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. 

Towards Cyber Peace, Closing the Accountability Gap

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towards cyber peace

Please join the Cyber Policy Center for Towards Cyber Peace, Closing the Accountability Gap, hosted by Cyber Policy Center's Marietje Schaake, along with guests Stéphane Duguin, CEO of the Cyber Peace Institute and Camille François, CIO of Graphika and Mozilla Fellow. The discussion will focus on the challenges to cyber peace, and the work being done to chart a path forward. The session is open to the public, but registration is required. 

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Marietje Schaake is the international policy director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She was named President of the Cyber Peace Institute. Between 2009 and 2019, Marietje served as a Member of European Parliament for the Dutch liberal democratic party where she focused on trade, foreign affairs and technology policies. Marietje is affiliated with a number of non-profits including the European Council on Foreign Relations and the Observer Research Foundation in India and writes a monthly column for the Financial Times and a bi-monthly column for the Dutch NRC newspaper. 

Camille François works on cyber conflict and digital rights online. She is the Chief Innovation Officer at Graphika, where she leads the company’s work to detect and mitigate disinformation, media manipulation and harassment. Camille was previously the Principal Researcher at Jigsaw, an innovation unit at Google that builds technology to address global security challenges and protect vulnerable users. Camille has advised governments and parliamentary committees on both sides of the Atlantic on policy issues related to cybersecurity and digital rights. She served as a special advisor to the Chief Technology Officer of France in the Prime Minister’s office, working on France’s first Open Government roadmap. Camille is a Mozilla Fellow, a Berkman-Klein Center affiliate, and a Fulbright scholar. She holds a masters degree in human rights from the French Institute of Political Sciences (Sciences-Po) and a masters degree in international security from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. François’ work has been featured in various publications, including the New York Times, WIRED, Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, Globo and Le Monde.

Stéphane Duguin is the Chief Executive Officer of the CyberPeace Institute. His mission is to coordinate a collective response to decrease the frequency, impact, and scale of cyberattacks by sophisticated actors. Building on his hands-on experience in countering and analyzing cyber operations and information operations which impact civilians and civilian infrastructure, he leads the Institute with the aim of holding malicious actors to account for the harms they cause. Prior to this position, Stéphane Duguin was a senior manager and innovation coordinator at Europol. He led key operational projects to counter both cybercrime and online terrorism, such as the setup of the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), the Europol Innovation Lab, and the European Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU). A leader in digital transformation, his work focused on the implementation of innovative responses to a large-scale abuse of the cyberspace, notably on the convergence of disruptive technologies and public-private partnerships.

 

Scot Marciel

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Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow
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Scot Marciel was the Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, affiliated with the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center from 2022-2024. Previously, he was a 2020-22 Visiting Scholar and Visiting Practitioner Fellow on Southeast Asia at APARC.  A retired diplomat, Mr. Marciel served as U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar from March 2016 through May 2020, leading a mission of 500 employees during the difficult Rohingya crisis and a challenging time for both Myanmar’s democratic transition and the United States-Myanmar relationship.  Prior to serving in Myanmar, Ambassador Marciel served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department, where he oversaw U.S. relations with Southeast Asia.

From 2010 to 2013, Scot Marciel served as U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country.  He led a mission of some 1000 employees, expanding business ties, launching a new U.S.-Indonesia partnership, and rebuilding U.S.-Indonesian military-military relations.  Prior to that, he served concurrently as the first U.S. Ambassador for ASEAN Affairs and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asia from 2007 to 2010.

Mr. Marciel is a career diplomat with 35 years of experience in Asia and around the world.  In addition to the assignments noted above, he has served at U.S. missions in Turkey, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Brazil and the Philippines.  At the State Department in Washington, he served as Director of the Office of Maritime Southeast Asia, Director of the Office of Mainland Southeast Asia, and Director of the Office of Southern European Affairs.  He also was Deputy Director of the Office of Monetary Affairs in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs.

Mr. Marciel earned an MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a BA in International Relations from the University of California at Davis.  He was born and raised in Fremont, California, and is married with two children.

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What does COVID-19 mean for Ukraine’s frontlines?

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President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government in Ukraine face two fundamental challenges: ending the conflict with Russia and implementing domestic reform. Overcoming these challenges appeared hard enough at the start of 2020. COVID-19 is only making that more difficult.

Ukraine finds itself in the seventh year of a war imposed on it by the Kremlin. Russian troops seized Crimea in March 2014, and Russian and Russian proxy forces have sustained a conflict in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, which has claimed some 13,000 lives.

While Moscow has sought to draw Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit, there is little reason to believe that it will succeed. Nothing has done more than Kremlin policy over the past six years to push Ukraine toward the West and away from Russia. Moscow thus has used the Donbas conflict to destabilise Kyiv—to make it more difficult for Ukraine to succeed and pursue its goal of integrating with Europe.

As COVID-19 hit both Ukraine and Russia in March, some (this author included) hoped it might change some of the calculations in the Kremlin. Faced with a pandemic, falling prices for its energy exports, and an economy tumbling into recession, might Moscow rethink its policy in Donbas? A settlement would ease Russia’s political isolation and lead to a lifting of Western sanctions, which some economists estimate have cut Russian gross domestic product by 1.0-1.5% per year over the past six years.

As of June, however, Moscow’s policy appears unchanged. Russian and Russian proxy forces continue low-intensity fighting in Donbas. The appointment of a new Kremlin point-person on Ukraine did not visibly affect policy, which is determined by Vladimir Putin.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, both grappling with COVID-19 and its economic consequences, have not followed up on the December ‘Normandy format’ summit with Zelensky and Putin. As the pandemic consumes the leaders’ attention, they and others – such as senior U.S. officials – show little bandwidth or readiness to press to change the cost-benefit calculation in the Kremlin and persuade Moscow to take up a different course that might bring peace in Donbas.

Therefore there is little reason to expect a diplomatic breakthrough, a fact that Zelensky and his team increasingly seem to recognise. The Ukrainian president has raised the idea of a “Plan B” if no progress is made by the end of the year. One suggested variant for a “Plan B” would entail virtually walling off the occupied part of Donbas and pushing the entire economic and social burden on to Russia.

The sad reality is the likely near-term scenario for Donbas is continuing simmering conflict. (As for Crimea, while not a hot conflict, it will burden Ukrainian-Russian and West-Russian relations for years if not decades to come.)

COVID-19 has made matters more complex, both for Zelensky politically on the domestic front as well as sinking the economy into recession. Kyiv recognised the need for an IMF stand-by program and access to low-interest credits. The Rada (parliament) enacted legislation to lift the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land and safeguard nationalised banks from efforts by former owners to regain control—both key conditions for an IMF stand-by agreement worth up to $5 bn. On June 9, the IMF executive board approved the agreement.

While the long-needed reforms on agricultural land and banking were most welcome, it was not clear whether their adoption reflected a genuine commitment to dramatic reform or, as with past Ukrainian leaders, the need to secure IMF credits. Both Ukrainians and the country’s friends in the West are looking for signs Zelensky will carry out the transformational agenda that carried him to an electoral landslide in April 2019, particularly with respect to curbing corruption.

Zelensky attaches priority to ending the conflict and restoring Ukrainian sovereignty in Donbas. But Kyiv cannot do that by itself. Moscow gets a vote, and the vote thus far favours keeping the conflict simmering. Whether Ukraine’s Western partners can mobilise additional pressure to change the Kremlin’s cost-benefit calculation at this point appears doubtful, at least in the near term.

If stalemated by Russia on Donbas, Zelensky can still take action on anti-corruption measures and other reforms to position the Ukrainian economy for strong growth as the pandemic eases. These are measures that he and his government control. To do so would deliver on the promises made to Ukrainian voters last year and solidify his reform credentials with his Western partners. Moreover, a more robust economy would bolster Zelensky’s position vis-à-vis the Kremlin, which hopes that domestic weakness will force him to compromise key Ukrainian principles and settle the Donbas conflict on Moscow’s terms.

Originally for Europe's World

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President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government in Ukraine face two fundamental challenges: ending the conflict with Russia and implementing domestic reform. Overcoming these challenges appeared hard enough at the start of 2020. COVID-19 is only making that more difficult.

Governments Aren’t Yet Serious About AI’s Risk to Human Rights

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From the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) blog:

More than 25 governments around the world, including those of the United States and across the European Union, have adopted elaborate national strategies on artificial intelligence — how to spur research; how to target strategic sectors; how to make AI systems reliable and accountable.

Yet a new analysis finds that almost none of these declarations provide more than a polite nod to human rights, even though artificial intelligence has potentially big impacts on privacy, civil liberties, racial discrimination, and equal protection under the law.

That’s a mistake, says Eileen Donahoe, executive director of Stanford’s Global Digital Policy Incubator, which produced the report in conjunction with a leading international digital rights organization called Global Partners Digital.

Read More (at the HAI blog)

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In the rush to develop national strategies on artificial intelligence, a new report finds, most governments pay lip service to civil liberties.

The Role of Human Rights in Policy Toward North Korea

This twelfth annual Koret Workshop had originally been scheduled to be held on March 13, 2020, but had to be cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic. Now the workshop participants are able to convene virtually to discuss North Korea human rights issues in relation to policy toward North Korea. The conference will cover the following topics:

Day 1: The Role of U.N. in Generating Changes in North Korea

Day 2: Freedom of Information — How Access to Information is Changing North Korea

Day 3: Human Rights and Denuclearization of North Korea — Help or Hinderance?

Read related article here.

The annual Koret Workshop is made possible through the generous support of the Koret Foundation.

 

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Need To Know: Brett McGurk on America’s strategy to defeat ISIS

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Brett McGurk discusses the broad challenges in foreign policy making in an interview with Rodger Shanahan from The Interpreter. 

Watch interview at The Interpreter

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US presidents tend to set maximalist objectives without necessarily providing the resourcing or laying the necessary diplomatic foundations to achieve such goals.

Patterns and Potential Solutions to Disinformation Sharing, Under COVID-19 and Beyond

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Join Cyber Policy Center, June 17rd at 10am Pacific Time for Patterns and Potential Solutions to Disinformation Sharing, Under COVID-19 and Beyond, with Josh Tucker, David Lazer and Evelyn Douek.

The session will explore which types of readers are most susceptible to fake news, whether crowdsourced fact-checking by ordinary citizens works and whether it can reduce the prevalence of false news in the information ecosystem. Speakers will also look at patterns of (mis)information sharing regarding COVID-19: Who is sharing what type of information? How has this varied over time? How much misinformation is circulating, and among whom? Finally, we'll explore how social media platforms are responding to COVID disinformation, how that differs from responses to political disinformation, and what we think they could be doing better.

Evelyn Douek is a doctoral candidate and lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center For Internet & Society. Her research focuses on online speech governance, and the various private, national and global proposals for regulating content moderation.

David Lazer is a professor of political science and computer and information science and the co-director of the NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks. Before joining the Northeastern faculty in fall 2009, he was an associate professor of public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and director of its Program on Networked Governance. 

Joshua Tucker is Professor of Politics, Director Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, Co-Director NYU Social Media and Political Participation (SMaPP) lab, Affiliated Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies and Affiliated Professor of Data Science.

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

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The Executive Order on Platforms and Online Speech: Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center Responds

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On Thursday, President Trump signed an executive order threatening to revoke CDA 230 protections, which would expose social media companies to increased liability for content that is posted on their sites. This comes on the heels of Twitter, last week, fact-checking two misleading tweets from the president about mail-in voting. Critics of the executive order say the White House is overstepping its authority, and cannot limit the legal protections that social media companies currently hold under federal law.
 
Join the Stanford Cyber Policy Center's team Monday June 1 at 8AM PST for President Trump’s Executive Order on Platforms and Online Speech: Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center Responds, with Nate Persily, Faculty Co-Director of the Cyber Policy Center and Director of the Program on Democracy and the Internet; Daphne Keller, Director for the Program on Platform Regulation and former associate general counsel for Google; Alex Stamos, Director of the Cyber Center’s Internet Observatory and former Chief Security Officer at Facebook; Marietje Schaake, Policy Director for the Cyber Policy Center and former Member of EU Parliament; and Eileen Donahoe, Executive Director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator and former US Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Counsel, in conversation with Cyber Center Director Kelly Born.

Monday, June 1st
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Panel Discussions

Weapons of the Weak State: Contracts and Consent in Post-Conflict Statebuilding

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

 

Livestream: Please click here to join the livestream webinar via Zoom or log-in with webinar ID 924 4971 4330.

 

About the Event: International statebuilding aims to transform weak, conflict-affected states into stable modern states, grounded in rule of law, market economies, and liberal democracies (Barnett 2006, Mann 2012). International organizations (IOs) play a central role in this effort. By deploying country-level statebuilding missions in conflict-affected states, IOs aim to co-govern with the conflict-affected state for a defined period of time, helping to strengthen the capacity of the state to govern itself. International relations scholarship assumes that once IOs exercise, possess, and assert their authority to intervene on a country’s domestic territory they do not have to renegotiate this authority. We argue, in contrast, that most agreements between IOs and the host government are incomplete contracts that give weak states substantial authority over the intervening IO. We demonstrate that in a context of changing sovereignty norms, weak states have consistently used their authority to resist the influence of IOs and reduce the effectiveness of international statebuilding efforts. To test the observable implications of these claims, we employ a mixed method research design that integrates text-as-data analysis with in-depth case studies.

 

About the Speakers:

 

Susanna P. Campbell is an Assistant Professor at the School of International Service and Director of the Research on International Policy Implementation Lab (RIPIL) at American University. Her research examines the sub-national behavior of international actors in fragile and conflict-affected states, addressing debates in the statebuilding, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, international aid, and global governance literatures. She uses mixed-method research designs and has conducted extensive fieldwork in conflict-affected countries, including Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, Sudan, South Sudan, and East Timor. She has received grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Swiss Network for International Studies, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Swedish and Dutch governments, among others. In 2018, she won the School of International Service Scholar-Teacher of the Year Award and the Excellence in PhD Mentoring Award.

Prof. Campbell’s first book, Global Governance and Local Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2018), argues that because global governance actors are accountable to external stakeholders, seemingly “bad behavior” by country-based staff is necessary for local peacebuilding performance. It was shortlisted for the 2020 Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Prize and featured as one of the 2018 top picks for engaged scholarship by Political Violence @ a Glance. She is finishing a co-authored second book, Aid in Conflict, that explains the aid allocation behavior of international donors in war-torn countries. Her work has also been published by Columbia University Press, International Studies Review, International Peacekeeping, Journal of Global Security Studies, and Political Research Quarterly, among others. Prior to graduate school, she worked for the United Nations, International Crisis Group, and the Council on Foreign Relations and recently served as a senior advisor for the Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States, mandated by the US Congress. She received her PhD from Tufts University and was a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and The Graduate Institute in Geneva.

 

Aila M. Matanock is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research addresses the ways in which international and other outside actors engage in fragile states. She uses case studies, survey experiments, and cross-national data in this work. She has conducted fieldwork in Colombia, Central America, Europe, Melanesia, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. She has received funding for these projects from many sources, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Minerva Research Initiative, the National Center for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism (START), and the Center for Global Development (CGD). Her 2017 book, Electing Peace: From Civil Conflict to Political Participation, was published by Cambridge University Press. It won the 2018 Charles H. Levine Memorial Book Prize and was a runner up for the 2018 Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Prize. It is based on her dissertation research at Stanford University, which won the 2013 Helen Dwight Reid award from the American Political Science Association. Her work has also been published by the Annual Review of Political Science, Governance, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and elsewhere. She worked at the RAND Corporation before graduate school, and, since then, she has held fellowships at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at UCSD. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and her A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard University.

 

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Susanna P. Campbell and Aila M. Matanock
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The New START verification regime: How good is it?

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The New START Treaty has come under fire in recent weeks. Marshall Billingslea, President Trump’s new special envoy for arms control, said the Obama administration negotiated a very weak verification regime, which is odd because Trump administration officials have repeatedly acknowledged the security benefits of New START.

Read full article at Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

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