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. 

News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs

FSI Center Fellow at APARC Oriana Skylar Mastro joins NPR's Weekend Edition host Scott Simon to discuss the rising tensions between China and Taiwan and how the United States should respond.

Listen to the complete interview below. This conversation originally appeared on NPR's website.

Read More

Logo of the Observer Research Foundation's 'Armchair Strategist' podcast with portraits of Oriana Skylar Mastro and Arzan Tarapore
Commentary

Assessing the Conventional Military Balance Between India and China

Oriana Skylar Mastro and Arzan Tarapore join the Observer Research Foundation’s ‘Armchair Strategist’ podcast to discuss how the Indian and Chinese militaries stack up as tensions between the two Asian neighbors continue to heat up.
Assessing the Conventional Military Balance Between India and China
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) talks with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (L) during a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in 2013.
Commentary

China-India: Talk is Cheap, But Never Free

Nations often hesitate to negotiate with opponents during conflict. But Oriana Skylar Mastro urges that this is precisely what India and China need to do in order to curb the potential for a protracted, costly war with devastating geopolitical implications.
China-India: Talk is Cheap, But Never Free
Portrait of Oriana Skylar Mastro and a 3D cover of her book, 'The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime'
News

FSI Center Fellow Wins Best Book in Security Studies Award

The American Political Science Association recognizes Oriana Skylar Mastro for her work on military strategy and mediation.
FSI Center Fellow Wins Best Book in Security Studies Award
Hero Image
NPR's audio streaming logo next to a portrait of Oriana Skylar Mastro.
All News button
1
Subtitle

"The current threat is that the CCP is running out of patience, and their military is becoming more and more capable. So for the first time in its history, there's the option of taking Taiwan by force," Mastro tells NPR's Weekend Edition host Scott Simon.

-

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/7uGcI3qswDw

 

About the Event: As relations between the West and Russia have sharply deteriorated in recent years, Germany has taken a leading role in shaping Europe's policy response, particularly that of the European Union.  That has included a tougher approach toward Kremlin misbehavior, such as various economic and other sanctions.  At the same time, Berlin has sought to keep an open line of communication with Moscow.

Amb. Thomas Bagger will discuss how Berlin views the challenge posed by Russia and how the West should respond.

 

About the Speaker: Thomas Bagger holds the rank of ambassador and is Diplomatic and Foreign Policy Advisor to the President of the Federal Republic of Germany.  He joined the German diplomatic service in 1992 and has served abroad in Prague, Ankara and Washington.  Before taking up his current position, he headed the Foreign Ministry's Policy Planning Office.    

Thomas Bagger Ambassador Federal Republic of Germany
Seminars
-

The internet is now the most common source of political news for almost half of Americans, and social media is now the primary source of news for those under 30. Yet today’s youth have little capacity to evaluate the credibility of digital sources, with colleges across the country often relying on severely outdated guidelines supporting digital literacy education. Join Stanford’s Sam Wineburg, Washington State University’s Mike Caulfield, and Rowan University’s Andrea Baer and Dan Kipnis, in conversation with the Cyber Center’s Kelly Born, about the many challenges and opportunities facing media literacy.

Andrea Baer
Mike Caulfield
Dan Kipnis
Sam Wineburg
Seminars
Paragraphs

VOTERS ARE BEING INUNDATED WITH POLITICAL ADVERTISING on social media and online platforms during the 2020 election season. Campaigns, PACs and third parties have added new tools and tactics for gathering data on voters and targeting them with advertising, and now they can pinpoint niches of potential voters on social media in ways unknown in prior election cycles.

Where once advertising conveyed reasons to vote for a candidate, now it frequently aims to convey misinformation, undermine trust, and depress turnout. The risk is that the spread of misinformation through such means could influence the U.S. vote, cast doubt on the democratic process and raise suspicions about the accuracy of the election outcome. 

 

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Policy Briefs
Publication Date
Authors
Marietje Schaake
Rob Reich
Authors
Graham Webster
News Type
Q&As
Date
Paragraphs

Graham Webster leads the DigiChina Project, which translates and explains Chinese technology policy for an English-language audience so that debates and decisions regarding cyber policy are factual and based on primary sources of information.  

Housed within Stanford’s Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance (GTG) and in partnership with New America, DigiChina and its community of experts have already published more than 80 translations and analyses of public policy documents, laws, regulations and political speeches and are creating an open-access knowledge base for policy-makers, academics, and members of the tech industry who need insight into the choices China makes regarding technology.

Q. Why is this work important?

A lot of tech is produced in China so it’s important to understand their policies. And in Washington, D.C., you hear a lot of people say, “Well, you can’t know what China’s doing on tech policy. It’s all a secret.” But while China’s political system is often opaque, if you happen to read Chinese, there’s a lot that’s publicly available and can explain what the Chinese government is thinking and planning.

With our network of experts, DigiChina works at the intersection of two policy challenges. One is how do we deal with high technology, and the questions around economic competitiveness, personal autonomy and the security risks that our dependence on tech creates.

The other challenge is, from a US government, business or values perspective, what needs to be done about the increased prominence and power of the Chinese government and its economic, technological and military capabilities.

These questions cut across tech sectors from IT infrastructure to data-driven automation, and cutting-edge developments in quantum technology, biotech, and other fields of research.

Q: How was DigiChina started?

A number of us were working at different organizations, think tanks, consultancies and universities and we all had an interest in explaining the laws and the bureaucratic language to others who aren’t Chinese policy specialists or don’t have the language skills.  

We started working informally at first and then reached out to New America, which is an innovative type of think tank combining research, innovation, and policy thinking on challenges arising during this time of rapid technological and social change. Under the New America umbrella, and through partnerships with the Leiden Asia Centre, a leading European research center based at the University of Leiden, and the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Initiative at Harvard and MIT, we were able to build out the program and increase the number of experts in our network.

Q: Who is involved in DigiChina and what types of expertise do you and others bring to the project?

More than 40 people have contributed to DigiChina publications so far, and it’s a pretty diverse group. There are professors and think tank scholars, students and early-career professionals, and experienced government and industry analysts. Everyone has a different part of the picture they can contribute, and we reach out to other experts both in China and around the world when we need more context.

As for me, I was working at Yale Law School’s China Center when I was roped into what would become DigiChina and had spent several years in Beijing and New Haven working more generally on US-China relations and Track 2 dialogues, where experts and former officials from the two countries meet to take on tough problems. As a journalist and graduate student, I had long studied technology and politics in China, and I took on a coordinating role with DigiChina as I turned back to that pursuit full time.

Stanford is an ideal home because the university is a powerhouse in Chinese studies and an epicenter of global digital development.
Graham Webster
Editor in Chief, DigiChina Project

Q. Are there other organizations involved as well?

We have a strong tie to the Leiden Asia Centre at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, where one of DigiChina’s cofounders, Rogier Creemers, is a professor, and where staff and student researchers have contributed to existing and forthcoming work. We coordinate with a number of other groups on translations, and the project benefits greatly from the time and knowledge contributed by employees of various institutions. I hope that network will increasingly be a resource for contributors and their colleagues.

The project is currently supported by the Ford Foundation, which works to strengthen democratic values, promote international cooperation and advance human achievement around the world. A generous grant from Ford will keep the lights on for two years, giving us the ability to build our open-access resource and, with further fundraising, the potential to bring on more in-house editorial and research staff.

We hope researchers and policy thinkers, regardless of their approaches or ideologies, can use our translations to engage with the real and messy evolution of Chinese tech policy.
Graham Webster
Editor in Chief, DigiChina Project

Q. Do you have plans to grow the project?

We are working to build an accessible online database so researchers and scholars can review primary source documents in both the original Chinese and in English. And we are working toward a knowledge base with background entries on key institutions, legal concepts, and phrases so that a broader audience can situate things like Chinese legal language in their actual context. Providing access to this information is especially important now and in the near future, whether we have a second Trump Administration or a Biden Administration in the United States.

On any number of policy challenges, effective measures are going to depend on going beyond caricatures like an “AI arms race,” “cyber authoritarianism,” or “decoupling,” which provide useful frameworks for debate but can tend to prejudge the outcomes of a huge number of developments. We hope researchers and policy thinkers, regardless of their approaches or ideologies, can use this work to engage with the real and messy evolution of Chinese tech policy.

Hero Image
Graham Webster Q&A
All News button
1
Subtitle

Webster explains how DigiChina makes Chinese tech policy accessible for English speakers

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

On September 29, the APARC China Program hosted Thomas Fingar and Stephen Stedman for the program “Rebuilding International Institutions.” The program, which was moderated by China Program Director Jean Oi, examined the future of international institutions such as the United Nations (UN), World Trade Organization (WTO), and World Health Organization (WHO) in our evolving global political landscape. While Fingar and Stedman acknowledged that such institutions facilitated attainment of unprecedented peace and prosperity after WWII, they also asked difficult questions: Are these institutions still adequate? And if not, how will we change them?

Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar kicked off the session by asking whether or not US-China tensions would impede cooperation on major global challenges, or if those challenges were so serious as to render such rivalries immaterial. Perhaps the most obvious example of such a crisis is the current COVID-19 pandemic. The efforts to curb the virus’ spread not only by individual countries, but also by international organizations like the WHO, have proven largely inadequate. According to Fingar, our existing institutions need to be reformed or supplemented to deal with these types of threats. However, such an overhaul of our international systems will be difficult, he says.

How, then, will we go about such a massive project? Stephen Stedman, Deputy Director at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), responded by explaining that the current failure of international cooperation makes such undertakings tough. Globalization has been a double-edged sword: On one hand, more contact, perhaps inherently, leads to increased tension. The resurgence of traditional notions of sovereignty in 2010, kickstarted by the opposition of countries like Russia and China to what was seen as UN overreaching, has led to a reduction of international cooperation overall. On the other hand, Fingar posits that our interconnectedness may force us toward cooperation despite rivalries as we face more and more transnational threats. International institutions create rules to organize and manage our many interconnected relationships so that we can deal with our problems effectively and reduce friction.

Stedman also pointed to the upcoming US elections and the major impact their outcome will have on how these problems are addressed—or not. In the last four year, the United States has pulled back significantly from international institutions and agreements, leaving a gap that China has started to fill. Furthermore, despite the US’s retreat from international responsibility, the country still remains a critical actor in global initiatives. China’s embrace of a global leadership role is not inherently negative, but its future relationship with the US will need to be “managed in a way that you get greater cooperation and not just paralysis.” Stedman says that it is likely that progress will need to be made on a bilateral front in order to have productive conversations about international issues with China.

Concluding on an optimistic note, Fingar voiced his hope that the current tensions and negative perceptions between rivals might ultimately “be mitigated by success in dealing with a common problem,” because “experience does shape perceptions.”

A video recording of this program is available upon request. Please contact Callista Wells, China Program Coordinator at cvwells@stanford.edu with any inquiries.

Read More

View of building roof in the Forbidden City complex and the Beijing skyline in the background
News

New Fellowship on China Policy Seeks to Strengthen U.S.-China Relations

Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Center invites applications for the inaugural 2021-22 China Policy Fellowship from experts with research experience on issues vital to the U.S. China policy agenda and influence in the policymaking process.
New Fellowship on China Policy Seeks to Strengthen U.S.-China Relations
Cover of the book Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China's Future
News

Thomas Fingar and Jean Oi Analyze the Choices and Challenges Facing China’s Leaders

Fingar and Oi joined the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations to discuss their edited volume, ‘Fateful Decisions: Choices that Will Shape China’s Future.’
Thomas Fingar and Jean Oi Analyze the Choices and Challenges Facing China’s Leaders
Hero Image
Photograph of the UN building in Geneva, Switzerland Image by Mat Reding on Unsplash
All News button
1
Subtitle

Fingar and Stedman spoke as part of the APARC program “Rebuilding International Institutions,” which examined the future of international institutions such as the United Nations (UN), World Trade Organization (WTO), and World Health Organization (WHO) in our evolving global political landscape.

Date Label
-
This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others
.
 
 APARC South Asia research Initiative presents: Fall 2020 Colloquium Series on
India-China Strategic Competition
 

Washington DC time:  7:00pm-8:30pm, 9-Nov. 2020
Sydney, Australia time: 11:00am-12:30pm, 10-Nov. 2020 

Expectations of India’s rise have been dented in 2020. Amid lackluster economic performance and creeping socio-political illiberalism, India also suffered a major strategic setback. Chinese forces that crossed the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh remain encamped at several tactically-valuable points, and although talks continue, India has few visible options to force a return to the status quo ante. India now sees China is more clearly adversarial terms – but does it have what it takes to compete effectively? This conversation will conclude the APARC South Asia’s fall 2020 colloquium series on the India-China strategic competition with a wider and deeper look at India’s political and military power. We will discuss India’s ability to deter and balance China, its strategies to build national power and align with new partners, and the prospects for the competition in 2021 and beyond.
 

Ashley Tellis29kb Ashley Tellis29Kb
Ashley J. Tellis holds the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Previously he was commissioned into the Foreign Service and served as senior adviser to the ambassador at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. While serving as the senior adviser to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, he was intimately involved in negotiating the civil nuclear agreement with India. He also served on the National Security Council staff as special assistant to President George W. Bush and senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia. Prior to his government service, Tellis was senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation and professor of policy analysis at the RAND Graduate School. He is a counselor at the National Bureau of Asian Research and serves as an adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations. He is the author of India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture (2001), co-author of Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future (2000), and co-editor of the sixteen latest annual volumes of Strategic Asia. He earned his PhD in political science from the University of Chicago.

 

Image
Arzan Tarapore
Arzan Tarapore is the South Asia research scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, where he leads the newly-restarted South Asia research initiative. He is also a senior nonresident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research. His research focuses on Indian military strategy and contemporary Indo-Pacific security issues. He previously held research positions at the RAND Corporation, the Observer Research Foundation, and the East-West Center in Washington. Prior to his scholarly career, he served as an analyst in the Australian Defence Department, which included operational deployments as well as a diplomatic posting to Washington, DC. Tarapore holds a PhD in war studies from King’s College London.

 

via ZOOM Webinar
Register:  https://bit.ly/2IPGZjS

Ashley J. Tellis <br><i>Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace</i><br><br>
Arzan Tarapore <br><i>South Asia Research Scholar, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University</i><br><br>
Seminars
-

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others.

 

The Stanford China Program convenes an expert panel focused on the Decision of the fifth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, which took place on October 26-29.  The Fifth Plenum Decision outlines not only China’s 14th Five Year Plan (2021-2025), but also Beijing’s economic blueprint through 2035 and the “goal of fully building a modern socialist country."  The CCP leadership recently articulated its “dual circulation” policy – viz., a drastic reduction in China’s dependence on U.S. technologies and increased reliance on domestic consumption while maintaining exports and attracting foreign direct investments.  At this critical juncture when the coronavirus pandemic has shrunk global trade and tensions between the U.S. and China continue to intensify, our panel members will be asked to examine what the Fifth Plenum Decision might signify.  Does it mark a significant shift in Beijing’s strategic economic orientation?  What are the short- and long-term implications of the Decision for China’s economic development strategy, U.S.-China relations, as well as the world’s economic and technology ecosystems?  
 

Speakers

Portrait of James GreenJames Green has worked for over two decades on U.S.-Asia relations. For five years, Green was the Minister Counselor for Trade Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing (2013-2018).  As the senior official in China from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), Green was deeply involved in all aspects of trade negotiations, trade enforcement, and in reducing market access barriers for American entities.  In prior government service, Green worked on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and at the State Department’s China Desk on bilateral affairs. He also served as the China Director of the White House’s National Security Council.  In the private sector, Green was a senior vice president at the global strategy firm founded by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and was the founding government relations manager at the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, Asia’s largest AmCham.  Currently, Green is a Senior Research Fellow at Georgetown University's Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues and hosts a U.S.-China Dialogue Podcast.   

Image
Portrait of Xiaomeng Lu
Xiaomeng Lu is a senior analyst in Eurasia Group's geo-technology practice. She focuses on the interactions of emerging technologies with geopolitics, market dynamics, and regulatory norms. Lu provides in-depth analysis on key policy issues such as cybersecurity, data protection, artificial intelligence, internet governance, 5G, and trade.

Before joining Eurasia Group, Lu was the China practice lead at the consulting firm Access Partnership. In this capacity, she helped top financial and cloud service providers of the US enter China's market amid the trade war between the two countries. She also played a key role in establishing and expanding the company's first office in Asia, which generated over $1 million in revenue in three years. Previously, Lu worked as a global policy director at the Information Technology Industry Council, where she conducted successful advocacy campaigns that led to the suspension of onerous regulatory regimes, helping global electronics manufacturers save billions in potential losses. Lu has a master's degree in international trade policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and a bachelor's degree in economics from Renmin University of China.

Image
Photo of Damien Ma
Damien Ma is Director and co-founder of MacroPolo, the Think Tank of the Paulson Institute. He is also adjunct faculty at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Previously, Ma was a Senior Analyst at Eurasia Group, the political risk research and advisory firm. At Eurasia Group, he mainly focused on the China and East Asian markets, covering areas that spanned energy and commodities and industrial policy to elite politics and US-China relations. Prior to joining Eurasia Group, he was a manager of publications at the US-China Business Council in Washington, DC, where he was also an adjunct instructor at Johns Hopkins SAIS. 

In addition, Ma has published widely, including in The AtlanticNew York TimesForeign AffairsThe New RepublicForeign Policy, and Bloomberg, among others. He has also appeared in a range of broadcast media such as the Charlie Rose Show, BBC, NPR, and CNBC. He is the author or editor of the books, In Line Behind a Billion People: How Scarcity Will Define China’s Ascent in the Next DecadeThe Economics of Air Pollution in China (by Ma Jun), and China’s Economic Arrival: Decoding a Disruptive Rise, published by Palgrave Macmillan. Ma was named a “99 under 33” foreign policy leader by the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. 

 


This event is part of the 2020 Fall Colloquia series, Shifting Geopolitics and U.S.-Asia Relations​, sponsored by Shorenstein APARC.

Via Zoom. Register at: https://bit.ly/2T8a3VV

James Green <br><i>Senior Research Fellow, Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues, Georgetown University</i><br><br>
Xiaomeng Lu <br><i>Senior Analyst, Geo-Technology, Eurasia Group</i><br><br>
Damien Ma <br><i>Director and co-founder, MacroPolo, Paulson Institute</i><br><br>
Panel Discussions
-

This event is held virtually via Zoom. Please register for the webinar via the below link.

Registration Link: https://bit.ly/2SS6DpY

 

This event is co-sponsored by the Shorenstein APARC Japan Program and China Program.

Japan's economic challenge to the United States in the 1980s aroused more concern in the United States than people now realize. Japan took some very effective steps to stop it. China's challenge plays out across the economic, military, technological, and global influence spheres. China has not yet taken steps to stop it and the tensions are increasingly serious and show no signs of diminishing. Japan has also found better ways to reduce tensions with China than has the United States. While the circumstances are different between the 1980s and today, Japan’s dealings with the United States in the 1980s might offer some lessons for China today. Dr. Ezra Vogel, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, will discuss these topics and more during this webinar. The event will conclude with an audience Q&A moderated by Japan Program Director Kiyoteru Tsutsui and China Program Director Jean Oi.

SPEAKER

Image
Portrait of Dr. Ezra Vogel, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University

Professor Ezra F. Vogel is Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. Vogel received his PhD at Harvard in 1958 in Sociology in the Department of Social Relations and was a professor at Harvard from 1967-2000. In 1973, he succeeded John Fairbank to become the second Director of Harvard's East Asian Research Center. At Harvard, he served as director of the US-Japan Program, director of the Fairbank Center, and as the founding director of the Asia Center. From fall 1993 to fall 1995, Vogel was the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council in Washington. His book Japan As Number One (1979), in Japanese translation, became a best seller in Japan, and his book Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2011), in Chinese translation, became a best seller in China. He lectures frequently in Asia, in both Chinese and Japanese. He has received numerous honors, including eleven honorary degrees.

Via Zoom Webinar.

Registration Link: https://bit.ly/2SS6DpY

Ezra Vogel, Professor Emeritus <br>Harvard University</br>
Seminars
Subscribe to Security