Governance

FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling. 

FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world. 

FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.

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CISAC’s Steven Pifer, former U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine, looks at the dueling US foreign policies toward Ukraine – one aimed at U.S. national interests, the other at President Donald Trump’s reelection – and the risk that poses for Ukraine. “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Kyiv should take care, lest their country become a political football in America’s domestic politics,” writes Pifer in a piece for Brookings. Read the rest at Brookings.edu.

 

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Daphne Keller Daphne Keller
Abstract:

Facebook recently announced its own version of the Supreme Court: a 40-member board that will make final decisions about user posts that Facebook has taken down. The announcement came after extended deliberations that have been described as Facebook’s “constitutional convention.” Sweeping terms such as Supreme Court and constitution are not commonly used to describe the operation of private companies, but here they seem appropriate given the platforms’ importance for the many people who use them in place of newspapers, TV stations, the postal service, and even money. Yet private platforms aren’t really the public square, and internet companies aren’t governments. That’s exactly why they are free to do what so many people seem to want: set aside the First Amendment’s speech rules in favor of new, more restrictive ones. 

Mimicking a few government systems will not make internet platforms adequate substitutes for real governments, subject to real laws and real rights-based constraints on their power. Compared with democratic governments, platforms are far more capable of restricting speech. And they are far less accountable than elected officials for their choices. In this talk, I will delve into the differences we should be considering before urging platforms to take on greater roles as arbiters of speech and information.

Daphne Keller Bio

 

Lunch Seminar Series Flyer
  • E207, Encina Hall
  • 616 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305
 

 

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Daphne Keller is the Director of Platform Regulation at the Stanford Program in Law, Science, & Technology. Her academic, policy, and popular press writing focuses on platform regulation and Internet users'; rights in the U.S., EU, and around the world. Her recent work has focused on platform transparency, data collection for artificial intelligence, interoperability models, and “must-carry” obligations. She has testified before legislatures, courts, and regulatory bodies around the world on topics ranging from the practical realities of content moderation to copyright and data protection. She was previously Associate General Counsel for Google, where she had responsibility for the company’s web search products. She is a graduate of Yale Law School, Brown University, and Head Start.

SHORT PIECES

 

ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

 

POLICY PUBLICATIONS

 

FILINGS

  • U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief on behalf of Francis Fukuyama, NetChoice v. Moody (2024)
  • U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief with ACLU, Gonzalez v. Google (2023)
  • Comment to European Commission on data access under EU Digital Services Act
  • U.S. Senate testimony on platform transparency

 

PUBLICATIONS LIST

Director of Platform Regulation, Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology (LST)
Social Science Research Scholar
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Director of Intermediary Liability Center for Internet and Society
Seminars
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CISAC will be canceling all public events and seminars until at least April 5th due to the ongoing developments associated with COVID-19.

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About this Event: Somatic (i.e. non-heritable) genome editing is already in clinical trials for the treatment of diseases ranging from certain cancers to sickle cell anemia.  But public fascination has largely focused on germline editing, especially with the startling late 2018 announcement that human embryos had been edited and then used for a pregnancy resulting in two live-born girls.  This talk will highlight key scientific and political responses since that announcement, and offer insights into ongoing debates and ongoing work by international commissions looking at whether there are any conditions under which such experiments could be done responsibly in the future.

 

About the Speaker:

R. Alta Charo, J.D., is a 2019-2020 Berggruen Fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin.  She was co-chair of the National Academies’ 2017 report on human genome editing, and a member of the organizing committee for the 2019 international summit on genome editing in Hong Kong.  At present, she serves on the  World Health Organization committee developing global governance standards for genome editing, and on the steering committee of the International Society for Stem Cell Research effort to revise and expand ethical guidelines for research and development of both heritable and non-heritable human genome editing.

 

 

Alta Charo Professor of Law University of Wisconsin, and Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
Seminars

Twitter: @StacieVilendrer

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Stacie grew up in Minnesota where she decided to become a physician after watching her grandfather survive metastatic cancer with the support of his medical team. She honored in Human Biology at Stanford, where her senior thesis investigated community beliefs around childhood malaria in rural Tanzania. She continued to pursue global health work with nonprofits in India and Tanzania prior to medical school that sought to scale the capacity of health worker training programs.   Stacie returned to Stanford School of Medicine to complete her medical degree where she focused on cost-effectiveness research for a genetic screening tool. Recognizing the increasing importance of market dynamics in healthcare delivery, Stacie also chose to pursue her MBA at the Graduate School of Business where she gained additional experience in the private sector with Medtronic and McKinsey & Company. Stacie completed her medical training at UCSF-affiliate Santa Rosa Family Medicine and is a practicing board-certified family physician. She is currently pursuing the Stanford-Intermountain Fellowship in Population Health Sciences.    Stacie’s current research seeks to bring rigorous methodologies to answer those questions most relevant to the hospital C-suite: How to effectively manage physicians and other healthcare workers? How to achieve the quadruple aim of improving patient outcomes, lowering cost, and improving the physician and patient experience? How to transition from a fee-for-service to a value-based health system? Her work is based in implementation science, using quantitative and qualitative methodologies to answer the above questions. Her ongoing projects relate to physician incentives, physician burnout, policy impacts on population health, corporate benefit management strategies, medical assistant turnover, and social determinants of health.
Stanford/Intermountain Fellow, PCPH
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Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

 

Abstract: The West’s sanctions regime on Russia is unprecedented. Russia is the largest economy ever to be subject to major sanctions. And for the first time, the West is now the major constraint on Russia’s participation in the global economy. This experience is driving adaptation and innovation in both Russian public policy and Western sanctions practice.

What do Russian sanctions reveal about both Russia and sanctions? What count as good and bad tests of sanctions’ efficacy? What implications do sanctions hold for Russia’s domestic evolution and its relationship with the West?

 

Speaker's Biography:

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Nigel Gould-Davies is an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). He teaches at Mahidol University International College in Thailand.

Nigel taught at Oxford University before joining the British Foreign Office, where his roles included Ambassador to Belarus. From 2010-14 he was Vice President, Policy and Corporate Affairs for BG Group in Asia.

He is the author of Tectonic Politics: Global Political Risk in an Age of Transformation (Brookings Institution, 2019). He received his B.A. and M.Phil. from Oxford and his Ph.D. from Harvard.

 

Nigel Gould-Davies Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House
Seminars
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Interpreting U.S.-China Trade War: Background, Negotiations and Consequences

Since March 2018, the US–China trade conflict has escalated from a tariff war to a technology war, and a strategic competition between the two giants. The direction of the trade war and China–US relations will reshape the world order of the future. In this talk, Professor Wang Yong will explore questions like: What major goals does the US have in the trade war against China? How should one evaluate the influence of domestic structural changes in the two countries on the trade conflict? Will a possible deal stop the spiraling of strategic competition between the two major powers? By answering these questions, Professor Wang will analyze the political and economic forces driving this current US–China trade war and the factors affecting the negotiations. Major arguments include that trade frictions have deep roots in the restructuring of domestic politics taking place in the two countries; while extreme thoughts define US–China relationship from the perspectives of ideology and strategic rivalry, economic interdependence and shared stakes set the ground for negotiation and possible compromise between the two countries. Rebuilding political trust will be the key to dealing with strategic rivalry and avoiding a new cold war between China and the US.

 

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Professor Wang Yong is director of the Center for International Political Economy and professor at the School of International Studies, both at Peking University. He is also professor at the Party School of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China and president-appointed professor for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Senior Civil Servants Training Program on Chinese Affairs at Peking University and a member of the Ministry of Commerce Economic Diplomacy Expert Working Group. Professor Wang was formerly a consultant of the Asia Development Bank, Visiting Chevalier Chair Professor at the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Global Trade and Foreign Direct Investment.

Professor Wang received his B.A. and M.A. in law and international politics and Ph.D. in law from Peking University. He joined the faculty of the School of International Studies at Peking University in 1990. He studied at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (an educational collaboration between the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University) and was also a visiting scholar at the University of California San Diego and a joint visiting fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy and the University of Southern California.

His major authored books include International Political Economy in China: The Global Conversation (co-edited with Greg Chin and Margaret Pearson, Routledge, 2015), Political Economy of International Trade (China Market Press, 2008) and Political Economy of China-U.S. Trade Relations (China Market Press, 2007), which was awarded the first prize for Excellent Social Sciences Works by the Beijing Municipal Government and the Beijing Confederation of Social Scientists in 2008.

Philippines Conference Room
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, Central, 3rd Floor
Stanford, CA 94305

WANG Yong <br><i>Director, Center for International Political Economy; Professor of International Studies, Peking University</i><br><br>
Lectures
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Sponsored by Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law

WE HAVE REACHED VENUE CAPACITY AND ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTING RSVPS

NOTE: THIS EVENT IS CLOSED TO THE MEDIA 

Registration required for admission.  No walk-ins.

No audio, video recording or photography will be permitted.  

News regarding increasing numbers of camps and detention facilities in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China have grabbed the headlines since mid-2017. China’s deployment of high-tech surveillance and police tactics have spread throughout the region, and approximately ten million Muslim minorities in the region are under tight, top-down control. Over one million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims have allegedly disappeared into these internment camps, which the Chinese government and media characterize as vocational training centers. Although Beijing has recently claimed that most of the detainees have been released, evidence for this is still difficult to verify. Information dissemination regarding the region to the outside world has been closely guarded.

To gain a better understanding of what is happening in Xinjiang, a panel of experts from various scholarly disciplines will analyze the current crisis and, as importantly, do what academics do best -- provide historical context and critical social scientific analysis that broaden and deepen our understanding of the events unfolding in that region. 


Speakers

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Gardner Bovingdon is Associate Professor of Central Eurasian Studies at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University. Bovingdon researches politics in contemporary Xinjiang as well as Xinjiang’s modern history. He is also an expert in historiography in China, as well as nationalism and ethnic conflict. He is the author of The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land (Columbia University Press, 2010); “Politics in Modern Xinjiang,” in Introduction to the Politics of China, ed. William Joseph (Oxford University Press, 2010); and “CCP Policies and Popular Responses in Xinjiang, 1949 to the present,” in Governing China’s Multiethnic Frontiers, ed. Morris Rossabi (University of Washington Press, 2004), among others.

 

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Darren Byler received his Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington in 2018. His research focuses on Uyghur dispossession, culture work and "terror capitalism" in the city of Ürümchi, the capital of Xinjiang. He has published research articles in the Asia-Pacific Journal, Contemporary Islam, Central Asian Survey, the Journal of Chinese Contemporary Art and contributed essays to volumes on ethnography of Islam in China, transnational Chinese cinema and travel and representation. He has provided expert testimony on Uyghur human rights issues before the Canadian House of Commons and writes a regular column on these issues for SupChina. In addition, he has published Uyghur-English literary translations (with Mutellip Enwer) in Guernica and Paper Republic. He also writes and curates the digital humanities art and politics repository The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia, which is hosted at livingotherwise.com.

 

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James Millward is Professor of Inter-societal History at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, teaching Chinese, Central Asian and world history. He is also an affiliated professor in the Máster Oficial en Estudios de Asia Oriental at the University of Granada, Spain. His specialties include Qing empire; the silk road; Eurasian lutes and music in history; and historical and contemporary Xinjiang. He follows and comments on current issues regarding the Uyghurs and PRC ethnicity policy.  Millward has served on the boards of the Association for Asian Studies (China and Inner Asia Council) and the Central Eurasian Studies Society, and was president of the Central Eurasian Studies Society in 2010. He edits the ''Silk Roads'' series for University of Chicago Press. His publications include The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction (2013), Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (2007), New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde (2004), and Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity and Empire in Qing Central Asia (1998).  His articles and op-eds on contemporary China appear in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Review of Books and other media.  

 

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Thomas Mullaney is Professor of Chinese History at Stanford University, and Curator of the international exhibition, "Radical Machines: Chinese in the Information Age."  He is the author of The Chinese Typewriter: A History (MIT Press 2017), Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China (UC Press, 2010), and principal editor of Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation and Identity of China’s Majority (UC Press, 2011). His writings have appeared in the Journal of Asian Studies, Technology & Culture, Aeon, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, and his work has been featured in the LA Times, The Atlantic, the BBC, and in invited lectures at Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and more. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

 

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Lauren Hansen Restrepo is Assistant Professor in Growth and Structure of Cities at Bryn Mawr College. She focuses on Chinese development planning and urbanization in Xinjiang, changes within urban Uyghur society, and state-society relations in Xinjiang’s cities. She also works on issues more broadly related to urban and economic development in conflict areas; urbanization in minority-majority regions; housing and slum upgrading; Chinese city planning; cross-border economic and development planning in Western China and Central Asia; development planning and practice in authoritarian states; gender and development.  Her book manuscript, Chinese Construction at the New Frontier: The Government of Uyghur Identity in Urban Xinjiang, combines ethnographic research with historical and policy analysis to assess the relationship between urban development, social control, and identity politics among upwardly mobile Uyghurs in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.

Philippines Conference Room
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, Central, 3rd Floor
Stanford, CA 94305

 

Gardner Bovingdon <br><i>Associate Professor, Central Eurasian Studies, Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, Indiana University</i><br><br>
Darren Byler <br><i>Post-Doctoral Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington</i><br><br>
James Millward <br><i>Professor of Inter-societal History, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University</i><br><br>
Thomas Mullaney (Moderator) <br><i>Professor of Chinese History, Stanford University</i><br><br>
Lauren Hansen Restrepo <br><i>Assistant Professor in Growth and Structure of Cities, Bryn Mawr College</i><br><br>
Panel Discussions
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Abstract: In 2013, the Obama Administration’s “Nuclear Employment Strategy” guidance announced that all war plans and operations would be “consistent with the fundamental principles of the Law of Armed Conflict” (LOAC). The Trump Administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review repeated this commitment. The literature on nuclear strategy and deterrence in political science however, has either ignored these legal requirements or misunderstood them. The legal literature on nuclear weapons, however, has largely ignored the technical revolution regarding improved accuracy and lower-yield nuclear weapons and the different strategic contexts in which the U.S. might contemplate nuclear use. This paper analyzes how proper application of the Law of Armed Conflict should constrain U.S. nuclear doctrine and war planning and how knowledge of strategic considerations is fundamental to proper legal analysis. We argue that the principle of proportionality can permit “counter-force” targeting— most clearly when such attacks can prevent or significantly reduce the expected damage to U.S. and allied populations with lower foreign collateral damage. We also argue that the legal requirement to take “feasible precautions” to protect non-combatants means the U.S. must use conventional weapons or the lowest yield nuclear weapons possible in any counterforce attack. Finally, we contend that the prohibition against deliberate targeting of civilians has gained the status of customary international law and that the U.S. government should therefore reverse its traditional position and reject the doctrine of “belligerent reprisal” against foreign civilians. This prohibition means that it is illegal for the United States, contrary to what is implied in the 2018 NPR and explicitly maintained by prominent U.S. Air Force lawyers, to either intentionally target civilians in reprisal to a strike against U.S. or allied civilians, or launch attacks against legitimate military targets if the intent to is cause incidental civilian harm.

 

Speaker's Biography:

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Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He also serves as Chairman of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Sagan has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Learning from a Disaster: Improving Nuclear Safety and Security after Fukushima (Stanford University Press, 2016) with Edward D. Blandford and co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Armed and Dangerous: When Dictators Get the Bomb” in Foreign Affairs (November/December 2018); “Not Just a War Theory: American Public Opinion on Ethics in Combat” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Studies Quarterly (Fall 2018); The Korean Missile Crisis” in Foreign Affairs (November/December 2017); “Revisiting Hiroshima in Iran: What Americans Really Think About Using Nuclear Weapons and Killing Noncombatants” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Summer 2017); and “Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons” with Daryl G. Press and Benjamin A. Valentino in the American Political Science Review (February 2013).

In 2018, Sagan received the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.

 

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Allen S. Weiner, JD ’89, is an international legal scholar with expertise in such wide-ranging fields as international and national security law, the law of war, international conflict resolution, and international criminal law (including transitional justice). His scholarship focuses on international law and the response to the contemporary security threats of international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and situations of widespread humanitarian atrocities. He also explores assertions by states of “war powers” under international law, domestic law, and just war theory in the context of asymmetric armed conflicts between states and nonstate armed groups and the response to terrorism. In the realm of international conflict resolution, his highly multidisciplinary work analyzes the barriers to resolving violent political conflicts, with a particular focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Weiner’s scholarship is deeply informed by experience; he practiced international law in the U.S. Department of State for more than a decade advising government policymakers, negotiating international agreements, and representing the United States in litigation before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Court of Justice, and the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal.

Senior Lecturer Weiner is director of the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law and co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 2003, Weiner served as legal counselor to the U.S. Embassy in The Hague and attorney adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State. He was a law clerk to Judge John Steadman of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

 

Scott Sagan Professor of Political Science Stanford University
Allen Weiner Stanford University
Seminars

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA  94305

 

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Visiting Scholar at The Europe Center, 2019-2020
Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois at Chicago
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Stanford University's Hoover Institution in Washington is pleased to invite you to attend the next National Security and Technology Congressional Briefing. The briefing, centered on the U.S. race with China for technological superiority, will feature various experts outlining actionable policy proposals to meet this rising challenge.

With the 2020 presidential campaign in full swing, the time is ripe to develop new nonpartisan policy ideas to inform the national security and technology policy priorities of whomever will occupy the White House in 2021. The Technology and Public Policy Project housed within the Freeman Spogli Institute's Cyber Policy Center, and in partnership with the Hoover Institution, seeks to address these policy challenges and questions by developing implementation-ready proposals that meet the needs of current and future policymakers.

Hosted by Hoover Research Fellow Andrew Grotto, the briefing will focus on opportunities for action, featuring proposals by: 

  • Anja Manuel, on developing an affirmative strategy for competing, contesting, and cooperating with China in response to its efforts to systematically extract advanced technology from the West.
  • Anthony Vinci, on harnessing a new joint venture model for public-private technology innovation to meet national security technology challenges. 

 

Schedule:

  • 9:00a.m. - Registration and Coffee
  • 9:30a.m. - 11:00a.m. - Panel Discussion
  • Hoover Institution DC
  • 1399 New York Avenue NW, Suite 500
  • Washington, DC 20005
Panel Discussions
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