FSI | CISAC - CISAC

Nord Stream 2: Background, objections, and possible outcomes

Commentary / April 14, 2021

Nord Stream 2 is an almost-finished natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. The Biden administration opposes it and has come under congressional pressure to invoke sanctions to prevent its...

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (L) and French President Emmanuel Macron

Steven Pifer: An important trip to Paris

Commentary / April 13, 2021

President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly will soon travel to Paris to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron. That is a trip very much worth making.

Kremlin saber-rattling in Ukraine: How the West should react

Commentary / April 7, 2021

Europe and the United States must ensure that Moscow does not underestimate the costs of a military assault.

Nuclear Arms Control in the 2020s

Commentary / April 6, 2021

As the United States, Russia and others figure out how to maintain and enhance strategic stability in a multi-player, multi-domain world, Washington and Moscow will continue to have a central role,...

Joe Biden’s Killer Comment: Undiplomatic, but the End of U.S.-Russia Relations?

Commentary / March 30, 2021

Putin may not like being called a killer—who would? However, when he sees engagement with Biden can advance his goals, he will engage.

Stanford’s Lin says new Aspen disinformation commission will wrestle with ‘how to incentivize doing the right thing'

News / March 29, 2021

Stanford University’s Herb Lin, a member of the Aspen Institute’s new Commission on Information Disorder, says “cyber-enabled information warfare” poses an existential threat that in many ways defies...

Stanford Scholar Explores Humans’ Complicated History with Earth’s Mineral Riches in New Book

News / March 29, 2021

With the support of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, Gabrielle Hecht will research and write a new book about the mineral riches humans have turned the world inside out to unearth.

Rebuilding U.S.-German Relations: Harder than it Appears

Commentary / March 24, 2021

The German government and many Germans breathed a sigh of relief when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in November. Mr. Trump damaged U.S. relations with its trans-Atlantic allies, and he often...

Biden’s Foreign Policy: What We Can Expect for China, Russia and Iran

News / March 17, 2021

On the World Class Podcast, experts discuss how the Biden Administration should navigate three of America’s most challenging bilateral relationships.

Biden's Afghanistan Decision

Commentary / March 17, 2021

President Biden has inherited America’s longest war—the war in Afghanistan—at a critical moment. Under the Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban, the US government is supposed to withdraw...

Why America will never be safe from cyberattacks

News / March 17, 2021

The U.S. government is still managing the fallout from two separate, massive cyberattacks linked to Russian and Chinese hackers, with a White House task force meeting this past Monday to probe the...

Stanford experts discuss the lessons and legacy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster

Q&A / March 12, 2021

A decade after a powerful earthquake and tsunami set off the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown in Japan, Stanford experts discuss revelations about radiation from the disaster, advances in...

Breaking Down Assumptions about China's Taiwan Strategy

News / March 12, 2021

FSI Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro joins the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's podcast to discuss how she sees China's strategy towards Taiwan and reunification changing as...

Stanford faculty and guest speakers from around the country examine issues of race in STEM fields

News / March 11, 2021

A new three-quarter sequence of courses provides insights from scholars around the nation on research related to race in the fields of science, technology and medicine, as well as their own lived...

Fukushima’s tragic legacy—radioactive soil, ongoing leaks, and unanswered questions

News / March 10, 2021

CISAC Co-Director Rod Ewing tells National Geographic that, “In some cases, as we become more sophisticated, we’ve lost the ability to see what’s most obvious.”

President Joe Biden walks with Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

How Biden’s Cyber Strategy Echoes Trump’s

Commentary / March 10, 2021

The Biden administration released its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. One would expect a final guidance document to be roughly consistent with the it while also containing more...

Using Genomic Data to Boost Population Health During COVID-19

News / March 9, 2021

Genomic data could benefit population health efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the US has to overcome several barriers before it can fully leverage this information.

Gottemoeller (top row left), Zegart (top row center), Hirsi Ali (top row right), Rice (bottom row left) and Economy (bottom row right)

Hoover Institution panelists say women face significant barriers in national security, academia

News / March 8, 2021

Former NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller made no bones about the challenges of being a woman in foreign policy and national security. “You have to have a tough hide,” she said. “There’s...

Director of nuclear experiment center, General Jean Thiry, pressing a button to trigger the explosion of the third French atomic bomb at the Reggane test site in the Algerian Sahara, December 27, 1960

French report grapples with nuclear fallout from Algerian War

News / March 4, 2021

French President Emmanuel Macron commissioned a report aimed at “reconciliation of memories between France and Algeria,” which France ruled as the jewel of its colonial empire for more than 130 years...

Manuela Schwesig (C), State Premier of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, talks with representatives of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline during a visit to the industrial port and the landfall facility of the joint German-Russian pipeline project in Lubmin, Germany,

How to solve the Nord Stream 2 dilemma

Commentary / March 3, 2021

If Gazprom could be persuaded to increase gas transit revenues for Ukraine, that would give the Biden administration a reason not to impose sanctions to block Nord Stream 2’s completion and...

Getting Ukraine’s security service reform right

Commentary / March 1, 2021

Ukraine finally has a chance to create a strong counterintelligence service and shed the Soviet standards of the old KGB. Are Ukrainian MPs ready to take responsibility and vote for such a security...

Socio-technical multi-criteria evaluation of long-term spent nuclear fuel management strategies: A framework and method

Commentary / February 26, 2021

Currently, commercial spent fuel remains at 75 sites across the US, including 18 “orphaned sites,” where it has been left at decommissioned reactor sites. Local communities are increasingly concerned...

Kremlin wall (left) and Saint Basil's Cathedral (right), in Moscow, Russia.

New Book by Kathryn Stoner Examines the ‘Paradox’ of Russian Power

News / February 23, 2021

FSI Deputy Director and Senior Fellow Kathryn Stoner discusses Russia’s economy, its international influence, and why the characterization of Russia as weak is outdated.

Oriana Skylar Mastro testifies to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on Taiwan deterrence.

Oriana Skylar Mastro Testifies on Deterring PRC Aggression Toward Taiwan to Congressional Review Commission

News / February 19, 2021

China may now be able to prevail in cross-strait contingencies even if the United States intervenes in Taiwan’s defense, Chinese security expert Oriana Skylar Mastro tells the U.S.-China Economic and...

Apocalypse When?