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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Noa Ronkin
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The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is pleased to announce its new China Policy Fellowship, which will bring to Stanford mid-career to senior-level experts with extensive research experience on issues vital to U.S. China policy and influence in the policymaking process. With this new offering, APARC seeks to apply cutting-edge academic analysis to pressing challenges affecting U.S. policy toward China and to strengthen U.S.-China relations.

The fellowship will be awarded annually to one expert. While at Stanford, the China Policy Fellow will undertake original research in his/her area of expertise and will play a lead role in organizing a major conference on a topic central to the U.S.-China policy agenda. Each fellow’s work and annual conference will result in a publication that will help advance a deeper understanding of China and its aims.

The fellowship will be hosted by APARC’s China Program, whose mission is to facilitate multidisciplinary, social science-oriented research on contemporary China, with a dual emphasis on basic and policy-relevant research. The appointment of the inaugural 2021-22 China Policy Fellow will begin in the fall quarter of 2021. The new fellowship is made possible thanks to the generosity of an APARC supporter.

“The need to enhance understanding within the United States about China has never been more critical,” says China Program Director Jean Oi, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics. “In these times when divergent claims and bellicose propositions are regularly made by politicians and policymakers in the United States and in China, the China Policy Fellowship will help us promote dialogue between the two nations and empirically-driven research relevant to U.S. China relations. I am delighted that we are able to offer this new fellowship opportunity.”

The application deadline for the 2021-22 China Policy Fellowship is February 15, 2021.

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Commentary

The United States Must Avoid a Nuclear Arms Race with China

Oriana Skylar Mastro explains why U.S. nuclear policy needs to minimize the role of nuclear weapons in the U.S.-China great power competition and pave the way for arms control.
The United States Must Avoid a Nuclear Arms Race with China
Encina Hall
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APARC Announces 2021-22 Postdoctoral Fellowships for Emerging Scholars in Contemporary Asia, Japan, and Korea Studies

The Center’s commitment to supporting young Asia scholars remains strong during the COVID-19 crisis.
APARC Announces 2021-22 Postdoctoral Fellowships for Emerging Scholars in Contemporary Asia, Japan, and Korea Studies
(Left) Yuen Yuen Ang; (Right) Congratulations Yuen Yuen Ang, Winner of the Theda Skocpol Prize from the American Political Science Association
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Dr. Yuen Yuen Ang Awarded Theda Skocpol Prize for Emerging Scholars

Former China Program postdoc and Stanford Ph.D alumna Yuen Yuen Ang has received the Theda Skocpol Prize for Emerging Scholars from the American Political Science Association for her scholarship on China’s transformation into a global superpower.
Dr. Yuen Yuen Ang Awarded Theda Skocpol Prize for Emerging Scholars
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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.

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* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/Q6-ErAxGmQ0

 

About the Event: While research into why repression varies has thrived, essentially no effort has been made to examine stopping large-scale applications once underway. We put forward a new theoretical framework that conceptualizes repressive behavior as a rare/slow-changing process that is unlikely to terminate unless it is perturbed by a significant cost. As such, we maintain that repression is more likely ended by democratization than from diverse factors commonly espoused in the literature and policy community (e.g., military intervention, naming/shaming, international law and economic sanctions). Investigating a new database regarding 239 high-level repression spells for the period 1976-2007, we find that democratization is associated with spell-termination, while there is little systematic pacifying influence for other factors. Additionally, we find that non-violent movements for change largely drive democratization but that these movements have little direct impact on state repression themselves.

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About the Speaker: Christian Davenport is a Professor of Political Science and Faculty Associate at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo and Elected Fellow at the American Association for the Arts and Sciences. Primary research interests include political conflict, measurement, racism and popular culture. He is the author of seven books and author of numerous articles appearing in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science and the Annual Review of Political Science (among others). He is the recipient of numerous grants (e.g., 12 from the National Science Foundation) and awards.

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Christian Davenport Professor University of Michigan
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* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/5-om1-NWqv0

 

About the Event: Traditional international law is not sufficient for the oversight of emerging uses of the space environment, such as in situ resource utilization and increased militarization and weaponization. The US is pushing the boundaries through innovative contracting, governance instruments such as the Artemis Accords and new institutions such as the Space Force to test the space governance system. This presentation outlines a framework for organizing the system as a whole, including international agreements, national space policy and stakeholder interactions and interrelations.

 

About the Speaker: Aganaba is an assistant professor for the School for the Future in Innovation in Society with a courtesy appointment at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.

She is most known in her industry for promoting the regulation of technologies to be utilized against climate change. This has expanded to the use of satellites to measure greenhouse gas emissions.

She has received the Young Space Leaders Award from the International Astronautical Federation. She has served as the executive director of the World Space Week Association and trainee legal officer for the Nigerian Space Research and Development Agency.

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Timiebi Aganaba Assistant Professor School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University
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Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/yyZ54SgGuz4

 

About the Event: We are beginning to understand that globalization has strategic consequences. Countries are using their position in globalized networks to "weaponize interdependence," through their dominance of information and financial networks. In this talk, Henry Farrell will discuss the research and policy agenda of weaponized interdependence, addressing such questions as: What areas of the global economy are most vulnerable to unilateral control of information and financial networks? How sustainable is the use of weaponized interdependence? What are the possible responses from targeted actors? And how sustainable is the open global economy if weaponized interdependence becomes a default tool for managing international relations?

Book Purchase:   https://amzn.to/3d29F4a

 

About the Speaker: Henry Farrell is SNF Agora Institute Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, 2019 winner of the Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Politics and Technology, and Editor in Chief of the Monkey Cage blog at the Washington Post. His book (with Abraham Newman) Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Fight over Freedom and Security, was published in 2019 by Princeton University Press, and has been awarded the 2019 Chicago-Kent College of Law / Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize and the ISA-ICOMM Best Book Award. In addition he has authored or co-authored 34 academic articles, as well as several book chapters and numerous non-academic publications. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Henry Farrell SNF Agora Professor Johns Hopkins SAIS
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This event is Co-Sponsored by the Center for South Asia (CSA)

How are India and the United States responding to the growing political and military power of China in the Indian Ocean region? India has traditionally sought to maintain strategic preeminence in the region and sees its influence as being increasingly contested. The United States sees the region as an integral part of the wider “Indo-Pacific,” defined by intensifying strategic competition with China. Military planners at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command are refining their strategy in the region, including their approach to mitigating security risks and deepening the U.S. Major Defense Partnership with India, alongside other allies and partners. In this off-the-record webinar, the Command’s senior policy advisor and two leading experts on the Indian Ocean will share their assessments of the key strategic challenges facing India and the United States in the region.

Speakers:

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David Brewster
David Brewster is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Security College at the Australian National University, where he focuses on security in India and the Indian Ocean region, and Indo-Pacific maritime affairs. His books include India as an Asia Pacific Power, about India’s strategic role in the Asia Pacific, India’s Ocean: the Story of India’s Bid for Regional Leadership, which examines India’s strategic ambitions in the Indian Ocean, and the edited volume, India and China at Sea: Competition for Naval Dominance in the Indian Ocean. He is the author of several reports, including The Second Sea, which examines Australia’s role in the Indian Ocean proposes a new roadmap for Australia’s strategic engagement in that region. Brewster holds a PhD from the Australian National University.
 

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Shezi Khan
Shehzi Khan is the Senior Policy Advisor in the Strategic Planning and Policy Directorate at Indo-Pacific Command, supporting senior leadership on key regional policy initiatives.  Ms. Khan served on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, as Executive Officer to the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and as senior South Asia analyst at the State Department.  Ms. Khan briefed the President of the United States in 2013.  She has been posted in Pakistan, China, and New Zealand and also lived and worked in India, Egypt, and France. Ms. Khan speaks five foreign languages and holds an MBA in International Finance and an MA in International Relations.  She is a recipient of the National Intelligence Superior Service Medal and was named State Department’s Analyst of the Year in 2014.

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Nilanthi Samaranayake
Nilanthi Samaranayake directs the Strategy and Policy Analysis Program at CNA. She has led several studies on Indian Ocean and South Asia security. Recently Samaranayake has worked on U.S.-India naval cooperation, water resource competition in the Brahmaputra River basin, and Sri Lankan foreign policy. She also has conducted research on the navies of Bangladesh and Pakistan, the Maldives Coast Guard, security threats in the Bay of Bengal, and relations between smaller South Asian countries and China, India and the United States. Prior to joining CNA, Samaranayake held positions at the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Pew Research Center. Samaranayake holds an M.Sc. in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a B.A. in International Studies from American University.


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Arzan Tarapore
Arzan Tarapore (Moderator) 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. Tarapore’s research focuses on Indian military strategy and contemporary Indo-Pacific security issues. This includes a forthcoming paper on “Building Strategic Leverage in the Indian Ocean Region.” 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. Tarapore holds a PhD in war studies from King’s College London.

 

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David Brewster <br><i>Senior Research Fellow at National Security College, Australian National University</i><br><br>
Shehzi Khan <br><i>Senior Policy Advisor in the Strategic Planning and Policy Directorate, Indo-Pacific Command</i><br><br>
Nilanthi Samaranayake <br><i>Director of Strategy and Policy Analysis Program, CNA</i><br><br>
Arzan Tarapore - Moderator <br><i>South Asia Research Scholar, Stanford University</i><br><br>
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THE 2020 ELECTION IN THE UNITED STATES will take place on November 3 in the midst of a global pandemic, economic downturn, social unrest, political polarization, and a sudden shift in the balance of power in the U.S Supreme Court. On top of these issues, the technological layer impacting the public debate, as well as the electoral process itself, may well determine the election outcome. The eight-week Stanford University course, “Technology and the 2020 Election: How Silicon Valley Technologies Affect Elections and Shape Democracy,” examines the influence of technology on America’s democratic process, revealing how digital technologies are shaping the public debate and the election.

The eight-week Stanford University course, “Technology and the 2020 Election: How Silicon Valley Technologies Affect Elections and Shape Democracy,” examines the influence of technology on America’s democratic process, revealing how digital technologies are shaping the public debate and the election...

 

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Marietje Schaake
Rob Reich
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Nineteen years after 9/11, al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has yet to achieve the household notoriety evoked by his immediate predecessor, Osama bin Laden. In part that’s because the United States hasn’t cared enough to focus attention on him. Aside from massive financial overtures for intelligence on his whereabouts—there’s currently a $25 million bounty offered for his head, higher than the reward for any other terrorist in the world—the U.S. government has been relatively blasé about al Qaeda since Zawahiri took over in 2011. Some terrorism analysts even claim a living Zawahiri has done more harm to al Qaeda than a dead one ever could.

Read the rest at Foreign Policy

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Asfandyar Mir
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Nineteen years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, does al Qaeda still pose a significant threat to U.S. national security? Among researchers, military and intelligence officials, and policymakers who study the group, there is little consensus. But very few experts on Salafi-jihadi movements would dismiss the group outright. So when U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confidently declared in a March interview on Fox & Friends that “al Qaeda is a shadow of its former self,” we were startled and concerned.

Read the rest at Foreign Affairs

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Asfandyar Mir
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election debrief event stanford

The US 2020 elections have been fraught with challenges, including the rise of "fake news” and threats of foreign intervention emerging after 2016, ongoing concerns of racially-targeted disinformation, and new threats related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital technologies will have played a more important role in the 2020 elections than ever before.

On November 4th at 10am PST, join the team at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, in collaboration with the Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, for a day-after discussion of the role of digital technologies in the 2020 Elections.  Speakers will include Nathaniel Persily, faculty co-director of the Cyber Policy Center and Director of the Program on Democracy and the Internet, Marietje Schaake, the Center’s International Policy Director and International Policy Fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Alex Stamos, Director of the Cyber Center’s Internet Observatory and former Chief Security Officer at Facebook and Yahoo, Renee DiResta, Research Manager at the Internet Observatory, Andrew Grotto, Director of the Center’s Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance, and Rob Reich, Faculty Director of the Center for Ethics in Society, in conversation with Kelly Born, the Center’s Executive Director.

Please note that we will also have a YouTube livestream available for potential overflow or for anyone having issues connecting via Zoom: https://youtu.be/H2k62-JCAgE

 

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Renée DiResta is the former Research Manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She investigates the spread of malign narratives across social networks, and assists policymakers in understanding and responding to the problem. She has advised Congress, the State Department, and other academic, civic, and business organizations, and has studied disinformation and computational propaganda in the context of pseudoscience conspiracies, terrorism, and state-sponsored information warfare.

You can see a full list of Renée's writing and speeches on her website: www.reneediresta.com or follow her @noupside.

 

Former Research Manager, Stanford Internet Observatory

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Stanford University
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Andrew Grotto

Andrew J. Grotto is a research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

Grotto’s research interests center on the national security and international economic dimensions of America’s global leadership in information technology innovation, and its growing reliance on this innovation for its economic and social life. He is particularly interested in the allocation of responsibility between the government and the private sector for defending against cyber threats, especially as it pertains to critical infrastructure; cyber-enabled information operations as both a threat to, and a tool of statecraft for, liberal democracies; opportunities and constraints facing offensive cyber operations as a tool of statecraft, especially those relating to norms of sovereignty in a digitally connected world; and governance of global trade in information technologies.

Before coming to Stanford, Grotto was the Senior Director for Cybersecurity Policy at the White House in both the Obama and Trump Administrations. His portfolio spanned a range of cyber policy issues, including defense of the financial services, energy, communications, transportation, health care, electoral infrastructure, and other vital critical infrastructure sectors; cybersecurity risk management policies for federal networks; consumer cybersecurity; and cyber incident response policy and incident management. He also coordinated development and execution of technology policy topics with a nexus to cyber policy, such as encryption, surveillance, privacy, and the national security dimensions of artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

At the White House, he played a key role in shaping President Obama’s Cybersecurity National Action Plan and driving its implementation. He was also the principal architect of President Trump’s cybersecurity executive order, “Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure.”

Grotto joined the White House after serving as Senior Advisor for Technology Policy to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, advising Pritzker on all aspects of technology policy, including Internet of Things, net neutrality, privacy, national security reviews of foreign investment in the U.S. technology sector, and international developments affecting the competitiveness of the U.S. technology sector.

Grotto worked on Capitol Hill prior to the Executive Branch, as a member of the professional staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He served as then-Chairman Dianne Feinstein’s lead staff overseeing cyber-related activities of the intelligence community and all aspects of NSA’s mission. He led the negotiation and drafting of the information sharing title of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which later served as the foundation for the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act that President Obama signed in 2015. He also served as committee designee first for Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and later for Senator Kent Conrad, advising the senators on oversight of the intelligence community, including of covert action programs, and was a contributing author of the “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program.”

Before his time on Capitol Hill, Grotto was a Senior National Security Analyst at the Center for American Progress, where his research and writing focused on U.S. policy towards nuclear weapons - how to prevent their spread, and their role in U.S. national security strategy.

Grotto received his JD from the University of California at Berkeley, his MPA from Harvard University, and his BA from the University of Kentucky.

Research Scholar, Center for International Security and Cooperation
Director, Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance
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James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute
Professor, by courtesy, Political Science
Professor, by courtesy, Communication
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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. In addition to dozens of articles (many of which have been cited by the Supreme Court) on the legal regulation of political parties, issues surrounding the census and redistricting process, voting rights, and campaign finance reform, Professor Persily is coauthor of the leading election law casebook, The Law of Democracy (Foundation Press, 5th ed., 2016), with Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan, and Richard Pildes. 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 Program on Democracy and the Internet, and Social Science One, a project to make available to the world’s research community privacy-protected Facebook data to study the impact of social media on democracy.  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.  Along with Professor Charles Stewart III, he recently founded HealthyElections.Org (the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project) which aims to support local election officials in taking the necessary steps during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide safe voting options for the 2020 election. He received a B.A. and M.A. in political science from Yale (1992); a J.D. from Stanford (1998) where he was President of the Stanford Law Review, and a Ph.D. in political science from U.C. Berkeley in 2002.   

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Rob Reich
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marietje.schaake

Marietje Schaake is a non-resident Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She is a columnist for the Financial Times and serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards as well as the UN's High Level Advisory Body on AI. Between 2009-2019 she served as a Member of European Parliament where she worked on trade-, foreign- and tech policy. She is the author of The Tech Coup.


 

Non-Resident Fellow, Cyber Policy Center
Fellow, Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
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