Stanford University

Education

The Security Implications of Information Technology

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Abstract
Information access and distribution is expanding exponentially.  Recent technological advancements have created a state of information openness where the general public has easy access both to a wealth of information previously available only for select government agencies and to a large array of communication-collaboration tools that can further develop and disseminate content. This information, or cyber, openness is having a profound impact on society at large and has equally profound, if not greater, implications for international and national security in terms of both capabilities and vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, many of the potential expanded capabilities have yet to be realized and many of the new vulnerabilities have yet to be fully understood.  This project aims to illuminate the emerging cyber capabilities from various viewpoints: users and developers, operational impacts and vulnerabilities in conflict and crisis management, enhancement and suppression of democratic development, and future trends: what issues will face society in the cyber world of 2050?

Alistair Dawson is the Executive Assistant to CISAC’s co-director, Professor Siegfried Hecker. Prior to her arrival at CISAC, she served as an Administrative Assistant at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation in San Diego, California.  She obtained a BA in International Studies with an emphasis in Political Science along with a minor in European History from the University of California San Diego. Alistair received additional training in European Politics and Government while participating in the Education Abroad Program at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England.

Jeff Richardson recently retired after 35 years at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  At LLNL he held a variety of program management positions, including Division Leader of Chemistry and later of Proliferation Prevention.  He spent two tours in Washington DC, supporting NNSA in Nonproliferation R&D and DoD in the USAF Directorate of Nuclear Operations, Plans and Requirements.  His most recent paper, Shifting from a Nuclear Triad to a Nuclear Dyad, explores an alternate future strategy for the US nuclear arsenal.  At CISAC he will focus on science diplomacy, using science as a tool for international engagement and promoting regional security. He will also be working on developing the concept of cyber openness (i.e., how the information revolution will change international security).

Jeff earned his BS degree in chemistry from CalTech and his PhD in organic chemistry from Stanford University.  His work at LLNL including chemical and materials science research, energy research, materials development for nuclear weapons programs, radiation detection for border security, nuclear materials protection, and proliferation detection, science cooperation for international security, and support for the Chemical Weapons Convention.

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Alistair Dawson Executive Assistant to CISAC Co-Director Siegfried Hecker Speaker

Jeffery H. Richardson

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Jeff Richardson is an affiliate and former visiting scholar at CISAC. He came to CISAC after a 35-year career at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. At LLNL he held a variety of program management positions, including Division Leaders of Chemistry and later of Proliferation Prevention. He spent two tours in Washington DC, supporting NNSA in Nonproliferation R&D and DoD in the USAF Directorate of Nuclear Operations, Plans and Requirements. He recently completed 4-year assignment working for CRDF as the U.S. Science Advisor for the ISTC program, administered by the Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction, State Department. At CISAC he is focused on science diplomacy, using science as a tool for international engagement and promoting regional security.

Jeff earned his BS degree in chemistry from CalTech and his PhD in organic chemistry from Stanford University. His work at LLNL included chemical and materials science research, energy research, materials development for nuclear weapons programs, radiation detection for border security, nuclear materials protection, and proliferation detection, science cooperation for international security, and support for the Chemical Weapons Convention. He has authored over 100 papers. More recent papers include LLNL and WSSX, a contribution to Doomed to Cooperate: How American and Russian scientists joined forces to avert some of the greatest post-Cold War nuclear dangers, and Shifting from a Nuclear Triad to a Nuclear Dyad, which explored an alternate future strategy for the US nuclear arsenal.

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Jeffery H. Richardson CISAC Visiting Scholar Speaker
Seminars

Got Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube? Mastering Social Networks for Academic Outreach

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Margot Gerritsen is an Associate Professor in Energy Resources Engineering. Originally from the Netherlands, she left the country after receiving her MSc degree from Delft University of Technology. She earned her PhD in Computational Mathematics from Stanford in 1996. After teaching at the University of Auckland in New Zealand for five years, she returned to Stanford in 2001. Together with her colleagues and students, Margot works to develop computational tools to optimize the development of energy resources. She is active in large-scale solar development, wind farm optimization, marine energy, as well as mitigation of the harmful environmental impacts of oil and gas production. Margot is an expert in energy resources, fluid dynamics and computational mathematics, and teaches courses in these areas. She regularly advises NGOs, VCs, policymakers and the energy industry. Margot produces a podcast show on energy issues at http://www.smartenergyshow.com.

Ian Hsu has been director of Internet Media Research at Stanford since 2007. A graduate of Stanford's class of 1998 in electrical engineering, Ian went on to earn a master's in management science and engineering in 2001. He previously worked at Advanced Micro Devices and Spansion, AMD's spinoff, the latter as a manager of internet marketing, before joining a startup called FilmLoop in 2006. For his work on Stanford's university Facebook strategy, Ian was awarded the 2009 Excellence in New Communcations Award by the Society for New Communication Research (SNCR), a global non-profit research and education think-tank dedicated to the understanding of new media.  Ian's work at Stanford has been covered by many educational and new media publications including The Chronicle of Higher Education, CASE Currents, Mashable and Inside Facebook.

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Margot Gerritsen Associate Professor of Energey Resources Engineering, Stanford Speaker
Ian Hsu Director of Internet Media Research, Stanford Speaker
Seminars

Kleptocratic Interdependence: Trafficking, Corruption and the Marriage of Politics and Illicit Profits

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Corruption is a human condition and an ancient phenomenon. From the beginnings of civilization, public notables have abused their offices for personal gain while citizens have sought advantage by corrupting those holding power. Today, global security is threatened as never before by fiscal uncertainty, competition and mutual suspicion among world powers, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and tyranny. This book reveals corruption to be at the very center of these global threats and proposes a combination of remedies such as positive leadership, enhanced transparency, tougher punishment, and enforceable new sanctions against shady activities.

Corruption, Global Security, and World Order explores the ties between corrupt practice and threats to global peace, corrupt practice and the suppression of human rights and development, corrupt practice and the maintenance of tyranny, and corruption in health and education.

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Brookings Institution Press in "Corruption, Global Security and World Order", Robert I. Rotberg, ed.
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Reducing Nuclear Proliferation Risk Through Multinational Cooperation: North-East Asia and the Mongolian Nuclear Initiative

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Undraa Agvaanluvsan is a native of Mongolia. She is currently a visiting professor at CISAC. Undraa received her bachelor's (1994) and master's (1995) degrees in physics from the National University of Mongolia, and a diploma in high energy physics at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy in 1997. Undraa obtained her PhD in 2002 at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, studying nuclear reactions and quantum chaos in nuclei. Following completion of her doctorate, she conducted postdoctoral research work in the Nuclear Experimental Physics group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She published and co-authored several dozen articles in peer-reviewed journals.

In the past several years, Undraa's research interests have broadened to include policy studies. In the policy arena, she served as an adviser to Mongolia's Minister of Foreign Affairs. As an advocate of scientific education, Undraa serves as director of the Mongolian-American (MonAme) Scientific Research Center in Ulaanbaatar, which focuses on energy, the environment, and mineral processing technologies.

Her research interests at CISAC focus on nuclear energy studies. More specifically, Undraa is studying uranium mining and processing, front-end issues of the nuclear fuel-cycle, nuclear fuel supplies, and nuclear energy policy. Using her prior experience with scientific research in quantum chaos, she is working with her CISAC colleague Kate Marvel to study the resiliency of the electricity grid network when stressed with the addition of more power sources, including nuclear power generation.

At Stanford, Undraa has directed undergraduate research through the Bing Overseas Studies Program. She also teaches nuclear energy policy in the International Policy Studies program.

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Undraa Agvaanluvsan

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Dr. Undraa Agvaanluvsan currently serves as the president of Mitchell Foundation for Arts and Sciences. She is also an Asia21 fellow of the Asia Society and co-chair of Mongolia chapter of the Women Corporate Directors, a global organization of women serving in public and private corporate boards. 

Dr. Undraa Agvaanluvsan is a former Member of Parliament of Mongolia and the chair of the Parliamentary subcommittee on Sustainable Development Goals. Prior to being elected as a legislator, she served as an Ambassador-at-large in charge of nuclear security issues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia,  where she worked on nuclear energy and fuel cycle, uranium and rare-earth minerals policy issues. 

She is a nuclear physicist by training, obtained her PhD at North Carolina State University, USA and diploma in High Energy Physics at the International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy. She conducted research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, USA and taught energy policy at International Policy Studies Program at Stanford University, where she was a Science fellow and visiting professor at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. She published more than 90 papers, conference  proceedings, and articles on neutron and proton induced nuclear reactions, nuclear level density and radiative strength function, quantum chaos and the Random Matrix Theory, including its application in electric grid network. 

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Undraa Agvaanluvsan CISAC Visiting Professor Speaker
Seminars
Preventing Nuclear Proliferation and Terrorism

Preventing Genocide: Practical Steps Toward Early Detection and Effective Action

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David Hamburg is president emeritus at Carnegie Corporation of New York, where he served as the Corporation's eleventh president from 1982 to 1997. Under his leadership the work of the Corporation focused on education and healthy development of children and youth, human resources in developing countries and international security issues. He established a number of task forces on education and preventing conflict which produced seminal research and policy analysis and which will continue to influence the work in these fields in the future.

A medical doctor, Hamburg had a long history of leadership in the research, medical and psychiatric fields before his transition from a trustee of Carnegie to its president. He was chief, adult psychiatry branch, National Institutes of Health, from 1958 to 1961; professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University from 1961 to 1972; Reed-Hodgson Professor of Human Biology at Stanford University from 1972 to 1976; president of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, 1975-1980; and director of the division of health policy research and education and John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy at Harvard University, 1980-1983. He served as president and then chairman of the board (1984-1986) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Hamburg was a member of the United States Defense Policy Board with Secretary of Defense William Perry and cochair with former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. He is a member of President Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and a visiting professor at Harvard Medical School's department of social medicine. He was the founder of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government.

Hamburg received both his A.B. and M.D. degrees from Indiana University. He has received numerous honorary degrees during his career as well as the American Psychiatric Association's Distinguished Service Award in 1991, the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in 1996, the International Peace Academy's 25th Anniversary Special Award in 1996, the Achievement in Children and Public Policy Award from the Society for Research in Child Development in 1997, and the National Academy of Sciences' Public Welfare Medal in 1998.

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David Hamburg President Emeritus, Carnegie Corporation of New York Speaker
Seminars

Engineers of Jihad: The Interpretation

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Diego Gambetta is a sociologist at Nuffield College, Oxford, working on theories of trust and signals. He is known for his book The Sicilian Mafia and his edited volume, Making Sense of Suicide Missions. While at Stanford, he will discuss his recent manuscript, "Engineers of Jihad" as well as his recently published book, Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate.

Diego Gambetta will be visiting Stanford from late March to late April, 2010.

Abstract
Among violent Islamists individuals with an engineering education are four times more frequent than we would expect given the share of engineers among university students in Islamic countries.  We argue that a combination of two factors – engineers’ relative deprivation in the Islamic world and mindset – is the most plausible explanation. In this second talk I will focus on the mindset.

This talk is the final of a two part series presented by Dr. Gambetta. His first talk, "Engineers of Jihad: The Facts," will be presented at noon on Friday, April 2, at the Stanford Humanities Center.

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Diego Gambetta FSI-Humanities Center International Visitor; CISAC Affiliate Speaker
Seminars

Special IPS-CISAC Colloquium - Beyond Hearts and Minds: The Impact of Afghan Political Disenchantment on US Options in Afghanistan

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With a flawed Afghan election and a request for more troop increases by General Stanley McChrystal, there is renewed attention toward whether and how the United States can turn the situation in Afghanistan around. Several options for going forward have been proposed: a resource- and manpower-heavy counterinsurgency strategy; a more scaled down counterterrorism campaign; and various models in between those extremes. Yet regardless of which option is chosen a key ingredient of success will be the degree to which Afghan communities are invested. Unfortunately, regaining their trust and confidence will be no small task given the current environment. High civilian casualties and a corresponding failure to protect Afghans from the daily brutality of insurgents, criminal groups, and warlords lead Afghans to regard international military as impotent, malevolent, or both. Though billions have been spent to build schools, support economic development, and other initiatives, corruption, security concerns, and mismanagement lead Afghans to view these projects as symbols of Afghan and international fecklessness and failure rather than reasons to cast their lot with them in the future. Successful Taliban propaganda, often based on legitimate community grievances, has further fueled mistrust between the Afghan population and those who are supposed to be protecting their interests. 

While there has been much talk about enhancing the legitimacy of the Afghan government and winning "hearts and minds", it seems unlikely that elections or military slush funds will get anywhere near what Afghan communities perceive as the problem. Based in large part on on-the-ground observations and discussions with Afghan civil society groups, this talk will focus on some of these community perceptions and narratives about what is fueling the conflict with a view toward better analyzing the strategic implications.

Erica Gaston is a human rights lawyer consulting on civilian casualties for the Open Society Institute in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She first visited Afghanistan in 2007 to conduct research for a legal study on private security companies, and then moved to Kabul in 2008 with the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), whose mission is to encourage warring parties to provide compensation, victim assistance, recognition or other redress to victims of conflict. In addition to her work with CIVIC, she worked extensively with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, and was the lead editor on their 2008 report on the conduct of pro-government forces in Afghanistan. She also worked with the Afghan NGO WADAN, which focuses on grassroots civic education, governance and human rights advocacy.

In addition to her work in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Erica has also been involved in other human rights documentation and advocacy related to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in the summer of 2006, situations of ethnic conflict in Ethiopia, cluster munition use, among others.  She has also published legal articles related to the accountability of private security companies, issues and problems inherent in the humanitarian project, and the improvement of emergency preparedness for homeland security and counter-terrorism purposes. She is a blog contributor to the Huffington Post and has provided commentary on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, CBC, and other local and international radio programming.

Erica graduated from Harvard Law School in 2007. She graduated with a B.A. in International Relations, with honors in International Security, from Stanford University.

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Erica Gaston Consultant on Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Open Society Institute Speaker
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