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. 

The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review

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This seminar will provide analysis and implications of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review from the perspectives of three people who spent a significant portion of their careers working on the nuclear deterrent.  First, a brief history of nuclear posture reviews will be presented.  The results from the former reviews will be analyzed and the evolution of the nuclear posture reviews will be elucidated.  Next, a summary of the current security environment and the resulting important elements of the 2018 review will be presented.  The reasoning and rationale for the elements of the nuclear posture will be described.  Finally, a perspective of the implication of the 2018 nuclear posture review to the challenging issue of infrastructure and capabilities at the U.S. national laboratories responsible for the nuclear deterrent will be discussed.   The views of the speakers will differ from each other in some cases, and there will be time for questions from the audience to the panelists.

 

John R. Harvey Bio

Dr. John R. Harvey is a physicist with over 35 years of experience working nuclear weapons and national security issues, first at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, then at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Arms Control and in senior positions in the Departments of Defense (twice) and Energy.  From 2009-2013, he served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs under then Undersecretary Ash Carter.  He was Dr. Carter’s “go to” person for the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, as well as for interactions with the Department of Energy on joint oversight of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.  Dr. Harvey also provided oversight to DoD acquisition programs to sustain and modernize nuclear weapons delivery systems and systems for their command and control.  Since retiring from government service in 2013, he consults with the Defense Science Board, Institute for Defense Analysis, Los Alamos National Laboratory, National Institute for Public Policy, Center for Strategic and International Studies and Strategic Command’s Strategic Advisory Group Panel on Nuclear Weapons Command and Control.

 

Charles McMillan Bio

Dr. Charles McMillan served as the tenth Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory from 2011 through 2017. The Laboratory is a principal contributor to the Department of Energy mission of maintaining the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile. McMillan began his career as an experimental physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1983. As a scientific leader, he helped create the Stockpile Stewardship Program, developing and applying advanced experimental and computational tools to ensure the safety, security and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent without additional full-scale nuclear testing. He continues to serve as an adviser to the government, laboratories and industry.

 

Jill Hruby Bio

Jill Hruby is currently the inaugural Sam Nunn Distinguished Fellow at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Her work at NTI focuses on the intersection of technology and nuclear non-proliferation policy.

Hruby served as the Director of Sandia National Laboratories from July 2015 to May 2017. Sandia is a Department of Energy (DOE)/National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) national laboratory with over 12,000 employees and $3B annual revenue.  Sandia’s broad national security missions include nuclear weapons, cyberspace, energy, non-proliferation, biological defense, and space sensors and systems.

Hruby spent 34 years at Sandia in roles with increasing responsibilities.  In 2010, Hruby moved to Sandia’s New Mexico site after 27 years at Sandia’s California location to become vice president of the Energy, Nonproliferation, and High-Consequence Security Division, and leader of Sandia’s International, Homeland, and Nuclear Security Program.  

 

 

Jill Hruby, Charlie McMillan, and John Harvey
Seminars

Obama’s Prague Agenda: Success and Frustration

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Abstract: Steve Fetter worked in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the first three and last two years of the Obama administration.  In the first period he played a role in the debates that defined the administration’s nuclear policy; in the latter period he participated in the final push to make progress on what became known as “the Prague agenda.”  He will discuss the key successes and failures in President Obama’s attempt to revise U.S. nuclear weapon policy and lessons that can be learned for a future administration that seeks to reduce nuclear risks. 

 

Bio: Steve Fetter is Associate Provost, Dean of the Graduate School, and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.  Service in the U.S. government includes five years at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, two years at the Department of Defense, and a year at the State Department.  He has been a visiting fellow at Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and Livermore and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control.  Fetter holds a Ph.D. in energy and resources from Berkeley and a S.B. in physics from MIT.

Steve Fetter Associate Provost, Dean of the Graduate School, and Professor of Public Policy University of Maryland
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

George H.W. Bush's Security Legacy

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A panel discussion on the impact George H.W. Bush had on international security throughout his career.

 

Panelists:

David Holloway

Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies
Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History

 

Martha Crenshaw

Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science

 

Siegfried Hecker

Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Research Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus

 

With moderator: 

Colin Kahl
Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science

 

 

 

Indonesia: Democratic Hopes, Institutional Woes

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Co-sponsored by the Southeast Asia Program and

the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law

Indonesia features Southeast Asia’s most vibrant and dynamic democracy, but debilitating institutional dysfunctions persist.  Age-old patronage-style practices remain commonplace, despite voter demands for governance reform.  In effect, two mutually incompatible systems operate simultaneously: the rule of law on the one hand—“Ruler’s Law” on the other.  The disarray provides space for mafias and Islamist fringe groups to wield clout.  The contradiction tends to deter investment that Indonesia sorely needs in order to escape a “middle-income trap.”  What are the prospects for change in the April 2019 national elections?  Join the Indonesia political analyst Kevin O’Rourke for a presentation and discussion of poll data, political trends, and potential post-2019 scenarios in the world’s fourth most populous country. 

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Kevin O’Rourke’s Reformasi Weekly analyzes politics and policy-making for organizations operating in Indonesia. Subscribers include embassies, NGOs, universities, and companies. His firm, Reformasi Information Services, provides political risk consul­ting and customized research. His latest publication, 2019 Election Primer: Players, Playing Field and Scenarios (Nov. 2018), reviews in detail the rules, issues, and possible results of the country’s nationwide elections in April 2019. Earlier writings include Who’s Who in Yudhoyono’s Indonesia (2010) and Reformasi: The Struggle for Power in Post-Soeharto Indonesia (2002). Kevin started his career in Indonesia in 1994 as an equity research analyst. He is a graduate of Harvard University with an honors degree in government.

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Philippines Conference Room Encina Hall, 3rd Floor 616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305
Kevin O’Rourke Writer and producer, Reformasi Weekly Review of Indonesian politics and policymaking
Seminars

FSI Publications 2017 - 2018

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The faculty of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies enjoyed a productive period of policy-resonant scholarship spanning from winter quarter 2017 to fall quarter 2018.  This document inventories their academic publications, including books in print or under contract, Stanford courses delivered, invited talks across the globe, and activities that involve policy engagement comprising government testimony, advisement and public service, media commentary, opinion pieces, public policy training, and other efforts to translate scholarship into policy.

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Research in Progress: The Effects of U.S. School Shootings on Children's Antidepressant Use with Maya Rossin-Slater

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The Effects of U.S. School Shootings on Children’s Antidepressant Use

More than 220,000 American students have experienced a school shooting since the 1998 Columbine High massacre. School shootings are vastly more common in the U.S. than in any other developed country, and are becoming more frequent and deadly in recent years. While these events receive widespread media coverage and incite public debates, there is little empirical research quantifying their population-level mental health impacts. We combined data on 44 school shootings between January 2008 and April 2013 with data on antidepressant prescriptions filled at retail pharmacies between January 2006 and March 2015. We compared the number of antidepressants prescribed to children under age 20 by providers located in close proximity of a school that experienced a shooting (shooting-exposed area) to those prescribed to children by providers located slightly further away (reference group), both in the two years before and the two years after a shooting. The average number of monthly antidepressant prescriptions written to children was significantly higher in the shooting-exposed areas relative to the reference groups in the two years after a fatal shooting versus the two years before. The effect persisted when extending the post-shooting observation window to three years and was similar when using an alternative reference group of providers located in close proximity to observationally similar schools without a shooting. We found no significant effects on children’s antidepressant prescriptions following non-fatal shootings or on adult antidepressant use. Our results suggest that local exposure to fatal school shootings increases antidepressant use among children under 20 years old, a previously unmeasured cost of these events.


Maya Rossin-Slater
Assistant Professor of Health Research and Policy, Stanford University
Faculty Fellow, SIEPER
Faculty Research Fellow, NBER
Research Affiliate, IZA

Maya Rossin-Slater is an Assistant Professor of Health Research and Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is also a Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Research Affiliate at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA). She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University in 2013, and was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 2013 to 2017. Rossin-Slater’s research includes work in health, public, and labor economics. She focuses on issues in maternal and child well-being, family structure and behavior, and policies targeting disadvantaged populations in the United States and other developed countries.

CHP/PCOR Conference Room
123 Encina Commons
(Building located behind Encina Hall)

Seminars

New report from Stanford scholars seeks to demystify the biosecurity landscape

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From genome editing to “hacking” the microbiome, advances in the life sciences and its associated technological revolution have already altered the biosecurity landscape, and will continue to do so. What does this new landscape look like, and how can policymakers and other stakeholders navigate this space? A new report by Stanford scholars David Relman and Megan Palmer along with George Mason University’s Jesse Kirkpatrick and Greg Koblentz assesses this emerging biosecurity landscape to help answer these questions and illustrates gaps in governance and regulation through the use of scenarios.

The report—the product of two years of workshops, issue briefs, and white papers authored by different participants—involved people from different organizations and backgrounds ranging from life sciences and medicine to social science and ethics. “The project process was just as important as the product,” said Palmer. “It was a truly interdisciplinary effort.”

Genome editing, including CRISPR, is disruptive to the biosecurity landscape, and it serves as an illustration of more general trends in the evolving landscape, the authors write. CRISPR technology does not exist in a vacuum—rather, it is enabled by, represents, and gives rise to a suite of technologies with potential benefits and that require new approaches to adaptive policy making and governance.

Scenarios illustrating governance gaps in in the report include:

  • A reckless CRISPR user who develops and markets a probiotic created with genome editing that has serious unanticipated effects for consumers;
  • An agricultural biotechnology firm conducting dual use genome editing research that lies outside current oversight, but nonetheless could have negative consequences for human health
  • An intentional release of a gene drive organism from a lab, that while having limited physical harm, feeds a state-based misinformation campaign with large economic impacts
  • An accidental release of a gene drive organism due to lack of awareness and uncertainty about the risk classifications and protocols for handling new technologies
  • A terrorist group using commercial firms that lack strong customer and order screening to use genome editing to weaponize a nonpathogenic bacteria
  • A state-sponsored program to develop biological weapons for new strategic uses, including covert assassination, using largely publicly available research
     

In each of these examples, the researchers play out a hypothetical situation exposing a number of security and governance gaps for policymakers and other stakeholders to address.

In the report, the authors conclude that genome editing has tremendous potential benefits and economic impacts. The authors note that the market for genome editing is expected to exceed $3.5 billion by 2019, but a security incident, safety lapse, reckless misadventure, or significant regulatory uncertainty could hurt growth. Increased reliance on the “bio-economy,” they write, means biosecurity is increasingly critical to economic security as well as human health.

Other key takeaways:

Genome editing has the potential to improve the human condition. Genome editing is poised to make major beneficial contributions to basic research, medicine, public health, agriculture, and manufacturing that could reduce suffering, strengthen food security, and protect the environment.

Genome editing is disruptive to the biosecurity landscape. The threat landscape has, and continues to expand to include new means of disrupting or manipulating biological systems and processes in humans, plants, and animals. Genome editing could be used to create new types of biological weapons. Further, technical advances will make misuse easier and more widespread.

CRISPR illuminates broader trends and the challenges of an evolving security landscape. An approach to biosecurity that accounts for these trends, and encompasses risks posed by deliberate, accidental, and reckless misuse, can help address the complex and evolving security landscape.

Technology must be taken seriously.  A thorough, informed, and accessible analysis of any emerging technology is crucial to considering the impact that it may have on the security landscape.

Key stakeholders must be engaged. Stakeholders in the genome editing field encompass a more diverse array of actors than those that have been involved so far in biosecurity discussions. These stakeholders range from international organizations to government agencies to universities, companies, lay communities writ large, and scientists.

Applied research is needed to create and implement innovative and effective policies. Applied research is necessary to continue the process of modifying existing governance measures, and testing and adapting new ones, as new genome editing technologies and applications are developed, new stakeholders emerge, and new pathways for misuse are identified.

Download the executive summary and full report at editingbiosecurity.org.

 

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India's National Security Challenges and Decision-Making

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Bio: Dr. Arvind Gupta recently retired as India's Deputy National Security Advisor. In his capacity as Deputy NSA, he also headed India's National Security Council Secretariat from 2014 until 2017. Previously, he was the Director General of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA), a thinktank funded by India's Ministry of Defence. Dr. Gupta joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1979 and served at India's diplomatic missions in Moscow, London and Ankara. At the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi, he dealt with Afghanistan, the Soviet Union, Russia, Kashmir, and the Central Asian affairs. He is an honorary professor in the Department of Defence and National Security Studies, Panjab University. He has an MSc in Physics from the University of Delhi and a Ph.D. in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is currently the Director of Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), a Delhi-based independent, non-partisan think tank focussing on foreign policy, defense and security-related issues from an Indian perspective. His most recent book How India Manages its National Security was published by Penguin Random House in 2018.

Book Overview: In this authoritative and comprehensive survey of the challenges a changing global security environment poses to India, former deputy national security advisor Arvind Gupta outlines the important aspects of the country's security apparatus and how they interface to confront internal and external conflicts. We have today a turbulent Middle East to the west; a rising and assertive China to the north; Pakistan in the grip of the military and the militants across our border and an increasingly militarizing Indian Ocean region surrounding us. Additionally, climate change, cyber security and the vulnerability of our space assets are major areas of concern. Anything that weakens a nation weakens its security, which makes the issues of food, water, health, economics and governance critically significant. Arvind Gupta draws on his long experience in these areas to argue that instead of tactical remedies, a strategic, coherent, institutional approach is needed to deal with these challenges. Strengthening the National Security Council, for instance, could be one way forward.

How India Manages Its National Security explains with great clarity and thoroughness the concept and operation of India's national security apparatus. This book will be of great interest to practitioners, analysts and laymen alike and offer an important voice in the discussion on how national security challenges should be resolved in the decades to come.

Arvind Gupta Director Vivekananda International Foundation
Seminars

Roundtable on China’s Growing Sharp Power: American and Taiwanese Perspectives

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On 11/29/18 a group of leading experts on China and American foreign policy released “Chinese Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance,” a report documenting Chinese efforts to influence American society. The report examines China's efforts to influence American institutions, including state and local governments, universities, think tanks, media, corporations, and the Chinese-American community, and differentiates between legitimate efforts--like public diplomacy--and improper interference, which demands greater awareness and a calibrated response.

In this special roundtable, two of the report’s co-editors, Orville Schell and Larry Diamond, and a Taiwanese scholar, Ji-Jen Hwang, will discuss the findings of the report and compare the forms and effects of Chinese “sharp power” in the United States with its practice in and toward Taiwan.

This event is co-sponsored by the US-Asia Security Initiative in the Asia-Pacific Research Center, and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.  

Orville Schell

Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. He is a former professor and Dean at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Schell was born in New York City, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in Far Eastern History, was an exchange student at National Taiwan University in the 1960s, and earned a Ph.D. (Abd) at University of California, Berkeley in Chinese History. He worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and has traveled widely in China since the mid-70s.

Schell is the author of fifteen books, ten of them about China, and a contributor to numerous edited volumes. His most recent books are: Wealth and Power, China’s long March to the 21st Century; Virtual Tibet; The China Reader: The Reform Years; and Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China’s Leaders. He has written widely for many magazine and newspapers, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Time, The New Republic, Harpers, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Wired, Foreign Affairs, the China Quarterly, and the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

He is a Fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communications at USC and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Schell is also the recipient of many prizes and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Overseas Press Club Award, and the Harvard-Stanford Shorenstein Prize in Asian Journalism.

Larry Diamond

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. For more than six years, he directed FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, where he now leads its Program on Arab Reform and Democracy and its Global Digital Policy Incubator. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. His research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around in the world, and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy.  His 2016 book, In Search of Democracy, explores the challenges confronting democracy and democracy promotion, gathering together three decades of his writing and research, particularly on Africa and Asia.  He has just completed a new book on the global crisis of democracy, which will be published in 2019, and is now writing a textbook on democratic development.

Karl Eikenberry

is Director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative and faculty member at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, faculty member of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Professor of Practice at Stanford University. He is also an affiliate with the FSI Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law, and The Europe Center.

Prior to his arrival at Stanford, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 until 2011. Before appointment as Chief of Mission on Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a thirty-five year career in the United States Army, retiring in April 2009 with the rank of Lieutenant General. His military operational posts included commander and staff officer with mechanized, light, airborne, and ranger infantry units in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and Afghanistan as the Commander of the American-led Coalition forces. He held various policy and political-military positions, including Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium; Director for Strategic Planning and Policy for U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii; U.S. Security Coordinator and Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Kabul, Afghanistan; Assistant Army and later Defense Attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing, China; Senior Country Director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and Deputy Director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy on the Army Staff.

Ji-Jen Hwang

Dr. Ji-Jen Hwang is a Research Scholar in the Institute for East Asian Studies (IEAS) at UC Berkeley. Before that, he was a Professor & Program Director of the International Master Program in Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in the Republic of China (Taiwan). In 2014-15, Dr. Hwang was a visiting fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) located in Washington D.C. He also completed an internship at the United States Library of Congress while doing his Master’s coursework. A native of Taiwan, he holds a Ph.D. in politics from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the U.K., as well as a Masters in Library Science & Information Studies from the University of North Carolina. He has been working for a non-profit Think Tank based in Washington D.C. area as a Deputy Managing Director since April 2018. His current research is focused on relations between the United States, China, and Taiwan, in which he particularly aims to study how social media and the features in cyberspace have political impacts on these relations. He is well-known known as an expert in this area and been invited as a special lecturer to think tanks such as CSIS in Washington D.C., ASPI in Canberra, NATO, GlobalSec in Europe, and INSS in Seoul.

 

Philippines Conference Room
Encina Hall, 3rd Floor
616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305

Orville Schell
Larry Diamond
Ji-Jen Hwang
Karl Eikenberry
Panel Discussions
Taiwan Democracy
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