Security

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. 

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In American Crossings, nine scholars consider the complicated modern history of borders in the Western Hemisphere, examining borders as geopolitical boundaries, key locations for internal security, spaces for international trade, and areas where national and community identities are defined.

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Abstract:   There is a state of high anxiety about this year's election being "hacked" or "rigged". The media began speculating about the possibility when emails were stolen from the Democratic National Committee and, later, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, allegedly by state-sponsored hackers. Additionally, Donald Trump has been predicting that the election will be "rigged", worrying many of his supporters. New voter ID requirements have been imposed in many states in response to allegations of "voter fraud", but voting rights advocates worry that these requirements will disenfranchise many voters. In this talk, I will attempt a rational evaluation of election security risks and propose what we should do to address them.

About the Speaker: David L. Dill is the Donald E. Knuth Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where he has been on the faculty for 29 years. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been working on policy issues in voting technology since 2003. He is the founder of VerifiedVoting.org, whose mission is to safeguard elections in the digital age, and continues to serve as a board director in that organization.  He was a principle investigator in the National Science Foundation's "ACCURATE" voting tresearch center center from 2006 to 2011. In 2004, he received the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "Pioneer Award" for spearheading and nurturing the popular movement for integrity and transparency in modern elections."

Encina Hall, 2nd floor

David Dill Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Computer Science Stanford University
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An in memoriam event recognizing the legacy of Stephen W. “Steve” Bosworth was held last week. Organized by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), the event drew Stanford faculty, students and community members, paying tribute to the foreign affairs scholar and three-time U.S. ambassador.

Bosworth, who died in January 2016, was the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in 2014. During that time, he delivered three lectures at Stanford that highlighted lessons from his tenure in public service and in academia as dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Bosworth had also been a key participant over the years at Shorenstein APARC. He was active with the New Beginnings project that sought to bolster the U.S.-South Korea alliance and the Koret Workshop series focused on dialogue about North Korea.

Shorenstein APARC Distinguished Fellow Michael Armacost described him as a “longtime friend and colleague” and a mentor, having both worked to lay groundwork for the restoration of democracy in the Philippines as U.S. ambassador there.

“I admired Steve as a consummate diplomat, but he was a lot more than that,” Armacost said. “He was a man of intellectual acuity. He was a man of moral fortitude. He had a wry sense of humor. And, he had that remarkable ability of being able to stand-up and speak thoughtfully about almost any subject.”

Armacost was followed by remarks from Kathleen Stephens, the William J. Perry Distinguished Fellow and former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, and Sung Kim, the U.S. special envoy for North Korea, and discussion with the audience.

The collection of Bosworth’s Payne lectures has been published as a booklet. The booklet can be viewed here.

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CISAC nuclear scientist Siegfried S. Hecker earlier this year released a book, Doomed to Cooperate, about how American and Russian scientists joined forces to avert some of the greatest post-Cold War nuclear dangers. Physics Today and Arms Control Today recently ran reviews on the work. Below is a Nov. 1 article that Hecker wrote on this subject for Russia Matters:

By Siegfried S. Hecker

Recalling why U.S.-Russian nuclear cooperation was essential during the late 1980s, Russia’s then-First Deputy Minister of Atomic Energy Lev D. Ryabev said: “We arrived in the nuclear century all in one boat—a movement by any one will affect everyone… [Russian and American nuclear scientists] were doomed to work on these things together, which pushed us toward cooperation.”

Russia mattered then and it matters now. Today, like 30 years ago, the size of its nuclear program—namely its nuclear weapons, facilities, materials, experts—and its safety, security and environmental challenges are rivaled only by the United States. They dwarf all others in the world combined.

The dangerous difference between then and now is that the hard-won cooperation that amazingly prevented nuclear weapons, materials and technologies from spilling out of the disintegrating Soviet empire and into the hands of actors bent on deploying them has been replaced with animosity, tension and a freeze on substantive collaboration. Within the past month two U.S.-Russian agreements—on plutonium disposition and on cooperation in nuclear- and energy-related scientific research and development—have been suspended. Another one—on conversion of Russian research reactors—has been terminated altogether. Meanwhile, officials in Europe and the United States have tracked a number of disturbing activities suggesting that the Islamic State and its sympathizers may be pursuing nuclear and radiological terrorism as the group has been pushed on the defensive.

I must add that Russia also matters to me personally: It has been inextricably intertwined with my life. I was born during World War II in Europe. My father, a conscript in the German army, never returned from the Russian front. I grew up in post-war Austria, which until 1955 was under divided Allied and Soviet occupation. In 1956, I immigrated to the United States with my mother and siblings.

For the first 20 years after I received my bachelor’s degree in metallurgy and materials science from Case Institute of Technology in 1965, Russia also mattered because I spent most of that time employed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Our job was to deter the Soviet Union, which was in intense ideological, economic and military competition with the United States.

I became director of the laboratory in 1986 shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev took over leadership of the Soviet Union and dramatically changed geopolitics with his outreach to U.S. President Ronald Reagan and the West. At the end of 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved into 15 independent states. Remarkably and unexpectedly, the Cold War was over.

Mutually assured destruction was replaced by an acknowledgement of mutual nuclear interdependency. The West, rather than being threatened by the enormous nuclear might in the hands of Soviet leaders, was now threatened by Russia’s weakness and the potential for its new government to lose control of the nuclear assets it had inherited from the Soviet Union. The safety and security of Russia’s nuclear assets—its tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, over a million kilograms of fissile materials, a huge nuclear infrastructure and some one million employees of the once-powerful Soviet nuclear establishment—posed an unprecedented risk for Russia and the world.

Fortunately, collaboration replaced confrontation 25 years ago. President George H.W. Bush reached across the political divide to lend a helping hand during times of Soviet political and economic chaos to help Moscow manage its huge nuclear complex. Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar pioneered the visionary landmark Cooperative Threat Reduction legislation (appropriately called Nunn-Lugar) to provide rationale and financial support to that helping hand. The nongovernmental community—led by academics at U.S. universities, foundations such as the Carnegie Corporation of New York, groups such as the Federation of American Scientists, the U.S. National Academies and the Natural Resource Defense Council—paved the way by reaching out to courageous Soviet/Russian organizations, such as its Academy of Sciences and other leading thinkers.

The role of the American and Russian nuclear weapons laboratories changed as well. They had become acquainted during the 1988 Joint Verification Experiment, underground nuclear tests conducted at each other’s nuclear test sites with on-site monitoring by the other side to develop confidence in nuclear test verification so as to facilitate ratification of the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, which had lingered unratified since its signing in 1974. That acquaintance and subsequent interactions at the Geneva TTBT negotiations prompted both sides, but led by the Russian nuclear weapons scientists, to push their governments to allow scientific collaboration between former adversaries.

In February 1992, less than two months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Washington and Moscow approved exchange visits of the directors of their nuclear weapon design laboratories: Vladimir Belugin, director of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center VNIIEF, and Vladimir Nechai, director of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center VNIITF, visited the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories; John Nuckolls, director of LLNL, and I, director of LANL, visited the formerly secret cities of Sarov and Snezhinsk, home to VNIIEF and VNIITF, respectively.

Those visits marked the beginning of a remarkable period spanning more than two decades of scientific and technical nuclear cooperation that we called lab-to-lab cooperation—the story told in a book called “Doomed to Cooperate” by dozens of Russian and American scientists, engineers and officials. The book demonstrates how the camaraderie and the interpersonal relationships among the scientists and engineers helped them overcome the radically different views of the nuclear challenges as seen by the two governments.

To the U.S. government, Russia’s nuclear complex was considered an inheritance from hell: the danger of loose nukes, loose nuclear materials, loose nuclear experts and loose nuclear exports. The Russian government considered its nuclear complex part of its salvation in that it would provide a basis to help the country achieve a competitive, modern industrial base and economy. In “Doomed to Cooperate,” we, the scientists and engineers, describe how we confronted the unprecedented safety and security challenges, and how we collaborated to discover new science and help Russia’s vastly oversized nuclear workforce use their talents in civilian and commercial pursuits.

Russia’s nuclear complex has mattered enormously over the past 25 years. It has survived the four nuclear dangers mentioned above to a large extent because of the Russian nuclear community’s dedication, professionalism and patriotism—and their ability to persevere during difficult times. But it also had the benefit of innovative U.S. government programs, collaborations championed by U.S. NGOs and the many hundreds of nuclear lab-to-lab collaborations. These efforts helped the huge Soviet nuclear complex transition those in Russia and several other former Soviet republics in a safe and secure manner.

Unfortunately, whereas a convergence of our governments’ interests immediately following the end of the Cold War allowed for innovative nuclear cooperation, growing political differences during the past 10 to 15 years have done the opposite. The current differences over Crimea, eastern Ukraine and Syria have all but brought meaningful nuclear collaboration to an end.

Yet, Russia continues to matter—and cooperation between Moscow and Washington on common nuclear challenges is essential. They must take steps to reverse what appears to be a return to an arms race and potential nuclear confrontation. They must continue to share experiences and best practices to keep their huge nuclear complexes safe and secure. Although Russia has made enormous improvements in these areas, lessons from the United States nuclear complex demonstrate that this job is never done. Together, Moscow and Washington have a greater stake than anyone in ensuring that the nuclear nonproliferation regime is strengthened rather than crippled. And more than anyone in the world they have a responsibility to join their technical, professional and military talents to help the world avoid nuclear terrorism.

The stakes couldn’t be higher: Russia matters; nuclear cooperation is essential; isolation invites catastrophe.

 

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CISAC nuclear scientist Siegfried S. Hecker, second from the right, says that American and Russian scientists need to work together on averting nuclear dangers – as they have done so in the past.
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In an analysis piece for CSIS, Shorenstein APARC Distinguished Fellow Thomas Fingar examines the geopolitical, economic and developmental considerations of Xi Jinping's call for China and the states of Central Asia to build a modern-day "Silk Road."

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Effective Law Enforcement Institutions and Democratic Accountability: Workshop Focuses on Regional Issues in Law Enforcement

The Stanford Program on Poverty and Governance delivered its five-day training course, “Effective Law Enforcement Institutions and Democratic Accountability,” to law enforcement professionals from the Planning Unit of the Mexican Comision Nacional de Seguridad (CNS). Held in Encina Hall October 11-15, 2016, the workshop was led by Professors Beatriz Magaloni and Alberto Diaz-Cayeros as part of their U.S. State Department-funded research project on police accountability and citizen trust in Mexico. Stanford political scientists and legal scholars participated in the week-long workshop to address a wide range of topics focused on the dynamics between criminal violence, police practices and citizen trust. Highlights of the unique curriculum included:

  • Design of police interventions by Beatriz Magaloni and Alberto Diaz Cayeros, with discussion of drug policy, fighting organized crime, what law enforcement looks like up close, and prevention of violence.
  • How to measure the success of police operations by Edgar Franco, a doctoral student in Political Science.
  • Use of empirical evidence to develop effective public policy by Gustavo Robles, Ph.D candidate in Political Science, with a discussion of methods for gathering and analyzing data and how to develop indicators for performance, results and impact.
  • Regional issues with a focus on Latin America, including anomie and law, by Stanford Law School visiting professor Rogelio Perez-Perdomo.
  • Roundtable moderated by Beatriz Magaloni featuring Francis Fukuyama, Erik Jensen and Stephen Stedman on accountability, anti-corruption practices, trust in public institutions, civil engagement, and the role of international organizations.
  • A lecture by legal scholar Mirte Posterna from the Stanford Law School on human Rights, security and anti-drug policy.

The Mexican delegation took afiled trip to the Stockton Police Department to meet with Chief of Police Eric Jones, an innovator in effective community policing and use of body-worn cameras. They also a visited Stanford's new David Rumsey Map Center, where scholars can work with digital mapping software to manipulate, enlarge, quantify, aggregate, and visualize geo-data in unique ways for research.

The final session of the workshop focused on developing collaborative approaches between scholars and law enforcement practitioners in Mexico on a CNS-sponsored "risk terrain" project currently underway in Acapulco, with an analysis of police patrolling data, the role of schools in mitigating risk for youth violence and gang activity, and the design of federal police surveys.

The workshop and site visits were instrumental in advancing key goals of U.S. State Department-funded research project on project police accountability and citizen trust, which include assessing the efficacy of new law enforcement approaches in coordinating policing between federal, states and municipal agencies, mapping criminal activity and drug trafficking routes in Mexico, and correlating socio-economic characteristics with levels of trust among Mexican citizens.

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As a new U.S. administration assumes office next year, it will face numerous policy challenges in the Asia-Pacific, a region that accounts for nearly 60 percent of the world’s population and two-thirds of global output.

Despite tremendous gains over the past two decades, the Asia-Pacific region is now grappling with varied effects of globalization, chief among them, inequities of growth, migration and development and their implications for societies as some Asian economies slow alongside the United States and security challenges remain at the fore.

Seven scholars from Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) offered views on policy challenges in Asia and some possible directions for U.S.-Asia relations during the next administration.

View the scholars' commentary by scrolling down the page or click on the individual links below to jump to a certain topic.

U.S.-China relations

U.S.-Japan relations

North Korea

Southeast Asia and the South China Sea

Global governance

Population aging .

Trade


U.S.-China relations

By Thomas Fingar

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Managing the United States’ relationship with China must be at the top of the new administration’s foreign policy agenda because the relationship is consequential for the region, the world and American interests. Successful management of bilateral issues and perceptions is increasingly difficult and increasingly important.

Alarmist predictions about China’s rise and America’s decline mischaracterize and overstate tensions in the relationship. There is little likelihood that the next U.S. administration will depart from the “hedged engagement” policies pursued by the last eight U.S. administrations. America’s domestic problems cannot be solved by blaming China or any other country. Indeed, they can best be addressed through policies that have contributed to peace, stability and prosperity.

Strains in U.S.-China relations require attention, not radical shifts in policy. China is not an enemy and the United States does not wish to make it one. Nor will or should the next administration resist changes to the status quo if change can better the rules-based international order that has served both countries well. Washington’s objective will be to improve the liberal international system, not to contain or constrain China’s role in that system.

The United States and China have too much at stake to allow relations to become dangerously adversarial, although that is unlikely to happen. But this is not a reason to be sanguine. In the years ahead, managing the relationship will be difficult because key pillars of the relationship are changing. For decades, the strongest source of support for stability in U.S.-China relations has been the U.S. business community, but Chinese actions have alienated this key group and it is now more likely to press for changes than for stability. A second change is occurring in China. As growth slows, Chinese citizens are pressing their government to make additional reforms and respond to perceived challenges to China’s sovereignty.

The next U.S. administration is more likely to continue and adapt current policies toward China and Asia more broadly than to pursue a significantly different approach. Those hoping for or fearing radical changes in U.S. policy will be disappointed..

Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow and former chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council. He leads a research project on China and the World that explores China’s relations with other countries.


U.S.-Japan relations

By Daniel Sneider

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U.S.-Japan relations have enjoyed a remarkable period of strengthened ties in the last few years. The passage of new Japanese security legislation has opened the door to closer defense cooperation, including beyond Japan’s borders. The Japan-Korea comfort women agreement, negotiated with American backing, has led to growing levels of tripartite cooperation between the U.S. and its two principal Northeast Asian allies. And the negotiation of a bilateral agreement within the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks brought trade and investment policy into close alignment. The U.S. election, however, brings some clouds to this otherwise sunny horizon.

Three consecutive terms held by the same party would certainly preserve the momentum behind the ‘pivot to Asia’ strategy of the last few years, especially on the security front. Still there are some dangers ahead. If Japan moves ahead to make a peace treaty with Russia, resolving the territorial issue and opening a flow of Japanese investment into Russia, that could be a source of tension. The new administration may also want to mend fences early with China, seeking cooperation on North Korea and avoiding tensions in Southeast Asia.

The big challenge, however, will be guiding the TPP through Congress. While there is a strong sentiment within policy circles in favor of rescuing the deal, perhaps through some kind of adjustment of the agreement, insiders believe that is highly unlikely. The Sanders-Warren wing of the Democratic party has been greatly strengthened by this election and they will be looking for any sign of retreat on TPP. Mrs. Clinton has an ambitious agenda of domestic policy initiatives – from college tuition and the minimum wage to immigration reform – on which she will need their support. One idea now circulating quietly in policy circles is to ‘save’ the TPP, especially its strategic importance, by separating off a bilateral Japan-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Tokyo is said to be opposed to this but Washington may put pressure on for this option, leaving the door open to a full TPP down the road. .

Daniel Sneider is the associate director for research and a former foreign correspondent. He is the co-author of Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific Wars (Stanford University Press, 2016) and is currently writing about U.S.-Japan security issues.


North Korea

By Kathleen Stephens

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North Korea under Kim Jong Un has accelerated its campaign to establish itself as a nuclear weapons state. Two nuclear tests and multiple missile firings have occurred in 2016. More tests, or other provocations, may well be attempted before or shortly after the new American president is inaugurated next January. The risk of conflict, whether through miscalculation or misunderstanding, is serious. The outgoing and incoming administrations must coordinate closely on policy and messaging about North Korea with each other and with Asian allies and partners.

From an American foreign policy perspective, North Korea policy challenges will be inherited by the next president as “unfinished business,” unresolved despite a range of approaches spanning previous Republican and Democratic administrations. The first months in a new U.S. president’s term may create a small window to explore potential new openings. The new president should demonstrate at the outset that North Korea is high on the new administration’s priority list, with early, substantive exchanges with allies and key partners like China to affirm U.S. commitment to defense of its allies, a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and the vision agreed to at the Six-Party Talks in the September 2005 Joint Statement of Principles. Early messaging to Pyongyang is also key – clearly communicating the consequences of further testing or provocations, but at the same time signaling the readiness of the new administration to explore new diplomatic approaches. The appointment of a senior envoy, close to the president, could underscore the administration’s seriousness as well as help manage the difficult policy and political process in Washington itself.

2017 is a presidential election year in South Korea, and looks poised to be a particularly difficult one. This will influence Pyongyang’s calculus, as will the still-unknown impact of continued international sanctions. The challenges posed by North Korea have grown greater with time, but there are few new, untried options acceptable to any new administration in Washington. Nonetheless, the new administration must explore what is possible diplomatically and take further steps to defend and deter as necessary. .

Kathleen Stephens is the William J. Perry Distinguished Fellow and former U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea. She is currently writing and researching on U.S. diplomacy in Korea.


Southeast Asia and the South China Sea

By Donald K. Emmerson

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The South China Sea is presently a flashpoint, prospectively a turning point, and actually the chief challenge to American policy in Southeast Asia. The risk of China-U.S. escalation makes it a flashpoint. Future historians may call it a turning point if—a big if—China’s campaign for primacy in it and over it succeeds and heralds (a) an eventual incorporation of some portion of Southeast Asia into a Chinese sphere of influence, and (b) a corresponding marginalization of American power in the region.

A new U.S. administration will be inaugurated in January 2017. Unless it wishes to adapt to such outcomes, it should:

(1) renew its predecessor’s refusal to endorse any claim to sovereignty over all, most, or some of the South China Sea and/or its land features made by any of the six contending parties—Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam—pending the validation of such a claim under international law.

(2) strongly encourage all countries, including the contenders, to endorse and implement the authoritative interpretation of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) issued on July 12, 2016, by an UNCLOS-authorized court. Washington should also emphasize that it, too, will abide by the judgment, and will strive to ensure American ratification of UNCLOS.

(3) maintain its commitment to engage in publicly acknowledged freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea on a regular basis. Previous such FONOPs were conducted in October 2015 by the USS Lassen, in January 2016 by the USS Wilbur, in May 2016 by the USS Lawrence, and in October 2016 by the USS Decatur. The increasingly lengthy intervals between these trips, despite a defense official’s promise to conduct them twice every quarter, has encouraged doubts about precisely the commitment to freedom of navigation that they were meant to convey.

(4) announce what has hitherto been largely implicit: The FONOPs are not being done merely to brandish American naval prowess. Their purpose is to affirm a core geopolitical position, namely, that no single country, not the United States, nor China, nor anyone else, should exercise exclusive or exclusionary control over the South China Sea.

(5) brainstorm with Asian-Pacific and European counterparts a range of innovative ways of multilateralizing the South China Sea as a shared heritage of, and a resource for, its claimants and users alike. .

Donald K. Emmerson is a senior fellow emeritus and director of the Southeast Asia Program. He is currently editing a Stanford University Press book that examines China’s relations with Southeast Asia.


Global governance

By Phillip Y. Lipscy

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The basic features of the international order established by the United States after the end of World War II have proven remarkably resilient for over 70 years. The United States has played a pivotal role in East Asia, supporting the region’s rise by underpinning geopolitical stability, an open world economy and international institutions that facilitate cooperative relations. Absent U.S. involvement, it is highly unlikely that the vibrant, largely peaceful region we observe today would exist. However, the rise of Asia also poses perhaps the greatest challenge for the U.S.-supported global order since its creation.

Global economic activity is increasingly shifting toward Asia – most forecasts suggest the region will account for about half of the global economy by the midpoint of the 21st century. This shift is creating important incongruities within the global architecture of international organizations, such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank, which are a central element of the U.S.-based international order and remain heavily tilted toward the West in their formal structures, headquarter locations and personnel compositions. This status quo is a constant source of frustration for policymakers in the region, who seek greater voice consummate with their newfound international status. 

The next U.S. administration should prioritize reinvigoration of the global architecture.  One practical step is to move major international organizations toward multiple headquarter arrangements, which are now common in the private sector – this will mitigate the challenges of recruiting talented individuals willing to spend their careers in distant headquarters in the West. The United States should join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, created by China, to tie the institution more closely into the existing architecture, contribute to its success and send a signal that Asian contributions to international governance are welcome. The Asian rebalance should be continued and deepened, with an emphasis on institution-building that reassures our Asian counterparts that the United States will remain a Pacific power. .

Philip Y. Lipscy is an assistant professor of political science and the Thomas Rohlen Center Fellow. He is the author of the forthcoming book Renegotiating the World Order: Institutional Change in International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2017).


Population aging

By Karen Eggleston

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Among the most pressing policy challenges in Asia, U.S. policymakers should bear in mind the longer-term demographic challenges underlying Asia’s economic and geopolitical resurgence. East Asia and parts of Southeast Asia face the headwinds of population aging. Japan has the largest elderly population in the world and South Korea’s aging rate is even more rapid. By contrast, South Asian countries are aging more gradually and face the challenge of productively employing a growing working-age population and capturing their “demographic dividend” (from declining fertility outweighing declining mortality). Navigating these trends will require significant investment in the human capital of every child, focused on health, education and equal opportunity.

China’s recent announcement of a universal two-child policy restored an important dimension of choice, but it will not fundamentally change the trajectory of a shrinking working-age population and burgeoning share of elderly. China’s population aged 60 and older is projected to grow from nearly 15 percent today to 33 percent in 2050, at which time China’s population aged 80 and older will be larger than the current population of France. This triumph of longevity in China and other Asian countries, left unaddressed, will strain the fiscal integrity of public and private pension systems, while urbanization, technological change and income inequality interact with population aging by threatening the sustainability and perceived fairness of conventional financing for many social programs.

Investment in human capital and innovation in social and economic institutions will be central to addressing the demographic realities ahead. The next administration needs to support those investments as well as help to strengthen public health systems and primary care to control chronic disease and prepare for the next infectious disease pandemic, many of which historically have risen in Asia. .

Karen Eggleston is a senior fellow and director of the Asia Health Policy Program. She is the editor of the recently published book Policy Challenges from Demographic Change in China and India (Brookings Institution Press/Shorenstein APARC, 2016).


Trade

By Yong Suk Lee

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Trade policy with Asia will be one of the main challenges of the new administration. U.S. exports to Asia is greater than that to Europe or North America, and overall, U.S. trade with Asia is growing at a faster rate than with any other region in the world. In this regard, the new administration’s approach to the Trans-Pacific Partnership will have important consequences to the U.S. economy.

Anti-globalization sentiment has ballooned in the past two years, particularly in regions affected by the import competition from and outsourcing to Asia. However, some firms and workers have benefited from increasing trade openness. The U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement of 2012, for example, led to substantial growth in exports in the agricultural, automotive and pharmaceutical sectors. Yet, there are winners and losers from trade agreements. Using an economist’s hypothetical perspective, one would assume firms and workers in the losing industry move to the exporting sector and take advantage of the gains from trade. In reality, adjustment across industries and regions from such movements are slow. Put simply, a furniture worker in North Carolina who lost a job due to import competition cannot easily assume a new job in the booming high-tech industry in California. They would require high-income mobility and a different skill set.

Trade policy needs to focus on facilitating the transition of workers to different industries and better train students to prepare for potential mobility in the future. Trade policy will also be vital in determining how international commerce is shaped. As cross-border e-commerce increases, it will be in the interest of the United States to participate in and lead negotiations that determine future trade rules. The Trans-Pacific Partnership should not simply be abandoned. The next administration should educate both policymakers and the public about the effects of trade openness and the economic and strategic importance of trade agreements for the U.S. economy.

Yong Suk Lee is the SK Center Fellow and deputy director of Korea Program. He leads a research project focused on Korean education, entrepreneurship and economic development.

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A woman walks past a construction site in Beijing, China, Sept. 2014.
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You can now listen to podcast seminars held at the Center for International Security and Cooperation on Stanford's iTunes U site.

With more talks to be added after they occur, the CISAC iTunes page launched this week with the following podcasts from the fall 2016 quarter:

• Margaret Levi's Oct. 13 talk where she discusses the conditions under which individuals act beyond their narrow economic interests in situations where logic suggests that self-interest should triumph. A political science professor, Levi is the director of Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

• Derek Chollet's Oct. 10 seminar on President Obama's foreign policy legacy. Chollet served in senior positions at the White House, State Department, and Pentagon.

• Mark Zoback's Oct. 10 discussion about the opportunities and challenges of the world's natural gas abundance. Zoback is a Stanford geophysics professor and director of the Stanford Natural Gas Initiative.

To access the podcasts, go to itunes.stanford.edu. Then click on the red button, "Launch Stanford on iTunes U," and look for CISAC under the "What's New Button. Check the CISAC homepage for future speaker events that will be eventually added to the center's iTunes site.

Stanford on iTunes U is an archive of audio and video content from schools, departments, and programs across the university on Apple's popular iTunes platform. The site includes Stanford course lectures, faculty presentations, event highlights, music and more. The collection is maintained by Stanford's Office of University Communications.

All of the content from Stanford on iTunes U is free. To access the site, make sure you have the most current version of iTunes installed on your Mac or PC computer. To download the application, visit to www.apple.com/itunes. Next, launch the iTunes application and click on iTunes Store in the source list. Select iTunes U in the top navigation area, and click on Stanford on the resulting page. Alternatively, you can go directly to the university's iTunes U page via the “Launch Stanford on iTunes U” link at itunes.stanford.edu. Stanford launched its iTunes U collection in 2005.

 

 
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The Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) officially debuted its Stanford iTunes page this week. See itunes.stanford.edu. Click on the red button, "Launch Stanford on iTunes U," and look for CISAC under the "What's New Button."
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Erin Baggott Carter, a CISAC fellow during 2014-16, recently published a Washington Post op-ed on the Chinese media coverage of the current U.S. presidential election. This is a result of CISAC's increased focus on requiring and helping all CISAC fellows publish an op-ed based on their academic research. Carter is now an assistant professor at the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. Click here to read the entire op-ed, with charts and additional links. Below is the written portion:

 

Erin Baggott Carter

How do the 2016 U.S. elections appear outside the United States? The state-controlled Russian media clearly leans toward Republican nominee Donald Trump, who appears to admire President Vladimir Putin.

But what about China’s state-controlled media? Given Trump’s frequent references to China as a major cause of U.S. job losses — and his promises to get tough on trade pacts — one might expect harsh reporting on Trump.

To test this theory, I scraped China’s leading state-affiliated print news media from May 1 to Oct. 24, looking for references to the two candidates and automatically coding whether nearby words indicated a positive or a negative tone. This exercise shows that official Chinese-language media leans somewhat toward “Hillary” (as the Democratic candidate is referred to in China) in terms of favorable mentions.

Early this summer, Chinese state media covered Trump far more often than Hillary Clinton. But by this fall, the volume of coverage was nearly equal. There has been very little coverage of trade policies or economic implications for China. Instead, Chinese reporting tends to focus on scandals and missteps. This does not reflect a typical “horse-race” view of elections. Instead, as my ongoing research shows and some journalists point out, Chinese propaganda likes to emphasize the flaws of democracy as a political system.

The graph below shows the volume of coverage for both candidates. In early May, state-run newspapers mentioned Trump five times as often as they mentioned Clinton. This imbalance has steadily declined. Currently, the candidates are mentioned with nearly identical frequency.

The next graph shows the editorial tone of coverage of Trump and Clinton. Since May, Chinese propaganda has consistently covered Clinton more favorably, although both candidates have become slightly less popular over time. Clinton’s favorability rating started at 92 percent in May and declined to 77 percent in late October. Trump’s favorability rating started at 79 percent in May and declined to 71 percent in late October.

China’s state-run newspapers have said relatively little about the candidates’ policies and their implications for U.S.-China relations. Instead, coverage has focused on scandals: Clinton’s deleted emails and Trump’s affinity for Vladimir Putin, his tax returns, and his relationships with women.

Excluding generic campaign words and filler words, the most commonly used words about Clinton include “email,”  “investigation,” “Russia,” “FBI,” “lawsuit,” “Clinton Foundation,” “scandal,” “husband,” and “women.” The most commonly used words about  Trump include “Russia,” “Putin,” “intraparty,” “criticism,”  “immigrants,” “tax payments,” “slander,” “New York,” “magnate,” “women” and “real estate.”

Why is Clinton getting better coverage?

China’s preference for Clinton over Trump is notable for two reasons. First, China has a tepid relationshipwith Clinton. In her first visit to Beijing in 1995, she refused to meet with senior leaders and criticized Chinese human rights practices, neither of which endeared her to her hosts. As secretary of state, she implemented the Obama administration’s strategy of rebalancing toward Asia, which many in China interpreted as a move toward containment. After Clinton left the State Department, the China Daily wrote that she “always spoke with a unipolar voice and never appeared interested in the answers she got.”

Second, it takes a lot for Chinese leaders to take China-bashing from U.S. presidential candidates seriously. They learned from Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush that U.S. presidents rarely enact the anti-China campaign platforms that help carry them to victory. For instance, as Mitt Romney ramped up his criticism of Chinese trade practices in 2012, China’s Global Times speculated, “Is Romney’s toughness toward China just a scam? … His soft stance is only a matter of time.”

These two facts speak to the depths of Chinese concern about a Trump presidency. Despite China’s historical antipathy toward Clinton and willingness to countenance tough campaign rhetoric, Chinese propaganda still favors Clinton over Trump.

This is important because the American media has recently speculated that China, like Russia, may prefer a Trump presidency because it would lead the United States to withdraw from the world. Although there are doubtless some in the 88 million-member Chinese Communist Party who hold this view, China is far more integrated into the American financial system than Russia is and has commensurately larger stakes in U.S. economic stability.

For instance, as the U.S. financial sector was unraveling in September 2008, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson asked China not to sell Treasury bonds. China agreed, Paulson tells us in his memoirs, even though Russia invited China to weaken the American economy by dumping bonds in concert.

Now, as was the case eight years ago, when forced to choose between global stability and relative gains over the United States, Chinese leaders prefer global stability. Although Trump offers China the enticing possibility of American withdrawal from the Asia-Pacific sphere, Chinese leaders have begrudgingly cast their lot with the devil they know. This is evident from the propaganda they control, which favors Clinton over Trump.

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Former CISAC fellow Erin Baggott Carter discusses China's media coverage of the U.S. election in a Washington Post op-ed, noting that so far the evidence points to them favoring Clinton over Trump.
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The coordinated cyber attack that crippled parts of the internet on Friday highlighted key policy problems, a Stanford cybersecurity scholar said.And while the problems were clear, there are no easy solutions, said Herbert Lin, a senior research scholar for cyberpolicy and security at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. A research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Lin serves on the President’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.

Beginning early Friday morning, several major websites including Twitter and Amazon went down for most of the day, and many other sites were inaccessible. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are investigating what is described as a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack. The attacks mainly focused on Dyn, one of the companies that run the internet’s domain name system (DNS).

The following is an interview with Lin:

What happened on Oct. 21?

It was a distributed denial-of-service attack on a major internet services provider. The company operates much of the internet’s infrastructure. It’s not a consumer-facing company, but is in between the user and a company like, say, Amazon. These attacks centered on the domain name system (DNS), which is the service that translates something like stanford.edu into a numerical IP address. People remember Amazon.com, but they don’t remember the numerical IP address (which is actually where a company like Dyn sends web users going to a site like Amazon). What a DOS attack involves is the flooding of this (Dyn) company’s servers with millions of fake requests from sources for service to go to those web sites. Being forced to process all these requests, the company can’t service real people trying to use web sites. On Friday, the millions of sources making these requests appear to have been part of the Internet of Things.

What is the Internet of Things, and how did it factor into the cyberattack?

In this case, they weren’t, by and large, products like your computer or mine, but were mostly smaller things like surveillance cameras, baby monitors and home routers [everyday objects that have network connectivity to the internet]. What makes these things particularly vulnerable is that they are small, they don’t have much computational power in them, and they don’t include many, if any, security features. In fact, a Chinese company just admitted that it didn’t pay enough attention to security, and they recommend users do some things to improve security. But they shipped their products without paying much attention to security, and that’s why this was a vulnerability.

What new public policies could lessen the likelihood of this happening again?

The primary policy recommendation is that we need policy that encourages – or mandates, depending on how strong you want to be about it – at least minimal security measures for devices that connect to the internet, even Internet of Things devices. How you actually promote, encourage or incentivize that without a legal mandate is problematic, however, because nobody quite knows what the market will accept. Also, if you’re going to force manufacturers to pay attention to security, you’re going to reduce the rate of innovation for these products. Then there’s the question of who’s going to buy them, because the unsecure ones will probably be cheaper. The fundamental problem here is that guys who use the Internet of Things, like surveillance cameras, will find those cameras work perfectly fine, even if they were compromised. So they don’t care about security. They have no incentive to do so. Why should they pay more to protect me?

Does this show that our November election is even more vulnerable to hacking?

At this point, it looks unrelated … But I don’t know, it is all just speculation.

Herb Lin's research interests focus on policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, especially regarding the use of offensive operations in cyberspace as instruments of national policy. In addition to his Stanford positions, he is chief scientist, emeritus, for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies. Prior to this, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. To learn more, read Lin's "An Evolving Research Agenda in Cyber Policy and Security."

MEDIA CONTACTS

Herbert Lin, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 497-8600, herbert.s.lin@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

 

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Stanford cybersecurity expert Herb Lin says the Oct. 21 cyberattack reveals weaknesses in the ‘Internet of Things’ that need to be addressed. But stricter security requirements could slow innovation, increase costs and be difficult to enforce.
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