Cosponsored by The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies

Abstract:

Half a decade after Arabs across the Middle East poured into the streets to demand change, hopes for democracy have disappeared in a maelstrom of violence and renewed state repression. Egypt remains an authoritarian state, Syria and Yemen are in the midst of devastating civil wars, Libya has descended into anarchy, and the self-declared Islamic State rules a large swath of territory. Even Turkey, which also experienced large-scale protests, has abandoned its earlier shift toward openness and democracy and now more closely resembles an autocracy. How did things go so wrong so quickly across a wide range of regimes? In False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and the New Middle East, noted Middle East regional expert Steven A. Cook looks at the trajectory of events across the region from the initial uprising in Tunisia to the failed coup in Turkey to explain why the Middle Eastern uprisings did not succeed.

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Abstract: The U.S. government continues to struggle with how best to defend the country from cyber attacks. Reacting out in frustration, Senator John McCain wondered aloud if the United States should consider what lessons can be learned from a new cyber defense organization in the United Kingdom called the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC). In this paper, Stuart Russell and Michael Sulmeyer examine the NCSC, its origins, its missions, and its effectiveness. They then consider how certain aspects of the NCSC might map onto the more complicated governance structure around cyber defense in the United States. Despite important differences between the United Kingdom and the United States, they conclude that there is a great deal the United States can adapt from the United Kingdom’s efforts, particularly the NCSC’s ambitious Active Defense agenda. 

Speaker Bio: Dr. Michael Sulmeyer is the Belfer Center's Cyber Security Project Director at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a Contributing Editor for the national security blog Lawfare. Before Harvard, he served as the Director for Plans and Operations for Cyber Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. There, he worked closely with the Joint Staff and Cyber Command on a variety of efforts to counter malicious cyber activity against U.S. and DoD interests. For this work, he received the Secretary Medal for Exceptional Public Service.

Previously, he worked on arms control and the maintenance of strategic stability between the United States, Russia, and China. As a Marshall Scholar, Sulmeyer received his PhD (DPhil) in Politics from Oxford University, and his dissertation, "Money for Nothing: Understanding the Termination of U.S. Major Defense Acquisition Programs," won the Sir Walter Bagehot Prize for best dissertation in government and public administration. He received his B.A. and J.D. from Stanford University and his M.A. in War Studies from King's College London. In the mid-1990s, he was the System Operator (SysOp) of The Summit BBS in Santa Barbara, California.

Abstract:

The factually dubious for-profit articles known as “fake news” were read and shared by millions of people during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, but little is known scientifically about who read fake news, the mechanisms by which it was disseminated, and the extent to which fact-checks reached fake news consumers. In this study, we use behavioral data to better understand the prevalence and spread of “fake news.” (Joint work with Andrew Guess and Jason Reifler.)

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Abstract:

Although peace operations are the main policy instrument for directly protecting civilians from severe violence, only a few are designed to reflect threatened civilians’ security needs. In a forthcoming book, Humanitarian Hypocrisy: Civilian Protection and the Design of Peace Operations, I examine how four major democracies – the US, UK, France, and Australia – contribute to this situation by facilitating gaps between a force’s ambitions to protect civilians and its resources for doing so. Although missions affected by these gaps gesture toward protecting civilians, they can actually worsen their suffering. I describe these gaps as a form of organized hypocrisy and argue that their attraction lies in their ability to help leaders balance competing normative and material pressures to protect civilians while also limiting associated costs. The argument has implications both for when these gaps are most likely and for how leaders can benefit from them politically. I support it with diverse evidence based on quantitative analysis of original data and four in-depth case studies.

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Abstract:

Modernization theory, institutional capacity, and rational choice institutionalism are the three candidate theories that explain how rich democratic states got to be rich and democratic. External development efforts will only be successful if he objectives or external and internal elites are complementary. This is only likely to be the case for 30-40 countries in the world. For the other 130 poorer countries the best that can be hoped for is good enough governance.

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Abstract: What is the strategic value of cyber weapons? Even though a growing body of research has addressed the destructive potential of cyber weapons, there remains a large gap in thinking about the strategic utility of these capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to partially fill this gap, by means of assessing under what conditions 'counterforce’ and ‘countervalue’ cyber weapons can be effective. I argue that cyber weapons can provide an ‘extra option’ to leaders. The discussed cases suggest that they can be used both as an important force-multiplier enabler for conventional military assets or as independent capability. Cyber weapons can also be used to achieve a form of psychological ascendancy and can be used effectively with few casualties.

Speaker Bio: Max Smeets is a cybersecurity fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, St. John’s College. Max current book project focuses on the causes underlying cyber proliferation and restraint. The results of this research are valuable for understanding the likely changes in the future prevalence of cyber weapons. It clarifies to what degree this is an ‘inevitable’ development – and if/how it can be stopped.

Max was a College Lecturer in Politics at Keble College, University of Oxford, and Research Affiliate of the Oxford Cyber Studies Programme. He was also a Carnegie Visiting Scholar at Columbia University SIPA and a Doctoral Visiting Scholar at Sciences Po CERI. He holds an undergraduate degree from University College Roosevelt, Utrecht University, and an M.Phil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, Brasenose College.  Max has a diverse professional background, having worked for financial, political, and non-governmental organizations.

Title: Optimal Clinical Trials for Personalizing Medical Care: The Expected Value of Oversampling Information

Abstract: Personalizing patient care frequently involves selecting treatments based on risk predictions, with patients at lower risk being recommended less aggressive treatment or no treatment at all. Because risk predictions are uncertain, treatments selected based on them may not be optimal. Collecting additional information could, therefore, be valuable. Designing studies to collect the needed information most efficiently is important given that studies have become increasingly expensive to conduct. Methods exist to support such endeavors (i.e., expected value of sample information (EVSI)). However, to date, EVSI calculations consider only studies that estimate overall population means efficiently. Studies to support the personalization of medical care require deciding how much information to collect about which patient subgroups: on which locations along the risk spectrum should studies focus? We develop the Expected Value of Oversampling Information (EVOSI) framework by introducing EVSI into a previously proposed Expected Value of Individualized Care (EVIC) framework, narrowing prediction uncertainty where doing so maximally increases the overall value of individualized treatment choices. With the EVOSI framework, we analyze the features of patient risk subgroups that increase the value of oversampling and conduct numerical simulations to consider trade-offs between these features (i.e., how much to oversample). Results show that studies designed with EVOSI can be expected to achieve more value than those designed with EVSI at a given sample size or the same expected value as EVSI at a smaller sample size. Features that determine optimal oversampling in EVOSI include: subgroup prevalence; one’s priors on the relative distance to the threshold risk at which one should initiate treatment for each subgroup; the amount of uncertainty in these priors for each subgroup; and the amount of available sample for the new study (i.e., the new study’s total sample budget). Deciding to personalize medical care based on patients’ predicted but uncertain risks also requires decisions about collecting additional information. Such risk heterogeneity calls for an EVOSI analysis if, given available sample, the value of personalized care is to be maximized.

Please note: All research in progress seminars are off-the-record unless otherwise noted. Any information about methodology and/or results are embargoed until publication.

Abstract: We live in a world where the risks from a changing climate are clear. New research highlights the magnitude of the risks and the benefits of rapid, ambitious action. We also live in a world where the technologies for addressing climate change, for limiting the amount of climate change that occurs and for dealing as effectively as possible with the changes that cannot be avoided, are increasingly mature, affordable, and rich with co-benefits. In many ways and in many places, progress in deploying solutions is dramatic. But worldwide, progress is much slower than it needs to be, if we are to avoid the worst impacts. We need to find a global accelerator pedal for climate solutions. Key enablers include steps to level the economic playing field, government investments to drive down the costs and risks of technology solutions, and novel mechanisms to spur international collaboration.

Speaker Bio: Chris Field is the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies. His research focuses on climate change, ranging from work on improving climate models, to prospects for renewable energy systems, to community organizations that can minimize the risk of a tragedy of the commons. Field was the founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, a position he held from 2002 to 2016. He was co-chair of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 2008-2015, where he led the effort on the IPCC Special Report on “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation”  (2012) and the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014) on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. His widely cited work has earned many recognitions, including election to the US National Academy of Sciences, the Max Planck Research Award, and the Roger Revelle Medal.