After the end of World War II, more than 45,000 young Japanese women married American GIs and came to the United States to embark upon new lives among strangers. The mother of Kathryn Tolbert, a former long-time journalist with The Washington Post, was one of them.

Kathryn noted, “I knew there was a story in my mother’s journey from war-time Japan to an upstate New York poultry farm. In order to tell it, I teamed up with journalists Lucy Craft and Karen Kasmauski, whose mothers were also Japanese war brides, to make a short documentary film through a mother-daughter lens. Fall Seven Times, Get Up Eight: The Japanese War Brides was released in August 2015 and premiered on BBC World Television. To show the experiences of many more women like our mothers, I spent a year traveling the country to record interviews, funded by a Time Out grant from Vassar College, my alma mater.”

The Japanese War Brides Oral History Archive is the result of her interviews. The Oral History Archive documents an important chapter of U.S. immigration history that is largely unknown and usually left out of the broader Japanese American experience. In these oral histories, Japanese immigrant women reflect on their lives in postwar Japan, their journeys across the Pacific, and their experiences living in the United States.

SPICE developed five lessons for the Japanese War Brides Oral History Archive that suggest ways for teachers to engage their students with the broad themes that emerge from the individual experiences of Japanese war brides. The lessons are: (1) Setting the Context; (2) Japanese Immigration to the United States; (3) The Transmission of Culture; (4) Notions of Identity; and (5) Conflict and Its Analysis. SPICE also developed a teacher’s guide for the film, Fall Seven Times, Get Up Eight: The Japanese War Brides, that helps teachers set the context for the film and provides guided viewing activities and debriefing activities. The lessons and teacher’s guide can be found at the webpage below.

At the core of GKC is a series of classes and initiatives that combine STEM skills with policy know-how in a way that’s meant to encourage students to leverage entrepreneurship and innovation in order to develop rapid, scalable solutions to national security issues. Students from both undergraduate and graduate level programs, regardless of their prior experience in national defense, are encouraged to participate.

“We’re really trying to empower students to pursue national security-relevant work while they’re here at Stanford,” explains Joe Felter, GKC’s director, co-founder, and senior research scholar at CISAC. FSI and CISAC have deep roots in this type of innovative, interdisciplinary approach to policy solutions GKC is working to implement. Michael McFaul, FSI’s director, is a founding faculty member and principal investigator for GKC, and David Hoyt, the assistant director of GKC, is an alumnus of the CISAC honors program.

Results from GKC’s classes have been very encouraging so far. Working through "Hacking for Defense," a GKC-affiliated class taught out of the MS&E department, Jeff Jang, a new Defense Innovation Scholar and MBA student, showed how implementing a rapid interview process and focusing on problem and customer discovery has allowed his team to create enterprise software for United States Air Force (USAF) fleet management that has vastly improved efficiency, reduced errors and enabled better planning capabilities into the workflow. Their product has been given numerous grants and awards, and the team has received signed letters of interest from 29 different USAF bases across the world.

In another GKC class, "Technology, Innovation, and Great Power Competition,” Abeer Dahiya and Youngjun Kwak, along with Mikk Raud, Dave Sprague and Miku Yamada — three students from FSI’s Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy program (MIP) — have been tackling the challenges involved in developing a domestic U.S. semiconductor strategy. They were among the student teams asked to present the results of their work to Dep. Sec. Hicks during her visit.

“Attending this class has been one of the highlights of my time at Stanford,” says Mikk Raud (MIP ‘22). “It’s been a great example of how important it is to run interdisciplinary courses and bring people from different fields together.”

He continues, “As a policy student, it was very insightful for me to learn from my peers from different programs, as well as make numerous visits to the engineering quad to speak to technical professors whom I otherwise would have never met. After meeting with and presenting to Deputy Secretary Hicks and hearing about the work other students are doing, it really hit home to me that the government does listen to students, and it really is possible that a small Stanford group project can eventually lead into significant changes and improvements of the highest levels of policy making.”

This kind of renewed interest in national security and defense tech among students is precisely what the Gordian Knot Center is hoping to foster. Building an interconnected innovation workforce that can “think deeply, [and] act quickly,” GKC’s motto, is a driving priority for the center and its supporters.

The Department of Defense recognizes the value of this approach. In her remarks, Dep. Sec. Kathleen Hicks acknowledged that reshaping the culture and methodologies by which the DoD runs is as imperative as it is difficult.

“My life is a Gordian knot, day in and day out at the Defense Department,” she quipped. Speaking seriously, she reminded the audience of the tremendous driving power DoD has had in creating future-looking national security defenses.  “Because of its sophistication, diversity, and capacity to innovate, the U.S. Defense Industrial Base and vibrant innovation ecosystem remains the envy of the world,” Hicks emphasized. “Every day, people like you are designing, building, and producing the critical materials and technologies that ensure our armed forces have what they need.”

But she also recognized that the challenges facing the DoD are real and complex. “There are many barriers in front of the Department of Defense in terms of what it takes to operate in government and to make the kinds of shifts we need in order to have the agility to take advantage of opportunities and partner effectively.” She reiterated that one of her key priorities is to accelerate innovation adoption across DoD, including organizational structure, processes, culture, and people.

Partnerships with groups like the Gordian Knot Center are a key component to breaking down the barriers to innovation facing our national institutions and rebuilding them into new, more adaptable bridges forward. While the challenges facing the Department of Defense remain significant, the work of the students in GKC’s classes so far proves that progress is not only possible, but can be made quickly as well.

Introduction to Issues in International Security is a collaboration between the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). Four CISAC scholars are featured in accessible video lectures that aim to introduce high school students to issues in international security and increase awareness of career opportunities available in the field. Free discussion guides, developed by SPICE, are available for all of the lectures in this series.

The CISAC scholars and descriptions of their lectures are listed below.

• Martha Crenshaw: Terrorism and Countertterrorism

Professor Crenshaw explores some fundamental issues about terrorism, such as why people resort to terror, the political goals of terrorism, and the importance of understanding the complex web of relationships among terrorist organizations.

• Rose Gottemoeller: International Security and DPRK’s Nuclear Program

The Honorable Gottemoeller discusses the difference between national and international security. She takes a close look at the nuclear weapons program of North Korea and highlights the possible danger that North Korea’s nuclear weapons could pose to the world, as well as different ways to mitigate this risk.

• Norman Naimark: Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide

Professor Naimark discusses the difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide. He highlights key historical events that have taken place around the world and discusses the “Responsibility to Protect” and how it has shaped the way the international community responds to such atrocities.

• Megan Palmer: Biosecurity

Dr. Palmer discusses how biological threats shape our world—different types of threats and what we can do to prevent and to prepare for them.

An online symposium for high school students from four high schools is being planned for May 2022. They will have the opportunity to meet with one or two of the CISAC scholars to discuss issues in international security and careers in the field of international security. The online symposium is part of CISAC’s and SPICE’s DEI-focused efforts. In the 2022–23 academic year, CISAC and SPICE will invite high school teachers, who introduce the curriculum series, to recommend students to a second online symposium.

For more information about the curriculum series and the 2022–23 symposium, contact Irene Bryant at irene3@stanford.edu.

CISAC faculty and fellows offer their winter reading (and listening) selections:

Martha Crenshaw, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and professor, by courtesy, of political science, recommends:

My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante

Karl Eikenberry, Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, CISAC, CDDRL, and TEC affiliate, and director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, recommends:

Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane, by S. Frederick Starr

“This book was recommended to me by Abbas Milani before making a trip to Central Asia and the Caucasus. My respect for the civilizations of those regions grew immensely as a result of this read. Transformed my thinking.”

Rodney C. Ewing, Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security and Co-Director, CISAC, recommends:

In the Shadow of Los Alamos - Selected Writings of Edith Warner, by Edith Warner

“I have the personal tradition at Christmas of rereading the Christmas letters of Edith Warner - written just down the slope from Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. Warner captures the enchantment of New Mexico and touches on what was going on up the hill.”

Colin Kahl, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the inaugural Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and professor, by courtesy, in the department of political science at Stanford University recommends:

The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World, by Robert Ragan

“This short provocative book (essentially a long essay) discusses what America’s role should be in an increasingly chaotic world—one full of challenges that the existing norms, institutions, and alliances that compromise the liberal international order seem increasingly ill-suited to address. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Kagan’s conclusions, his analysis is insightful and worth arguing with.”

Erik Lin-Greenberg, predoctoral fellow at CISAC and a PhD candidate in political science at Columbia University, recommends:

Rise and Kill First, by Ronen Bergman

“Rise and Kill First traces the history of Israel's targeted killing program from before the establishment of the State of Israel to present day. Ronen Bergman draws from hundreds of interviews and previously unpublished documents to describe the organizations and operations responsible for assassinating Israel's adversaries in a book that reads more like an action novel than a non-fiction work.”

Michal Onderco, junior faculty fellow, CISAC, recommends:

White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America, by Joan Williams

“If you sometimes wonder about the worldviews of the people you meet under the Christmas tree, this book will give you a framework to understand them better. Williams wrote an excellent (and surprisingly easy to read) book explaining misunderstanding between classes in America; which surprisingly well resonates with research findings from outside the US. Though solutions proposed are rather simplistic, the analysis is worth reading and pondering. ”

Seeing People Off, by Jana Beňová

“A novel about a hipster couple in Bratislava, with all the trappings of the hipster life in Central Europe. Jana Benova received the 2012 European Union Prize for Literature for the book, and it is one of the rare modern Slovak fiction translated to English. Come for the (somewhat) exotic origin, stay for the story.”

Kathryn Stoner, deputy director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, as well as the deputy director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy at Stanford University, recommends:

These Truths: A History of the United States, by Jill Lepore

“This book came out a few months ago and is a really excellent overview of US history through the lens of inequality. It is really well written, and informative even for those of us who think we know US history well.”

Harold Trinkunas, deputy director and senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, recommends:

Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics, by Austin Carson

“An engaging read on why states engage in covert action against each other and why even competitors may have a mutual interest in not acknowledging such activities, keeping them 'backstage' and deniable to avoid the risk of escalation and war.”

Sherry Zaks, postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation recommends:

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking, by Samin Nosrat

“Samin Nosrat -- a former Chez Panisse chef and Alice Waters protege -- takes her readers on an enthralling journey through the four essentials of good cuisine. This book changed the way I cook and eat. While the book itself has some (amazing!) recipes, it reads more like a memoir and history than a cookbook. Nosrat is charming, brilliant, and witty. Don't just skip it in favor of the Netflix Series. If anything, do both. Bon appetit!”

S-Town Podcast, hosted by Brian Reed

“S-Town is one of the most enrapturing examples of investigative reporting I've ever come across. No description would do it justice. It won the 2017 Peabody award and only highlights how antiquated other literary and journalism awards are for not expanding to accommodate this medium. If you want make sitting in Bay Area traffic more palatable, throw this into your rotation.”

Amy Zegart, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies (FSI), professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University, and a contributing editor to The Atlantic, recommends:

The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age, by David Sanger

“David Sanger's exploration of cyber weapons is an instant classic.”

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, by John Carreyrou

“A riveting non-fiction account of how Elizabeth Holmes turned Theranos into a $9 billion Silicon Valley fraud.”

As publics and policymakers are becoming more aware of the gravity of cyber related activities and potential disruption, Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation honors undergraduate alumni have produced cutting-edge work to address major cyber issues in their final theses.

The theses topics span computer systems design, deterrence, international cooperation, defense acquisitions, hacking, zero days, the intelligence community, big data, and special forces operations. They make an excellent back-to-school reading list for anyone interested in cyber security, policy, and foreign affairs.

Check out their work on major cyber threats, events and consequences through the links below:

Sharpening the Tip of the Spear: Evaluating Technology Integration in Special Operations Forces, by Sam Lisbonne (June 2018)

Lisbonne articulates three early warning indicators suggesting that U.S. Special Operations Forces acquisitions processes have begun to look more like that of traditional branches of the armed services. He goes on to discuss the best paths forwards for mitigating root causes driving this pattern.  

Cybersecurity Magic: Parallel Structures of Design by Hackers and Magicians, by Samuel Kasem Sagan (May 2018)

Sagan explains how cyber criminals are successful despite technical and well-organized efforts to defend against cyber-crime. He investigates the “art of deception” as it relates to espionage, warfare, politics, theatre, and magic. In comparing exploits and tricks, he demonstrates “how the design processes used by hackers have inherent structural similarities to those used by magicians.”

Star Wars, Poison Gas, and Cybersecurity: Lessons from the Past for a Better Future, by Rachel Hirshman (May 2018)

Hirshman’s recent thesis outlines the conditions necessary for the creation of a formal international agreement to regulate cyberspace. She draws on the efforts of the Reykjavik Summit and the Chemical Weapons Convention to find that the most influential factor for an agreement “is the willingness of parties to make reciprocal concessions during negotiations.”

Towards DIUx 2.1 or 3.0? Examining Defense Innovation Unit Experimental’s Progress Towards Procurement Innovation, by Gabriele Fisher (June 2017)

Fisher’s thesis examines the military outfit known as DIUx intended to expedite military acquisitions from smaller tech firms outside of major defense procurement working on novel technologies for defense. She weighs how sustainable the program is given their reliance on Other Transaction Authorities over traditional U.S. Department of Defense procurement processes.

In Data We Trust?: The Big Data Capabilities of the National Counterterrorism Center, by Ben Mittelberger (May 2016)

Mittelberger combines lessons of capabilities yielded by big data analytics with the mission of counterterror intelligence for the National Counterterrorism Center. He provides recommendations on how to adopt large-scale analytics exercises to benefit the intelligence community’s organizational capacity and structure.

Evaluation of the Analogy Between Nuclear and Cyber Deterrence, by Patrick Cirenza (May 2015)

Cirenza details where the analogies of nuclear and cyber weapons and deterrence are flawed. Although cyber weapons have potentially strategic impacts, they have thus far not reached a level of importance to cause “revolution in military affairs that developed into a strategic deterrent because of its unique characteristics” alike nuclear weapons.

Scalable Security: Cyber Threat Information Sharing in the Internet Age, by Connor Gilbert (May 2014)

Gilbert unpacks information sharing issues faced by the federal government when analyzing cyber threats related to private companies tied to U.S. critical infrastructure. An engineer by training, he applies a Computational Policy approach to bring “the power of the abstractions used in computer systems design to bear on difficult policy problems.”

Anarchy or Regulation: Controlling the Global Trade in Zero-Day Vulnerabilities, by Mailyn Fidler (May 2014)

Fidler reveals the trade mechanisms of zero-day vulnerabilities as they are traded and utilized by governments, militaries, intelligence operations, law enforcement agencies, and criminal organizations. Her work “demonstrates how difficult regulation of the global zero-day trade will be, signaling the pervasiveness of realpolitik in cyberspace.”

CISAC faculty offer their summer reading selections:

Martha Crenshaw, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and professor, by courtesy, of political science, recommends:

Muslims in a Post-9/11 America: A Survey of Attitudes and Beliefs and Their Implications for U.S. National Security Policy

“I am recommending a book for late summer, to be published by University of Michigan Press in August.  The author is Rachel Gillum, who recently received her PhD in political science from Stanford. It is the definitive account of who American Muslims are and what they think, a much-needed antidote to prejudice and misconception, and a clear warning about the unintended consequences of counterterrorism policies.”

François Diaz-Maurin, Nuclear Security Visiting Scholar and the European Commission’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow recommends one book for each month of summer:

The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War, by Eileen Welsome

“This book tells the harrowing story of the plutonium injections and other experiments conducted on U.S. citizens in the postwar era. It provides one of the best illustrations of how distrust in the government and fear about nuclear energy got firmly embedded in the minds of the American public; two of the main factors explaining today's difficulty to deal with the legacy of radioactive waste.”

The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, by Daniel Ellsberg

“Ellsberg's memoirs on his early-career involvement in the US nuclear war planning come 45 years after he famously leaked the Pentagon Papers helping to end the Vietnam War in 1975. Although mainly based on now declassified documents that will be known from historians, the book shows to the general public the insanity of U.S. and Russian nuclear policies based on a permanent state of alert of their early warning systems, which risks to humanity could only be exacerbated by prospects of a new arms race.”

From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, by Michael McFaul

“In this book mixing history, scholarship and memoirs, McFaul explains that after the Cold War, U.S.-Russia relations went from resetting relations aimed at more cooperation after the fall of the Soviet Union to a period of Hot Peace with the rise of Vladimir Putin. Deliberately echoing the past, McFaul argues that Hot Peace is no less dangerous than the Cold War because it brings new types of destabilizing factors, such as elections interference and military annexation, and calls for a bipartisan strategy to reset (again) the U.S.-Russia relations.”

Karl Eikenberry, Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center,

CISAC, CDDRL, and TEC affiliate, and director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center recommends:

Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari

Rodney C. Ewing, Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security and Co-Director, CISAC, recommends:

Hue 1968 - A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden

This is a long, hard read, but I think it is appropriate reading on the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive.

Gabrielle Hecht, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Frank Stanton Foundation Professor of Nuclear Security, and professor of history, recommends:

“Stephen Graham, Vertical: the City from Satellites to Bunkers. Most of us think about maps and spatial politics in two dimensions. This book invites readers to incorporate a third dimension into their thinking: verticality.  Ranging from satellites, drones, and skyscrapers to sewers, mines, and tunnels, Graham upends our sense of how politics, geography, and urban spaces are entwined. A great read, sparkling with insight.”

Siegfried Hecker, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, emeritus, and research professor of management science and engineering, emeritus, recommends:

Geoff West's Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies.

“He is a good friend - former Los Alamos physicist, now at the Santa Fe Institute.”

David Holloway, Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies senior fellow, recommends:

Svetlana Alexievich, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. 

“This is based on interviews Alexievich did between 1991 and 2012 and it provides an incomparable insight into the Soviet Union and post-Soviet reality, on the basis of what has been called a “symphony of Russian voices."  I found it compulsive reading and very moving.  It is not not about policy, but it is very much about the impact of politics on individuals and on society.  Alexievich won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015 but you shouldn’t let that put you off.”

Colin Kahl, Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Director of the Middle East Initiative recommends:

Paul Scharre, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War.

“Rapid technological advances in autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons systems and artificial intelligence will revolutionize the way humans fight. Yet security specialists are still in the early phases of thinking through the battlefield and ethical implications of these developments. This book, by a former Army Ranger, is a terrific starting point for that conversation.”

David Relman, Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in the Departments of Medicine, and of Microbiology and Immunology, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System in Palo Alto, California recommends:

Thank You For Your Service, by David Finkel.

“After embedding himself with the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry during the 2007-2008 Surge in Iraq, Finkel, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and editor for the Washington Post, follows some of these soldiers after their return home to the U.S., and describes their painful struggles with the consequences of profound psychological trauma. His accounts are gripping, disturbing and for even the reader, life-changing. This book should be required reading for anyone who contributes to decisions about sending and subjecting people of any nation to war.”

Scott Sagan, Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, recommends:

S.C. Gwyne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Paker and Rise and Fall of the Commanches.

“Summer for me should include time away from the hustle and bustle of the city, to vacation in the wilds of the American West.  Gwynne's book brilliantly captures the story of both Quanah Parker, the last independent chief of the Commanche, and his mother, Sarah Ann Parker, who was captured by raiding warriors as a young girl and then lived with the Commanche until captured a second time, by white relatives, after having raised a family with her Native American husband.  This book, and the great John Wayne film, The Searchers, provides a summer window through which to glimpse dark elements of American history and culture.”

Amy Zegart, co-director of CISAC, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and professor of political economy (by courtesy) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, recommends two books:

“Daniel Pink, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, which is chalk full of useful (and sometimes frightening) research about timing -- with implications for how to improve efficiency and outcomes in a wide array of activities, from when to get medical procedures to how to get the most out of a nap. In international security, it is easy to overlook the human dimensions of good decision-making. One of McGeorge Bundy's best decisions during the Cuban missile crisis was to let President Kennedy sleep before telling him about the U2 photos showing Soviet missile installations. Pink's book grounds this essential intuition in research.

“Tara Westover, Educated. A moving memoir about a young woman's journey from a survivalist family in Idaho to Cambridge University, where she earned a DPhil in History. Told with a sense of love and brutal honesty, the book provides a penetrating glimpse into segments of American society that are literally and figuratively off the grid and one woman's singular determination to make a different future for herself.”