Stanford University

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. 

Sarah Baran

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Sarah is dedicated to working on humanitarian policy reform after spending the last six years leading teams in humanitarian responses in the Horn of Africa and South Asia. Most recently, she worked with the United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to support efforts to improve accountability to crisis-affected populations with the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Secretariat, the longest-standing and highest-level humanitarian coordination forum, comprised of executive heads of 18 UN and Non-UN organizations. Sarah spent the year prior to joining MIP leading a team of over 200 people to provide emergency services in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh with Solidarites International. She also directed a $50 million Consortium of nine non-governmental organizations with Norwegian Refugee Council to respond to the threat of famine in Somalia. Prior to humanitarian work, Sarah began her career with Georgetown University, her alma mater, implementing randomized control trials in Kenya and working alongside East African governments to translate the results into development policy. She also helped open Georgetown University’s Initiative on Innovation, Development, and Evaluation (gui2de) East African office, expanding operations to Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda. Sarah is pursuing the MIP through the generous support of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program. Now that she's in the bay area, she's excited to spend as much time as possible in the mountains.

Master's in International Policy Class of 2022

Miku Yamada

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Miku is a Master’s in International Policy candidate at Stanford, where she specializes in International Security. She has worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan for over two years where she worked on wide-ranging issues concerning Japan’s security cooperation with the U.S. At Stanford, she hopes to further deepen her understanding of security policies and alliance management, and the impact of technology on national security policies and foreign policy. She is also hoping to develop a better understanding of cyber policy and the intersection with national security. Miku holds a bachelor’s degree in Law and Politics from the University of Tokyo and studied Political Science at Princeton University as an exchange student.

Master's in International Policy Class of 2023

Bradley Jackson Jr.

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MIP Brad Jackson

Bradley Jackson Jr. is a Master’s in International Policy candidate concentrating in the international security and cyber policy and security specializations. His areas of interest include U.S.-Russia and U.S.-China relations, foreign policy, great power competition, and American grand strategy. While at Stanford, Bradley is particularly interested in the potential implications and increasingly pertinent role of emerging and advanced technologies in all facets of national security and foreign policy, particularly with artificial intelligence. He currently works as a research assistant to Dr. Condoleezza Rice and Lieutenant General (Ret.) H.R. McMaster at the Hoover Institution, and with Ms. Marietje Schaake in the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. Bradley speaks Russian, Italian, Spanish, and recently started learning Chinese (Mandarin). He joined MIP and Stanford directly after graduating from Towson University in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and a minor in Italian. Outside of academia, Bradley enjoys snowboarding, traveling, golfing, baseball, basketball, and learning languages.

Master's in International Policy Class of 2022

Ukraine Is a Distraction from Taiwan

Authors
Oriana Skylar Mastro
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Commentary
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This commentary was originally published by The Wall Street Journal.

A Russian invasion of Ukraine would be the most consequential use of military force in Europe since World War II and could put Moscow in a position to threaten U.S. allies in Europe. Many in the American foreign-policy establishment argue that the appropriate U.S. response to any such invasion is a major American troop deployment to the Continent. This would be a grave mistake.

The U.S. can no longer afford to spread its military across the world. The reason is simple: an increasingly aggressive China, the most powerful state to rise in the international system since the U.S. itself. By some measures, China’s economy is now the world’s largest. And it has built a military to match its economic heft. Twenty-five years ago, the Chinese military was backward and obsolete. But extraordinary increases in Beijing’s defense budget over more than two decades, and top political leaders’ razor-sharp focus, have transformed the People’s Liberation Army into one of the strongest militaries the world has ever seen.

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China’s new military is capable not only of territorial defense but of projecting power. Besides boasting the largest navy in the world by ship count, China enjoys some capabilities, like certain types of hypersonic weapons, that even the U.S. hasn’t developed.

Most urgently, China poses an increasingly imminent threat to Taiwan. Xi Jinping has made clear that his platform of “national rejuvenation” can’t be successful until Taiwan unifies with the mainland—whether it wants to or not. The PLA is growing more confident in its ability to conquer Taiwan even if the U.S. intervenes. Given China’s military and economic strength, China’s leaders reasonably doubt that the U.S. or anyone else would mount a meaningful response to an invasion of Taiwan. To give a sense of his resolve, Mr. Xi warned that any “foreign forces” standing in China’s way would have “their heads . . . bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.”

If Taiwan falls into Chinese hands, the U.S. will find it harder to defend critical allies like Japan and the Philippines, while China will be able to project its naval, air and other forces close to the U.S. and its territories

The U.S. must defend Taiwan to retain its credibility as the leader of a coalition for a free and open Indo-Pacific. From a military perspective, Taiwan is a vital link in the first island chain of the Western Pacific. If Taiwan falls into Chinese hands, the U.S. will find it harder to defend critical allies like Japan and the Philippines, while China will be able to project its naval, air and other forces close to the U.S. and its territories. Taiwan is also an economic dynamo, the ninth-largest U.S. trading partner of goods with a near-monopoly on the most advanced semiconductor technology—to which the U.S. would most certainly lose access after a war.

The Biden administration this month ordered more than 6,000 additional U.S. troops deployed to Eastern Europe, with many more potentially on the way. These deployments would involve major additional uncounted commitments of air, space, naval and logistics forces needed to enable and protect them. These are precisely the kinds of forces needed to defend Taiwan. The critical assets—munitions, top-end aviation, submarines, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities—that are needed to fight Russia or China are in short supply. For example, stealthy heavy bombers are the crown jewel of U.S. military power, but there are only 20 in the entire Air Force.

The U.S. has no hope of competing with China and ensuring Taiwan’s defense if it is distracted elsewhere. It is a delusion that the U.S. can, as Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said recently, “walk and chew gum at the same time” with respect to Russia and China. Sending more resources to Europe is the definition of getting distracted. Rather than increasing forces in Europe, the U.S. should be moving toward reductions.

To be blunt: Taiwan is more important than Ukraine. America’s European allies are in a better position to take on Russia than America’s Asian allies are to deal with China.

There is a viable alternative for Europe’s defense: The Europeans themselves can step up and do more for themselves, especially with regard to conventional arms. This is well within Europe’s capacity, as the combined economic power of the NATO states dwarfs that of Russia. NATO allies spend far more on their militaries than Russia. To aid its European allies, the U.S. can provide various forms of support, including lethal weapons, while continuing to remain committed to NATO’s defense, albeit in a more constrained fashion, by providing high-end and fungible military capabilities. The U.S. can also continue to extend its nuclear deterrent to NATO.

The U.S. should remain committed to NATO’s defense but husband its critical resources for the primary fight in Asia, and Taiwan in particular. Denying China the ability to dominate Asia is more important than anything that happens in Europe. To be blunt: Taiwan is more important than Ukraine. America’s European allies are in a better position to take on Russia than America’s Asian allies are to deal with China. The Chinese can’t be allowed to think that America’s distraction in Ukraine provides them with a window of opportunity to invade Taiwan. The U.S. needs to act accordingly, crisis or not.

Ms. Mastro is a center fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, part of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Colby is a principal at the Marathon Initiative and author of “The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict.”

Headshot of Oriana Skylar Mastro

Oriana Skylar Mastro

Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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President Xi and Kim Jong Un meet on a TV screen
Commentary

North Korea Is Becoming an Asset for China

Pyongyang’s Missiles Could Fracture America’s Alliances
North Korea Is Becoming an Asset for China
Chinese military propaganda depicting the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1958.
News

Reassessing China’s Capabilities and Goals for Strategic Competition

On the World Class podcast, Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that in order to set effective policy toward China, the United States needs to better understand how and why China is projecting power.
Reassessing China’s Capabilities and Goals for Strategic Competition
Taiwan Wall
Commentary

Would the United States Come to Taiwan's Defense?

On CNN's GPS with Fareed Zakaria, APARC Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro shares insights about China's aspirations to take Taiwan by force and the United States' role, should a forceful reunification come to pass.
Would the United States Come to Taiwan's Defense?
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U.S. Army Reserve members during a Cold Weather Operations Course near Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, Jan. 13, 2022.
U.S. Army Reserve photo by Sgt. 1st Class Clinton Wood
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Getting bogged down in Europe will impede the U.S.’s ability to compete with China in the Pacific.

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Mother Nature, Bioweapons and Lab Accidents: Guarding Against the Next Global Biological Catastrophe

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For winter quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

SEMINAR RECORDING

YouTube

                                                                                           


About the Event: With the devastating loss of life, economic disruption, and political instability it has wrought, COVID-19 has revealed that national governments and the international community are woefully unprepared to respond to pandemics—underscoring the world’s vulnerability to future catastrophic biological threats that could meet or exceed the severe consequences of the current pandemic. To effectively guard against future biological risks, leaders should take a longer-term view and recognize that, while naturally occurring pandemics remain a threat, the next global catastrophe could result from a laboratory accident or the deliberate misuse of bioscience and biotechnology.   This talk will provide a high-level overview of the broader biothreat landscape and outline actions that national leaders and the international community should take with a view to preventing catastrophic biological events—specifically by constraining capabilities and shaping the intent of powerful actors who may wish to exploit the tools of modern bioscience to cause harm. This talk will outline two priority NTI initiatives to strengthen international capabilities to prevent catastrophic biological events. We are working to develop and launch the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS), a new international organization that will focus on preventing the deliberate abuse or accidental misuse of bioscience and biotechnology by strengthening international biosecurity norms and developing innovative, practical tools to reduce risks throughout the research and development life cycle. NTI is also working to develop the concept of a new Joint Assessment Mechanism to strengthen UN-system capabilities to investigate high-consequence biological events of unknown origin. The ability to rapidly discern the source of emerging pandemics is critical to mitigating their effects in real time and protecting against future risks.
 

About the Speaker: Dr. Jaime M. Yassif is Senior Director and Lead Scientist for Global Biological Policy and Programs at NTI, where her work focuses on strengthening governance of dual-use bioscience and reducing global catastrophic biological risks. Yassif previously served as a Program Officer at Open Philanthropy, where she led the Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness initiative. In this role, she managed approximately $40 million in biosecurity grants, which rebuilt the field and supported work in several key areas, including developing new biosecurity programming at leading think tanks, establishing the Global Health Security Index, and initiating new biosecurity work in China and India. Prior to this, Yassif served as a science and technology policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Defense and worked on the Global Health Security Agenda at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person. 

Jaime Yassif NTI
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

Russia, Ukraine and NATO: The View from London

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 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

SEMINAR RECORDING

YouTube
 

                      

About the Event: The Russian military continues to mass forces near Ukraine, while the Kremlin says that the United States and NATO have addressed its secondary concerns but have ignored its key demands, such as that the Alliance foreswear further enlargement. Britain has played a critical role in NATO deliberations on how to respond to Moscow proposals and actions, and the British military is sending additional forces to bolster the Alliance's eastern flank. Sir Roderic Lyne, a former British ambassador to Russia and former foreign policy advisor to the prime minister, will describe how the crisis is viewed in London, the motivations driving Russian actions, and how the West should respond.

 

About the Speaker: Roderic Lyne served in the UK's Diplomatic Service for 34 years, including three postings to Moscow between 1972 and 2004, and was the last Head of the Soviet Department in the Foreign Office. In the mid-1990s he was the adviser to the Prime Minister on foreign affairs, security and Northern Ireland. Since retiring as Ambassador to the Russian Federation in 2004 he has visited Russia about fifty times as a business consultant and lecturer, and has written extensively on the subject. His most recent article was "Putin's Gamble: Must It End Up As Lose/Lose", published by Chatham House in late January. From 2009 to 2016 Roderic Lyne served on the UK's Inquiry into the Iraq conflict of 2003.

Virtual only.

Sir Roderic Lyne
Seminars
European Security Initiative

North Korea Is Becoming an Asset for China

Authors
Oriana Skylar Mastro
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs

This essay was originally published in Foreign Affairs magazine.

On January 30, North Korea fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile from the north province of Jagang, its seventh rocket test this year. At first glance, this may not seem like a huge deal. The rockets are not, after all, the nuclear bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that North Korea has tested in the past. Russia is currently massing troops on the Ukrainian border, and COVID-19 cases are surging around the world thanks to the Omicron variant. By comparison, the launches may look like a lesser concern—just another routine military provocation from Pyongyang.

But the tests aren’t coming at a routine moment. Instead, they are occurring at a time of stark, rising competition between the United States and the Pacific’s other great power: China. Washington sold nuclear submarines to Australia as part of a new, trilateral security arrangement along with the United Kingdom. U.S. assistant secretary of defense Ely Ratner declared that deterring China from attacking Taiwan is “an absolute priority.” In explaining the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, U.S. President Joe Biden argued Washington needed to refocus its energy and resources on the “serious competition with China.” The pivot to Asia, long elusive, is clearly underway.

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In this context, North Korea’s tests take on a new meaning—and it is dangerous for U.S. ambitions. The heightened threat of North Korean missile attacks incentivizes both Japan and South Korea to avoid alienating Beijing, which they hope will help keep Pyongyang in check. (China is North Korea’s main patron and sole ally.) It also means both Japan and South Korea are likely to redouble their militaries’ focus on Pyongyang rather than support U.S. operations elsewhere in Asia. And if the United States has to bolster its armed posture on the Korean Peninsula, whether to assuage Seoul’s and Tokyo’s fears, better deter North Korea, or fight in an actual conflict, Washington will need to reposition forces designed to constrain China elsewhere. Pyongyang’s weapons program was long seen as a liability for Beijing, given the erratic and unpredictable behavior of North Korea’s leaders. Now, it is becoming an asset.

For China, this switch comes at an opportune time. Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing has grown more impatient, expansionist, and belligerent. It is increasingly possible that China will try to seize control of Taiwan, especially since the peaceful unification of the mainland and the island is clearly no longer an option. Xi is closely watching the U.S. response to North Korea’s provocations and drawing lessons about Washington’s credibility. To prevent conflict in the Korean Peninsula and keep pace in its competition with Beijing, the United States will need to come up with new ways to unite its allies and prove its resolve in the region.

Cracking Through

North Korea’s latest rockets may not be capable of reaching the continental United States, but that hardly means they aren’t dangerous. Missile defense systems cannot see low-flying objects until they are near their targets, and this year’s first and second tests were of hypersonic advanced boost-glide vehicle missiles, which can travel at low altitudes, evade radar, and maneuver to avoid last-second interception. In the third test, the North Korean military successfully launched a missile off a moving train, indicating that Pyongyang can fire rockets from a mobile system, in turn making both tracking and targeting even more difficult (especially given the country’s vast railway system). In other words, these recent tests may have neutralized U.S. missile defense capabilities, such as the U.S.-deployed Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile system and the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system.

These capabilities were designed to protect Japan and, especially, South Korea. Their erosion comes at a tricky time for the United States’ relations with the latter. Biden has yet to designate a U.S. ambassador to Seoul, and he appointed a special envoy for North Korea only in May of last year. The president placed new sanctions on North Korea in December 2021, but they were human rights-related and largely viewed as symbolic. In response to January’s missile threats, the Biden administration implemented its first weapons-related sanctions, but they were relatively limited in scope. Some South Korean analysts now believe that the administration discusses North Korean issues with Seoul not because it seriously intends to resolve them but more to persuade the South Korean government to help the United States compete against Beijing. South Koreans fear that the Biden administration’s prioritization of China comes at the expense of the denuclearization of North Korea.

North Korea has explicitly tied its missiles to U.S. involvement in Taiwan.
Sungmin Cho and Oriana Skylar Mastro

This is a welcome development for Beijing. Chinese analysts view South Korea as a weak link in the United States’ East Asian alliances, and Beijing is trying to divide Washington and Seoul through a combination of compliments and threats. In August 2020, Chinese media praised South Korea’s efforts to "be objective and keep its friendship with China," and several weeks later, Chinese scholars commended South Korea’s “kindness to China” in a time of “U.S. suppression.” But after South Korean President Moon Jae-in discussed Taiwan with Biden at their May 2021 summit, China’s Foreign Ministry warned South Korea not to “play with fire.” It is telling that Chinese scholars at a government-affiliated institute are arguing openly that China needs to raise the cost of South Korea’s cooperation with the United States on Taiwan.

North Korea’s missile capabilities are helping accomplish this task. The newer rockets more effectively threaten South Korea, and they increase Seoul’s doubts about the efficacy of U.S. deterrence. North Korea has explicitly tied its menacing assets to the issues surrounding the island. Pyongyang has publicly criticized the United States policies’ on Taiwan and threatened that “tragic consequences” will result from U.S. support. “The indiscreet meddling by the U.S. into the issue of Taiwan entails a potential danger of touching off a delicate situation on the Korean peninsula,” North Korea’s vice foreign minister said in a statement. These words could make Seoul think twice about backing the United States in the Taiwan Strait.

Japan is more difficult to split from Washington. But North Korea’s activities can certainly draw some of Japan’s attention away from Beijing. Although Tokyo was getting onboard with playing a greater role in deterring China and defending Taiwan, Japan’s Ministry of Defense has identified North Korea’s military capabilities as a “grave and imminent” threat, and there is no doubt that the government’s focus will shift if Pyongyang escalates its provocations. In the White House’s statement regarding Biden’s January 21 meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Taiwan was mentioned only once. In comparison, the two leaders cited North Korea three times, condemned the country’s recent missile tests, and committed to work with South Korea more closely. Although Tokyo could theoretically focus on both North Korea and China, in practice it might struggle. Pyongyang poses a far more direct threat to Japanese lives and territory than does Beijing, and it would be hard for Japanese leaders to concentrate on China if North Korea grows more belligerent.

Drawing the Heat

North Korea’s new capabilities don’t help Beijing just diplomatically. The tests provide tangible, military benefits. The United States has been attempting to enlist South Korea in its efforts to strengthen deterrence across the Taiwan Strait. But Pyongyang’s new missiles mean Seoul is less likely to focus its military somewhere other than North Korea, especially if it continues the provocations. Indeed, a South Korean expert on Chinese politics has argued that when Washington asks for support in its contest with Beijing, Seoul should explain that it is too busy handling Pyongyang.

To reassure its allies, the United States may also need to refocus military attention on the Korean Peninsula, reducing its ability to operate in other parts of Asia. In 2017, when North Korea conducted ICBM and nuclear tests, the United States responded by sending more strategic assets, including heavy naval power, near the Korean Peninsula. If tensions rise high enough, Washington may have to do so again, including by shifting the Seventh Fleet’s operational focus to the area. Stationed in the middle of Japan, this fleet has been one of the United States’ primary tools for deterring Beijing, conducting patrols near the Taiwan Strait and promoting freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. But given past positioning patterns, a crisis on the Korean Peninsula would also most certainly drag the fleet farther north, undermining Washington’s ability to carry out operations elsewhere.

A major war on the Korean Peninsula would prove particularly devastating to the United States’ competition with Beijing. In addition to the Seventh Fleet, the United States Forces Korea’s 28,000 soldiers, 40 F-16 fighters, 90 military aircrafts, 40 attack helicopters, and other assets would immediately become unavailable for operations beyond the peninsula. A majority of the United States Forces Japan’s aircraft, ships, and approximately 55,000 military personnel would also be deployed to Korea. Japan’s own military, which could help the United States if it needed to fight China, would grow busy providing combat support to protect U.S. naval forces—including antisubmarine operations and sea minesweeping—as U.S. troops prepared for an amphibious landing on the peninsula.

For China, a crisis on the Korean Peninsula would be a golden opportunity.
Sungmin Cho and Oriana Skylar Mastro

Beijing, by comparison, is in a better position. The United States has to worry that China will use a North Korea–spurred crisis to invade Taiwan, but the inverse isn’t true: Beijing isn’t concerned that Seoul or Washington will start a war over Taiwan if Pyongyang launches an attack. China’s commitment to North Korea is also not as comprehensive as the United States’ is to Seoul. In the event of a renewed Korean war, China plans to send mostly ground forces into the North. Its air and naval assets would remain focused across the Taiwan Strait.

For China, therefore, a crisis on the peninsula—especially one that evolves into a conflict—would be a golden opportunity to expand its power. It may even make it possible to defeat Taipei. With U.S. intelligence assets supporting troops in Korea, a Chinese amphibious force might be able to move on the island without giving the United States advanced warning. China could establish beachheads on Taiwan long before U.S. forces, bogged down on the peninsula, have time to arrive. The war’s eventual outcome would be a fait accompli.

North Korea’s latest tests may have already made a Chinese attack more likely. As Chinese media happily pointed out, Pyongyang’s January 11 missile launch briefly confused the United States Northern Command’s warning system, grounding some commercial airplanes for 15 minutes. China has the most advanced ballistic and cruise missile program in the world. If North Korea’s offensive strike capability can jeopardize the U.S. early warning system, it surely bodes well for Beijing’s ability to surprise and defeat Washington’s forces.

Better Together

To counter North Korea’s new missile threats and prevent them from helping China, the Biden administration needs a stronger North Korea strategy—one that deters further provocations, reassures South Korea, and demonstrates Washington’s continued resolve and credibility to Beijing. That means Washington must support South Korea’s efforts to advance its offensive capabilities, such as the development of nuclear-powered submarines. South Korea, meanwhile, must scale up its combined exercises with the United States. A stronger U.S.–South Korean alliance will improve the two countries’ combat readiness, which is especially critical at a time when North Korea appears to be building up to another round of ICBM and nuclear tests. Finally, closer ties would make it easier for the United States to marshal allies in its competition against China, including in the Taiwan Strait.

The United States should also use the renewed tensions on the Korean Peninsula to encourage closer Japanese–South Korean cooperation. Seoul has long had highly fraught relations with its former colonial ruler, and the two states have especially struggled to get along in recent years. But for better or worse, the Korean Peninsula, East China Sea, and Taiwan Strait are increasingly intertwined in the current era of strategic competition. Pyongyang's provocations against the United States and its allies on the peninsula can embolden the Chinese Communist Party to act in other regions. And if Beijing can weaken or defeat the United States and its Asian allies anywhere, both the Chinese Communist Party and the Kim regime will be emboldened to act on the peninsula. To cope with this changing security environment, it makes sense for strategists in Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo to package these issues together. By demonstrating greater coordination, the three countries would also make it harder for China or North Korea to fracture Washington’s East Asia alliances, regardless of the contingency.

Finally, these three states must prepare for simultaneous provocations in East Asia, including concurrent conflicts in Taiwan and on the Korean Peninsula. In consultation with one another, the United States and its allies must demonstrate a strong willingness to cooperate and take strategic risks. They should hold more trilateral defense minister meetings, more thoroughly review various contingency scenarios, and discuss how to enhance their combined capabilities. Hopefully, these countries will never need to put these plans and abilities into practice. But to deter Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping, they need to prove that they can fight two wars—and win both—if the need arises.

Headshot of Oriana Skylar Mastro

Oriana Skylar Mastro

Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Chinese military propaganda depicting the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1958.
News

Reassessing China’s Capabilities and Goals for Strategic Competition

On the World Class podcast, Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that in order to set effective policy toward China, the United States needs to better understand how and why China is projecting power.
Reassessing China’s Capabilities and Goals for Strategic Competition
Taiwan
Commentary

America's Future in Taiwan

Intensifying threats of a military conflict over Taiwan have brought uncertainty to the stability of regional security for Southeast Asia, according to Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro on radio show On Point.
America's Future in Taiwan
An Island that lies inside Taiwan's territory is seen with the Chinese city of Xiamen in the background.
Commentary

The Taiwan Temptation

Why Beijing Might Resort to Force
The Taiwan Temptation
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President Xi and Kim Jong Un meet on a TV screen Chung Sung-Jun, Getty Images
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Pyongyang’s Missiles Could Fracture America’s Alliances

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Surveilling the Future of American Intelligence

Authors
Melissa Morgan
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News
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James Bond; Jason Bourne; Jack Bauer: cinema spies like these are the suave and daring face of spycraft and intelligence for most people.

That’s a problem, says Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). In her new book, Spies Lies and Algorithms, Zegart draws on her expertise in U.S. intelligence and national security to debunk some of the pop cultural tropes around spycraft, many of which have a surprisingly pervasive influence on how both the public and policymakers understand the intelligence community.

She joins FSI Director Michael McFaul on World Class podcast to talk about the book and what she’s learned from her research about the challenges the U.S. intelligence community will need to meet in order to stay competitive in a rapidly-evolving, increasingly digital world.

Listen to the full episode now. A transcript and highlights from their conversation are available below.

Click the link for a transcript of “Spies, Lies and Algorithms with Amy Zegart."

The Origins of Spies, Lies and Algorithms


When I was a professor at UCLA, I was teaching an intelligence class. On a lark, I did a survey of my students and I asked them about their spy-themed entertainment viewing habits, as well as their attitudes towards certain intelligence topics like interrogation techniques.

What I found was there was a statistically significant correlation between their spy-themed viewing habits; people who watch the show 24 all the time were far more pro-waterboarding, among other things, than students who didn't watch spy-themed entertainment.

This got me really thinking, what do people know about espionage? Where do they get this information? And what I found is that most Americans don't know anything about the intelligence community, and when you're talking about spy agencies in a democracy, that's really problematic.

The original book was going to be more of a textbook for the class I was teaching, but as I write it, so many things started to change in the intelligence community, both politically and technologically. So with that in mind, I tried to make it forward looking to where intelligence needs to go, not just backward to where it’s been.

Spies, Lies and Algorithms, by Amy Zegart

Spies, Lies and Algorithms

Amy Zegart
Purchase Now

Who are the Spies?
 

The biggest surprise for me came from the research I did on open-source intelligence and nuclear threats. If ever there was an area you would think spy agencies would have cornered the market on intelligence, it would be nuclear threats.

But what I found is that there's a whole ecosystem of non-governmental people tracking nuclear threats around the world and actually uncovering really important things. That includes some open-source nuclear sleuths here at Stanford among my colleagues at CISAC.

The more I dug into this, the more I realized that open-source intelligence and publicly available data is the ballgame in the future of intelligence. Secrets still matter; but they matter a whole lot less than they did even ten years ago.

There is so much insight that we can glean from open-source information, but the intelligence community has to figure out better ways to connect with organizations and people who are in this ecosystem.

Open-source intelligence and publicly available data is the ballgame in the future of intelligence. Secrets still matter; but they matter a whole lot less than they did even ten years ago.
Amy Zegart
Senior Fellow at CISAC

What are the Lies?


Intelligence is about deception. We don't want our enemies to understand all of our military capabilities, for example, or what our intentions are.

But I think the technology and data revolutions of the last few decades has also changed the nature of deception. It’s gone from elites deceiving elites about where their troops are, and whether they're going to attack, to mass audience deception and this disinformation-information warfare of domestic audiences like we're experiencing here in the United States.

Understanding deception, not in a pejorative sense but as an analytic frame, is critically  important to being able to gather and analyze intelligence correctly.

We're drowning in data. If intelligence is in the business of collecting or finding needles in haystacks, the haystacks are growing exponentially.
Amy Zegart
Senior Fellow at CISAC

The Power of Algorithms in Intelligence


We're drowning in data. The amount of data on Earth is estimated to double every two years. Think about that for a minute. It's just an astounding amount of data. And it's too much for any human to deal with.

So, if intelligence is in the business of collecting or finding needles in haystacks, the haystacks are growing exponentially. The intelligence community has to use artificial intelligence and other tools to augment human analysts. AI frees up analysts to then ask questions about things like intent, which humans can figure out much better than machines.

Imagine an algorithmic red team: you have humans that are developing assessments of what is Putin going to do in Ukraine, and you've got a red team that's just algorithms aggregating data, so that you have a sort of competitive analysis between humans and machines that can make the humans better. Those are the kinds of things that intelligence agencies need to be doing much more with AI.

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Amy Zegart

FSI Senior Fellow at CISAC
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Nine researchers from Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). AAAS describes their Fellows as “a distinguished cadre of scientists, engineers and innovators who have been recognized for their achievements across disciplines ranging from research, teaching and technology, to administration in academia, industry and government, to excellence in communicating and interpreting science to the public.”

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Algorithmic Newsfeeds and Elections

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alessandro vecchiato

Join us on Tuesday, February 1st from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for Algorithmic Newsfeeds and Elections featuring one of our postdoctoral scholars, Alessandro Vecchiato. This weekly seminar series is jointly organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative.

While personalization algorithms are ubiquitous online, their impact on public opinion and voting behavior is still largely unknown. This talk looks at this question by presenting results from a globally replicable, lab-in-the-field experiment with a custom-developed news app. We evaluate the impact of personalized news feed on news consumption, public opinion, turnout, and voting behavior. The results show that personalization significantly skews the news consumption of politically extreme users while allowing most other users to maintain a moderate news diet. However, personalized news feeds are shown to reinforce pre-existing beliefs for all users, including a demobilizing effect for unlikely voters. While our effects are small due to design constraints, our findings call for more transparency and regulation on platforms.

The session is open to the public, but registration is required.

 

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Alessandro Vecchiato
Alessandro Vecchiato is a postdoctoral fellow at the Program on Democracy and the Internet at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Politics from New York University in May 2019. His work looks at internet technologies' role in shaping political beliefs and electoral outcomes. In his dissertation, he uses primarily experimental methods to study how algorithmic personalization in social media news feeds affects the beliefs and preferences of voters. In other work, he investigated how internet-mediated communication through social media has affected politicians' relationships with voters.

 

Nate Persily
Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication, and FSI.  Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Persily taught at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and as a visiting professor at Harvard, NYU, Princeton, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Melbourne. Professor Persily’s scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law or what is sometimes called the “law of democracy,” which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.  He also served as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. His current work, for which he has been honored as a Guggenheim Fellow, Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, examines the impact of changing technology on political communication, campaigns, and election administration.  He is codirector of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet, and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, which supported local election officials in taking the necessary steps during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide safe voting options for the 2020 election. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a commissioner on the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age.

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