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Due to its extreme climate and low population density, the Russian Arctic region remains largely infrastructurally undeveloped. Many settlements in the Arctic area are not connected to the Unified Energy System of Russia (UES) and employ various carbon-intensive sources for local electricity generation. Currently, the Russian government has drafted a strategic development plan for the region, specifically utilizing the region's vast supply of oil and natural gas reserves for electricity generation. The Arctic ecosystem is fragile, and constructing new oil, gas, or diesel power stations may not be sustainable for the region. Additionally, the utilization of fossil fuels would exclude the current technological advancements in electricity systems. This paper offers an improved and more sustainable approach to developing electricity generation in remote localities. Given unique regional ecological and sustainability concerns, Territories of Advanced Social and Economic Development (TASED) should be created in the Arctic regions of Yamal and Murmansk in order to integrate wind electricity generation on a small scale in these regions' most remote population centers. Not only would this protect the region's ecosystem from the negative effects of new fossil fuel power stations, but it would also present new opportunities for equitable development of the region's economy.

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Ilya Karnaukhov
Lev Maksimov
Rowan Baker
Milad Y. Najafabadi
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This study focuses on the mitigation of methane emissions from large-scale oil and gas infrastructure. It is built on two complementary cases of the Russian Federation and United States, who are two of the largest oil and natural gas producers, possess the most extensive oil and natural gas pipeline networks, and both deal with the emerging problem of high-level methane emissions. The paper attempts to identify differences and similarities between the countries' approaches in mitigating methane emissions. Analyzing open data on methane emissions, legislation, corporate standards, and reports of state agencies, this research seeks to answer the question of whether there is space for cooperation and exchange of experiences and best practices between the two countries in methane leak detection and repair (LDAR). Our analysis shows a considerable lack in corresponding regulation in both countries and identifies a dramatic misalignment between international, national, and corporate actions. However, we see the opportunity to significantly reduce the existing gaps in regulation and technological adaptation through international cooperation and exchange of best practices. The paper supports corresponding policy and practical implications that rely on bilateral and multilateral initiatives and a cooperative approach between oil and gas companies and the government.

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Tom J. Cinq-Mars
Taisa Kropotova
Maria Morgunova
Amina Tallipova
Sher Yunusov
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In Tyumen, a Siberian city located some 1,000 miles east of Moscow, a radical experiment in Russian higher education is taking place. The School of Advanced Studies (SAS) is an institute that is attempting to bring multidisciplinary, liberal arts-influenced education to Russia. Founded in 2017, SAS operates as an autonomous institution within the state-funded University of Tyumen (UTMN). This article will analyze SAS's current educational model through data and interviews with faculty, administration, and students. It is divided into five parts. The first section offers background information. We explain how SAS was founded, its source of funding, and why liberal education is an outlier in Russia. The middle three sections take a deeper look at the institution from the perspectives of the administration, students, and faculty. We document their observations about the SAS experiment, highlighting their differing views on what they believe the institute's mission should be. These sections also analyze which elements of the SAS model are working so far and which ones need further development. The final section sums up our findings: how is SAS, a progressive, liberal experiment, able to exist in a traditional, generally inflexible Russian education system? So far, what are the institution's successes and failures? And finally, is SAS a fluke experiment, or is there potential to create similar institutions throughout Russia?

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Victoria Burnside Clapp
Alexandra Kozulina
Nikki Lohr
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Our increasingly internet-connected world has yielded exponential demand for cybersecurity. However, protecting cyber infrastructure is technically complex, constantly changing, and expensive. Small organizations or corporations with legacy systems may struggle to implement best practices. To increase cybersecurity for organizations in Russia, we propose fostering a culture of ethical hacking by supporting bug bounty programs. To date, bug bounties have not had the same level of success or investment in Russia as in the United States; yet, we argue that bug bounty programs, when properly established, institutionalize a culture of ethical hacking by establishing trust between talented hackers and host organizations. This paper will first define ethical hacking and bug bounty programs. It will explore the current bug bounty landscape in Russia and the United States. Based on issues identified, we will proceed to offer a set of best practices for establishing a successful bug bounty program. Finally, we will discuss some considerations for setting up bug bounty programs in Russia.

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Evgeniia Rudenko
Anastasia Gnatenko
Andrew Milich
Kathryn Hedgecock
Zhanna Malekos Smith
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White nationalism remains an often overlooked terror threat amongst the many national security risks facing the United States and Russian Federation. While typically grounded in domestic theaters, white nationalist groups have increased the frequency and scale of their armed activities by incorporating aspects of transnational cooperation that are tactics often used by larger terrorist networks. This trend has raised questions regarding the ways in which white nationalism represents a new type of international technology-enabled terror threat toward the United States and Russian Federation and how policy makers can best address this challenge. This research paper will explore how white nationalist groups in the United States and Russian Federation have sought cooperation with one another through wider ideological and strategic alignment. This paper will also explore the respective communication techniques of these groups, which have been enabled through the internet and new technologies. This paper will conclude with a reflection on potential avenues of cooperation between the United States and the Russian Federation, drawing on previous examples of collaboration among government officials and non-state actors in combating terrorism.

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Justin Tomczyk
Ilya Tolmachev
Lee DuWors
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As the Russian government seeks to improve its economic performance, it must pay greater attention to the role of technology and digitalization in stimulating the Russian economy. While digitalization presents many opportunities for the Russian economy, a few key challenges – cumbersome government regulations and an unequal playing field for foreign companies – restrict Russia's potential in digitalization. In the future, how the Russian government designs its technology and regulatory policies will likely have significant impact both on the domestic front, as well as on their international initiatives and relationships. This paper provides an overview of recent Russian digital initiatives, the regulatory barriers for U.S. technological companies in Russia, and the intellectual property challenges for doing business in Russia. This paper also discusses recent digital initiatives from China, the United States, and other countries, and discusses what such programs mean for Russia. In this context, we also discuss Chinese and U.S. efforts to shape the future of global technological standards, alongside new programs from countries like Chile and Estonia, to attract foreign startup companies. Finally, this paper discusses the future challenges that the Russian government needs to address in order to improve its digital business environment. The paper concludes by providing some recommendations for designing market-friendly regulations, creating a level-playing field for foreign businesses in Russia, promoting Russian engagement with Western companies and governments, and undertaking more outreach efforts to make Russia's digital business environment more inclusive.

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Dina Nasretdinova
Evgeniya Kazina
Matt Agnew
Phillipe Rodriguez
Ryan Nabil
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This paper aims to offer readers ways of understanding and mitigating the risks posed by the current venture capital (VC) environment in Russia, whilst introducing readers to a historically lucrative asset class in a country renowned for its intellectual capital. Amidst often biased and disparate analysis within contemporary literature, we have examined the current research on Russian VC and conducted expert interviews to present a well-rounded, yet distinct perspective on operating in the industry today. We demonstrate that after weighing the primary Russia-specific risks (governmental, legal, operating) and unique selling propositions (technical talent, established scientific initiatives, a burgeoning adoptive middle class), there are two central operational strategies investors should deploy, particularly in the lower-risk technology sector: 1) concentrate on globally-oriented Russian companies utilizing local technical talent to deliver global products, or 2) concentrate on market-leading Russian companies focusing on a particular product or service for local consumption. Despite the added challenges, we believe that if approached properly, the Russian market has substantial opportunities in venture capital for the adaptive investor.

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Gunner Hardy
Sydney Adams
Andrew Moore
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With arms control in crisis and strategic stability in jeopardy, it is worth remembering the remarkable success of nuclear cooperation between the United States and Russia in the late Cold War and post-Cold War periods, often referred to as the 'Golden Age of Arms Control'. In an effort to understand the current deterioration in U.S.-Russian arms control, this article presents a history of bilateral cooperation since the 1980s from both the American and Russian perspectives. We describe its past successes and investigate the current impasse using historical analysis and a collection of interviews with former diplomats, negotiation participants, and academics. From this analysis, we offer recommendations on best practices to reinvigorate arms control talks based on the historical lessons of success.

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Dmitry Asinovskiy
Areti Iliopoulou
Nick James
Yasmin Samrai
Liya Wizevich
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No. 1
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Sean Penn walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, Ukraine

This event is in-person only.

Co-directed by Aaron Kaufman and Sean Penn, "Superpower" is a documentary following events in Ukraine before and during Russia's invasion in February 2022. Following the screening, Sean Penn will discuss the film with FSI Director Michael McFaul in a conversation moderated by Natalia Antelava, editor-in-chief of Coda Story and a Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University.

Hosted by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University.

Natalia Antelava

Hauck Auditorium, Traitel Building, 435 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, CA 94305

Sean Penn

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Director, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies, Department of Political Science
Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
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PhD

Michael McFaul is Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. Dr. McFaul also is as an International Affairs Analyst for NBC News and a columnist for The Washington Post. He served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

He has authored several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. Earlier books include Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective (eds. with Kathryn Stoner); Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (with James Goldgeier); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. He is currently writing a book called Autocrats versus Democrats: Lessons from the Cold War for Competing with China and Russia Today.

He teaches courses on great power relations, democratization, comparative foreign policy decision-making, and revolutions.

Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. In International Relations at Oxford University in 1991. His DPhil thesis was Southern African Liberation and Great Power Intervention: Towards a Theory of Revolution in an International Context.

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If you had five minutes to speak with the president of the United States, what would you say? That’s the question Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, posed to FSI scholars at a Stanford 2023 Reunion Homecoming event.

The discussion, “Global Threats Today: What's At Stake and What We Can Do About It,” centered around five major challenges currently facing the world: political dissatisfaction and disillusionment at home, tensions between China and Taiwan, the consequences of climate change, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, and the conflict between Hamas and Israel.

Speaking to each of these areas of concern and how they overlap, FSI scholars Didi Kuo, Larry Diamond, Marshall Burke, Michael McFaul, and Amichai Magen offered their perspectives on what can be done. You can listen to their full conversation on the World Class podcast and browse highlights from their policy ideas below.

Follow the link for a full transcript of "Global Threats: What's at Stake and What We Can Do About It."


Reform the Electoral College |  Didi Kuo


One of the major problems people feel right now in American politics is that their voices aren’t heard. We live in what my colleague Francis Fukuyama calls a "vetocracy," meaning there are a lot of veto points in our system.

In a lot of other democratic institutional configurations, you have rule by the majority. But in the United States, we have an institutional configuration that allows a very small group — for example, 15 people in the House of Representatives — to hold up government in various ways. We see this in dramatic examples on the national level, but it also trickles down to the local level where you see it in issues like permitting hold-ups.

Reforming the Electoral College would be a very direct way of changing that vetocracy. The United States is one of the only advanced democracies that has this indirect system of elections. If all the votes counted equally and all the presidential candidates had to treat all of us the same and respond to us equally in all 50 states, it would do a lot to show the power of the popular vote and realign us more closely to the principle of majoritarianism that we should seek in our institutions.

Didi Kuo

Didi Kuo

Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute
Didi Kuo Full Profile


Allow Taiwan to License Weapons Production |  Larry Diamond


My recommendation is deterrence, deterrence, deterrence. It is not inevitable that the People's Republic of China is going to launch an all-out military assault on Taiwan. But if the United States does not do more to make that a costly decision, the likelihood it will happen are exponentially higher.

Deterrence works. The United States deterred the Soviet Union from moving against West Berlin and much of Europe for decades. But it only works if you have a superior force.

To that end, the United States needs to pre-position more military force in the region. There's now a $12 billion backlog of weapons that Taiwan has ordered and paid for but hasn't received yet. That’s because the American defense production system is completely broken. This is the same reason why we can’t get weapons to Ukraine at the pace we need there.

This issue could be fixed, at least in part, if we licensed the production of some of these weapon systems directly to Taiwan. Their ability to build plants and produce these systems is much more agile than our own, and so licensing the rights to production would dramatically increase the deterrence factor against China, in addition to deepening our cooperation with allies throughout the region.

Portrait of Hesham Sallam

Larry Diamond

Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at FSI
Larry Diamond Full Profile


Pursue Climate Mitigation AND Adaptation |  Marshall Burke


There are three things we can do in response to climate change: we can mitigate, we can adapt, or we can suffer. We’re off to a good start, but we have decades of long slog ahead of us to get that right. And it's not just us; even if we do a good job, we depend on other countries to also do a good job. The Biden administration has already been engaged on some of that front, but there’s more work to do there.

And even with our best efforts, we are not going to be able to move as fast as we want or mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as we need to avoid climate change. So, we're going to have to live with some climate change, which means adaptation. And if we can't adapt, then we're going to suffer. 

The key point is that we are very poorly adapted to today's climate, much less the climate we're going to have 30 or 50 years from now. The West Coast and California are prime examples of this. There have been monumental wildfire seasons there the last few years, and there are significant negative health impacts from smoke exposure. I see it in my own home, even as someone who studies this and should know better and do more to reduce those risks.

The point is, we're really poorly adapted to the current climate, and things are going to get a lot worse. We need to focus on mitigation; it’s still really important and we need to get it done. But at the same time, we need to figure out how to adapt and live with the changing climate that we're going to experience.

Marshall Burke

Marshall Burke

Deputy Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment
Marshall Burke Full Profile


Weapons for Ukraine, Sanctions on Russia |  Michael McFaul


When I was in Kyiv this September, I had a chance to meet with President Zelenskyy, and he pointed out an absolutely crazy reality. Companies in the United States and Europe are still making tens of thousands of dollars in profits from selling various technologies that ultimately end up in Russia. It’s getting in through places like Hong Kong and Kazakhstan and Belarus and Georgia, and it allows Russia to keep waging its horrific war.

At the same time, the United States is spending millions of dollars to arm Ukraine with systems to shoot down the Russian rockets that were built using the components they got from the West. That’s completely illogical, bad policy. I know it’s hard to control technology, but we have to find a better way than what we’re doing right now. If you're an American taxpayer, that is your money being wasted.

That means more and better weapons for Ukraine, faster. And that means more and better sanctions on Russia, faster. That is the way to speed the end of this war.

Michael McFaul

Michael McFaul

Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute
Michael McFaul Full Profile


Be Confident in America |  Amichai Magen


Just a few short years ago, we were all talking about the decline of the United States. I think that is far from inevitable. People speak about the 20th century as the “American Century.” The 21st century can also be the American Century. It's in our hands.

Be bullish on America. Be confident in America. Rediscover the spirit of America for adaptation and innovation and entrepreneurship. We need to wake up from the break we’ve taken from history in the post-Cold War era and rally once again in our spirit, our research, and our intellect.

We need to find new solution structures to the great challenges of our era: environmental challenges, AI, biotechnological challenges, nuclear challenges. And we can do it. China is on the verge of demographic decline and economic decline. Russia is a very dangerous international actor, but it is not a global superpower. We must reinvent the institutions and the alliances that we need for the 21st century in order to make sure that we continue a journey towards greater peace and prosperity for all of mankind.

Amichai Magen

Amichai Magen

Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies at the Freeman Spogli Institute
Amichai Magen Full Profile


The entire discussion, including the audience Q&A, is available to watch on FSI's YouTube channel. To stay up to date on our content, be sure to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications.

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Family and friends of May Naim, 24, who was murdered by Palestinians militants at the "Supernova" festival, near the Israeli border with Gaza strip, react during her funeral on October 11, 2023 in Gan Haim, Israel. (Getty Images)
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FSI Scholars Analyze Implications of Hamas’ Terror Attack on Israel

Larry Diamond moderated a discussion between Ori Rabinowitz, Amichai Magen and Abbas Milani on the effects of Hamas’ attacks on Israel and what the emerging conflict means for Israel and Middle Eastern geopolitics.
FSI Scholars Analyze Implications of Hamas’ Terror Attack on Israel
Michael McFaul poses with a Stanford University flag in front of a group of Ukrainian alumni during a reunion dinner in Kyiv.
Blogs

On the Ground in Ukraine: A Report from Michael McFaul and Francis Fukuyama

A trip to Kyiv gave FSI Director Michael McFaul and Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow Francis Fukuyama the opportunity to meet with policymakers, military experts, and Ukrainian alumni of FSI's programs and fellowships.
On the Ground in Ukraine: A Report from Michael McFaul and Francis Fukuyama
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Democracy Day sweeps Stanford

Thousands turned out for the student-run, campuswide event, which has grown significantly since launching in 2021.
Democracy Day sweeps Stanford
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FSI scholars offer their thoughts on what can be done to address political polarization in the United States, tensions between Taiwan and China, climate change, the war in Ukraine, and the Israel-Hamas war.

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