Stanford University

Society

FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.

The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.

Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.

The Mysterious Flash of 9/22/79: The Case for an Israeli Nuclear Test

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This seminar is based on a recently published article that reviews the history of the September 22, 1979 double flash recorded by the VELA satellite and concludes that the flash was an Israeli nuclear test assisted by South Africa. The work of a government panel created at the time to determine the cause of the flash is discussed as is the author's own involvement in the issue.

About the speaker:

Leonard Weiss is an affiliated scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He is also a national advisory board member of the Center for Arms control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC. He began his professional career as a PhD researcher in mathematical system theory at the Research Institute for Advanced Studies in Baltimore. This was followed by tenured professorships in applied mathematics and electrical engineering at Brown University and the University of Maryland. During this period he published widely in the applied mathematics literature. In 1976 he received a Congressional Science Fellowship that resulted in a career change. For more than two decades he worked for Senator John Glenn as the staff director of both the Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Nuclear Proliferation and the Committee on Governmental Affairs. He was the chief architect of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978 and legislation that created the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. In addition, he led notable investigations of the nuclear programs of India and Pakistan. Since retiring from the Senate staff in 1999, he has published numerous articles on nonproliferation issues for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Arms Control Today, and the Nonproliferation Review. His current research interests include an assessment of the impact on the nonproliferation regime of nuclear trade with non-signers of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and more generally the relationship of energy security concerns with nonproliferation.

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Leonard Weiss

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Leonard Weiss is a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He is also a national advisory board member of the Center for Arms control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC. He began his professional career as a PhD researcher in mathematical system theory at the Research Institute for Advanced Studies in Baltimore. This was followed by tenured professorships in applied mathematics and electrical engineering at Brown University and the University of Maryland. During this period he published widely in the applied mathematics literature. In 1976 he received a Congressional Science Fellowship that resulted in a career change. For more than two decades he worked for Senator John Glenn as the staff director of both the Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Nuclear Proliferation and the Committee on Governmental Affairs. He was the chief architect of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978 and legislation that created the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. In addition, he led notable investigations of the nuclear programs of India and Pakistan. Since retiring from the Senate staff in 1999, he has published numerous articles on nonproliferation issues for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Arms Control Today, and the Nonproliferation Review. His current research interests include an assessment of the impact on the nonproliferation regime of nuclear trade with non-signers of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and more generally the relationship of energy security concerns with nonproliferation.

For a comprehensive list of Dr. Weiss's publications, click here.

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Exposure to Low-­‐Dose Radiation: We Need Social Discussion for Risk Judgment

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For a copy of the original article in Japanese, please contact Toshihiro Higuchi at th233@stanford.edu.

At the end of last year, the expert panel established by the Cabinet Office submitted a report on the effects of low-level and chronic radiation exposure. It is a Herculean task to tackle the difficulty challenge of risk management within such a short period. Risk management regarding the type of radiation exposure at issue, however, is not a matter of pure science to be left solely with scientific experts. It is essential for each of us to judge the degree of its danger and work out social consensus as to solutions.

Our past experience offers a lesson worth noting. In March 1954, the U.S. hydrogen bomb test showered an enormous amount of deadly fallout on a Japanese tuna fishing boat. The specter of “radioactive tuna” terrified consumers, and reports of cesium and strontium in brown rice and vegetables continued. As public opinion against nuclear tests was boiling, the U.S. government claimed that health damage from them was negligible and asked the scientific committee established by the United Nations to investigate this problem.

Accurate estimates of the health damage caused by low-level radiation exposure, however, proved extremely difficult. A fierce debate inevitably broke out over the validity of the findings, and people began to feel even more insecure. The claim that the damage from pollution was small also turned out to be relative in comparison to the security value of nuclear weapons, the scale of X-rays, natural background and other radiation hazards, and such commonly accepted dangers as smoking cigarettes or driving a car. In reality, however, the world was deeply divided over the merits of nuclear armaments. Moreover, the essential character of fallout hazards differed from our everyday risks in that we could neither avoid the danger of fallout nor expect due compensation for it. As a result, all prerequisites for comparative analysis quickly eroded in the case of radioactive contamination. In August 1958, the United Nations Scientific Committee reported its conclusion that there was no reason to tolerate the risks of radioactive fallout from nuclear tests. In the end, the U.S. government’s claim lost its ground.

Our society has a wide diversity of values. It is simply impossible to seek a universal answer as to how much radiation dose is acceptable to all stakeholders. Even if those in charge of risk management unilaterally determine the “acceptable” dose, it will be meaningless unless people at risk accept such decision. It will rather saw a seed of distrust and make risk management even more difficult.

Our next task is to listen to the voices of people at risk through regular field visits and social media such as Internet, and to explore a point of social consensus as to the risks associated with nuclear power. 

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The South African Denuclearization Exemplar: Insights for Nonproliferation

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July 10, 2011 was a milestone in history, marking twenty years since South Africa acceded to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).  To this day, South Africa remains the only country to have produced and assembled nuclear weapons and to have later relinquished that arsenal.  Moreover, that denuclearization came without any direct external intervention, and involved opening-up the former top secret program to international scrutiny, voluntarily, beyond that required by the NPT.  While each example of nuclear weapons proliferation has a unique history and basis, South Africa is a particularly instructive exemplar as a result of its unprecedented rollback. That rollback provided sufficient transparency for clear insights into:


1) Why a nation might seek to acquire nuclear weapons,
2) What tactics might a nation employ to conceal the existence of nuclear weapons program under a “Peaceful” nuclear program umbrella,
3) What strategies might a nation consider with respect to the potential use of such weapons, and
4) Why a nation might choose to renounce its nuclear weapons.

This seminar will focus upon a few less reported, but nonetheless salient, aspects of the South African nuclear weapons program pertinent to the monitoring and assessment of the capabilities and intent of other threshold nations whose nuclear programs remain suspect (despite having been repeatedly declared as being solely for only peaceful purposes).  They include object lessons derived from the various efforts that the minority-ruled government of South Africa took to conceal its nuclear program from external discovery, and to ensure sufficient ambiguity to allow that program to progress unabated, despite externally imposed restraints and sanctions, (and only up until termination was self-imposed through internal decision making). The lessons thus learned also provide an objective basis for comparison and assessment of alternative intents represented by the various capabilities, activities, and statements associated with those of contemporary nuclear threshold states exhibiting similar ambiguity.

About the speaker:

Frank Pabian is the Senior Geospatial Information Analyst at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the Global Security Directorate and a visiting scholar at CISAC. Frank has nearly 40 years in the nuclear nonproliferation and satellite imagery analysis fields including 30 years with US National Laboratories. During 1996-1998, he served as Nuclear Chief Inspector for the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) during ground inspections in Iraq, focusing primarily on equipment/materials “Hide Sites”, and “Capable Sites” that were deemed potentially associated with weapons of mass destruction development and/or production.

His responsibilities at Los Alamos National Laboratory include “Rest-of-World” infrastructure analysis involving the exploitation of all-source information, particularly commercial satellite imagery in combination with openly available geospatial tools for visualization. Frank has published in numerous peer-reviewed scientific journals on the use of commercial satellite imagery for treaty verification and monitoring, and his work has been featured on magazine covers and in textbooks for training in the nonproliferation and intelligence professions. Frank is a recipient of the US Intelligence Community Seal Medallion (gold medal) for “sustained superior performance” for Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty verification support to the IAEA during South Africa’s denuclearization, and for associated discoveries derived from original analysis of all-source, including open source, information. Frank is also a “Certified Mapping Scientist, Remote Sensing” with the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASP&RS).

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Frank Pabian

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Frank Pabian is a globally recognized expert in the fields of nuclear nonproliferation and satellite imagery intelligence analysis with one half century of professional experience, beginning with the CIA’s Office of Imagery Analysis, followed by employment at US and European National Nuclear Laboratories. During the period from 1996-98, Frank was a Nuclear Chief Inspector for the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) during ground inspections in Iraq, focusing primarily on equipment/materials “Hide Sites” and “Capable Sites” potentially associated with weapons of mass destruction development and/or production. His Iraq Action Team’s efforts helped garner support for the IAEA and its Director General to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Frank is recipient of the US Intelligence Community’s highest  award for contractors, the Gold Seal Medallion, for “sustained superior performance” for Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty verification support to the IAEA during South Africa’s denuclearization, and for associated discoveries derived from original analysis of all-source information. He was also named a Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow in 2013, having served as the senior geospatial open-source information analyst in both the Global Security Directorate and the Earth and Environmental Sciences Division to help solve key intelligence questions in a geospatial context until retirement in May 2017. During 2014-2016, served as a Senior Fellow Researcher during USG authorized overseas service at the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy; and is continuing as an Affiliate at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation where, previously, Frank was a Research Fellow during the 2011-2012 academic year.
 

Although now fully retired, Frank remains a consultant to the CISAC IMINT Team and continues to lecture on new developments for Open Source Geospatial Intelligence.  Frank is a “Certified Mapping Scientist, Remote Sensing” with the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASP&RS) and an American Mensan.

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Q&A: Stanford’s Cuéllar and US diplomat on human rights and the Internet

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As the Internet evolves, people around the world have faster, easier ways to connect. Innovative plans and economic opportunities are being hatched online, but so are ideas that challenge governments. Voices of dissent are amplified by social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, leaving some countries confused about how to balance free expression rights against perceived threats to national security and government stability.

Working with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Eileen Donahoe is trying to make government officials feel more comfortable with online technology. Donahoe, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nation’s Human Rights Council, recently brought about 35 diplomats from around the world to Stanford. The group met with academics, Internet developers and technology business leaders to address the questions posed by a free and open Internet.

“I know the technology feels mysterious and challenging,” says Donahoe, who was an affiliated scholar at CISAC before becoming an ambassador. “So part of what we tried to do was demystify it. But we also conveyed the message that you’re not going to control technological change. And you’d better get used to it. It’s part of our world.”

In the following interview, Donahoe and CISAC co-director Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar discuss the challenges and potential promised in the online frontier.

Why did you arrange this meeting of diplomats in Silicon Valley?

Donahoe: Some ambassadors who are otherwise very committed to human rights have started to feel that the protections for freedom of expression and freedom of assembly could be weakened or lessened when you bring technology into the mix. There was a sense that governments could legitimately squelch free speech and free assembly when it happened in the online world. That’s a problem because so much of what happens today happens online. The Internet is now so central to the ability to speak freely. It was our responsibility to call them out and make them understand that technology should not change the equation in the protection of human rights.

How has the Internet changed the way we need to think about human rights and free expression?

Donahoe: In some ways, it hasn’t changed anything – free speech is free speech. But new technology has created new media, and that’s all changing at an exponential pace. People are being required to adjust in timeframes that were unimaginable before, and governments can’t keep up. Individuals can hardly keep up. It’s the pace and innovation that’s challenging. But there’s no change in our responsibility to protect the longstanding values of free expression.

What does a free and open Internet have to do with global security?

Cuéllar:  Some governments lack a commitment to basic rights and the rule of law. Technology can help people respond by raising their voices. They can organize and respond when their own government threatens citizens’ security.  Cyber technologies can also empower law enforcement officials, intelligence agencies and armed forces, raising fundamental questions about the role of government and the nature of conflict in the years to come. The Internet is an evolving technology that reflects vulnerability and enormous potential. Societies depend on government and private sector systems that face a variety of threats.  For all these reasons, the future of cyberspace is an important security issue at the very center of our agenda at CISAC.

Why do some governments feel threatened by the Internet?

Donahoe: It comes from the volume of voices you can have online. It comes from the pace of change. And there’s another aspect to online technology that’s intriguing: It is inherently democratizing. Citizens are becoming journalists. Anyone with a cell phone can broadcast live to the planet anything they’re observing. That can be threatening, but I believe it’s ultimately going to be a very positive force for transparency and government accountability.

How do you convince governments worried about those threats that open Internet access is ultimately in their best interest? 

Cuéllar: If the leaders of a state see it merely as a vehicle for control and stability, then much of the technology we have been discussing will appear profoundly threatening.  States seeking to build or maintain lasting institutions capable of meeting the needs of their citizens will tend to take a different approach, focused on the value of the public’s feedback and participation in governance.

Donahoe: A compelling point – especially for developing countries that may not otherwise place emphasis on the benefits to freedom from technology – is the recognition that there’s an economic upside to a free and open Internet. It can be framed as a development issue. Many government leaders can see that the future of all our economies is so intricately connected to this technology that if they try to squelch or shut down Internet development for political reasons, there will be dramatically negative effects for their economies. And that will lead to political problems. The economic value isn’t my primary human rights emphasis, but it helps to remind governments they run the risk of shutting themselves out of economic development if they don’t get comfortable with the technology.

What role, if any, should governments play in regulating the Internet?

Donahoe: Governments do need to play a role in regulation, just as they do in the offline world. But just because technology is brought into the equation doesn’t mean governments and regulators should be free to regulate too broadly or without concern for the costs to freedom. Just like in the offline world, regulation must be narrowly tailored and serve important government interests. Part of the challenge comes from the sense that governments can’t keep up with the technological advances. So they’re inclined to regulate more – and more bluntly – rather than in a more tailored way. This is where governments need to get more sophisticated about how to adjust to technological change.

What do policymakers need to know and understand before passing regulations?

Cuéllar: The future of cyberspace implicates security, economic development and the protection of civil and political rights – and all of these challenges are deeply interrelated.  A country's decision to restrict certain forms of Internet traffic can discourage economic innovation. Internet access in poor communities can lead to new economic opportunities, changing the larger context in which governance and security problems arise.  It is crucial to recognize these connections as societies think through the future of cyberspace.

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The Road Ahead for America and Pakistan

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About the topic: When democracy returned to Pakistan, Americans and Pakistanis had high expectations of an improved partnership. Those expectations have not been met: The events of 2011 were hard on both sides, and pushed the relationship to a series of dangerous crises. What can we expect in 2012 and beyond, not only in bilateral ties, but in the plans both countries have for regional stability in South Asia?

About the Speaker: Cameron Munter was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan on October 6, 2010. Prior to his nomination, Ambassador Munter completed his tour of duty at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. He served there first as Political-Military Minister-Counselor in 2009, then as Deputy Chief of Mission for the first half of 2010. He served as Ambassador in Belgrade from 2007 to 2009.

In 2006, he led the first Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul, Iraq. He was Deputy Chief of Mission in Prague from 2005 to 2007 and in Warsaw from 2002 to 2005. Before these assignments, in Washington, he was Director for Central Europe at the National Security Council (1999-2001), Executive Assistant to the Counselor of the Department of State (1998-1999), Director of the Northern European Initiative (1998), and Chief of Staff in the NATO Enlargement Ratification Office (1997-1998). His other domestic assignments include: Country Director for Czechoslovakia at the Department of State (1989-1991), and Dean Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (1991).

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Cameron Munter U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Speaker
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The Renunciation of Nuclear Weapons as a Historical Possibility

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Benoît Pelopidas

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Associate Professor Benoît Pelopidas is the founding director of the “Nuclear Knowledges” program at Sciences Po (CERI) in Paris (formerly known as the “Chair of excellence in security studies” (2016-9)).

Nuclear Knowledges is the first scholarly research program in France on the nuclear phenomenon which refuses funding from stakeholders of the nuclear weapons enterprise or from antinuclear activists in order to problematize conflicts of interest and their effects on knowledge production. It offers conceptual innovation and unearths untapped primary sources worldwide to grasp nuclear vulnerabilities and rethink possibilities in the realm of nuclear weapons policies.

Benoît has been awarded three international prizes for his research on the scoping of publicly available nuclear choices and the most prestigious scholarly grants in Europe (including one from the European Research Council).

Since 2019, Nuclear Knowledges has hosted PhD students on global nuclear politics and history and secured two two-year Marie Curie fellowships from the European Commission.

Over the last decade, he has been engaging with policy making elites in the US, Europe and New Zealand as well as civil society groups to reconnect democracy, intergenerational justice and nuclear policy and support innovative arms control and nuclear disarmament policies.

Publications are available at www.sciencespo.fr/nk/en and https://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/nuclear/

 

 

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Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain

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This talk presents an unconventional look at the creation of a deadly barrier between East and West Germany.  It reveals how the Iron Curtain was not simply imposed by communism, but had been emerging haphazardly in both East and West long before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.  From the end of the Third Reich, ad hoc enforcement of the tenuous border between the two Germanys led to the creation of difference where there was no difference, institutionalization of violence among neighbors, popular participation in a system that was deeply unpopular--and people normalizing a monstrosity in their midst.

Edith Sheffer is assistant professor of Modern European History at Stanford. Edith Sheffer came to Stanford as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities in 2008 and joined the History Department faculty in 2010.  She recently completed Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain, and was the winner of the 2011 Fraenkel Prize, awarded by the Wiener Library Institute of Contemporary History, London. 

Co-sponsored by The Europe Center (TEC), the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), the Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies (CREEES) and the Department of German Studies

 

Event Summary

Professor Sheffer's presentation includes a social history of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. She examines the process by which culturally homogenous populations internalized ideas of difference, and erected arbitrary physical and mental borders accordingly. She argues that the Iron Curtain was a "wall of the mind" reinforced not only by Communist authorities but by the everyday actions of ordinary Germans. 

Professor Sheffer first outlines her recent book, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain. Drawing on archives, news stories, and personal interviews with people from East and West Germany, she argues that the Berlin Wall was simply a visible manifestation of an existing rift within the country that had been building for 16 years.  She examines the process of institutionalization of difference, by which people living in a once-cohesive community with no stark religious or cultural differences began to view those on the opposite side of an arbitrary border as "other." Professor Sheffer offers several explanations for why Germans largely accepted the divide, including the gradual internalization by individual citizens, on both sides of the wall, of what Sheffer describes as "the living wall" and a "wall in the head formed by a wall on the ground."  The fact that the wall was a structural response to a social set of conflicts can explain why it both went up and came down so quickly, as the result of many small steps and individual actions.

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Norman M. Naimark

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Stanford University
Encina Hall, C235
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Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
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Norman M. Naimark is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies, a Professor of History and (by courtesy) of German Studies, and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution and (by courtesy) of the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies. Norman formerly served as the Sakurako and William Fisher Family Director of the Stanford Global Studies Division, the Burke Family Director of the Bing Overseas Studies Program, the Convener of the European Forum (predecessor to The Europe Center), Chair of the History Department, and the Director of Stanford’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

Norman earned his Ph.D. in History from Stanford University in 1972 and before returning to join the faculty in 1988, he was a professor of history at Boston University and a fellow of the Russian Research Center at Harvard. He also held the visiting Catherine Wasserman Davis Chair of Slavic Studies at Wellesley College. He has been awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1996), the Richard W. Lyman Award for outstanding faculty volunteer service (1995), and the Dean's Teaching Award from Stanford University for 1991-92 and 2002-3.

Norman is interested in modern Eastern European and Russian history and his research focuses on Soviet policies and actions in Europe after World War II and on genocide and ethnic cleansing in the twentieth century. His published monographs on these topics include The History of the "Proletariat": The Emergence of Marxism in the Kingdom of Poland, 1870–1887 (1979, Columbia University Press), Terrorists and Social Democrats: The Russian Revolutionary Movement under Alexander III (1983, Harvard University Press), The Russians in Germany: The History of The Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (1995, Harvard University Press), The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe (1998, Westview Press), Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing In 20th Century Europe (2001, Harvard University Press), Stalin's Genocides (2010, Princeton University Press), and Genocide: A World History (2016, Oxford University Press). Naimark’s latest book, Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty (Harvard 2019), explores seven case studies that illuminate Soviet policy in Europe and European attempts to build new, independent countries after World War II.

 

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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Cybersecurity talk draws business and political leaders to Stanford CISAC

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Computers and the networks that connect them are powerful storehouses of information. They're also vulnerable to sabotage, and the data they handle can be stolen, altered or erased. President Obama has called cyberattacks "one of the most serious economic and national security threats our nation faces." 

To help tackle the problem, researchers at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation are exploring issues in cybersecurity and keeping a close eye on the policy discussions. Earlier this month, CISAC brought together a group of lawmakers and industry leaders from Silicon Valley to discuss new efforts to prevent cyberespionage and related crimes. 

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) talked about a bill he’s introduced to safeguard technology. "The intelligence community believes strongly that it's just a matter of time before we have a catastrophic cyberattack," said Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "We have admired this problem for a very long time and it's time to do something." 

Among the other speakers were Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini, and security experts from Google, Cisco Systems and Oracle. 

After the invitation-only event, CISAC's Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Otellini and Rogers discussed the future of the Internet, the scope of the cyberthreat and government's role in defending against it. Excerpts: 

 

There are core questions about where the world is going  

"Cybersecurity problems are real and they’re immediate. And the threats are probably growing and the problems we face require solutions. But it’s just as important to think about where we’re going to be 20 to 30 years from now as it is to deal with the immediate problems. That’s because the choices we make about how to secure cyberspace are going to be choices about what your identity will be online, what powers government will have, what nation states will be able to do to each other, what companies will be able to do when they deal with cyberthreats, how aggressively they will be able to respond on their own -- those are essentially choices about the architecture of the world. So it's useful for us to understand as scholars and as people engaged in policy, that choices about cybersecurity are not just technical. They’re really core questions about where is the world going."

-- Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, co-director, Center for International Security and Cooperation

 

Preventing electronic pickpockets 

"On the commercial side it's no secret that there's industrial espionage going on through cyberhacking. There are also rogue groups that are not nation states, but people who just want to steal your identity. So the ability to see those attacks coming, to see those profiles coming, and to be able to improve the quality of the computer network and the phone networks and the phones themselves will also allow us to protect our own intellectual property as companies, and protect the identity and potentially the financial assets of our collective customers. When your cell phone is your wallet -- as it will be in the not-too-distant future -- all of a sudden that's like having an electronic pickpocket. An attack is going to compromise everything you have. Beyond that, many large technology firms feel that as good corporate citizens and as good local citizens, we have a responsibility to try and make sure the world's computer networks are not disrupted. If computers aren’t trusted, we don't have much of a business. We are commercially incentivized to make all this stuff so much better."

-- Paul Otellini, chief executive officer, Intel. 

 

We can be a partner with industry 

"Individually, a company gets hacked for espionage purposes -- that's a criminal event. Collectively, it becomes a national security issue because of the sheer volume of intellectual property that would be compromised. You also have the other level: a disruptive cyberattack that shuts down certain capabilities, whether it's financial, in the energy sector or otherwise. We've fought this fight with dot-gov and dot-mil for quite a long time. Dot-com has, too, but they've been a bit on their own. This proposal has the government weighing in and saying, 'Hey, maybe we can be a partner.'"

-- Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. 

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