Abstract: The quotation in the title is taken from the memoirs of Boris Chertok, a leading Soviet missile designer.  In my talk I will examine significant shifts in Soviet thinking about nuclear war and military strategy in the 1960s and 1970s and discuss some of the implications of those shifts for strategic stability in the 1980s.  I will also explore the influence of the McNamara Pentagon on Soviet military strategy and Soviet thinking about deterrence and war-fighting.    

Speaker bio: David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into seven languages. The Chinese translation is due to be published later in 2018. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.

Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.

Abstract: This research investigates why and how regional nuclear powers come to develop specific kind of nuclear delivery systems, especially a submarine-based ballistic missile (SSBN) force. In the second nuclear age, as new nuclear states develop sophisticated delivery systems including SSBNs, understanding the logic and process of their nuclear force development is essential for both regional and international security. The origins and development process of India’s nuclear submarine program suggests that nuclear force development is a historically contingent process. This data-driven research, based on newly declassified archival documents from the Indian archives and extensive oral history interviews, refutes teleological narratives that either argue for technological determinism or the need for projecting nuclear deterrence as the primary causal variables. By situating India’s nuclear submarine program in the organizational routines of its nuclear scientific bureaucracy, bureaucratic politics of its military-scientific complex and the military socialization of the Indian Navy, this research explains India’s most secretive military-scientific programs. This comprehensive empirical research, currently based on a single case study, also addresses an important theoretical question in the field of international security studies: why states develop specific kinds of weapon systems, including those for nuclear weapons delivery?  

Speaker bio: Prior to joining CISAC as a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow, Yogesh Joshi was an Associate Fellow in the Strategic Studies Program at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. He recently received his PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University specializing in Indian foreign and security policy. 

At CISAC, Yogesh is finishing a book manuscript on the history of India's nuclear submarine program. His research traces the origins, process and development of India's nuclear submarine program using multi-archival sources and extensive oral history interviews. Yogesh’s data-driven research posits that India’s nuclear submarine program was riddled with shifting motivations, ambivalent rationales and halting progress. Rather than being driven by a single coherent strategic plan, India stumbled upon a submarine-based nuclear deterrent. By situating the nuclear submarine program in India’s Cold War security policy, its nuclear policy, its naval strategy in the Indian Ocean, the bureaucratic politics of its military-scientific complex and its quest for technological prestige, this research is an attempt to understand path-dependency in one of India’s most secretive military-scientific programs. It not only has implications for explaining India's nuclear program and policy but also provides an avenue to explain the process of decision-making behind state's pursuance of specific kinds of nuclear delivery systems. This research is supported by the MacArthur foundation. 

He has held fellowships at George Washington University, King’s College London and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC. His research has appeared or is under review in Asian Security, International History Review, International Affairs, Survival, US Naval War College Review, Comparative Strategy, Harvard Asia Quarterly, India Review, Asia Policy, Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, War on the Rocks, World Politics Review and The Diplomat. He has co-authored two books: The US ‘Pivot’ and Indian Foreign Policy: Asia's Emerging Balance of Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and India in Nuclear Asia: Regional Forces, Perceptions and Policies (Orient Blackswan (South Asia), forthcoming 2018; also forthcoming in fall 2018 by Georgetown University Press for the rest of the world). A short introduction on India’s Nuclear Policy was recently commissioned by Oxford University Press and has been accepted for publication in 2018. A monograph titled 'India’s Evolving Nuclear Force and Implications for U.S. Strategy in the Asia-Pacific' was published by the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College in 2016. 

Abstract: The West has no peer competitors in conventional military power.  But its adversaries are increasingly turning to asymmetric methods for engaging in conflict.  Cyber-enabled information warfare (CEIW) leverages the features of modern information and communications technology to age-old techniques of propaganda, deception, and chaos production to confuse, mislead, and to influence the choices and decisions that the adversary makes—and a recent example of CEIW can be seen in the Russian hacks on the U.S. presidential election in 2016.  CEIW is a hostile activity, or at least an activity that is conducted between two parties whose interests are not well-aligned, but it does not constitute warfare in the sense that international law or domestic institutions construe it.  Nor is it cyber war or cyber conflict as we have come to understand those ideas.  Some approaches to counter CEIW show some promise of having some modest but valuable defensive effect.  If better solutions for countering CEIW waged against free and democratic societies are not forthcoming, societal discourse will no longer be grounded in reason and objective reality—an outcome that can fairly be called the end of the Enlightenment.

Speaker bios: Dr. Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University.  His research interests relate broadly to policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, and he is particularly interested in and knowledgeable about the use of offensive operations in cyberspace, especially as instruments of national policy.  In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Senior Fellow in Cybersecurity (not in residence) at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University; and a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. He recently served on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.  Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

To read more about Herb Lin's interests, please read "An Evolving Research Agenda in Cyber Policy and Security."

Jackie Kerr is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  Her research examines cybersecurity and information security strategy, Internet governance, and the Internet policies of non-democratic regimes.  She was a 2015-2016 Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) Pre-Doctoral Fellow with the Cyber Security Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Visiting Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University and a Cybersecurity Predoctoral Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation in 2014-2015.  Jackie holds a PhD and MA in Government from Georgetown University, and an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and BAS in Mathematics and Slavic Languages and Literatures from Stanford University.  She has held research fellowships in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Qatar, and has previous professional experience as a software engineer.

Please note that this event is canceled. We regret the inconvenience.

Abstract: Clean energy provides a number of benefits at scales from household to village to city and region. An unrealized and under-appreciated opportunity is to transition conflict regions from external fuel supply chains to local, clean and unpolluting energy. The benefits of this transition include local energy security to shared benefits from sustaining local generation capacity, which we term 'peace through grids'.  

Speaker bio: Daniel M. Kammen is a Professor of Energy at the University of California, Berkeley, with parallel appointments in the Energy and Resources Group where he serves as Chair, the Goldman School of Public Policy where he directs the Center for Environmental Policy, and the department of Nuclear Engineering. Kammen is the founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL; http://rael.berkeley.edu), and was Director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center from 2007 - 2015.

He was appointed by then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in April 2010 as the first energy fellow of the Environment and Climate Partnership for the Americas (ECPA) initiative. He began service as the Science Envoy for U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry in 2016, but resigned over President Trump’s policies in August 2017. He has served the State of California and US federal government in expert and advisory capacities, including time at the US Environmental Protection Agency, US Department of Energy, the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy

Dr. Kammen was educated in physics at Cornell (BA 1984) and Harvard (MA 1986; PhD 1988), and held postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and Harvard. He was an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Program at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University before moving to the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Kammen has served as a contributing or coordinating lead author on various reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1999. The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Kammen helped found over 10 companies, including Enphase that went public in 2012, Renewable Funding (Renew Financial) a Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) implementing company that went public in 2014. Kammen played a central role in developing the successful bid for the $500 million energy biosciences institute funded by BP.

During 2010-2011 Kammen served as the World Bank Group’s first Chief Technical Specialist for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency. While there, Kammen worked on the Kenya-Ethiopia “green corridor” transmission project, Morocco’s green transformation, the 10-year energy strategy for the World Bank, and on investing in household energy and gender equity. He was appointed to this newly created position in October 2010, in which he provided strategic leadership on policy, technical, and operational fronts. The aim is to enhance the operational impact of the Bank’s renewable energy and energy efficiency activities while expanding the institution’s role as an enabler of global dialogue on moving energy development to a cleaner and more sustainable pathway. Kammen’s work at the World Bank included funding electrified personal and municipal vehicles in China, and the $1.24 billion transmission project linking renewable energy assets in Kenya and Ethiopia.

He has authored or co-authored 12 books, written more than 300 peer-reviewed journal publications, and has testified more than 40 times to U.S. state and federal congressional briefings, and has provided various governments with more than 50 technical reports. For details see http://rael.berkeley.edu/publications. Dr. Kammen also served for many years on the Technical Review Board of the Global Environment Facility. He is the Specialty Chief Editor for Understanding Earth and Its Resources for Frontiers for Young Minds.

Kammen is a frequent contributor to or commentator in international news media, including Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Financial Times. Kammen has appeared on ‘60 Minutes’ (twice), NOVA, Frontline, and hosted the six-part Discovery Channel series Ecopolis. Dr. Kammen is a Permanent Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society. In the US, he has served on several National Academy of Sciences boards and panels.

Abstract: In this talk, I present three findings from an in-depth investigation of the US Drone War in Pakistan from 2004 to 2014. First, I use a panel estimation strategy to show a negative statistical association between the drone war period from 2008 onward and insurgent violence in Pakistan. Second, I use a process tracing approach, drawing on data collected through fieldwork in Pakistan including interviews with members of Al-Qaeda and Pakistan Taliban, to show the drone war period from 2008 to 2014 led to dramatic reduction in the targeted organizations’ operational capabilities, folding of and displacement from bases, managerial challenges like desertions, and political breakdown like splintering and feuds. Third, I use interview-based data to show that the popularly held notion of “drone blowback” – that drone strikes energize recruitment of targeted armed groups - doesn’t find empirical support. I explain these findings by introducing a new concept of Legibility and Speed-of-exploitation System, or L&S in short. L&S varies in the degree of legibility of the population where armed groups are based (legibility, in short) and the speed of exploitation of legibility gains (speed, in short). I argue that the period of the US Drone War which attained high levels of L&S (2008 to 2014) was very disruptive for the targeted groups. The theoretical position and empirical findings challenge the wisdom on importance of winning “hearts-and-minds” of civilians in counterterrorism/counterinsurgency. The findings also have important policy implications for how US policymakers are likely to approach the challenge of managing threats by Al-Qaeda and ISIS from weak states.

Speaker bio: Asfandyar Mir is a Social Science Predoctoral fellow at CISAC and a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on effectiveness of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. His research draws on quantitative and qualitative microdata collected through field work and archival sources. Some of his research is forthcoming in Security Studies. His commentary has been featured in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage. 

Abstract: What is the strategic value of cyber weapons? Even though a growing body of research has addressed the destructive potential of cyber weapons, there remains a large gap in thinking about the strategic utility of these capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to partially fill this gap, by means of assessing under what conditions 'counterforce’ and ‘countervalue’ cyber weapons can be effective. I argue that cyber weapons can provide an ‘extra option’ to leaders. The discussed cases suggest that they can be used both as an important force-multiplier enabler for conventional military assets or as independent capability. Cyber weapons can also be used to achieve a form of psychological ascendancy and can be used effectively with few casualties.

Speaker Bio: Max Smeets is a cybersecurity fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, St. John’s College. Max current book project focuses on the causes underlying cyber proliferation and restraint. The results of this research are valuable for understanding the likely changes in the future prevalence of cyber weapons. It clarifies to what degree this is an ‘inevitable’ development – and if/how it can be stopped.

Max was a College Lecturer in Politics at Keble College, University of Oxford, and Research Affiliate of the Oxford Cyber Studies Programme. He was also a Carnegie Visiting Scholar at Columbia University SIPA and a Doctoral Visiting Scholar at Sciences Po CERI. He holds an undergraduate degree from University College Roosevelt, Utrecht University, and an M.Phil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, Brasenose College.  Max has a diverse professional background, having worked for financial, political, and non-governmental organizations.