Limited number of lunches available for registered guests on day of event.

About the event: Climate change has been deemed the greatest threat to global public health, yet critical gaps remain in understanding how this anthropogenic phenomenon impacts health-relevant infrastructure and decision-making. My research leverages ecological principles and data science to address a subset of these gaps at the intersection of extreme environmental change and adaptive interventions for planetary and human health. In this talk, I present work evaluating how rising temperatures affect the design and deployment of vector-borne disease prevention strategies, using Aedes aegypti mosquitoes as a case study. I discuss the methodological challenge of predicting how unprecedented ecological perturbations drive disease persistence and transmission, leveraging historical dengue outbreaks to interrogate the capacity of data-driven methods for forecasting explosive, environmentally sensitive epidemiological events. Finally, I outline how economic forces contribute to and can mitigate anthropogenic change, focusing on the role of targeted investments in antibiotic research and development to reduce ecological contamination and address the growing crisis of antimicrobial resistance. Throughout, I highlight the utility of scientific software for advancing equity and efficiency in human and planetary health management. 

About the speaker: Dr. Váleri Vásquez is a Biotechnology Innovation and International Security Fellow at Stanford University, with appointments in the Department of Biology and the Center for International Security and Cooperation. Her research develops mathematical frameworks to render infectious disease management more robust to environmental uncertainty, as well as scientific software to guide strategic policymaking in public health. Dr. Vásquez completed her PhD at the University of California Berkeley in August 2023, with an emphasis in Computational Data Science and Engineering. Prior to her doctorate she specialized in international climate policy at the U.S. Department of State, serving on the senior team shaping the 2015 Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Dr. Vásquez holds an MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and an MS in Energy and Resources, both from UC Berkeley. She earned her BA from the College of William and Mary.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

The Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institution's (SCCEI) annual China Conference brings together leading voices from policy, business, and academia to examine key economic trends in China and their implications for the world.

This year's conference will examine China's role in a changing global economy. Panels of experts from Stanford and around the world will take a deep dive into China’s evolving economic ambitions and self-perception on the global stage, assess the roles of state and private enterprises in advancing China’s goals, and analyze the impacts on global trade, finance, and institutions.

We are finalizing an outstanding lineup of speakers from academia, industry, and policy communities. Updates will be posted here as confirmed. 

*Schedule is subject to change  

Questions? Contact scceichinaconference@stanford.edu 

About the event: Studies have found that voters in democratic countries are far more reluctant to use military force against democracies than against nondemocracies. This pattern may help explain why democracies almost never wage war against other democracies. In an important contribution, Rathbun, Parker, and Pomeroy (2024) propose that the apparent democratic peace in public opinion is an artifact of failing to account for race. Rather than democracy itself influencing support for war, they argue, the term “democracy” cues assumptions about the adversary’s racial composition, and those racialized assumptions are the true drivers of support for war. We reevaluate RPP’s evidence, concluding that their data do not support their predictions. In fact, their novel experiments provide powerful evidence that democracy affects support for war, independent of race. Our findings contribute to major debates about both regime type and race in international relations, as well as the design and interpretation of survey experiments.

About the speaker: Jessica L. P. Weeks is Professor of Political Science and H. Douglas Weaver Chair in Diplomacy and International Relations in the Department of Political Science at UW-Madison. Her research has appeared in journals including the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, International Organization, and World Politics. Her book, Dictators at War and Peace, explores the domestic politics of international conflict in dictatorships. Weeks was the 2018 recipient of the International Studies Association Karl Deutsch Award, recognizing the scholar under 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the study of international relations. Professor Weeks received a B.A. in political science from The Ohio State University in 2001, a Master’s degree in international history from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in 2003, and a PhD in political science from Stanford University in 2009.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: What explains the current US arsenal of unmanned systems? Why, for example, is the contemporary arsenal dominated by aerial unmanned systems versus the munitions that dominated earlier developments? This book challenges traditional explanations for the proliferation of unmanned systems that focus on capacity or structure. Instead, this book argues that beliefs and identities shape the structures and capacities chosen when the United States invests in weapon systems. In particular, it traces beliefs about technological determinism and military revolutions, force protection and casualty aversion, and service identities to explain why the United States has invested so heavily in remote-controlled unmanned aerial platforms over the last three decades. In doing so, the book illustrates how ideas become influential to ultimately manifest in budget lines, detailing the policy entrepreneurs, critical junctures, and path dependencies that shape the lifecycle of beliefs about unmanned weapon systems. The book begins by providing a historical overview of US unmanned systems investments, taking an expansive view of unmanned technologies from land mines to missiles and drones from the Revolutionary War to contemporary investments. It then leans on theories of norms, ideas, and influence to detail the role of the Office of Net Assessment, Vietnam, 9/11, and armed service identity in building the United States’ current unmanned arsenal. Finally, it concludes with what this case of unmanned technologies reveals about US support to Ukraine as well as contemporary weapons debates about cyber, information technology, space, and hypersonic missiles.

About the speaker: Jacquelyn Schneider is the Hargrove Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, and an affiliate with Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology, national security, and political psychology with a special interest in cybersecurity, autonomous technologies, wargames, and Northeast Asia. She was previously an Assistant Professor at the Naval War College as well as a senior policy advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

Dr. Schneider is an active member of the defense policy community with previous positions at the Center for a New American Security and the RAND Corporation. Before beginning her academic career, she spent six years as an Air Force officer in South Korea and Japan and is currently a reservist assigned to US Space Systems Command. She has a BA from Columbia University, MA from Arizona State University, and PhD from George Washington University.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the Event: Our speaker, Ambassador Juan Carlos Pinzón, will explore the intricate intersections of geopolitics, national security, and organized crime in the context of a rapidly evolving global landscape. He will examine the shift toward global power competition, the growing influence of the Global South, and the implications for national security in areas such as geoeconomics, trade, and technological rivalry. His discussion will delve into the socio-economic roots of organized crime, its entanglement with transnational networks, and its role in fueling proxy wars and political instability.

Key themes that Ambassador Pinzón will develop in this talk include the transformation of criminal organizations into national security threats, their influence over communities, and their capacity to undermine democratic institutions. He will also analyze when organized crime expands into or allies with terrorist networks and armed non-state actors. Ambassador Pinzón will conclude by considering policy options for confronting transnational organized crime through international cooperation.

About the Speaker: Juan Carlos Pinzón is currently a John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. visiting professor at Princeton University. He was previously Colombia's Minister of Defense and ambassador to the United States on two occasions. He served as ambassador to the United States between 2021 and 2022, celebrating 200 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries and between 2015 and 2017 strengthening the bilateral relationship. Previously, during 2018 and 2021 he was president of ProBogotá, a private non-profit entity for the promotion of public policies and long-term strategic projects for Colombia's capital region. During the period from 2011 to 2015 he served as Colombia's youngest Minister of Defense at a critical moment in the country's history.

In addition to these positions, he has also held other positions such as Chief of Staff to the President of Colombia from 2010 to 2011, Vice Minister of Defense from 2006 to 2009, Senior Advisor to the Executive Director of the World Bank from 2004 to 2006, Vice President of the Colombian Banking Association from 2003 to 2004, Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Finance from 2000 to 2002. In the 2018 national elections he served as presidential and vice-presidential candidate.

Juan Carlos Pinzón is an Economist from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, with a master's degree in economics from the same institution, and a master degree in Public Policy from Princeton University and Honoris Causa in National Security and Defense from the Colombian War College. Pinzón has also taken advanced courses in strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, science and technology policy at Harvard University, and smart cities at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Finally, he has several awards and over 60 decorations such as the Grand Cross of the Order of Boyacá and the Distinguished Public Service Medal from the U.S. Department of Defense.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the event: How AI might be used in nuclear command and control is the subject of much discussion in national security circles.  But this debate—important though it has been—obscures many other ways that AI could be used or should not be used across the entire nuclear weapons enterprise.  (In this talk, the nuclear weapons enterprise also encompasses nuclear weapons, their delivery systems, the associated command and control and the links of these entities to AI in systems not usually associated with nuclear weapons.)  Key attributes of AI and the nuclear weapons enterprise will be reviewed, principles for thinking about AI in the nuclear weapons enterprise discussed, and specific guidelines for assessing the wisdom of AI in any given nuclear application proposed.

About the speaker: Herbert Lin is senior research scholar and Hank J. Holland Fellow at Stanford University whose research interests are at the intersection of national security and emerging technologies. He is Chief Scientist Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academies and serves on the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Lin was a member of President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity (2016) and the Aspen Commission on Information Disorder (2020).  He was also a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee, where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: We use survey experiments to explore a variety of different contexts and how they affect the choices a decision maker might have to make about using nuclear weapons. One set of surveys explores the relationship between expected casualties and the willingness to use nuclear weapons. The result is clearly increasing support for nuclear use as expected casualties in a difficult conventional war increase. We also explore how the alternatives given to a decision maker influence choice. More specifically, we show that when the option not to launch nuclear weapons is presented along with three options to use those weapons, more people select not to launch. Overall, we also find clear evidence of consistent differences between democrats and republicans as well as a strong relationship between decision makers’ punitive tendencies and their support for using nuclear weapons. Implications for risk management and policy will be discussed.

About the speakers:

Rose McDermott:
Rose McDermott is the David and Mariana Fisher University Professor of International Relations at Brown University and a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She directs the Watson Postdoctoral Program. She works in the area of political psychology. She received her Ph.D.(Political Science) and M.A. (Experimental Social Psychology) from Stanford University and has also taught at Cornell and UCSB. She has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and the Women and Public Policy Program, all at Harvard University, and has been a fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences twice. She is the author of six books, a co-editor of two additional volumes, and author of over two hundred academic articles across a wide variety of disciplines encompassing topics such as American foreign and defense policy, experimentation, national security intelligence, gender, social identity, cybersecurity, emotion and decision-making, and the biological and genetic bases of political behavior.

Paul Slovic:
Paul Slovic is a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and a founder and President of Decision Research. After 47 years, he has rejoined the Oregon Research Institute as a senior scientist. He holds a B.A. from Stanford University (1959) and an M.A (1962) and Ph.D. (1964) from the University of Michigan. He studies human judgment, decision making, and the psychology of risk. With colleagues worldwide, he has developed methods to describe risk perceptions and measure their impacts on individuals and society. His recent work examines "psychic numbing" and the failure to respond to mass human tragedies. He is a past President of the Society for Risk Analysis and in 1991 received its Distinguished Contribution Award. In 1993 he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association He was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016. In 2022, Dr. Slovic received the Franklin Institute’s Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in the Science of Decision Making.

Sharon Weiner:
Sharon K. Weiner is an Associate Professor in the School of International Service at American University as well as a Visiting Researcher for the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. Sharon's research, teaching, and policy engagement are at the intersection of organizational politics and U.S. national security. Her current work focuses on the theory, practice, and social construction of deterrence, the politics of U.S. nuclear weapon modernization programs, and larger issues of civil-military relations. Her most recent book, Managing the Military: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and Civil-Military Relations (Columbia University Press, 2022) analyzes the power of the JCS chairman to help or hinder the president's ability to implement their defense policy preferences.  She also collaborates with Moritz Kutt (Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg) on The Nuclear Biscuit (thenuclearbiscuit.org), a virtual reality experience involving a nuclear crisis. The project analyses how people make high stakes national security decisions under conditions of uncertainty.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the event: Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has cast a spotlight on Russia’s burgeoning partnership with Iran. Moscow looked to Tehran for drones and ammunition to fuel its so-called ‘special military operation’, and Iran’s support for Russia’s war reflected a decade-long strengthening of Russo-Iranian ties, beginning with the 2011 outbreak of the Syrian Civil War.

Despite a relationship historically marred by mistrust and unmet expectations, the two regimes have worked together to promote their common interests in Syria, where battlefield coordination soon developed into much deeper political alignment. Nicole Grajewski uncovers the drivers of ever-closer cooperation between the Kremlin and the Islamic Republic. Detailing the internal structures, shared anxieties and broader ambitions underpinning this alignment, she explores the genesis of Russia and Iran’s mutual antagonism towards the Western-led global order; the impact of deep-seated leadership concerns over regime security and domestic protests; and the future trajectory of the partnership within the larger world order.

About the speaker: Nicole Grajewski is a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an Associate with the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Oxford and is the author of Russia and Iran: Partners in Defiance from Syria to Ukraine.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: When states go to war, they must devise a strategy that anticipates how their use of military force will achieve national objectives. But that choice is heavily constrained. This book project shows how wartime strategy is a function of both dispositional and situational factors - that is, the military’s abiding organizational preferences, and the government’s contingency-specific decisions, respectively. This presentation focuses on one of the book’s key theoretical contributions: how a military’s structure and processes reveal its unwritten warfighting preferences. In the Indian case, official doctrine pronouncements suggest a military that is postured to fight state of the art maneuver warfare. But, in reality, its entrenched preferences have not changed in over half a century, and heavily favor attritional combat. Doctrine, of course, is not destiny - states like India can and have fought differently under certain extraordinary conditions. But absent those rare conditions, the Indian Army’s attritional preferences dominate the state’s strategic options, which has implications for conventional deterrence and strategic stability.

About the speaker: Arzan Tarapore is a Research Scholar whose research focuses on Indian military strategy and regional security issues in the Indo-Pacific. In academic year 2024-25, he is also a part-time Visiting Research Professor at the China Landpower Studies Center, at the U.S. Army War College. Prior to his scholarly career, he served for 13 years in the Australian Defence Department in various analytic, management, and liaison positions, including operational deployments and a diplomatic posting to the Australian Embassy in Washington, DC.

His academic work has been published in the Journal of Strategic Studies, International Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, Asia Policy, and Joint Force Quarterly, among others, and his policy commentary frequently appears on platforms such as Foreign Affairs, the Hindu, the Indian Express, The National Interest, the Lowy Institute's Interpreter, the Brookings Institution’s Lawfare, and War on the Rocks.

He previously held research and teaching positions at Georgetown University, the East-West Center in Washington, the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, and the RAND Corporation.

He earned a PhD in war studies from King's College London, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a BA (Hons) from the University of New South Wales. Follow his commentary on Twitter @arzandc and his website at arzantarapore.com.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.