestimates Russia's reliance on the launch-on-warning posture and underestimates the dangers associated with that of the United States.

History shows that the Soviet strategic forces could never rely on radars and satellites to get a timely and accurate assessment of an incoming attack. As a result, the Soviet military never displayed high enough confidence in its early-warning system to make a launch decision based solely on the information provided by the early-warning system.

The United States, on the other hand, built a highly capable and sophisticated earlywarning system. It provides global coverage and very high probability of detection of a missile launch, which allows the United States to have a very high degree of confidence in the system. Paradoxically, this confidence potentially makes a catastrophic technical malfunction more dangerous than in the Russian case, since operators might be less likely to question the data provided by the system.

Although it is difficult to quantify the two systems' vulnerability to a possible technical malfunction, the less sophisticated Russian system does not necessarily pose a substantially greater risk of a catastrophic accident than its U.S. counterpart. This means that efforts to reduce the readiness level of the U.S. forces would bring benefits regardless of reciprocity.

Concerns about the deterioration of the Russian early-warning system are well founded. With the breakup of the Soviet Union most radars were left outside of the Russian territory, and many are not operational. The system's space-based tier is hardly better off. Russia is currently operating only three early-warning satellites, while a complete constellation would require ten satellites. Russia would need at least five satellites to provide minimum coverage of the U.S. territory.

Although the Russian system's decline is indeed serious, it does not necessarily increase the dangers associated with launch-on-warning. A loss of early-warning capability would pose a dire risk only if it were sudden and unexpected or discovered at the time of an attack. But this is not the case in Russia, where deterioration of the early-warning network has been gradual and well understood.

Since the early-warning system is an essential element of a launch-on-warning posture, it is understandable that a number of proposals that aim at reducing the risks of accidental launch suggest helping Russia to repair or upgrade its system. Instead of reducing the risk, however, upgrades would most likely increase risk by introducing new elements into the already complex system and increasing confidence in its performance.

Instead of trying to help Russia repair its early-warning system, efforts should be directed at helping Russia change the command-and-control procedures to accommodate the loss of early-warning capability. These changes would almost certainly result in a shift away from the launch-on-warning posture, reducing the risk of an accidental launch.

Trust And Do Not Verify

One reason de-alerting measures have not yet been implemented is that most of them are thought to require intrusive verification procedures. Indeed, measures like removal of nuclear warheads from missiles or limiting strategic submarine patrol areas, proposed by many, would be very difficult to implement in a transparent and verifiable manner.

Transparency, however, is not required to achieve the main goal of de-alerting-reduction of the risk associated with the launch-on-warning postures. The benefits of de-alerting do not depend on the ability to verify them. For example, submarines that are out of range of their targets cannot take part in a launch-on-warning strike regardless of whether the other side is able to verify their locations. Of course, without verification the opponent would have to assume that these submarines are in full readiness, but there is nothing wrong with that as long as we do not consider de-alerting a substitute for disarmament.

In fact, transparency makes de-alerting not only harder to implement but potentially dangerous. If measures that reduce the readiness level are visible and verifiable, an attempt to bring missiles back into operation could create instability in a crisis situation, when countries could find themselves in a rush to re-alert their forces. The dangers associated with this kind of instability could well outweigh any benefits of de-alerting.

Ideally, de-alerting measures should be designed in a way that would make them undetectable. That way, each side could reap the benefits-missiles not being available for launch-on-warning-while avoiding the instabilities associated with re-alerting.

Unilateral Solutions

The greatest challenge to de-alerting is not devising technical proposals but finding ways to convince the United States and Russia to implement them. This would be very difficult, for the United States and Russia have grown wary recently of negotiated agreements that would impose limits on their strategic forces. However, de-alerting seems ideally suited for unilateral non-binding declarations that might work now.

Russia and the United States could begin with a public commitment to de-alert a portion of their strategic arsenals. Of course, there will be plenty of questions about the value of a commitment that is neither enforceable nor verifiable. But this value would be quite real if both sides follow through and change their practices and procedures to exclude at least part of their forces from the launch-on-warning arrangements. The risk of a catastrophic accident will be reduced and these practices could then be extended to the whole force, further reducing the risk.

Making practical steps toward reducing the danger of accidental launch will not be easy. But de-alerting is one of those few arms control issues that still enjoy fairly strong political and public support. This support certainly creates an opportunity for action.

Coit D. Blacker, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, recently named Professor Michael McFaul as the new director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). McFaul, a reknowned specialist on the former Soviet Union, is currently associate professor of political science at Stanford as well as the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also an alumnus of Stanford University.

In appointing McFaul to lead CDDRL, Blacker expressed his confidence that the center will continue to establish itself as one of the leading research units in the United States devoted to exploring the interactions between the establishment of democracies, promoting development, and the rule of law. The center's previous director was Stephen D. Krasner, who took Ppublic service leave from Stanford in the winter of 2004 to serve as the director for policy planning at the U.S. Department of State.

Before joining the Stanford faculty in 1995, McFaul worked for two years as a senior associate for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in residence at the Moscow Carnegie Center. McFaul is also a research associate at the Center for International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) and a senior adviser to the National Democratic Institute. He serves on the board of directors of the Eurasia Foundation, Firebird Fund, International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy, Institute of Social and Political Studies, Center for Civil Society International, and Institute for Corporate Governance and Law; the steering committee for the Europe and Eurasia division of Human Rights Watch; and the editorial boards of Current History, Journal of Democracy, Demokratizatsiya, and Perspectives on European Politics and Society. He has served as a consultant for numerous companies and government agencies.

McFaul's current research interests include democratization in the post-communist world and Iran, U.S.-Russian relations, and American efforts at promoting democracy abroad. With Abbas Milani and Larry Diamond, he codirects the Hoover project on Iran.

McFaul is the author and editor of several monographs including one with Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (Cambridge University Press, 2004). With Nikolai Petrov and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Post-Communist Political Reform (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004); with James Goldgeier, Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (Brookings Institution Press, 2003); with Timothy Colton, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 (Brookings Institution Press, 2003); Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (Cornell University Press, 2001); Russia's 1996 Presidential Election: The End of Bi-Polar Politics, (Hoover Institution Press, 1997); with Tova Perlmutter, Privatization, Conversion and Enterprise Reform in Russia (Westview Press, 1995); Post-Communist Politics: Democratic Prospects in Russia and Eastern Europe (CSIS, 1993); and, with Sergei Markov, The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy: Political Parties, Programs and Profiles (Hoover Institution Press, 1993). His articles have appeared in Constitutional Political Economy, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, International Security, Journal of Democracy, Political Science Quarterly, Post-Soviet Affairs, and World Politics.

McFaul also comments on current Russian and U.S.-Russian affairs, including articles in the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Moscow Times, New Republic, New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, Washington Post, Washington Times, and the Weekly Standard, as well as television appearances on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, and PBS. During the 1995 parliamentary elections in Russia, he worked as senior consultant and commentator for CBS News. During the 1996 presidential election, 1999 parliamentary election, and 2000 presidential election in Russia, he served as a commentator and adviser for CNN. While in Moscow in 1994-95, he also coproduced and appeared in his own television program on democracy for the Russian Television Network (RTR).

McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his BA in international relations and Slavic languages and his MA in Slavic and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford where he completed his PhD in international relations in 1991.

Siegfried S. Hecker, a senior fellow and emeritus director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, will join CISAC as a visiting professor in 2005-2006. He will teach undergraduates and pursue research and policy advising on nuclear proliferation and the security of nuclear weapons stockpiles.

As the Los Alamos director, Hecker advised the U.S. Congress on nuclear security challenges created by the Soviet Union's dissolution. He worked with Russian counterparts to consolidate nuclear weapons from four former Soviet states and to implement new security measures agreed to under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program.

"Russia is the key link to fighting nuclear proliferation," Hecker said. He continues to advise Congress members and staff and to work closely with the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy on several cooperative threat reduction programs.

On his arrival this fall, Hecker will be one of two former national lab directors at CISAC. Emeritus Professor Michael M. May formerly directed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Science magazine announced Hecker's CISAC appointment in its Aug. 5 issue.