Dr. David Relman, infectious diseases expert and microbiologist at Stanford Medicine, discusses the Oxford vaccine candidate and just how deadly COVID-19 can be.
* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone
Livestream: Please click here to join the livestream webinar via Zoom or log-in with webinar ID 913 4480 9317.
About the Event: How do states build lasting international order? Existing explanations of order formation argue that leading states are incentivized to create binding institutions with robust rules and strong enforcement mechanisms. The stability resulting from such institutionalized orders, scholars argue, allows leading states to geopolitically punch above their weight after they have declined in power. I argue, however, that such explanations overlook the trade-off between stability and flexibility, that leading states are faced with. Flexibility calls for short-term agreements that can be renegotiated when the strategic situation changes. And it allows the leading state to take advantage of relative power increases.Whereas states face significant incentives to err on the side of stability if they predict irreversible decline in power, states face incentives to err on the side of flexibility if they predict relative rise in power.
About the Speaker: Mariya Grinberg is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago in 2019. Her primary research examines why states trade with their enemies, investigating the product level and temporal variation in wartime commercial policies of states vis-a-vis enemy belligerents. Her broader research interests include international relations theory focusing on order formation and questions of state sovereignty. Prior to coming to CISAC, she was a predoctoral fellow at the Belfer Center’s International Security Program. She holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago's Committee on International Relations and a B.A. from the University of Southern California.
Virtual Seminar
Not in residence
Andrew Shaver is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Merced. Prior to that, he completed postdoctoral research fellowships at Stanford University's Political Science Department and, separately, at Dartmouth College, where he was also a lecturer. Professor Shaver earned his PhD in Public Affairs (security studies) from Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs and completed his final year of the doctoral program as a predoctoral fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is also the founding director of the Political Violence Lab. His research focuses broadly on contemporary sub-state conflict and appears in the American Political Science Review, American Economic Review, Annual Review of Sociology, and Journal of Politics, amongst other outlets. Professor Shaver previously served in different foreign affairs/national security positions within the U.S. Government, including spending nearly one and a half years in Iraq during the U.S.-led war with the Pentagon.
Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/XFFT74SvaCM
Abstract: Pro-government militias have become a regular dimension of counterinsurgency operations, serving governments in fighting rebels locally. The level of violence employed by these irregulars, which often seems to exceed that of the regular army, but also the fascination with civilian fighters, have motivated students of counterinsurgency to pay more considerable attention to such actors in recent years. Much of this body of work has focused on the battlefield and tactical utilities of pro-government militias. However, these militias have other functions, which most of the studies tend to overlook, and that are socio-political in nature. Most notably, militias serve governments in their endeavors to divide societies, mainly by playing up parochial identities, such as tribalism and sectarianism, and playing up old rivalries. This function of militias has been particularly visible in cases of “defector militias,” namely militias composed of defectors from the rebel constituency to the government ranks. At least in some cases, these socio-political functions of militias have played no less significant role in governments’ decision to employ these forces than short-term battlefield needs. My study of pro-government defector militias uses two case studies: That of Iraq under the Ba‘th regime and its counterinsurgency efforts against Kurdish separatists in the north; and that of the Sudanese governments and their war against Southern rebels during the First Sudanese Civil War. Based on extensive archival, my work seeks to substantiate the argument about the strategic socio-political function of defector militias.
Speaker's Biography:
Dr. Jared Dunnmon is currently the Cofounder and Chief Scientist of a maritime logistics startup. He has previously served as the Technical Director for Artificial Intelligence at the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), Vice President of Future Technologies at battery firm Our Next Energy (ONE), and a member of the early team at Snorkel AI. Prior to this, Jared was an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellow in Computer Science at Stanford University, where he was advised by Prof. Chris Ré at the Stanford AI Lab. Jared holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University (2017), a B.S. from Duke University, and both an MSc in Mathematical Modeling and Scientific Computing and an MBA from Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.
Reid Pauly is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brown University and the Dean’s Assistant Professor of Nuclear Security and Policy at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs. He studies nuclear proliferation and nuclear strategy, coercion, secrecy in international politics, and wargaming. Pauly is the author of The Art of Coercion: Credible Threats and the Assurance Dilemma (Cornell University Press, 2025). His scholarship has also been published in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, the European Journal of International Relations, and Foreign Affairs. Pauly earned his Ph.D. from MIT and has held fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Schmidt Futures International Strategy Forum, and Dartmouth College’s Dickey Center for International Understanding.
The world is experiencing an unprecedented period of geopolitical change and technological disruption. How should we rethink U.S. national security and defense in an era of intensifying great power competition? What principles should guide US policy and presidents in the future?
Drell Lecture Recording: https://youtu.be/y8a307Sttjc
Drell Lecture Transcript: Click here to view
Speaker's Biography: Michèle Flournoy is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of WestExec Advisors, and former Co- Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), where she currently serves on the board.
Michèle served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from February 2009 to February 2012. She was the principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the formulation of national security and defense policy, oversight of military plans and operations, and in National Security Council deliberations.
Michèle is a former member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, the CIA Director’s External Advisory Board, and the Defense Policy Board. She’s currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Strategy Group, is a Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and sits on the Honorary Advisory Committee of The Leadership Council for Women in National Security. Michèle serves on the boards of Booz Allen Hamilton, Amida Technology Solutions, The Mission Continues, Spirit of America, CARE, the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation.
Militaries around the world are racing to build robotic systems with increasing autonomy. What will happen when a Predator drone has as much autonomy as a Google car? Should machines be given the power to make life and death decisions in war? Paul Scharre, a former Army Ranger and Pentagon official, will talk on his new book, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War. Army of None was named one of Bill Gates’ Top 5 Books of 2018. Scharre will explore the technology behind autonomous weapons and the legal, moral, ethical, and strategic dimensions of this evolving technology. Paul Scharre is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
Drell Lecture Recording: https://youtu.be/ldvDjU1C4Qs
Drell Lecture Transcript: NA
Paul's Biography: Paul Scharre is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. He is author of Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War. Mr. Scharre formerly worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) where he played a leading role in establishing policies on emerging weapons technologies. He led the working group that drafted DOD Directive 3000.09, establishing DOD’s policy on autonomy in weapon systems. He is a former infantryman in the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment and completed multiple tours to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Radha's Biography: Radha Iyengar is the head of Product Policy Research at Facebook and an adjunct economist at the RAND Corporation. Previously, she served in senior staff positions at the White House National Security Council, Department of Defense, and Department of Energy. Over the course of her government service, she was instrumental in executive actions on sexual assault and suicide prevention, budget and policy related to nuclear and energy infrastructure security and resilience, and security assistance and counterterrorism efforts in the the Middle East and North Africa. Her research has covered empirical evaluations of policies aimed at reducing violence including criminal violence, sexual assault, terrorist behavior, and sexual and intimate partner violence.
Jeremy's Biography: Jeremy is a Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. His research focuses on civil wars and political violence; ethnic politics and the political economy of development; and democracy, accountability, and political change. He is the author of Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge University Press), which received the William Riker Prize for the best book on political economy. He is also the co-author of Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action (Russell Sage Foundation), which received the Gregory Luebbert Award for the best book in comparative politics. He has published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Journal of Democracy, World Policy Journal, and the SAIS Review.
Stanford University CEMEX Auditorium (655 Knight Way, Stanford, CA 94305)
Abstract: Multilateral conferences are the bread-and-butter of international politics. In such settings, countries may pursue their interests individually, but most of the time they prefer to act through coalitions. Such coalitions are overlapping, creating a network structure. States build and utilize networks to get agenda items pushed through or to block unfavorable ones. While sometimes they are formed on the basis of formal institutions (such as the NAM or the EU), frequently their membership is based on either ad hoc cooperation, or existing informal bodies (such as the NSG, New Agenda Coalition, or Zangger Committee). The attention to such networks is, however, still in its infancy. This paper looks at how state networks within one of the most important recurring diplomatic conferences – the quinquennial NPT Review Conference – develop and transform over time. By doing so, the paper maps the existing networks, and explains their transformation as an instrument of global governance.
Speaker Bio: Michal Onderco is a Junior Faculty Fellow at CISAC (2018-2019), and his research focuses on politics of multilateral nuclear diplomacy. His current project tries to understand how states build coalitions in multilateral diplomacy, and why are some coalitions more successful than others.
Michal is currently on leave from Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he is Assistant Professor of International Relations. Previously, he was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, Fulbright Visiting Researcher at Columbia University in New York, and a short-term Stanton Fellow at Fundação Getúlio Vargas in São Paulo. He received his LLM in Law and Politics of International Security and PhD in Political Science from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His earlier work was published in International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of Political Research, Cooperation & Conflict, The Nonproliferation Review, and European Political Science Review.
Abstract: Materials used in key components of nuclear power reactors, such as the fuel cladding and the pressure vessel, provide shields for the release of highly radioactive isotopes generated in the nuclear fuel to the environment, thus their reliability is an important issue in the safety evaluation. The accident that occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi in 2011 demonstrated that materials that are considered reliable during normal operating conditions will fail in an extreme accident condition. Subsequently, there has been an international effort on developing materials for Accident Tolerant Fuels (ATF). In addition, the development of new generation of nuclear reactors also calls for new materials that may withstand higher temperatures, higher radiation doses and with better performance under severe corrosive conditions. This talk will outline the challenges and status for such developments using recent data from the authors’ own research group as examples. Also, since China is building the most nuclear reactors now and “a nuclear accident anywhere of the world will be an accident of everywhere of the world”, the importance and challenges of collaborating with the Chinese in this area will be discussed.
Bio: Dr. Lumin Wang is a professor of nuclear engineering, and materials science & engineering at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (UM). He came to the US from China in 1982, and received his MS and PhD degrees in Material Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1984 and 1988, respectively. He worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Argonne National Laboratory and a research scientist at the University of New Mexico before joining the faculty of UM in 1997. His research has focused on the study of radiation effects of materials using ion beams and transmission electron microscopy. He served as the director of Electron Microbeam Analysis Laboratory, a campus-wide material characterization center at UM between 2005 and 2010. Dr. Wang has published more than 400 papers in research journals and delivered more than 100 invited talks internationally. He has been a member of the International Committee of the American Nuclear Society and an adjunct chair professor of Xiamen University of China since 2011. He has taken more than 100 UM students to China to observe the construction of nuclear reactors during the last 8 summers.
