Did the Russian-affiliated groups that interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election want to be caught?

“There’s a reason why they paid for Facebook ads in rubles,” Nathaniel Persily, who is a senior fellow at FSI and co-director of the Cyber Policy Center, told FSI Director Michael McFaul on the World Class podcast. “They wanted to be open and notorious.”

Since the election, Americans have become more suspicious of fake news, but they have also become suspicious of real news and journalists in general. Another problem with the Russians’ success in influencing the 2016 election, said Persily, is that Americans will automatically assume that the Russians will do the same thing during the 2020 race.

“Everyone is going to be looking for nefarious influences and shouting them from the rooftops, and that actually serves the [bad actors’] purposes just as much,” Persily said. “Many of the attempts in 2016 were about fostering division and doubt, and I think there’s a lot of appetite for doubt right now in America.”

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Since 2016, Facebook, Twitter and Google have made some important changes to the way they handle advertising, including adding a requirement that all candidate ads and other ads of “national legislative importance” be identified as advertisements on users’ feeds.

But there are no standardized rules or regulations that dictate how tech companies should handle advertisements or posts that contain disinformation, Persily said, and because of this, it is up to those respective companies to make those decisions themselves  — and they aren’t always in agreement. For example, when a video of Nancy Pelosi that was slowed down to make her seem drunk was posted in late May on YouTube and Facebook, YouTube took the video down, but Facebook decided to leave it up.

“The standards that are going to be developed in test cases like these — under conditions which are not as politically incendiary as an election — are going to be the ones that will be rolled out and applied in elections in the U.S. and around the world,” Persily said.

When it comes to election security, the 2020 presidential race will be the next big test for the U.S. government and private-sector companies. But other countries should also be on the lookout for activity from foreign agents and actors in their elections.

“The 2016 election was not just an event, it was a playbook that was written by the Russians,” warned Persily. “That playbook is usable for future elections in the United States as well as around the world, whether it’s between India and Pakistan or China and Taiwan.”

Forty years after the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, the two superpowers are competing and contesting every arena, from trade to AI research and from space exploration to maritime rights. Instead of what Americans referred to as engagement and Chinese called reform and opening, many experts and analysts now characterize the relations between the two countries as dangerously brittle. Some see a new kind of Cold War in the making. Such assertions, however, argues Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar, “both ignore history and impute a level of fragility that has not existed for many years.”

Fingar reflects on the U.S.-China bilateral relationship in a new article, “Forty years of formal—but not yet normal—relations,” published in the China International Strategy Review. He claims that the relationship is resilient and not destined for conflict, albeit it is beset by a host of aspirational, perceptual, and structural differences.

A political scientist and China specialist who served over two decades in senior government positions, Fingar urges readers to remember that assertions of fragility of the U.S.-China relationship undervalue the strength, scope, and significance of interdependence, shared interests, and constituencies in both countries. These, he says, have a substantial stake in the maintenance of at least minimally cooperative relations.

U.S.-China relations are indeed highly asymmetrical: Chinese citizens and organizations have far greater access to the United States than Americans do to China, notes Fingar. He also recognizes that the troubles that have soured the relationship are more intricate and often more sensitive than those of the past. Decades ago, most of the issues that arose were handled at the governmental level. But now “the number and variety of players with stakes in the relationship and disputes with counterpart actors are much greater.” Furthermore, explains Fingar, the U.S. business community is expressing a stronger voice for government action to change Chinese behavior and is not as consistent an advocate of stability in U.S. policy toward China as it used to be. “This is an extremely important development,” he says, “because it reverses a key dynamic in the U.S.-China relationship.”

Ultimately, however, the two countries and our institutions and people are linked by myriad ties that bring mutual benefits as well as the constraints of interdependence. “I remain confident that we will continue to be able to manage the relationship,” concludes Fingar. He expresses disappointment, though, that normalization of U.S.-China relations remains a work in progress and cautions that merely managing the relationship to prevent it from deteriorating is an unsatisfactory goal that should be unacceptable to both sides. Not only does such a low bar limit what each counterpart can achieve, but it also inhibits the kind of cooperation required to address transnational challenges like climate change, infectious disease, and proliferation of dangerous technologies.

Where are CISAC's fellows headed this year? After a fun and challenging year together at Stanford, we wish them well as they begin new positions and explore new areas of interests. Read their updates below:

Kristin Ven Bruusgaard will begin a tenure-track postdoctoral position at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Hyun-Binn Cho will join the Belfer Center at Harvard University as a postdocoral fellow.

Fiona Cunningham will be an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University.

Francois Diaz-Maurin will continue his Marie S. Curie fellowship with the European Commission in Barcelona, Spain. He will also continue to actively collaborate with CISAC Professor Rod Ewing on research.

Sidra Hamidi will join the faculty of Stetson University as an assistant professor.

Yogesh Joshi will join the Institute of Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore as a research fellow.

Erik Lin-Greenberg will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvnia before joining the faculty of American University as an assistant professor in the School of International Service.

Asfandyar Mir will remain at CISAC for another postdoctoral fellowship year.

Timothy Mungie will begin a new military assignment.

Chantell Murphy plans to take a position in industry.

Michal Onderco will return to his position as an assistant professor of international relations at Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

Kerry Persen will join Facebook’s Global Policy Campaigns and Programs team doing research in the policy space.

Maxime Polleri will remain at CISAC for another fellowship year.

Sergey Sanovich will join Princeton’s Center for Information Technology as a postdoctoral fellow.

Max Smeets will work as a Senior Research Scholar at ETH Zurich.

Yeajin Yoon will join the Belfer Center at Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow.

Sherry Zaks will join the faculty of the University of Southern California as an assistant professor of comparative politics.

“But as I read what the communist party, what President Xi says, I don't see the same fervor to the ideological dimension of what China is doing around the world...[compared to what] the Soviets were doing.”

It was during the 2019 Oksenberg Conference that FSI Director Michael McFaul made the preceding assessment. Titled On the Brink: A New Cold War with China, the conference sought to explore the causes underlying today’s intensified conflict between the United States and China. McFaul was joined on stage by APARC's Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow David M. Lampton and China Program Director Jean Oi. Their panel followed an earlier fireside chat featuring keynote speaker Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

Rice, the 66th U.S. Secretary of State, opened the program with a wide-ranging conversation with Oi regarding our rapidly deteriorating trade relations with China. Among other topics, Secretary Rice drew contrasts between our current tensions with China and the Soviet-era Cold War; the potential sources of China’s increasing nationalism; and what the appropriate U.S. policy responses could be.

Condoleezza Rice (right) listens on as Jean Oi addresses the audience

Dr. Jean Oi (left) and Dr. Condoleezza Rice

Audio recordings and transcripts of the formal remarks by McFaul and Lampton are available below.

The annual Oksenberg Conference honors the legacy of Professor Michel Oksenberg. A renowned China scholar and senior fellow at Shorenstein APARC, Professor Oksenberg served as a key member of President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council, guiding the United States towards normalized relations with China and consistently urging that the U.S. engage with Asia in a more considered manner.

Our MIP student, Keunwang Nah, chose Stanford “because it is the birthplace of innovations that change the world, but it can also be the birthplace of sound policy that can manage the potentially negative impacts technology can have on society.” Find out more on our FSI blog. #MIPFeatureFriday 

Trust but verify. That mantra from nuclear-weapons negotiation discourse during the Cold War is newly relevant today. Versions of the advice are circulating among governments in Southeast Asia and elsewhere as they weigh the security risks of partnering with this or that company to install the fifth-generation telecommunications technology known as 5G.

It is tempting to believe that a technical solution to the problem of unwanted risk exists — a clever digital tweak that will fully and permanently protect a 5G network’s users. It does not. The best one can hope for is a “good enough” balancing of faith and proof that is — arguably, not assuredly — reassuring and realistic. Characteristics of the network-offering company in its home country and of the network-purchasing government in its own country will shape the 5G seller-buyer bargain and its location. This will occur on an eventual spectrum of arrangements between the unwise and the unworkable: unverified trust at one extreme end, trust-eliminating verification at the other....

Read the full article on RSiS Commentaries.

Although there is progress regarding the code of conduct (COC) for the South China Sea between ASEAN and China, the South China Sea is not without tensions. China’s first aircraft carrier took part in a naval review, along with latest-generation nuclear submarines, destroyers, and fighter jets in late April, marking the People’s Republic navy’s 70th anniversary. Despite warming up with China, Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte recently threatened a "suicide mission" if Beijing does not back off from a Manila-occupied island in the South China Sea. The United States and Japan held a 2+2 meeting reaffirming the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” approach with primary emphasis on the South and East China Seas. In March, the US Navy sent the assault ship USS Wasp — a small aircraft carrier operating 20 F-35B Joint Strike Fighters and a Marine Expeditionary Force — to exercise with the Filipino Navy. In addition to the freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) conducted by the US Navy, the US Coast Guard also turned increasingly towards the Asia-Pacific, dispatching its service members to countries such as Vietnam. In this commentary, I focus on US policies toward Southeast Asia, above all the South China Sea: What is unchanged? How is policy oscillating? And what has been gradually shifting?...

Read the full article on The Asan Forum.