Abstract: We all know that we face cyberrisks everyday, from destructive attacks on our critical infrastructure to the theft of intellectual property. Yet countries and companies are woefully behind in making the investments necessary to secure themselves and withstand potential attacks. How should we move forward? Given the range of cyberthreats facing the United States and its allies and partners we should focus on (1) securing our most important missions and operations and (2) on planning for the certainty of some technological disruption. The talk begins by presenting a series of assumptions about the limits and opportunities for security planners in mitigating risks (cyber and otherwise), and then outlines strategic recommendations for governments and companies to improve their cybersecuity posture. It explores elements of effective cyber strategy; the role of leaders in managing cybersecurity across large organizations; the future of public-private partnerships for collective defense and contingency response; and the dark but necessary nature of resiliency planning.
About the Speaker: Jonathan Reiber is currently Senior Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley's Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. A writer, speaker, and security researcher, Mr. Reiber held a number of senior advisory positions in the Obama Administration within the U.S. Department of Defense. He was also the principal author of the U.S. Department of Defense Cyber Strategy (2015).
From January 2013 to September 2015, he served as Chief Strategy Officer for Cyber Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. As Chief Strategy Officer, he advised the Pentagon leadership and led strategic initiatives across the cyber policy portfolio, to include strategic planning; key international, interagency, and industry partnerships; and strategic communications. In addition to serving as Chief Strategy Officer, he was also the Executive Secretary of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Cyber Deterrence.
Earlier in the Obama Administration, Mr. Reiber served as Special Assistant and Speechwriter to the United States' Deputy Secretary of Defense, Dr. Ashton B. Carter, and previously as Special Assistant to the United States' Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Dr. James N. Miller. In both positions he focused on strategy, Middle East security, Asia-Pacific security, cyber policy, and public communications.
From 2007 to 2009, Mr. Reiber was Research Manager at Ergo, a consulting and intelligence firm focusing on emerging markets. At Ergo he coordinated scenario planning exercises and deep-dive geopolitical analysis, advising Fortune 500 companies and other organizations on the political and social affairs of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Earlier in his career he served with the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Sudan, as a policy advisor to the Episcopal Church of the United States, and as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow in South Africa, Italy, India, Turkey and Cyprus, where he studied the role of religion in political and social change.
Mr. Reiber is a graduate of Middlebury College, where he studied Religion, and The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he focused his studies on international security and U.S. diplomatic history and served as Editor-in-Chief of The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs.
At Berkeley Mr. Reiber focuses his writing and research on human resilience, national contingency planning, and cybersecurity in the Asia-Pacific region. He regularly advises companies and governments on cybersecurity, strategy, and geopolitical risk.
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
Jonathan Reiber
Senior Fellow
University of California at Berkeley's Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity
Abstract: There is a state of high anxiety about this year's election being "hacked" or "rigged". The media began speculating about the possibility when emails were stolen from the Democratic National Committee and, later, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, allegedly by state-sponsored hackers. Additionally, Donald Trump has been predicting that the election will be "rigged", worrying many of his supporters. New voter ID requirements have been imposed in many states in response to allegations of "voter fraud", but voting rights advocates worry that these requirements will disenfranchise many voters. In this talk, I will attempt a rational evaluation of election security risks and propose what we should do to address them.
About the Speaker: David L. Dill is the Donald E. Knuth Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where he has been on the faculty for 29 years. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been working on policy issues in voting technology since 2003. He is the founder of VerifiedVoting.org, whose mission is to safeguard elections in the digital age, and continues to serve as a board director in that organization. He was a principle investigator in the National Science Foundation's "ACCURATE" voting tresearch center center from 2006 to 2011. In 2004, he received the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "Pioneer Award" for spearheading and nurturing the popular movement for integrity and transparency in modern elections."
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
David Dill
Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Computer Science
Stanford University
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E205
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
(650) 725-8035
0
antanas@stanford.edu
Senior Research Scholar
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Harold Trinkunas is the Deputy Director and a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Prior to arriving at Stanford, Dr. Trinkunas served as the Charles W. Robinson Chair and senior fellow and director of the Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. His research focuses on issues related to foreign policy, governance, and security, particularly in Latin America. Trinkunas has written on emerging powers and the international order, ungoverned spaces, terrorism financing, borders, and information operations.
Trinkunas has co-authored Militants, Criminals and Warlords: The Challenge of Local Governance in an Age of Disorder (Brookings Institution Press, 2017), Aspirational Power: Brazil’s Long Road to Global Influence (Brookings Institution Press, 2016) and authored Crafting Civilian Control of the Military in Venezuela (University of North Carolina Press, 2005). He co-edited and contributed to Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Change in International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2021), Three Tweets to Midnight: The Effect of the Global Information Ecosystem on the Risk of Nuclear Conflict (Hoover Institution Press, 2020), American Crossings: Border Politics in the Western Hemisphere (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty (Stanford University Press, 2010), Global Politics of Defense Reform (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), and Terrorism Financing and State Responses (Stanford University Press, 2007).
Dr. Trinkunas also previously served as an associate professor and chair of the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He received his doctorate in political science from Stanford University in 1999. He was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela.
Deputy Director, Center for International Security and Cooperation
Are our societies prepared for large-scale cyberattacks on critical infrastructures? How can countries establish joint norms and rules for cyber space? Which steps are necessary in order to stop the digital advance of the 'Islamic State' and other terrorist groups? In how far should data privacy be compromised for effective intelligence work?
Around 140 senior representatives from science, politics, business and the military will debate these and other questions in the course of several panels held over two days in Encina Hall, home to CISAC and FSI. Among the participants are representatives from US and EU authorities, the cyber security coordinators of several European states, numerous business leaders, as well as security experts from various Silicon Valley companies.
This book discusses issues in large-scale systems in the United States and around the world. The authors examine the challenges of education, energy, healthcare, national security, and urban resilience. The book covers challenges in education including America's use of educational funds, standardized testing, and the use of classroom technology. On the topic of energy, this book examines debates on climate, the current and future developments of the nuclear power industry, the benefits and cost decline of natural gases, and the promise of renewable energy. The authors also discuss national security, focusing on the issues of nuclear weapons, terrorism and cyber security. Urban resilience is addressed in the context of natural threats such as hurricanes and floods.
A real possibility exists that foreign hackers could throw a monkey wrench into the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in the fall, a Stanford expert says.
Herbert Lin, senior research scholar for cyberpolicy and security at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, said that electronic voting could be affected by hackers in the presidential race, especially if a candidate claims tampering. In recent months, hackers from outside the country reportedly infiltrated the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign computer networks, leading to data breaches that made headlines worldwide.
The Stanford News Service interviewed Lin on this subject:
How worried are you about possible cyberattacks that could influence the outcome of the November elections in the U.S.?
There are two kinds of things to worry about. One is an actual cyberattack that, for example, alters vote counts in a way that tilts the election away from the will of the voters. That kind of attack is hard to pull off, and I’m not very worried about that – though I worry about it some.
A second worry – much more serious in my opinion – is the possibility that an election loser might challenge the outcome of the election, alleging that the results were altered by a cyberattack, especially if the election were close. How would anyone ever prove that ballots, electronically cast with no permanent and auditable record, were accurately counted?
If the evidence that Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign proves to be legitimate, how should President Obama respond to Russia and Vladimir Putin?
Herbert Lin (Image credit: Rod Searcey/CISAC)
The U.S. has many response options, ranging from private diplomatic conversations to military action and everything in between. There are many things we could do to exact a price. But some of these things may be wise and others may be unwise. For example, an unwise option would be to threaten overt military action and otherwise do saber-rattling in response. The balancing act is calibrating a response that exacts a penalty but does not provoke a response that is unacceptable to us – and that’s a hard thing to do.
Would the U.S. ever hack back at Russia in some way?
I would be utterly amazed if the U.S. were not hacking Russia, and every other major power in the world for that matter. And I would be amazed if every other major power in the world were not hacking the U.S. There’s a baseline level of hacking that is going on all the time by everyone.
So, the question isn’t hacking or not hacking, the question is hacking back versus hacking. And on that point, I suspect it would be really hard for the recipient – in this case, Russia – to distinguish between hacking that almost surely is going on already and hacking that was conducted in response to any putative Russian involvement in the Democratic National Committee hack.
Is the hacking symbolic of a poor relationship between the U.S. and Russian governments?
I would not say symbolic – but it’s entirely consistent with a poor relationship.
In this 2015 video, Herb Lin talks about how U.S. policy on offensive cyber operations should be declassified.
Clifton Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.
Lunch will be served. Please RSVP to allow for an accurate headcount.
Abstract: Dr. Johnston will present a preliminary analysis of some of the tensions between inter-state crisis management principles (as accepted by many Chinese crisis management experts) and concepts for the use of cyber weapons in military conOlicts being developed by the Chinese military.
About the Speaker: Alastair Iain Johnston is The Governor James Albert Noe and Linda Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs at Harvard University and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution in summer 2016. He has written on socialization theory, identity and foreign policy, and strategic culture, mostly with application to the study of China’s foreign policy and East Asian international relations.
Despite growing consensus about the magnitude of cyber security threats, a clear strategy for securing the United States’ critical digital infrastructure has yet to be reached. This is partially due to the complexity of cyber security issues, which intersect computer science, law, policy, economics, public opinion, and ethics. In recent years, however, the Hoover Institution has helped scholarship and dialogue on cyber security to move forward by channeling the expertise of Hoover fellows, Stanford University, and Silicon Valley, as well as extending these resources to policy makers and the media.
Hoover’s Cyber Security Boot Camps, led by Hoover fellows Amy Zegart and Herbert Lin in partnership with Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Program and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), are key components of these efforts. Past boot camps have assembled senior congressional staff from both sides of the aisle for expert briefings and discussions about the law, policy, and technology pertaining to cyber security. This year, Zegart and Lin shifted the program’s focus toward national media, partnering with Hoover’s public affairs team to host a cyber security themed Media Roundtable.
Following the format of previous Media Roundtables, Hoover brought dozens of reporters from leading outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York Times together with cyber policy and technology experts on May 16, 2016. The program featured presentations, interactive discussion, and thought-provoking exercises designed to aid reporters in understanding and communicating cyber security news and debates. The interactive atmosphere also helped strengthen lines of communication between the reporters, technology experts, and strategists tasked with making sense of the changing cyber security landscape.
Amy Zegart, Davies Family Senior Fellow at Hoover, introduced attendees to the unique challenges of crafting cyber security policy. Zegart discussed the exceptional vulnerability of powerful countries to cyber threats, consumer driven connectivity as a factor that increases cyber risks, and the obstacles to protecting privately held cyber infrastructure at a time of acute mistrust of government.
John Villasenor, a professor of electrical engineering, public policy, and management; visiting professor of law at UCLA; and a national fellow at the Hoover Institution, introduced the technical challenges associated with cyber security. Villasenor discussed the irreversible growth of cyberspace as mobile connectivity proliferates and data storage costs plummet, the overwhelming complexity of cyber systems, and the startling capabilities of hackers in identifying and exploiting security weaknesses.
Herbert Lin, Hoover research fellow and senior research scholar for cyber security and policy at CISAC, applied his expertise to an often-overlooked topic in cyber security: the role of offensive cyber tactics. Where passive defenses such as network security or law enforcement fail, offensive measures can prove critical in disrupting or identifying the source of cyber security breaches. Lin also discussed the potential use of offensive cyber tactics against our adversaries without waiting for incoming attacks, which he likens to “punching” in cyberspace, rather than “punching back.”
Carey Nachenberg, a vice president and fellow at Symantec Corporation and prolific developer of cyber security technology, delivered a technical primer on cyber exploitation. Nachenberg described ways that design flaws, human error, and the sheer complexity of cyber systems create potential vulnerabilities. He also provided a step-by-step walkthrough of various tactics hackers use to exploit these weaknesses, including denial of service attacks, computer worms, and manipulating human agents.
Jack Goldsmith, senior fellow at Hoover and the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard, discussed the complications of applying international law designed to address traditional uses of force to cyber hostilities. Goldsmith highlighted the problematic distinction between cyber attacks, which constitute illegal acts of international aggression, and exploitations, which constitute legal acts of espionage.
Elaine Korzak, a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at Hoover, reported on the evolving UN response to cyber security concerns. After decades of review, UN action on cyber law gained traction in 2014 with a milestone report recognizing the applicability of international law to cyberspace. A subsequent 2015 report recommended several cooperative steps on cyber security, although the proposed rules and norms rely on voluntary implementation.
The roundtable also featured interactive exercises to expand media perspectives on cyber issues, including a detailed simulation of a cyber security breach at a major web services company. Participants formed groups to address technical, legal, public relations, and other concerns related to the breach and presented their strategies to real-world private-sector cyber security experts. Hoover invited four other cyber security leaders to discuss what the media is getting right and wrong on cyber coverage and how reporters can develop stronger relationships with private sector sources.
The 2016 Cyber Media Roundtable covered a wide range of complex topics, and the engagement of participants signaled strong interest in internalizing the material. Discussion periods spilled into breaks, and participants asked penetrating questions characteristic of good reporting.
Reflecting on the outcomes of the event, Amy Zegart stated:
The media cyber boot camp was a great success—giving some of the nation’s top national security reporters a fast and deep dive into key cyber issues, developing broader networks of experts to help inform the public debate, and enabling candid conversation with industry leaders about what the press can do to improve coverage of cyber issues. Our vision is to hold a boot camp every year to educate a wide range of key policymakers and influencers—including congressional staff, federal judges, and the press.
Moving cyber policy forward will require continued attention to issues raised in the Media Roundtable. How can tensions between government and the private sector be eased to allow for greater cooperation? Can current international rules and norms be applied to cyber issues? To what extent do legal and ethical considerations permit “hacking back” or even hacking first? Where should reasonable expectations for cyber security be set in light of the overwhelming complexity of cyber systems?
As the larger policy community expands their focus on these and other key cyber security questions, Hoover’s ongoing research and outreach will help inform their answers.
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CISAC co-director Amy Zegart (center) speaks during a simulated cybersecurity breach group exercise at the 2016 Cyber Media Roundtable at Stanford. | Rod Searcey
Abstract: The NERC-CIP standards are the only federally mandated cybersecurity standards for critical infrastructure in the United States. Targeting the electric system, the standards have been developed to ensure the reliability and the resilience of the electric grid and prevent catastrophic failures. Although the standards have been around for almost a decade, their role in building the resilience of the electric grid is fiercely contested, with critics claiming the standards represent little more than a ‘check box’ exercise that directs attention and resources away from achieving real security. This talk will present evidence on the effectiveness of the standards in addressing risk and offer suggestions as to how the standards might be improved to enhance resilience.
About the Speaker: Aaron Clark-Ginsberg is a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity Postdoctoral Scholar at CISAC. His research interests center on the theory and practice of disaster risk governance, particularly resilience and disaster risk reduction approaches. He is currently researching how government regulations designed to improve the resilience of the power grid to cyber-threats are affecting utility companies.
Aaron holds a PhD and MSc in Humanitarian Action from the University College Dublin and a BA in American Studies with a Concentration in Environmental Studies from Kenyon College. Aaron's doctoral research examined how international NGOs interacted with national stakeholders to reduce disaster risk in developing countries. As part of this, Aaron traveled to ten countries in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean to review risk reduction and resilience building approaches addressing a variety of hazards including flooding, drought, price shocks, cyclones, landslides, erosion, disease, and conflict.
Aaron has extensive experience in real world application of risk management principles. Aaron’s PhD was in conjunction with Concern Worldwide, an international Irish humanitarian organization. While at Concern, Aaron produced a series of reports on risk management in different countries and contexts designed to improve the effectiveness of Concern’s approach to risk reduction. He has also conducted policy-focused research on humanitarian reform for the World Humanitarian Summit Irish Consultative Process, the results of which were used to help develop the Irish position on humanitarian action. Aaron also spent four seasons working as a wildland firefighter for various governmental and private sector organizations across the western United States.
Cybersecurity Regulations and Power Grid Resilience (preliminary findings)
It’s a quintessential Silicon Valley scene. A group of tech-savvy Stanford students are delivering a passionate pitch about a product they hope is going to change the world, while a room full of venture capitalists, angel investors and entrepreneurs peppers them with questions.
But there’s a twist. This Stanford classroom is also packed with decorated military veterans and active duty officers. And a group of analysts from the U.S. intelligence community is monitoring the proceedings live via an iPad propped up on a nearby desk.
These Stanford students aren’t just working on the latest “Uber for X” app. They’re searching for solutions to some of the toughest technological problems facing America’s military and intelligence agencies, as part of a new class called Hacking for Defense.
A student team briefs the class on a wearable sensor they're developing for an elite unit of U.S. Navy SEALs – a product they're pitching as "fitbit for America's divers."
“There’s no problems quite like the kind of problems that the defense establishment faces, so from an engineering standpoint, it has the most powerful ‘cool factor’ of anything in the world,” said Nitish Kulkarni, a senior in mechanical engineering.
Kulkarni’s team is working with an organization within the US Department of Defense to devise a system that will provide virtual assistance to Afghan and Iraqi coalition forces as they defuse deadly improvised explosive devices.
“At Stanford there’s a lot of opportunities for you to build things and go out and learn new stuff, but this was one of the first few opportunities I’ve seen where as a Stanford student and as an engineer, I can go and work on problems that will actually make a difference and save lives,” said Kulkarni.
A 21st century tech ROTC
That’s exactly the kind of “21st century tech ROTC” model of national service that Steve Blank, a consulting associate professor at Stanford’s Department of Management Science and Engineering, said he had in mind when he developed the class.
“The nation is facing a set of national security threats it’s never faced before, and Silicon Valley has not only the technology resources to help, but knows how to move at the speed that these threats are moving at,” said Blank.
MBA student Rachel Moore presents for Team Sentinel, which is working with the U.S. 7th Fleet to find better ways to analyze drone and satellite imagery.
The students’ primary mission will be to produce products that can help keep Americans and our allies safe, at home and abroad, according to Blank.
Former U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Joe Felter, who helped create the class and co-teaches it with Blank, said the American military needs to find new ways to maintain its technological advantage on the battlefield.
“Groups like ISIS, al–Qaeda and other adversaries have access to cutting edge technologies and are aggressively using them to do us harm around the world,” said Felter, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and is currently a senior research scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
“The stakes are high – this is literally life and death for our young men and women deployed in harm’s way. We’re in a great position here at Stanford and in Silicon Valley to help make the connections and develop the common language needed to bring innovation into the process, in support of the Department of Defense and other government agencies’ missions.”
Startup guru Steve Blank shares a light moment with a group of students.
The class is an interdisciplinary mix of undergraduate and graduate students, from freshman to fifth year PhD student.
“It’s like a smorgasbord of all these people coming together from different parts and different schools of Stanford, and so I think that’s just a really cool environment to be in,” said Rachel Moore, a first-year MBA student.
Moore’s team includes electrical and mechanical engineering students, and they’re working together to develop a system to enable the Navy’s Pacific Fleet to automatically identify enemy ships using images from drones and satellites.
Tough technological challenges
Months before the course start date, class organizers asked U.S. military and intelligence organizations to identify some of their toughest technological challenges.
Class co-teacher Pete Newell throws his hands up to celebrate a student breakthrough.
U.S. Army Cyber Command wanted to know if emerging data mining, machine learning and data science capabilities could be used to understand, disrupt and counter adversaries' use of social media.
The Navy Special Warfare Group asked students to design wearable sensors for Navy SEALs, so they could monitor their physiological conditions in real-time during underwater missions.
Intelligence and law enforcement agencies were interested in software that could help identify accounts tied to malicious “catfishing” attempts from hackers trying to steal confidential information.
And those were just a few of the 24 problems submitted by 14 government agencies.
Developing Solutions
The class gives eight teams of four students 10 weeks to actively learn about the problem they are addressing from stake holders and end users most familiar with the problem and to iteratively develop possible solutions or a “minimum viable product,” using a modified version of Steve Blank’s “lean launchpad methodology,” which has become a revered how-to guide among the Silicon Valley startup community.
Rachel Olney, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, tries on a military-grade dry suit on a visit to the 129th Rescue Wing at Moffett Field.
A key tenet of Blank’s methodology is what he calls the “customer discovery process.”
“If you’re not crawling in the dirt with these guys, then you don’t understand their problem,” Blank told the class.
One student team, which was working on real-time biofeedback sensors and geo-location devices for an elite team of Navy SEALS (a project they were initially pitching at “fitbit for America’s divers”), earned a round of applause from the class when they showed a slide featuring photos from a field trip they took to the 129th Rescue Wing at Moffett Field to find out what it felt like to wear a military-grade dry suit.
Rachel Olney, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, said the experience of squeezing into the tight suit and wearing the heavy dive gear gave her a better appreciation for the physical demands that Navy SEALs have to deal with during a mission.
“They’re diving down to like 200 feet for up to six to eight hours…and during that time they can’t eat, they can’t hydrate, they’re physically exerting a lot, because they’re swimming miles and miles and miles at depth and they can’t see and they can’t talk to each other,” Olney said.
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“It’s probably one of the most extreme things that humans do right now.”
Another group came in for some heavy criticism from the teaching team for failing to identify and interview enough end users.
But the next week, they were back in front of the class showing a video from a team member’s visit to an Air Force base in Fresno, where he logged some time inside the 90-pound bomb suit that explosive ordinance disposal units wear in the field.
“You can’t address a customer issue unless and until you really step into the shoes of the customer,” said Gaurav Sharma, who’s a student at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.
“That was the exact reason why I went to Fresno and wore the bomb suit, to get into the shoes of the end customer.”
Navigating the defense bureaucracy
Active duty military officers from CISAC’s Senior Military Fellows program and the Hoover Institution’s National Security Affairs Fellows program act as military liaisons for the class and help students navigate the complex defense bureaucracy.
“[The students] have really just jumped in with both feet and immersed themselves in this Department of Defense world that for so many civilians is just very foreign to them,” said U.S. Army Colonel John Cogbill, who has spent the last year as a senior military fellow at CISAC.
“I think they will come away from this experience with a much better appreciation of what we do inside the Department of Defense and Intelligence community, and where there are opportunities for helping us do our jobs better.”
Cogbill said he hoped that some of the inventions from the class, like an autonomous drone designed to improve situational awareness for Special Forces teams, could help the troops on his next combat deployment, where he will serve as the Deputy Commanding Officer of the U.S. Army’s elite 75th Ranger Regiment.
“It’s not just about making them more lethal, it’s also about how to keep them alive on the battlefield,” said Cogbill.
Students also get support from their project sponsors and personnel at the newly established Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) stationed at Moffett Field.
Tech saves lives on the battlefield
Another key member of the teaching team is Pete Newell, who was awarded the Silver Star Medal (America’s third-highest military combat decoration), for leading a U.S. Army battalion into the Battle of Fallujah, where he survived an ambush and left the protection of his armored vehicle in an attempt to save a mortally wounded officer.
Class co-teacher and Silver Star Medal recipient Pete Newell explains some of the classic reasons why military products fail in the field.
Newell said he saw first-hand the difference that technology can make on the battlefield in his next job, when he served as director of the U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, which was tasked with creating technological solutions to the troops fighting in Afghanistan.
“What I realized is that the guys on the front edge of the battlefield who were actually fighting the fight, don’t have time to figure out what the problem is that they have to solve,” Newell said.
“They’re so involved in just surviving day to day, that they really don’t have time to step back from it and see those problems coming, and what they needed was somebody to look over their shoulder and look a little deeper and anticipate their needs.”
One of the first and most urgent problems Newell faced on the job was responding to the sudden spike in IED attacks on dismounted infantry.
The Army was still using metal detector technology from the ‘50s to find mines, but the new breed of IEDs, which were often hidden inside buried milk jugs, were virtually undetectable to the outdated technology.
Former U.S. Army Colonel Pete Newell demystifies some military jargon for the class.
“They could create an improvised explosive device and a pressure plate trigger…by using almost zero metal content,” Newell said. “It was almost impossible to find.”
Newell’s solution was a handheld gradiometer, the kind of technology used to find small wires in your backyard during a construction project, paired with a ground penetrating radar that can see objects underground.
But by the time the new technology reached troops in the field last summer, more than 4,000 had been wounded or killed in IED attacks.
Newell said he hoped the class would help get life-saving technology deployed throughout the military faster.
“I think it’s important to enable this younger generation of technologists to actually connect with some of the national security issues we face and give them an opportunity to take part in making the world a safer place,” Newell said.
Tom Byers, an entrepreneurship professor in Management Science and Engineering and faculty director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, rounds out the teaching team and brings his experience in innovation education and entrepreneurship to the classroom.
Inspiring the next generation
Students said the opportunity to find solutions to consequential problems was their primary inspiration for joining the class.
“When I first came to Stanford, the hype around entrepreneurship was very much around, ‘go out, make an app, do something really fun and cool, and get rich’,” said Darren Hau, a junior in Electrical Engineering.
Students share a laugh during a class break.
“In Hacking for Defense, I think you’re seeing a lot of people bring that same entrepreneurial mindset into a problem statement that seems a lot more impactful.”
Felter said he was humbled that so many students were willing to serve in this way.
“It’s encouraging to find out that students at one of our top universities are very interested and highly motivated to work very hard and use their skills and expertise and talent and focus it on these pressing national security problems,” said Felter.
The teaching team said they planned on expanding their class to other universities across the country in the coming years, to create a kind of open source network for solving unclassified national security problems.
For military officers like Cogbill, who will likely soon be leading U.S. soldiers into combat, that’s welcome news.
“Every time you run a course, that’s eight more problems,” Cogbill said.
“If this scales across 10, 20, 30, 40 more universities, you can imagine how many more problems can be solved, and how many more lives can potentially be saved.”
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Influential startup educator Steve Blank (center) gives advice to Stanford students working on tough national security problems, while retired U.S. Army Colonels and class co-teachers Joe Felter (right) and Pete Newell (left) listen in. | Rod Searcey
A student team briefs the class on a wearable sensor they're developing for an elite unit of U.S. Navy SEALs – a product they're pitching as "fitbit for America's divers."
MBA student Rachel Moore presents for Team Sentinel, which is working with the U.S. 7th Fleet to find better ways to analyze drone and satellite imagery.
Startup guru Steve Blank shares a light moment with a group of students.
Class co-teacher Pete Newell throws his hands up to celebrate a student breakthrough.
Rachel Olney, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, tries on a military-grade dry suit on a visit to the 129th Rescue Wing at Moffett Field.
“[The students] have really just jumped in with both feet and immersed themselves in this Department of Defense world that for so many civilians is just very foreign to them,” said U.S. Army Colonel 
Class co-teacher and Silver Star Medal recipient Pete Newell explains some of the classic reasons why military products fail in the field.
Former U.S. Army Colonel Pete Newell demystifies some military jargon for the class.
Students share a laugh during a class break.
