FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.
Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions.
In early May, North Korea held its first Workers’ Party Congress in over three decades. Kathleen Stephens, Stanford distinguished fellow and former ambassador to South Korea, told CNBC’s “Squawkbox” that the meeting was an effort by North Korea to demonstrate consolidated rule under Kim Jong-un. Stephens said she did not anticipate any major announcements at the meeting, but recognized that North Korea faced a “new challenge” in its ally China joining the bid for tougher U.N. sanctions against it in response to its latest nuclear and missile tests.
China and the United States have lately been characterized as geostrategic rivals and on a path toward inevitable conflict. But, according to Fu Ying, chairperson of China’s Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress and former ambassador to the Philippines, Australia and the United Kingdom, this picture is incomplete and misrepresents a reality that is much more nuanced.
Fu discussed the current state of U.S.-China relations in a keynote speech at Stanford on Tuesday. Speaking to a full house in Encina Hall, she described different perspectives and shared challenges of China and the United States, and urged a new consensus between the world’s two largest economies.
“In the past thirty years, we’ve had friendly moments, but we were never very close. We had problems, but the relationship was strong enough to avoid derailing.
“Now we are at a higher level. If we work together now, we are capable of making big differences in the world. But if we fight, we will bring disasters – not only to the two countries, but to the world,” Fu said.
Fu’s visit was co-hosted by the China Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, two centers in the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI). Following her remarks, Thomas Fingar, a Shorenstein APARC Distinguished Fellow and former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, offered comments and took questions from the audience.
Fu opened her speech by saying she welcomed alternative views and “a debate.”
Misunderstandings, she said, afflict the U.S.-China relationship. Confusion shared between the two countries can largely be attributed to a “perception gap,” which, she said, is aggrandized through media reporting.
Concern on the American side over China, she said, is tied to its own doubts over its “constructive engagement” strategy. An approach held during the past eight U.S. administrations, the strategy was based on an assumption that supporting market-based reforms in China would lead to political change, she said. However, this has not occurred, and some in the U.S. are now urging the construction of another “grand strategy.”
The United States, she said, also has “rising anxiety about what kind of a global role China is going to play,” and about the future direction of the Chinese economy after its growth slid to hover around seven percent in the last two years compared to its once double digit growth in the past decade.
China interprets the United States’ apprehension as misguided, Fu said. “We see it as a reflection of the United States’ fear of losing its own primary position in the world.”
On the other hand, China, she said, is “relatively more positive” about its overall engagement with the United States. The purpose of Chinese foreign policy, Fu said, is to improve the international environment and to raise the standard of living of its people without exporting its values or seeking world power. “We believe China has achieved this purpose,” she added.
The United States and others must also remember that the past can loom large in the minds of the Chinese people, Fu said.
In attempting to understand China, “one should not lose sight of the historical dimension,” she said. China at various times in the nineteenth to early twentieth century was under occupation by foreign powers, she said, and this is a reason why sovereignty is a closely held value in the Chinese ethos.
The overall “perception gap” between China and the United States has moved from misunderstanding to fear, and that, she said, is causing negative spillover effects for both countries.
Two manifestations of this fear, she cited, are the United States’ “reluctance to acknowledge China’s efforts to help improve the existing order,” such as the development of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative, and the U.S.’ “growing interference” in South China Sea issues.
“Will it lead to a reckless urge to ‘throw down the gauntlet’?” Fu asked.
She acknowledged that collision is a concern. China is focused on addressing its challenges with the United States, including avoiding potential incidents and finding ways “to adapt to and participate in adjustment in international order,” Fu said.
Yet, she cautioned that the two countries be realistic in their aims and know that China is not seeking to emulate the United States. China and the United States, unlike Japan and South Korea, do not have a formal strategic or security alliance, and they need not have one, Fu said.
“China is not an ally, and it should not be an enemy either,” she said.
“Can we accept and respect each other, and build new consensus?” she asked. She then stated, “I want to end my speech with a question mark as a salute to Stanford University which is renowned for its capability of addressing difficult questions.”
Fingar gave a brief response to Fu’s address.
Calling it largely “fictional,” he challenged the notion that there is high “American anxiety” about China. Instead, he noted, “Americans do not think very much about China,” as reflected in the multitude of polls taken recently during the primary campaigns. Thus, “there isn’t a lot of public drive to do things differently with China.”
Among U.S. academics, however, there is “puzzlement,” Fingar suggested. Puzzlement, he explained, borne less from any kind of loss of confidence in U.S. policy of constructive engagement but rather from China’s seeming departure from a trajectory that it had set for itself over the last 40 years. At the moment China’s reforms appear “bogged down;" its leaders, slow to take the critical steps necessary for economic growth; and its engagement with the outside world, increasingly unpredictable. “The puzzlement about China,” therefore, and “concern about policy has at least as much to do with concern that China may be stumbling as it does about a rising China,” he added. Debunking the zero-sum notion of international relations, Fingar emphasized instead that the United States has “done very well as a nation” in part because of its active engagement with and because of China’s success. “We welcome the rise of China, the rise of others,” he stated.
Fingar concluded with his opinion that the debacle in the South China Sea does not pose a serious threat to the relationship. Instead, “the world needs more examples of joint U.S.-Chinese cooperation and leadership” as was the case with recent breakthroughs in climate change between the United States and China. Otherwise, he added, other countries will not commit their resources for fear of a veto or objection from either the United States or China.
Later that day, Fu met with faculty members of FSI and Hoover.
Fu Ying, chairperson of China's Foreign Affairs Committee at the National People's Congress, speaks with Thomas Fingar about U.S.-China relations at Stanford, May 10.
James Steinberg is Dean of the Maxwell School, Syracuse University and University Professor of Social Science, International Affairs and Law. Prior to becoming Dean on July 1, 2011, he served as Deputy Secretary of State, serving as the principal Deputy to Secretary Clinton. From 2005-2008 Steinberg was Dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. From 2001 to 2005, Steinberg was vice president and director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he supervised a wide-ranging research program on U.S. foreign policy. Steinberg served as deputy national security advisor to President Clinton from 1996 to 2000. During that period he also served as the president’s personal representative to the 1998 and 1999 G-8 summits.
Prior to becoming deputy national security advisor, Steinberg served as director of the State Department’s policy planning staff, and as deputy assistant secretary for analysis in the bureau of Intelligence and Research. Previously, Steinberg was Senator Edward Kennedy’s principal aide for the Senate Armed Services Committee and minority counsel, U.S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee.
The Oksenberg Lecture, held annually, honors the legacy of Professor Michel Oksenberg (1938–2001). A senior fellow at Shorenstein APARC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Professor Oksenberg served as a key member of the National Security Council when the United States normalized relations with China, and consistently urged that the United States engage with Asia in a more considered manner. In tribute, the Oksenberg Lecture recognizes distinguished individuals who have helped to advance understanding between the United States and the nations of the Asia-Pacific.
At times beginning in 2009 the decision was made to expand this series from its original lecture format to a workshop in order to bring scholars and policy makers together to discuss the ever-changing role China is playing in today's world. This new format allows for the exchange of ideas and opinions amongst today's top experts.
James Steinberg
Keynote
<i>Former Deputy Secretary of State; Dean of the Maxwell School, Syracuse University and University Professor of Social Science, International Affairs and Law</i>
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C-327
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 723-9149
(650) 723-6530
0
tfingar@stanford.edu
Shorenstein APARC Fellow
Affiliated Scholar at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
tom_fingar_vert.jpg
PhD
Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009.
From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.
Fingar is a graduate of Cornell University (A.B. in Government and History, 1968), and Stanford University (M.A., 1969 and Ph.D., 1977 both in political science). His most recent books are From Mandate to Blueprint: Lessons from Intelligence Reform (Stanford University Press, 2021), Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011), The New Great Game: China and South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform, editor (Stanford University Press, 2016), Uneasy Partnerships: China and Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (Stanford, 2017), and Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China’s Future, co-edited with Jean Oi (Stanford, 2020). His most recent article is, "The Role of Intelligence in Countering Illicit Nuclear-Related Procurement,” in Matthew Bunn, Martin B. Malin, William C. Potter, and Leonard S Spector, eds., Preventing Black Market Trade in Nuclear Technology (Cambridge, 2018)."
Kathleen Stephens was the William J. Perry Distinguished Fellow at Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center from 2015 to 2017
Kathleen Stephens, a former U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea, is the William J. Perry Fellow in the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). She has four decades of experience in Korean affairs, first as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Korea in the 1970s, and in ensuing decades as a diplomat and as U.S. ambassador in Seoul.
Stephens came to Stanford previously as the 2013-14 Koret Fellow after 35 years as a U.S. Foreign Service officer. Her time at Stanford, though, was cut short when she was recalled to the diplomatic service to lead the U.S. mission in India as charge d'affaires during the first seven months of the new Indian administration led by Narendra Modi.
Stephens' diplomatic career included serving as acting under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in 2012; U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea from 2008 to 2011; principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2005 to 2007; and deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2003 to 2005, responsible for post-conflict issues in the Balkans, including Kosovo's future status and the transition from NATO to EU-led forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
She also served in numerous positions in Asia, Europe and Washington, D.C., including as U.S. consul general in Belfast, Northern Ireland, from 1995 to 1998, during the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement, and as director for European affairs at the White House during the Clinton administration, and in China, following normalization of U.S.-PRC relations.
Stephens holds a bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies from Prescott College and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University, in addition to honorary degrees from Chungnam National University and the University of Maryland. She studied at the University of Hong Kong and Oxford University, and was an Outward Bound instructor in Hong Kong. She was previously a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.
Stephens' awards include the Presidential Meritorious Service Award (2009), the Sejong Cultural Award, and Korea-America Friendship Association Award (2013). She is a trustee at The Asia Foundation, on the boards of The Korea Society and Pacific Century Institute, and a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.
Abstract: Supercomputing impacts everybody, everywhere, every day. The simulation capabilities have allowed advanced medicine, energy, aviation and manufacturing. Supercomputers allow us to explore fields such as global climate change, as well as tackle problems for which experiments are impractical, hazardous or prohibitively expensive. The Department of Energy is a leader in supercomputers as part of their national security mission. With the demise of underground testing, supercomputers are a key resource used to ensure the safety and reliability of the nuclear stockpile. This talk will explore the buildup to our current petaflop systems and the challenges to obtaining exascale systems in the future.
About the speaker: As Acting Associate Director for Computation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Trish Damkroger leads the 1,000-employee workforce behind the Laboratory’s high performance computing efforts. The Computation team develops and deploys an integrated computing environment for petascale analytics and simulations such as understanding global climate warming, clean energy creation, biodefense, and nonproliferation. LLNL’s computing ecosystem includes high performance computers, scientific visualization facilities, high performance storage systems, network connectivity, multiresolution data analysis, mathematical models, scalable numerical algorithms, computer applications, and necessary services to enable LLNL mission goals and scientific discovery through simulation.
Trish Damkroger
Acting Associate Director for Computation
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Abstract: Nuclear war and climate change present the two most serious threats to global security since World War II. This talk shows that nuclear weapons research and climate science were historically connected in deep, sometimes intimate ways. Each developed its own knowledge infrastructure, including people, technical systems, and organizations, with surprising parallels and frequent exchanges across the classified/civilian divide. From the 1940s on, nuclear weapons research and climate science both relied heavily on computer models, used related physics and numerical methods, and shared human as well as technical resources. Radiocarbon from nuclear weapons tests contributed to understanding of the global carbon cycle, while fallout monitoring networks produced critical knowledge about the stratosphere. In the 1980s, the potential for “nuclear winter” — a war-induced climatic catastrophe — became a major political issue, but the groundwork for this concern had been laid long before.
This interplay not only continued, but became even more significant after the Cold War’s end, when the weapons labs’ expertise, equipment, and observing systems were partially repurposed. Several US national laboratories now play essential roles in climate and Earth system science. Among these roles are the Program on Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, based at Livermore and responsible for the important Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), a major unifying force in climate modeling for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments. The cyberinfrastructure underlying CMIP and similar projects must address mounting challenges related to data access controls, software support, and the security of huge data collections, while their institutional and human bases depend on ongoing national support. Crafting effective climate policy, I argue, will require understanding and rethinking the dynamics of these knowledge infrastructures for the present, rapidly evolving context.
About the Speaker: Paul Edwards is a Professor in the School of Information (SI) and the Dept. of History at the University of Michigan. SI is an interdisciplinary professional school focused on bringing people, information, and technology together in more valuable ways.
His research explores the history, politics, and cultural aspects of computers, information infrastructures, and global climate science. His current research focuses on knowledge infrastructures for the Anthropocene.
Dr. Edwards is co-editor (with Geoffrey C. Bowker) of the Infrastructures book series (MIT Press), and he serves on the editorial boards of Big Data & Society: Critical Interdisciplinary Inquiries and Information & Culture: A Journal of History. His most recent book is A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010).
Paul Edwards
Professor of Information and History
University of Michigan
It’s a quintessential Silicon Valley scene. A group of tech-savvy Stanford students are delivering a passionate pitch about a product they hope is going to change the world, while a room full of venture capitalists, angel investors and entrepreneurs peppers them with questions.
But there’s a twist. This Stanford classroom is also packed with decorated military veterans and active duty officers. And a group of analysts from the U.S. intelligence community is monitoring the proceedings live via an iPad propped up on a nearby desk.
These Stanford students aren’t just working on the latest “Uber for X” app. They’re searching for solutions to some of the toughest technological problems facing America’s military and intelligence agencies, as part of a new class called Hacking for Defense.
A student team briefs the class on a wearable sensor they're developing for an elite unit of U.S. Navy SEALs – a product they're pitching as "fitbit for America's divers."
“There’s no problems quite like the kind of problems that the defense establishment faces, so from an engineering standpoint, it has the most powerful ‘cool factor’ of anything in the world,” said Nitish Kulkarni, a senior in mechanical engineering.
Kulkarni’s team is working with an organization within the US Department of Defense to devise a system that will provide virtual assistance to Afghan and Iraqi coalition forces as they defuse deadly improvised explosive devices.
“At Stanford there’s a lot of opportunities for you to build things and go out and learn new stuff, but this was one of the first few opportunities I’ve seen where as a Stanford student and as an engineer, I can go and work on problems that will actually make a difference and save lives,” said Kulkarni.
A 21st century tech ROTC
That’s exactly the kind of “21st century tech ROTC” model of national service that Steve Blank, a consulting associate professor at Stanford’s Department of Management Science and Engineering, said he had in mind when he developed the class.
“The nation is facing a set of national security threats it’s never faced before, and Silicon Valley has not only the technology resources to help, but knows how to move at the speed that these threats are moving at,” said Blank.
MBA student Rachel Moore presents for Team Sentinel, which is working with the U.S. 7th Fleet to find better ways to analyze drone and satellite imagery.
The students’ primary mission will be to produce products that can help keep Americans and our allies safe, at home and abroad, according to Blank.
Former U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Joe Felter, who helped create the class and co-teaches it with Blank, said the American military needs to find new ways to maintain its technological advantage on the battlefield.
“Groups like ISIS, al–Qaeda and other adversaries have access to cutting edge technologies and are aggressively using them to do us harm around the world,” said Felter, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and is currently a senior research scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
“The stakes are high – this is literally life and death for our young men and women deployed in harm’s way. We’re in a great position here at Stanford and in Silicon Valley to help make the connections and develop the common language needed to bring innovation into the process, in support of the Department of Defense and other government agencies’ missions.”
Startup guru Steve Blank shares a light moment with a group of students.
The class is an interdisciplinary mix of undergraduate and graduate students, from freshman to fifth year PhD student.
“It’s like a smorgasbord of all these people coming together from different parts and different schools of Stanford, and so I think that’s just a really cool environment to be in,” said Rachel Moore, a first-year MBA student.
Moore’s team includes electrical and mechanical engineering students, and they’re working together to develop a system to enable the Navy’s Pacific Fleet to automatically identify enemy ships using images from drones and satellites.
Tough technological challenges
Months before the course start date, class organizers asked U.S. military and intelligence organizations to identify some of their toughest technological challenges.
Class co-teacher Pete Newell throws his hands up to celebrate a student breakthrough.
U.S. Army Cyber Command wanted to know if emerging data mining, machine learning and data science capabilities could be used to understand, disrupt and counter adversaries' use of social media.
The Navy Special Warfare Group asked students to design wearable sensors for Navy SEALs, so they could monitor their physiological conditions in real-time during underwater missions.
Intelligence and law enforcement agencies were interested in software that could help identify accounts tied to malicious “catfishing” attempts from hackers trying to steal confidential information.
And those were just a few of the 24 problems submitted by 14 government agencies.
Developing Solutions
The class gives eight teams of four students 10 weeks to actively learn about the problem they are addressing from stake holders and end users most familiar with the problem and to iteratively develop possible solutions or a “minimum viable product,” using a modified version of Steve Blank’s “lean launchpad methodology,” which has become a revered how-to guide among the Silicon Valley startup community.
Rachel Olney, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, tries on a military-grade dry suit on a visit to the 129th Rescue Wing at Moffett Field.
A key tenet of Blank’s methodology is what he calls the “customer discovery process.”
“If you’re not crawling in the dirt with these guys, then you don’t understand their problem,” Blank told the class.
One student team, which was working on real-time biofeedback sensors and geo-location devices for an elite team of Navy SEALS (a project they were initially pitching at “fitbit for America’s divers”), earned a round of applause from the class when they showed a slide featuring photos from a field trip they took to the 129th Rescue Wing at Moffett Field to find out what it felt like to wear a military-grade dry suit.
Rachel Olney, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, said the experience of squeezing into the tight suit and wearing the heavy dive gear gave her a better appreciation for the physical demands that Navy SEALs have to deal with during a mission.
“They’re diving down to like 200 feet for up to six to eight hours…and during that time they can’t eat, they can’t hydrate, they’re physically exerting a lot, because they’re swimming miles and miles and miles at depth and they can’t see and they can’t talk to each other,” Olney said.
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“It’s probably one of the most extreme things that humans do right now.”
Another group came in for some heavy criticism from the teaching team for failing to identify and interview enough end users.
But the next week, they were back in front of the class showing a video from a team member’s visit to an Air Force base in Fresno, where he logged some time inside the 90-pound bomb suit that explosive ordinance disposal units wear in the field.
“You can’t address a customer issue unless and until you really step into the shoes of the customer,” said Gaurav Sharma, who’s a student at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.
“That was the exact reason why I went to Fresno and wore the bomb suit, to get into the shoes of the end customer.”
Navigating the defense bureaucracy
Active duty military officers from CISAC’s Senior Military Fellows program and the Hoover Institution’s National Security Affairs Fellows program act as military liaisons for the class and help students navigate the complex defense bureaucracy.
“[The students] have really just jumped in with both feet and immersed themselves in this Department of Defense world that for so many civilians is just very foreign to them,” said U.S. Army Colonel John Cogbill, who has spent the last year as a senior military fellow at CISAC.
“I think they will come away from this experience with a much better appreciation of what we do inside the Department of Defense and Intelligence community, and where there are opportunities for helping us do our jobs better.”
Cogbill said he hoped that some of the inventions from the class, like an autonomous drone designed to improve situational awareness for Special Forces teams, could help the troops on his next combat deployment, where he will serve as the Deputy Commanding Officer of the U.S. Army’s elite 75th Ranger Regiment.
“It’s not just about making them more lethal, it’s also about how to keep them alive on the battlefield,” said Cogbill.
Students also get support from their project sponsors and personnel at the newly established Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) stationed at Moffett Field.
Tech saves lives on the battlefield
Another key member of the teaching team is Pete Newell, who was awarded the Silver Star Medal (America’s third-highest military combat decoration), for leading a U.S. Army battalion into the Battle of Fallujah, where he survived an ambush and left the protection of his armored vehicle in an attempt to save a mortally wounded officer.
Class co-teacher and Silver Star Medal recipient Pete Newell explains some of the classic reasons why military products fail in the field.
Newell said he saw first-hand the difference that technology can make on the battlefield in his next job, when he served as director of the U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, which was tasked with creating technological solutions to the troops fighting in Afghanistan.
“What I realized is that the guys on the front edge of the battlefield who were actually fighting the fight, don’t have time to figure out what the problem is that they have to solve,” Newell said.
“They’re so involved in just surviving day to day, that they really don’t have time to step back from it and see those problems coming, and what they needed was somebody to look over their shoulder and look a little deeper and anticipate their needs.”
One of the first and most urgent problems Newell faced on the job was responding to the sudden spike in IED attacks on dismounted infantry.
The Army was still using metal detector technology from the ‘50s to find mines, but the new breed of IEDs, which were often hidden inside buried milk jugs, were virtually undetectable to the outdated technology.
Former U.S. Army Colonel Pete Newell demystifies some military jargon for the class.
“They could create an improvised explosive device and a pressure plate trigger…by using almost zero metal content,” Newell said. “It was almost impossible to find.”
Newell’s solution was a handheld gradiometer, the kind of technology used to find small wires in your backyard during a construction project, paired with a ground penetrating radar that can see objects underground.
But by the time the new technology reached troops in the field last summer, more than 4,000 had been wounded or killed in IED attacks.
Newell said he hoped the class would help get life-saving technology deployed throughout the military faster.
“I think it’s important to enable this younger generation of technologists to actually connect with some of the national security issues we face and give them an opportunity to take part in making the world a safer place,” Newell said.
Tom Byers, an entrepreneurship professor in Management Science and Engineering and faculty director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, rounds out the teaching team and brings his experience in innovation education and entrepreneurship to the classroom.
Inspiring the next generation
Students said the opportunity to find solutions to consequential problems was their primary inspiration for joining the class.
“When I first came to Stanford, the hype around entrepreneurship was very much around, ‘go out, make an app, do something really fun and cool, and get rich’,” said Darren Hau, a junior in Electrical Engineering.
Students share a laugh during a class break.
“In Hacking for Defense, I think you’re seeing a lot of people bring that same entrepreneurial mindset into a problem statement that seems a lot more impactful.”
Felter said he was humbled that so many students were willing to serve in this way.
“It’s encouraging to find out that students at one of our top universities are very interested and highly motivated to work very hard and use their skills and expertise and talent and focus it on these pressing national security problems,” said Felter.
The teaching team said they planned on expanding their class to other universities across the country in the coming years, to create a kind of open source network for solving unclassified national security problems.
For military officers like Cogbill, who will likely soon be leading U.S. soldiers into combat, that’s welcome news.
“Every time you run a course, that’s eight more problems,” Cogbill said.
“If this scales across 10, 20, 30, 40 more universities, you can imagine how many more problems can be solved, and how many more lives can potentially be saved.”
Hero Image
Influential startup educator Steve Blank (center) gives advice to Stanford students working on tough national security problems, while retired U.S. Army Colonels and class co-teachers Joe Felter (right) and Pete Newell (left) listen in.
Please note the venue is now the Bechtel Conference Center at Encina Hall.
This event is jointly sponsored by the China Program at at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and the Center on Democracy,Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).
Geostrategic rivalry and economic interdependence coexist in uneasy balance between the U.S. and China. Ambassador Fu will identify key strands in U.S. perceptions of China, frequently marked by confusion and anxiety, and China’s perceptions of the U.S., riddled by the desire for closer cooperation and suspicions over U.S.’s exclusion of China. The speech will highlight the South China Sea issue and emphasize the harmful effects of negative perceptions and the importance of cooperation. Commentary will be provided by Dr. Thomas Fingar, the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center Distinguished Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, after the speech.
Ambassador Fu Ying has been the Chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress of China since March 2013. She is also the Chairperson of the Academic Committee for China’s Institute of International Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. From 1993 to 2000, she served successively as the Director, Counselor of the Foreign Ministry’s Asian Department and the Minister Counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Indonesia (1997). While serving as the head of the Asian Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2000, she was instrumental in crafting China’s comprehensive strategic partnership with ASEAN and for launching the Six Party Talks with North Korea. She has served as China’s Ambassador to the Philippines (1998), Australia (2004) and to the United Kingdom (2007). From 2009 to 2013, she served as the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs for the P.R.C.
Dr. Thomas Fingar is the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. From 2005 to 2008, he served concurrently as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2004–2005), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001–2003), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994–2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989–1994), and chief of the China Division (1986–1989).
Chairperson, Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress, China; former PRC Ambassador to the Philippines, Australia, and the U.K.
Chairperson, Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress, China; former PRC Ambassador to the Philippines, Australia, and the U.K.
Fu Ying
<i>Chairperson, Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress, China; former PRC Ambassador to the Philippines, Australia, and the U.K.</i>
<i>Chairperson, Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress, China; former PRC Ambassador to the Philippines, Australia, and the U.K.</i>
<i>Chairperson, Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress, China; former PRC Ambassador to the Philippines, Australia, and the U.K.</i>
Dr. Thomas Fingar
<i>Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center Distinguished Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford Universit</i>
Event Recap: German Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyen Visits Stanford
Ursula von der Leyen, Minister of Defense, Federal Republic of Germany
In her March visit to Stanford University, Ursula von der Leyen, Minister of Defense for the Federal Republic of Germany, spoke to members of the Stanford community about the consequences of current international security challenges for Germany and for Europe. In recent months, some in Germany have advocated border closures as a solution to the ongoing migration crisis. Von der Leyen was highly critical of such measures because they necessitate closing intra-European Union borders thereby limiting the freedom of movement within the European Union, something she heralds as one of the greatest achievements of European integration.
As an alternative to the simplistic border closure approach, von der Leyen advocated a more nuanced approach, consisting of four broad steps. First, she said that the EU member states must clarify the meaning of “asylum,” and that those wishing to migrate to Germany or some other European country but who are not fleeing persecution must go through the regular migration process. Second, she stated that in order to maintain border-free travel across the Schengen area, the member states must reinforce external borders in an effort to combat human smuggling, human trafficking, and organized crime. The third step in von der Leyen’s approach was to enhance multilateral cooperation. She highlighted increased NATO naval patrols in the Mediterranean, the EU-NATO-Turkey summit meeting, and commitment to raising funds to feed and shelter refugees as examples of such cooperation. Finally, she said that Europe and its allies must deal with the root causes of the refugee flows by bringing peace and stability to both Iraq and Syria and by stopping ISIS. Doing so, she argued, will require military means, at least initially, and also requires increased coordination among the many disparate actors currently involved in the conflict. In order to successfully deal with the ongoing crisis, she argued, people must have a viable future in their own countries.
A medical doctor by training, von der Leyen spoke fondly of the time that she and her family spent at Stanford in the nineties. She became a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1990 and became active in politics shortly after returning to Germany from Stanford. Since that time, she has served at the local, lander, and federal levels of government and was first appointed to the cabinet in 2005. Prior to her 2013 appointment as Minister of Defense, von der Leyen served as the Minister of Family Affairs and Youth (2005-2009) and as the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs (2009-2013).
The Europe Center Undergraduate Internship Program in Europe
Please join us in congratulating the students selected to participate in The Europe Center’s summer 2016 Undergraduate Internship Program in Europe:
The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Christine Cavallo Joshua Petersen
Bruegel Nafia Chowdhury Max Morales Andrea Villarreal
The Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) Amanda Jaffe
The International Center for Defense and Security (ICDS) Caitlyn Littlepage Sarah Manney
For more information about The Europe Center’s Undergraduate Internship Program in Europe, please visit our website.
Featured Faculty Research: Ken Scheve
We would like to introduce you to some of The Europe Center’s faculty affiliates and the projects on which they are working. Our featured faculty member this month is Ken Scheve, who is a Professor of Political Science and Director of The Europe Center.
Ken earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2000 and joined the faculty at Stanford University in 2012. Ken's research interests are in the fields of international and comparative political economy and comparative political behavior with particular interest in the behavioral foundations of the politics of economic policymaking. An example of this research is his recent book, Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe, which he co-authored with David Stasavage of New York University. In this book, Scheve and Stasavage tackle a subject of considerable political conflict: taxes on the richest members of society. There has been a great deal of debate about what government should do in this area, but we know far less about the reasons why some governments actually do tax the rich and others do not. Scheve and Stasavage address this question by examining income, inheritance, and other taxes from 1800 to the present in a set of twenty countries.
The core argument of the book is that countries tax the rich when the public thinks the state has failed to treat citizens as equals and in so doing has privileged the rich. Scheve and Stasavage begin with the premise that debates about taxation revolve around self-interest (no one likes paying taxes), economic efficiency, and fairness. They argue that fairness considerations center on what it means for the state to treat citizens as equals in income tax policy. Historically, they demonstrate that there are three main fairness arguments that have been used for or against taxing the rich. Equal Treatment arguments claim that everyone should be taxed at the same rate just like everyone has one vote. Ability to Pay arguments contend that states should tax the rich at higher rates because they can better afford to pay when compared with everyone else. Compensatory arguments suggest that it is fair to tax the rich at higher rates when it compensates for unequal treatment by the state in some other policy area. They argue that over the last two centuries compensatory arguments have been the most powerful arguments in favor of taxing the rich.
Examining the history of income taxation, Scheve and Stasavage find that compensatory arguments were important in the early development of income tax systems in the 19th century when it was argued that income taxes on the rich were necessary to compensate for heavy indirect taxes that fell disproportionately on the poor and middle class. But the most significant compensatory arguments over the last two centuries have been arguments to raise taxes on the rich to preserve equal sacrifice in wars of mass mobilization. These conflicts, particularly World War I and World War II, led states to raise large armies, often through conscription, and citizens and politicians alike adopted compensatory fairness arguments to justify higher taxes on income and wealth. Mass war mobilization led governments of both left and right to tax the rich.
Scheve and Stasavage show that governments have neither taxed the rich just because inequality is high, nor have they done so simply because the poor and middle classes outnumber the rich when it comes to voting. The main occasion when governments have moved to tax the rich is during times of mass mobilization for war, especially in democracies in which the norm of treating citizens as equals is held more strongly. They demonstrate that the real watershed for taxing the rich for many countries came in 1914. The era of the two world wars and their aftermath was one in which governments taxed the rich at rates that would have previously seemed unimaginable.
Throughout the book, Scheve and Stasavage show that when countries shift from peace to war, or the reverse, there has also been a big shift in the type of fairness arguments made in favor of taxing the rich. During times of peace, debates about whether it is fair to tax the rich center on competing equal treatment and ability to pay arguments. During times of war, supporters of taxing the rich have also been able to make compensatory arguments. If the poor and middle classes are doing the fighting, then the rich should be asked to pay more for the war effort. If some with wealth benefit from war profits, then this creates another compensatory argument for taxing the rich. These compensatory arguments had the biggest impact in democracies that are founded on the idea that citizens should be treated as equals. The fact that war had a much bigger impact on taxes on the rich in democracies than in autocracies also suggests that the rich weren’t being taxed out of simple necessity. It was because war determined what types of fairness arguments could be made.
The findings in Taxing the Rich have implications for the future of income taxation: Don’t expect high and rising inequality to necessarily lead to a return to the high top tax rates of the post-war era. What really matters is what people believe about how inequality is generated in the first place. If it is clear that inequality has risen because the government has failed to treat citizens as equals in the first place, then there is room for convincing compensatory arguments. Today, in an era where military technology favors more limited forms of warfare — drones rather than boots on the ground — the wartime compensatory arguments of old are no longer available. Absent new compensatory arguments, Scheve and Stasavage expect some to argue for taxing the rich based on ability to pay, but this probably won’t suffice to produce radically higher tax rates. More politically plausible reforms include those that involve increasing taxes on the rich by appealing to the logic of equal treatment to remove deductions, exemptions, and cases of special treatment. For more information about this research, please visit the book's website.
Publication Details: Scheve, Kenneth F., and David Stasavage. 2016. Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe. Princeton, NJ and New York, NY: Princeton University Press and the Russell Sage Foundation.
Featured Graduate Student Research: Melissa Kagen
We would like to introduce you to some of the graduate students that we support and the projects on which they are working. Our featured graduate student this month is Melissa Kagen (German Studies). Melissa is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of German Studies at Stanford University. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies at Stanford, Melissa earned an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago and a BA in Literary Arts from Brown University.
Melissa's research interests include nineteenth and twentieth century German and Austrian opera and fiction, Jewish studies, and performance studies, as well as digital humanities. In her dissertation, Melissa examines the concept of "Wandering" - an important theme since Wagner's work - in modernist German opera. She considers the distinctive conceptions of German and Jewish wanderers in four operas written by German-speaking Jews prior to World War II. These operas include Der Ferne Klang (1912) by Franz Schreker, Die Tote Stadt (1920) by Erich Wolfgang, Moses und Aron (1933) by Arnold Schoenberg, and The Eternal Road (1937) by Kurt Weill. Supported by The Europe Center, Melissa conducted research in Germany and Austria during summer 2015. During this time, she traveled to libraries and archives to access works related to her dissertation research. A highlight of her research trip was seeing a performance of Der Ferne Klang in Manheim. Because this opera is rarely performed and is not available on DVD, this was the first time Melissa had ever seen a performance of Der Ferne Klang. Another crucial outcome of her archival work was the realization that in Die Tote Stadt, the protagonist himself does not wander, but rather the spaces wander around him. This realization was crucial to her novel discussion of this work. Melissa will be presenting her completed project in May and graduating in June. She hopes to return to Europe this summer to work on a related project.
For more information about The Europe Center's Graduate Student Grant program, please visit our website.
Stanford Student Sarah Flamm Participates in Model WTO
Model WTO Participants at the University of St. Gallen
In April Stanford University student Sarah Flamm traveled to Switzerland to participate in the 19th annual Model World Trade Organization program. Here is Sarah’s description of her experience:
I had the pleasure of representing the delegation of the United States at the 19th annual Model World Trade Organization (WTO) this April. With the generous support of SIEPR and The Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute, I traveled to Switzerland to join 60 graduate and undergraduate students from different parts of the world to deliberate over the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). The simulation took place at the University of St. Gallen and the WTO headquarters in Geneva. Over the course of an intense week, we delegates negotiated and drafted amendments to the GPA to reflect changing national and international priorities and values.
Government procurement refers to purchases of goods and services made by government agencies with public money for public purposes. This topic is more interesting and polemical than one might initially suspect. Federal procurement represents a huge market ($530 billion in the United States), making its impact quite consequential. The goal of the GPA is to facilitate and to open trade opportunities and to ensure that governments follow the principles of non-discrimination, transparency, and procedural fairness in procurement. It is one of the few agreements where the United States has allowed itself to be subject to international arbitration, favoring the benefits of market access. Government procurement is also symbolically important as it reflects how nations choose to spend their money and whom they decide to support.
I represented the delegation of the United States, along with four others students from Belgium, Switzerland, China, and Hong Kong. We were each assigned to represent the United States on different committees, which included Green Procurement, Anti-corruption, African Participation, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), and Social Issues. I served on the Social Issues Committee, which addressed priorities in government procurement as they relate to labor standards, minority rights and discrimination, among others. On the Social Committee I had two main negotiation goals: 1) insert the term "social issues" into the GPA text in order to empower governments to explicitly take social responsibility into account when awarding government contracts, and 2) define "social issues" to mean meeting minimum labor standards, notably to comply with two International Labour Organization conventions - Convention 105 on the Abolition of Forced Labour and Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour. Over the course of six moderated negotiation rounds, we discussed these as well as priorities raised by other countries. The negotiations varied from meticulous arguments over text, to practical discussions on how to create allowances for developing countries that currently rely on child and cheap labor, making them presently unable to meet the requirements of developed countries in order to compete for contracts.
Amidst negotiations, our delegation consulted with David Bisbee, who is the Attaché at the U.S. Mission to the WTO. He advised on negotiations and strategy, and upon conclusion of the negotiations we met with him in person at the U.S. embassy in Geneva. It was interesting to represent a country that is not very enthusiastic about multilateral bodies such as the WTO. In reality, the United States would likely have abstained from voting to include the Social Issues language that we had promoted because of the fear that it would open the door to discrimination. At the end of the week, we met with lawyers from the WTO Secretariat in Geneva who gave us detailed feedback on the new GPA text we had created. This provided an opportunity to better understand whether our results were realistic and how they compared to real negotiation outcomes. We also learned about the procedure for ratification of the amended document.
Simulations like Model WTO differ from reality in that country representatives are often more willing to compromise than they would in reality, but this also allowed for an expanded policy space for our countries to come up with workable solutions. This experience has piqued my interest in one day representing the labor and trade priorities of the United States on the global stage.
The Europe Center Sponsored Events
April 28, 2016 12:00PM - 1:30PM Pauline Schnapper, Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle Is Britain Going to Leave the EU? The Referendum Campaign and the Crisis of British Democracy CISAC Central Conference Room, Encina Hall RSVP by 5:00PM April 25, 2016.
Save the Date: April 28-29, 2016 9:00AM - 5:00PM Conference: Networks of European Enlightenment Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center This conference is co-sponsored by The Europe Center, the French Cultural Workshop, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages.
Save the Date: April 29-30, 2016 Symposium: Adjudicating Across Borders: Contemporary Challenges in International Adoption Stanford Law School Room 290 RSVP required. This conference is co-sponsored by The Europe Center
May 9, 2016 11:30AM - 1:00PM Monica Martinez-Bravo, Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros (CEMFI), Madrid Workshop Title TBD Room 400 (Graham Stuart Lounge), Encina Hall West No RSVP required. This seminar is part of the Comparative Politics Workshop in the Department of Political Science and is co-sponsored by The Europe Center.
European Security Initiative Events
Save the Date: April 28, 2016 4:15PM - 5:45PM John Bass, United States Ambassador to Turkey
Save the Date: May 3, 2016 Steve Sestanovich, Professor of International Diplomacy at Columbia University
A student team briefs the class on a wearable sensor they're developing for an elite unit of U.S. Navy SEALs – a product they're pitching as "fitbit for America's divers."
MBA student Rachel Moore presents for Team Sentinel, which is working with the U.S. 7th Fleet to find better ways to analyze drone and satellite imagery.
Startup guru Steve Blank shares a light moment with a group of students.
Class co-teacher Pete Newell throws his hands up to celebrate a student breakthrough.
Rachel Olney, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, tries on a military-grade dry suit on a visit to the 129th Rescue Wing at Moffett Field.
“[The students] have really just jumped in with both feet and immersed themselves in this Department of Defense world that for so many civilians is just very foreign to them,” said U.S. Army Colonel 
Class co-teacher and Silver Star Medal recipient Pete Newell explains some of the classic reasons why military products fail in the field.
Former U.S. Army Colonel Pete Newell demystifies some military jargon for the class.
Students share a laugh during a class break.
Dr. Thomas Fingar is the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. From 2005 to 2008, he served concurrently as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2004–2005), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001–2003), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994–2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989–1994), and chief of the China Division (1986–1989).
Ken earned his Ph.D. from 
Melissa's research interests include nineteenth and twentieth century German and Austrian opera and fiction, Jewish studies, and performance studies, as well as digital humanities. In her dissertation, Melissa examines the concept of "Wandering" - an important theme since Wagner's work - in modernist German opera. She considers the distinctive conceptions of German and Jewish wanderers in four operas written by German-speaking Jews prior to World War II. These operas include Der Ferne Klang (1912) by Franz Schreker, Die Tote Stadt (1920) by Erich Wolfgang, Moses und Aron (1933) by Arnold Schoenberg, and The Eternal Road (1937) by Kurt Weill. Supported by The Europe Center, Melissa conducted research in Germany and Austria during summer 2015. During this time, she traveled to libraries and archives to access works related to her dissertation research. A highlight of her research trip was seeing a performance of Der Ferne Klang in Manheim. Because this opera is rarely performed and is not available on DVD, this was the first time Melissa had ever seen a performance of Der Ferne Klang. Another crucial outcome of her archival work was the realization that in Die Tote Stadt, the protagonist himself does not wander, but rather the spaces wander around him. This realization was crucial to her novel discussion of this work. Melissa will be presenting her completed project in May and graduating in June. She hopes to return to Europe this summer to work on a related project.
