CISAC's Honors Program in International Studies recently awarded three prizes to some of its students, instead of the traditional two. “At the end of the year we award prizes to three of the thesis writers. It’s always a hard decision to make because they are all really good,” said FSI Senior Fellow and Honors Co-director Martha Crenshaw.

Taylor Grossman, Patrick Cirenza, and Teo Lamiot were awarded the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research, the William J. Perry Prize, and the John Holland Slusser World Peace Prize, respectively. They presented their work in front of faculty, advisors, and friends at a packed seminar in early June.

The Perry Prize, named after former Defense Secretary and current FSI Senior Fellow William Perry, is awarded to a student for excellence in policy-relevant research in international security studies. Cirenza’s thesis, “An Evaluation of the Analogy between Nuclear and Cyber Deterrence,” examined whether cyber weapons can be accurately understood by comparing them to nuclear weapons.

Image

“My thesis topic definitely evolved over time,” Cirenza said. “I really did not know that much about cyber weapons. I initially wanted to look at non-state actors in cyber space and I asked Professor Scott Sagan about that and he asked what I knew about cyber and the reality was I really did not know anything. But I still really wanted to study it and at the time I was in Condoleezza Rice’s seminar and she suggested examining the analogy between nuclear and cyber weapons, which was being used a lot at the time. I went through several different topics and ultimately landed on deterrence.”

Cirenza was advised by FSI Senior Fellow Coit Blacker, who co-directs the honors program with Crenshaw, and by consulting professor Phil Taubman. Next fall he will attend Cambridge for a one year M.Phil program in international relations. After that he hopes to join the Marine Corps infantry.

“I never wanted a desk job in my twenties and I think it’s the best way to serve my country at this time,” he said.

The newly created Slusser Prize goes to the thesis that best contributes to the development of “permanent world peace.” Lamiot’s thesis, “When Blue Helmets Do Battle: Civilian Protection in the Democratic Republic of the Congo” examined whether the use of force against rebel groups in the DRC by UN peacekeepers had any effect on atrocities committed against civilians. He was advised by FSI Senior Fellow Stephen Stedman, who formerly served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Lamiot started formulating his thesis topic when he was working in the U.S. embassy in the DRC. “I worked in the unit that is tasked with monitoring the conflict in the eastern part of the country. Part of my work was investigating a massacre that had taken place in that region about a month before I arrived in country. The massacre was of interest to the U.S. government because the Congolese and U.N. peacekeeping forces stationed nearby did not respond to the massacre despite knowing that it was going on,” he recounted.

Image

“This sparked my interest and, at first, I wanted to answer the question why do peacekeepers use force in some cases but not in others, but I ultimately decided on answering what happens when they do use force. I’m hoping that my argument that in some cases using force has positive effects and decreases rebel violence against civilians informs these decision-makers on the ground when they are choosing what to do.”

After graduation Lamiot will be on a Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law fellowship in Uganda doing development work. “I’ll likely be working on democratic and political development. I’m trying to learn something about how outside actors can try to bring about these development outcomes in foreign countries.”

The Firestone Medal is a Stanford-wide prize awarded to the top ten percent of all honors theses in social science, science, and engineering. Grossman, who will also graduate with a B.A. Political Science, wrote hers on homeland security and the evolution of terrorism advisory systems. She was advised by CISAC Co-Director Amy Zegart.

“I really wanted to look at effectiveness of communication and intelligence sharing, but in a way that I could actually see government information. That led me to public warning systems for terrorism where there is a lot of public information available. Not a lot has been written on how effective they are, how they operate, or how they have evolved,” Grossman said.

Image

After graduation she plans on joining the Hoover Institution as a research assistant.

“I feel like I majored in CISAC. Ever since I took the class ‘The Face of Battle’ with Professor Scott Sagan and Colonel Joe Felter, I’ve been hooked on international security and the issues CISAC focuses on. I think the honors program has been the defining part of my undergraduate career. It was really rewarding and challenging and I’m glad I did it.”

Grossman and Cirenza were also elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society in May 2015, as was Geo Saba, a political science major. Phi Beta Kappa is a nationwide society honoring students for the excellence and breadth of their undergraduate scholarly accomplishments.

Additionally, the Stanford Alumni Association (SAA) selected Cirenza, Grossman, and Akshai Baskaran, who majored in chemical engineering, to receive an Award of Excellence. 

Congratulations to all graduates of the Class of 2015: Akshai Baskaran, Patrick Cirenza, Kelsey Dayton, Taylor Grossman, Sean Hiroshima, Annie Kapnick, Sarah Kunis, Teo Lamiot, Austin Lewis, Sam Rebo, Geo Saba, Eliza Thompson, and Adrienne von Schulthess.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told a Stanford audience Thursday that mass surveillance programs are designed to find possible terrorists, not snoop on American citizens.

She pointed to the rise of groups like ISIS – now in 12 countries, she said – and the gruesome spectacles of their brand of terrorism as proof that the world is more dangerous than ever.

"I don't think during my lifetime I've ever seen the degree of evil that is out there in the world today," said Feinstein, noting mass murders and beheadings of innocent civilians, including children. "These [surveillance] programs aim to protect this country, pure and simple. They're not aimed to go after Americans."

Feinstein was the final speaker in the yearlong series titled "The Security Conundrum." She spoke in a colloquy format with Stanford's Philip Taubman, consulting professor at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and former Washington bureau chief of the New York Times. 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein was the final speaker in the yearlong series titled 'The Security Conundrum.' 

Image

The discussion comes during a national debate on how to strike the right balance between security and liberty when technology now makes it possible for the government to collect phone and email data on citizens. With the USA Freedom Act expiring on June 1, Congress is considering legislation to reform the National Security Agency's mass surveillance program.

"We recognize that some reform is in order," said Feinstein, who plans to fly back to Washington for a rare Sunday Senate session on the expiring law.

"The big reform is that the data would be held by the phone companies and not the NSA," she said. If red flags resulted in queries, then warrants would have to be approved.

She took issue with descriptions of those programs as "mass surveillance." In 2013, warrants were sought in just 12 cases out of 288 queries about possible suspects. She said it is a selective process to find a suspect who raises enough concerns to trigger a query.

Feinstein's talk, titled "Congressional Oversight and the Intelligence Community," was held at CEMEX Auditorium.

Feinstein served as chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 2009 to 2014 and is now the ranking minority member. She played a leading role in the Senate investigation of the Central Intelligence Agency detention and interrogation program following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

'Miscarriages of justice'

Taubman asked Feinstein if she was worried that the surveillance programs could track law-abiding citizens, like more primitive efforts in the 1960s and '70s that targeted political and civil rights groups. Feinstein acknowledged that abuses happened in the past, but that congressional oversight of the programs – as is the case today – is essential to a fair process.

In particular, Feinstein decried the government's interrogation process of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay that resulted in claims of torture. Her committee reviewed considerable intelligence data on that issue. "We found there were terrible miscarriages of justice," she said.

She described intelligence agencies as akin to "presidents" in the power they wield. "How do you make these agencies follow the law?" she asked. The only way is to "get in deep enough and close enough" to make it impossible for them to tell an "untruth" in a congressional hearing, she said.

Taubman suggested that it's extremely hard for a few dozen congressional staffers and members to oversee large agencies that employ thousands of people. "You're outgunned," he said.

Feinstein replied that "we have to look beyond the hearing." She said bipartisanship and a focus on producing effective legislation that addresses real problems is critical. "That's the nature of what we do."

She added that no other country in the world has an intelligence committee with as strong an oversight function as does the United States. China and Russia, for example, have growing intelligence agencies but no one watching them.

Feinstein agreed with Taubman that too much secrecy is detrimental to a democratic society. She said she wished she would have held more open, public meetings while in charge of the intelligence committee.

Feinstein expects that renewing the legislation will depend on perhaps three votes in the Senate. "It's possible. If not, the law ends at midnight and that creates a chink in our armor. There's no question in my mind," she said.

Feinstein said there is a "backup" bill that is similar to the USA Freedom Act, but she would prefer to reform the original legislation.

Taubman asked her if the surveillance efforts were actually preventing terrorist acts.

Feinstein said that people are arrested every week under the program, and that relevant information also goes to other countries to help them.

But more than ever, she noted, it's the private sector – not the government – that is extremely enterprising in collecting vast amounts of data from people, such as how they use their cellphones or surf the web.

CIA, China an issue

A California Democrat and Stanford graduate, Feinstein has served in the U.S. Senate since 1993.

When asked why she continues to work as a public servant, she said that 9/11 was a pivotal point in her life. That tragic event and flawed intelligence regarding the justification for the war in Iraq convinced her that a senior position on the intelligence committee would give her a way to help protect her country and fellow citizens.

Taubman expressed amazement that the CIA was actually spying on Feinstein's committee during its review of the hostage intelligence data.

"It was a real dust-up, there's no question about. I think it was a real violation of the separation of powers," she said.

On other issues, such as the rise of China, Feinstein said that country is now practicing "soft power" and flexing its muscles in the South China Sea. Plus, China is "eating our lunch" in regard to cybersecurity.

"I am very worried," she said. "I do not see China as a necessary enemy, but it seems to be going the opposite direction now."

In addition to CISAC, sponsors of "The Security Conundrum" series included the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Hoover Institution, Stanford Continuing Studies, Stanford in Government and Stanford Law School.

The series "was designed to be an open inquiry in the ongoing debate on how to balance security and liberty," said Amy Zegart, co-director of CISAC and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

This year the series has also included Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA; journalist Barton Gellman; and former U.S. Sen. Mark Udall.

What is it about terrorism that makes it so difficult to study and counteract through U.S. government policy? That’s the central question CISAC Senior Fellow Martha Crenshaw hopes to answer in an upcoming book she is co-authoring with Gary LaFree, Director of the National Center for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), where Crenshaw serves as lead investigator. at the University of Maryland. 

The idea for the book stems from Crenshaw’s long career in grappling with terrorism and observing how governments struggle to combat it. She has been writing and thinking about terrorism since the 1970s and is currently conducting a multi-year project mapping the evolution of violent extremist groups. However, the difficulties inherent in the topic have not much changed for academics and policymakers.

The problems start with defining terrorism, something that has bedeviled both researchers and policymakers for decades, Crenshaw told a Stanford audience in CISAC. 

“We are still arguing about what terrorism means. But even if you agree on a definition, then applying it to the real world remains difficult,” she said.

Beyond semantics, the study of terrorism faces a series of hurdles inherent to the topic. An overarching social theory of the causes of terrorism remains elusive, and there is no agreement on whether terrorism actually works. 

Additionally, academics have used many different levels of analyses–individual, organizational, cultural, economic, and others–but have yet to agree on which analyses bear more fruit.

Despite what you might gather from what’s said in the media, terrorism events are actually very rare. Terrorist attacks that kill large amounts of people are even more rare. “9/11 was a black swan, a highly consequential event but only a one-of-a-kind. We show why it’s the case that terrorism is very rare and therefore makes it very hard to predict any kind of trends,” Crenshaw said.

Most of the information available is about attacks that actually happened. But there are many more plots, about ten times more, than actual attacks. Crenshaw said she and her research assistants have used news media and government documents to identify failed and foiled plots against the United States, European Union, and NATO countries plus Australia and New Zealand. The plots have been coded in a dataset that she will analyze.  

There are additional obstacles in the way of researchers and policymakers. 

Attributing responsibility for attacks is difficult, which hampers research and government responses. “How do you know who to respond against? The concept of terrorism is mixed in with insurgency. It’s hard to think of a policy that targets one but not the other,” Crenshaw said. Terrorist organizations are very small and the boundaries between groups are extremely porous. Yet, there is not a preponderance of lone wolves.

Sometimes, the U.S. government obstructs research. Crenshaw lamented the over-classification of government documents, and drew particular attention to the designation “For Official Use Only”, which is not a classification but a designation that seems to depend on the agency using it. 

“If you are analyzing illegal forms of violence there are three sources of information: governments, victims, and terrorists. Victims are difficult to find. Self-reporting is even harder and usually unfeasible. And governments are very secretive. We would like to see more transparency and openness on their part,” she said.

“I think what is being done here is really important when it comes to the question of why it’s so hard to find policy solutions for terrorism,” said Betsy Cooper, a Law and International Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC, who offered commentary on the book draft to the seminar. “A lot of what is in the chapter about the state of counter-terrorism research is very important.” 

“I learned a lot especially about the automation in the global terrorism database and it poses some interesting questions. Is something terrorism because we say it is or can we use objective criteria regardless of whether you see it as something else?” 

In this talk sponsored by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, three CISAC scholars discuss the Islamic State, Iran and the Taliban and the threats they impose to American security. The talk is moderated by Brad Kapnick, a Partner at Katten & Temple, LLP, and SIEPR Advisory Board member. Joining him are Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at CISAC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and professor, by courtesy, of political science; CISAC Senior Fellow Scott Sagan, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science; former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, the William J. Perry Fellow at CISAC and a consulting professor at the Freeman Spogli Institute.

This is an abbreviated version of the talk below. The full talk can be found here.