It's rare to get a brain download from a former CIA chief, both in the classroom and at the lectern.

But that will occur at CISAC during Feb. 6-11, when Michael Morell will spend time with students, faculty and scholars discussing the changing global landscape for U.S. national security.

Morell, who worked at the CIA for 33 years, served as its deputy director and acting director twice, first in 2011 and then from 2012 to 2013. He was at President George W. Bush’s side when the U.S. was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. And he was serving as the CIA’s deputy director when President Obama gave the order to kill Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Among Morell’s scheduled activities are a CISAC seminar, participation in a two-day simulation for a political science class, and a lecture. 

In his seminar talk, Morell described terrorism as the top threat facing the U.S. He also discussed the potential of conflict with a rising China, an aggressive Russia, and a nuclear North Korea. He defined the role of the CIA as putting "facts and factual analysis" on the table of the president so the best decisions can be made. Effective intelligence, he noted, strives to understand what is happening now, and what will happen in the future.

Class simulation

Amy Zegart, CISAC co-director who co-teaches POLISC 114S, said Morell will be doing a "CISAC world tour -- giving a public FSI Wesson lecture about all issues intelligence-related, meeting with faculty and fellows, guest lecturing in CISAC's signature course, 'International Security in a Changing World,' and leading a country team during our class's South China Sea crisis simulation with 125 undergraduate and graduate students."

For the class simulation, Morell will be joined by Under Secretary of State Nick Burn; they will play world leaders, and about 20 other faculty and postdoc fellows will work with student "country" teams. Zegart said some version of the simulation has been taught at Stanford for 20 years. One year students went "rogue" and hacked into emails in a covert attempt to derail a hypothetical deal between Russia and China.

This year's exercise for POLISC 114S involves a special emergency session of the United Nations Security Council following the collision of a U.S. Navy warship with a Chinese Navy ship. The scenario takes place in the context of esclating real-world tensions in the South China Sea in recent years. China has built artificial islands hosting military bases, and the region is home to the world's busiest commerical shipping corridors. The simulation and its pre-planned scenario changes are designed to be plausible and timely.

Learning from someone with Morell's experience is invalauble for the students, she said. "Having him involved in the class is a priceless opportunity for our students to gain real-world insight into how intelligence works in crises, and to work with one of the nation's most distinguished intelligence leaders."

Terrorism, cybersecurity

In an email, Morell said he plans to talk about the key national security issues facing the new Trump administration, the importance of intelligence in dealing successfully with those issues, and the importance of a close relationship between a president and an intelligence community.

As for the most pressing risks now facing the U.S., Morell said it is “still the threat posed by international terrorists groups, but the threat posed by a variety of cyber actors is number two and growing.”

Morell described CISAC's research and teaching in national security and intelligence as “one of the best in the nation. It is an honor to spend some time there.”

After leaving the CIA in 2013, Morell authored a memoir entitled The Great War of Our Time while working in the private sector. In the book, he offers a candid assessment of CIA's counterterrorism successes and failures of the past 20 years and, noting that the threat of terrorism did not die with the death of Osama bin Laden. He has criticized the Senate Intelligence Committee's 2014 report on the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques, and has spoken in favor of the CIA’s use of drones to kill terrorists.

Morell endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, explaining his view in a New York Times op-ed. “My training as an intelligence officer taught me to call it as I see it,” he wrote in that piece.

On the issue of Russian hacking during the 2016 election, Morell noted in a Times' essay on Jan. 6 that President-elect Trump’s public rejection of the C.I.A. is a danger to the nation. "The key national security issues of the day — terrorism; proliferation; cyberespionage, crime and war; and the challenges to the global order posed by Russia, Iran and China — all require first-rate intelligence for a commander in chief to understand them, settle on a policy and carry it out."

Morell has a bachelor of arts from the University of Akron and a master of arts from Georgetown University, both in economics.

Zegart’s co-instructor in POLISC 114S is Stanford political scientist Stephen Krasner. The class surveys the most pressing global security problems facing the world today. Past guest lecturers include former Secretary of Defense William Perry, former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Gen. Karl Eikenberry, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Study topics include changing types of warfare, ethics and conduct of war, nuclear proliferation, insurgency and terrorism, Russia, and ISIS.

Follow CISAC at @StanfordCISAC and www.facebook.com/StanfordCISAC.

(Click here for the story from the New York Times)

Sidney D. Drell, a physicist who served for nearly half a century as a top adviser to the United States government on military technology and arms control, died on Wednesday at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 90.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Persis Drell.

Dr. Drell combined groundbreaking work in particle physics — he was deputy director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, now the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, for nearly 30 years — with a career in Washington as a technical adviser and defense intellectual.

In 2000, he was given the Enrico Fermi Award for his life’s work, and in 2013, President Obama presented him with the National Medal of Science for his contributions to physics and his service to the government.

Beginning in 1960, as the Cold War heated up, Dr. Drell served on a succession of advisory groups that helped advance the technology of nuclear detection and shape the policy of nuclear deterrence.

As a founding member of the Jason defense advisory group, a panel of defense scientists, he helped develop the McNamara Line, a barrier that was intended to halt the infiltration of soldiers and weapons into South Vietnam from the north through a system that combined electronic surveillance with mines and troop concentrations at strategic points.

Dr. Drell was a strong proponent of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War. “I believed that given the Soviet empire, its stated goals and existence, we had to deter them,” he said in an interview for “The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb” (2012), a book by Philip Taubman, a former reporter and editor for The New York Times.

“We had to be clear,” he added. “These are not weapons we want to use, but they have to know that should they monkey around with us, they had to expect we’re going to use them against them, and at a degree that’s unacceptable to them.”

At the same time, he was a leading advocate of arms control and a critic of major projects such as the MX missile and the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Reagan administration program also known as Star Wars.

Dr. Drell was recruited as a consultant for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency soon after its creation in 1961 and served as a director of the Center for International Security and Arms Control (now the Center for International Security and Cooperation) at Stanford University in the 1980s. In 2006, he and George P. Shultz, the secretary of state under Ronald Reagan, founded a program at the Hoover Institution to propose practical steps to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

“In dealing with terrorists or rogue governments, nuclear deterrence doesn’t mean anything — the value has gone,” he told the website In Menlo in 2012. “Yet the danger of the material getting into evil hands has gone up. So what are existing nuclear arms deterring now? In this era, I argue that nuclear weapons are irrelevant as a deterrence.”

Sidney David Drell was born on Sept. 13, 1926, in Atlantic City, to Jewish immigrants from the Russian empire. His father, Tully, was a pharmacist. His mother, the former Rose White, was a teacher.

He was admitted to Princeton at 16 and earned a degree in physics in 1946. At the University of Illinois, he obtained a master’s degree in physics in 1947 and a doctorate in 1949.

After teaching at Stanford for two years, he joined the physics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He left in 1956 to work under Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

As an academic, Dr. Drell specialized in quantum electrodynamics, which describes the interactions between light and matter, and quantum chromodynamics, which explores subatomic particles like quarks and gluons.

He and Tung-Mow Yan, a research associate at the accelerator center, formulated a key concept in particle physics when they explained what happens when a quark in one particle collides with an antiquark in a second particle, an annihilating confrontation that yields an electron and a positron. The sequence of events became known as the Drell-Yan process.

Dr. Drell was the author of “Electromagnetic Structure of Nucleons” (1961) and, with the theoretical physicist James D. Bjorken, wrote the textbooks “Relativistic Quantum Mechanics” (1964) and “Relativistic Quantum Fields” (1965).

As the head of the theory group at the accelerator center, which gathered leading scientists to discuss nuclear science, he found himself in demand as a technical adviser on defense and security.

In 1960, Dr. Drell was invited to join an advisory group led by Charles H. Townes, the father of the laser. His task was to see whether orbiting infrared sensors could detect a Soviet intercontinental missile launch by picking up a heat reading from the missile’s exhaust plume. Additionally, he had to determine whether the Soviet Union could nullify the sensors by exploding a nuclear device in the atmosphere before the main launch.

After he and his team judged such an explosion impractical, the Defense Department went ahead with plans to develop the Missile Defense Alarm System.

He later served on the Land Panel, which developed a new system for taking high-resolution, wide-range photographs from spy satellites.

During the Vietnam War, Dr. Drell’s service on the President’s Science Advisory Committee under Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, and his role as a shadow adviser to Henry A. Kissinger, damaged his academic reputation as opinion turned against American policy. Increasingly, he found himself fending off attacks in public forums.

“Call it entrapment, commitment or whatever, but I have remained actively involved in technical national security work for the United States,” he told Mr. Taubman.

After the war, he emerged as a leading thinker on arms control and disarmament, which he addressed in numerous books and papers, including “Facing the Threat of Nuclear Weapons” (1983), “The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: A Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment” (1985), “In the Shadow of the Bomb: Physics and Arms Control” (1993) and “The Gravest Danger: Nuclear Weapons” (2003).

In addition to his daughter Persis, who directed Stanford’s accelerator laboratory for five years, he is survived by his wife of 64 years, the former Harriet Stainback; another daughter, Joanna Drell; a son, Daniel, and three grandchildren.

While Russia poses one of the biggest foreign policy challenges facing the U.S., an opportunity for rapprochement may exist with the incoming administration, several Stanford scholars said Wednesday.

The panel event, “Russia Looking Back and Looking Ahead,” featured Russia experts William J. Perry, Michael McFaul, Siegfried Hecker, and David Holloway from Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute. The discussion came at a time when American-Russian relations are arguably at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. On top of this, the Central Intelligence Agency recently concluded that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election. Against this backdrop, the Stanford scholars examined both the past and the future of the U.S.-Russia relationship. (Click here to watch a video of the event.)

Amy Zegart, CISAC co-director, said in opening remarks that there is “no more timely moment to be looking at the state of U.S.-Russia affairs than today.”

Perry, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense and director of the Preventive Defense Project at CISAC, said that he hopes Russia does not fall prey to its worst tendencies, the way the Weimar Republic of Germany succumbed to Nazism. Perry pointed out, however, that some bright spots in Russian cooperation have occurred.

“You could never have predicted that was going to work,” he said, referring to the post-Cold War cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in reducing and safeguarding the latter’s nuclear stockpile. There was also collaboration on solving the Bosnian conflict in the 1990s.

“The greatest disappointment is that we let all this slip away,” said Perry, citing the NATO expansion as one trigger effect. “Our greatest challenge is trying to avoid a war with Russia. We’ve gotten to a point where that is a real possibility.”

The Russians, Perry noted, realize they’re outgunned by the U.S. in conventional weapons, so they have made it known they may use tactical nuclear weapons in the event of a war with America.

Perry urges re-engaging with Russia on nuclear issues. The best approach, he said, may be to separate out some problems that may be too difficult so the focus is on nuclear cooperation. Still, he acknowledges he is "profoundly pessimistic,” but what is at stake is the survival of human civilization, so these two countries must find a way to work together. 

Protests and people

McFaul, the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute, recently penned a column urging a bipartisan examination of Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

McFaul explained the Obama Administration’s efforts to engage with Putin’s Russia. He served in the administration during that period that some refer to as an attempted “reset” of Washington’s relationship with Moscow. Some cooperation definitely occurred – the successful raid on Osama Bin Laden would not have happened without Russia’s collaboration, among other examples, he added. “It was an amazing achievement."

Why did the reset end? “It ended because protesting people got in the way of our policy,” he said, noting mass protests in Russia and in Middle Eastern countries that were allies of Putin’s regime.

“We were not imposing our values on the government when I was in office,” said McFaul about his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Russian from 2012 to 2014.

On Trump, McFaul expressed cautious optimism, but described him as exhibiting “mixed-up ends and means,” and Trump seems to suggest everyone “should just get along.” Putin, on the other hand, has very clear strategic priorities, McFaul said. 

“There’s a history of interference,” he said about Russia’s forays into elections here and abroad.

In addition, many issues have connections – such as the Iran nuclear deal and the Russian relationship – that are so complex that the new administration needs to truly understand the broader context, he said.

Prior nuclear agreements - such as Nunn-Lugar – were viewed in Moscow as American intelligence efforts, McFaul said. This reflects Russia’s wariness to talk about nuke issues.

‘A country coming apart’

Hecker, a senior fellow at CISAC and FSI, recently wrote an article about how the recent U.S. election may have opened a window of opportunity on U.S. Russia nuclear cooperation. The idea for the panel originated from the publication of Hecker’s recent book, Doomed to Cooperate.

Hecker recalled his career as the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where they were faced with helping strengthen the U.S. against Soviet nuclear capabilities, to the years of transition after the Cold War when he led U.S. efforts over a 20-year period to work with Russian scientists on safeguarding loose nukes.

“'They were Russia’s inheritance from Hell,'” he said, quoting a passage in a book by moderator David E. Hoffman, a contributing editor to The Washington Post and Russian expert as well.

The scientists in Russia, however, were heroically motivated to collaborate with American scientists like Hecker in protecting their country from a nuclear catastrophe. “It was like looking in a mirror,” Hecker said about their talents and conscientiousness.

Such scientific collaboration and support from both countries’ governments is a template for future relationships, he said. Unfortunately, that type of cooperation is “being held hostage” by political differences in both countries, said Hecker, who has visited Russia 52 times in 25 years.

“There is no reason we should be enemies,” he said.

Hecker suggests not “demonizing” the Russian people and avoiding imposing American values on those people. Staying out of internal affairs in Russia is critical, too, he said.

‘Not the Soviet Union’

Holloway, a senior fellow at CISAC and FSI, has analyzed the steps taken to shrink the world's nuclear stockpile.

“Russia’s not what people hoped it would become 25 years ago, but still something remains. This is still not the Soviet Union,” said Holloway, pointing out some limited freedoms exist in contemporary Russian society compared to the country’s Stalinist past.

“The failure to integrate Russia into the international system” has created a serious problem, he said. “We’ve had a real downward spiral” since the Obama administration’s attempted reset. “There is a debate about who is to blame,” but that is a complicated debate.

“What is to be done?” asked Holloway. This is the question to ask and answer in order to ascertain ways to improve the relationship. The liberal world order, created by the U.S. in the wake of WWII, may be coming to an end, he said. China and Russia feel they have not been accommodated by such a U.S.-led world order, such as in trade deals and military alliances.

Like Putin, who uses unpredictable tactics in world affairs, Trump, too, seems made from the same template.

“This is not good to have two unpredictable leaders facing each other” with many nuclear weapons at their commands, said Holloway, who recently visited Russia and observed many reactions there about the 2016 election outcome.

Follow CISAC at @StanfordCISAC and www.facebook.com/StanfordCISAC.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Editor’s Note: The following article by CISAC's Siegfried S. Hecker is part of a multi-part symposium commissioned by the National Interest and Carnegie Corporation of New York. They asked some of the world’s leading experts about the future of U.S.-Russia relations under President-elect Donald Trump. You can find all of their answers here.

By Siegfried S. Hecker

Nuclear is different. Nuclear energy can electrify the world or destroy it. Cooperation is essential to maximize its benefits and to limit its dangers. President-elect Trump should move swiftly to reestablish U.S.-Russian nuclear cooperation, which has been held hostage to political differences.

Whereas political relations between the United States and Russia have swung from confrontation during the Cold War, to cooperation in its aftermath, and now back to confrontation, combating nuclear risks has required dialogue and at least some modicum of cooperation. In spite of bitter ideological differences during the Cold War, U.S. and Russian leaders took cooperative measures to avoid nuclear confrontation, reduce nuclear stockpiles and limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The collapse of the Soviet Union transformed the global nuclear threat—from potential annihilation of humankind by the enormous nuclear arsenal in the hands of the Soviet government, to the possibility that the new Russian government may lose control of its tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, over one million kilograms of fissile materials, a huge nuclear infrastructure, and the several hundred thousand nuclear experts and workers it had inherited from the Soviet Union.

The safety and security of Russia’s nuclear assets posed an unprecedented challenge for the world as well as for Russia. An equally unprecedented cooperation between Russia and the United States during the past twenty-five years has greatly enhanced the safety and security of Russia’s nuclear complex and helped avoid a nuclear catastrophe.

Although President Putin has reemphasized the role of nuclear weapons in Russia’s security and has suspended or terminated most nuclear cooperation with the United States, President-elect Trump must work with Russia to jointly develop an acceptable path to avoid nuclear confrontation and combat global nuclear dangers. The first order of business must be to develop mutually agreed conditions to ensure strategic stability and avoid a new nuclear arms race.

Whereas nuclear safety and security in Russia’s nuclear complex has improved greatly, these are never-ending quests that require continued collaboration—sharing best practices and lessons learned, cooperating on training, and assisting other countries. Likewise, cooperation to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism is in the interest of both countries. The Iranian nuclear deal is a recent example of what the two countries can achieve by working hand in hand. North Korea is another case that warrants cooperation because interests converge.

The president-elect should also listen closely to Russia’s expressed desire to expand the benefits of the atom—particularly to collaborate on peaceful nuclear technologies and the safe global expansion of nuclear energy.

The U.S. election may have opened a window of opportunity to return U.S.-Russian relations to cooperation. There is no better place to start than with nuclear cooperation.

Siegfried S. Hecker is the author of Doomed to Cooperate, a two-volume compendium of articles on U.S.-Russian nuclear cooperation. Follow him at @SiegfriedHecker. 

Drones are unlikely to radically change relationships between countries, according to a new study.

And while the U.S. will not always be an exclusive leader in this technology, the possibility exists that drones can actually help keep the peace in some situations, the researchers wrote.

One of the co-authors, political scientist Matt Fuhrmann, is a visiting associate professor at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

In an email interview, Fuhrmann explained that drones are most useful for counterterrorism operations where the risk of them being shot down is very small. However, he noted, most situations in world politics are not like this.

“Current-generation drones are vulnerable to enemy air defenses, in part because they fly relatively slow. It is therefore difficult to employ this technology against another government, making drones mostly unhelpful for military deterrence or coercive diplomacy in an interstate context,” Fuhrmann said.

“Drones, then, are unlikely to dramatically transform interstate relations the way that technologies such as nuclear weapons did,” he added. 

Fuhrmann points out, however, that drone technology is changing quickly. “Technological advancements – for example, the development of swarming platforms, where a large number of drones fly together in formation – could make drones more transformative in the future.”

U.S. drone monopoly fading

Since November 2001, when the U.S. launched its first drone strike in Afghanistan, its drone strikes have grown in both geographic scope and number, extending to Pakistan in 2004 and Somalia in 2007, and increasing from about 50 total counterterrorism strikes from 2001 to 2008 to about 450 from 2009 to 2014.

Though the U.S. is the most prolific user of combat drones, other countries have used them as well – Iraq, Israel, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. Almost a dozen countries, including China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, reportedly now possess armed drones, and many others – such as India – are racing to acquire them.

“To whatever extent a U.S. monopoly on cutting-edge drones existed, it is over,” wrote Fuhrmann and the others. Drones are a high priority in military investment for many states now and into the near future.

Few drones, Fuhrmann said, are as capable as the U.S. Reaper, which can remain in the air for many hours, has an operational range of more than 1,000 miles, and is linked to an advanced communications network.

“Countries such as Iraq are unlikely to successfully field Reaper-like drones in the near future, but that could change over time,” he said.

How should the U.S. respond to rising drone interest around the world? Fuhrmann said that an increase in drones is inevitable, but that does not mean that the technology will severely undermine American strategic interests.

“The global spread of militarily useful UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones) could affect U.S. national security, but in more limited ways than the alarmist view suggests – namely, by lowering barriers to the use of force domestically or in uncontested airspace,” they added.

While technological advancements will likely make some drones more deadly for combat use in regions of conflict, they will also enable drone usage in a much broader array of missions than counterterrorism strikes.

Domestic usage likely

Apart from interstate relationships, one concern is that states might internally use drones for domestic political reasons, Fuhrmann said.

“Drones give a leader more centralized control over the use of military force, making the technology attractive to leaders who distrust the military. Autocratic leaders, therefore, are drawn to drones because they may be useful for domestic control or, potentially, repression,” he said.

Fuhrman said that many of the states pursuing armed drones today are dictators.

“While we often assume that democracies crave drone technology, since it eliminates the possibility that the pilot would be killed if the aircraft is shot down, we should not forget that autocrats have their own unique reasons to seek this technology,” he said.

Norms and nations

The use of armed drones also raises important ethical dilemmas. What will become the “norms” or standards of behavior by states when using drones?

The U.S. can help shape such global norms for drone use if it opens up its own processes, Fuhrmann said.

“More transparency by the United States concerning its decision-making process for drone strikes could give it more credibility in seeking to convince other countries to use their newly acquired drone capabilities in ways that comply with international law,” he and his co-authors stated.

Right now, the norms regarding drones are murky, Fuhrmann said.

“Are drones just like any other technology, like tanks, that is part of a modern military? When is it acceptable to carry out drone strikes? What happens when a drone is shot down? We do not yet have clear answers,” he said

In regard to technologies such as naval warships, nuclear weapons and chemical weapons, the international community has sought to clarify norms through international agreements about what is “appropriate,” Fuhrmann said.

“Doing something along these lines for drones through a treaty or an informal agreement might help identify clearer standards, and the United States could play a key role towards that end,” he said.

Keeping the peace

Fuhrmann said that while people think of drones as “destabilizing,” they may offer stabilizing benefits as well. Drones equipped with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities can provide states with valuable information about an adversary in real-time.

“These drones could therefore reduce uncertainty along contested borders or in other areas where they are less vulnerable to shoot-down,” he said. “Because uncertainty about an adversary’s intentions or military maneuvers can be a source of conflict, drones may promote peace to some degree.”

The title of the study was “Separating Fact from Fiction in the Debate over Drone Proliferation.” It was published in the journal International Security. Other co-authors include Michael C. Horowitz from the University of Pennsylvania and Sarah Kreps from Cornell University.

Follow CISAC on Twitter at @StanfordCISAC and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/StanfordCISAC.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Matthew Fuhrmann, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 723-0337, mcfuhrmann@gmail.com

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Stanford cybersecurity expert Herb Lin said America may be at a “tipping point” regarding the rewards and risks of the Internet, unless new cybersecurity policies are adopted by the incoming Trump Administration. He speaks Dec. 7 at Stanford on the issue.

The costs of using the Internet and computational devices due to inadequate security may soon outweigh the benefits unless dramatic cybersecurity measures are taken, a Stanford scholar said.

Herbert Lin, a senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), serves on the President’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, which on Dec. 2 issued strong recommendations to upgrade the nation’s cybersecurity systems.

Lin will speak Dec. 7 at Stanford about the report – his talk will be featured live on video. The 100-page report aims to inform the incoming Trump Administration about how to approach escalating cybersecurity dangers. The effort follows significant hacking of U.S. government systems in and accusations by the White House that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election.

The commission suggested both short- and long-term measures, such as fixing problems from the weakly protected ‘internet-of-things’; creating an assistant to the president for cybersecurity; and re-organizing responsibility for the cybersecurity of federal agencies, among others.

The report also urged getting rid of traditional passwords, which could help reduce identity theft. It also advised that the new administration train 100,000 new cybersecurity workers by 2020.

A research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Lin was recently interviewed by CISAC about the report:

What is the reason to move the burden of cybersecurity away from the user to higher levels of companies, government?

Taking the necessary and appropriate measures for cybersecurity is, for practical purposes, too complex for average end-users. A successful effort to push cybersecurity measures farther from the user will result in better security because security decisions will be made by those who are security experts rather than users that are unfamiliar with security.

Why is the White House the best entity to lead cybersecurity efforts?

Enhancing national cybersecurity requires a whole-of-government effort, indeed a whole-of-society effort.  The task is making a meaningful dent in a problem that is so large. Only with high-level leadership does that effort have any chance of success.

Will the distrust of the U.S. government by the technology community in general hinder this approach to cybersecurity? How can the tech world's trust in the government on cybersecurity issues be improved?

Distrust harms both sides – the U.S. government and the technology community.  The U.S. government loses the ability to enlist the cooperation of the private sector, which has many capabilities that it does not have, capabilities that would be useful in fulfilling its responsibilities to the American people. The tech sector invites harsh legislation and suspicion that work against its interests. At the same time, the distrust is not entirely unfounded, as both sides have indulged in apocalyptic rhetoric that has raised the temperature of the debate without much productive result.  But what I’m saying here represents a personal perspective, and isn’t part of the commission’s report.

What happens if these recommendations are not enacted or adopted? What happens to the typical American computer user? In the long run, if we do little or nothing, how will this affect the Internet – as an economic driver or engine for the economy, place where people connect?

President Obama created the commission because he believed that cybersecurity was a high national priority, a sentiment with which both presidential candidates agreed. If the nation does too little to improve its cybersecurity posture, the gap between the security we have and the security we need will only grow because the cybersecurity threat we face is growing. And if that is the case, the costs of using the Internet and computational devices due to inadequate security will outweigh the benefits – indeed, there is evidence that we are near such a tipping point today. Even now, a large fraction of Americans are unwilling to use the Internet for certain purposes due to security concerns – and I can tell you that I personally refrain from conducting certain transactions online for just such reasons.

Any other issues?

One of the most surprising aspects of the report was the process that produced it.  The chair of the commission is known to be a Democrat. The vice-chair is known to be a Republican.  Other than that, you would be hard-pressed to identify the political affiliations of anyone else on the commission on the basis of what they said. So it was thoroughly a nonpartisan effort that produced the report.

Herb Lin will speak at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 7 in the NEC Auditorium, Gates Computer Science Building Room B3. More information and live video information is available at http://ee380.stanford.edu. The title of the talk is “Charting a Cybersecurity Path for the Next Administration: Report of the President's Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.” In February, President Obama announced a Cybersecurity National Action Plan to take a series of short-term and long-term actions to improve our nation’s cybersecurity posture.  A central feature of that plan is the non-partisan Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.

Follow CISAC on Twitter at @StanfordCISAC and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/StanfordCISAC.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Herbert Lin, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 497-8600, herbert.s.lin@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

In this new article, Megan Palmer, a senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, talks about the different ways that the FBI is collaborating with the biotech community in order to be prepared to respond to an emerging biological threat. One of them is by reaching out to student bioengineers at programs like the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition. The purpose of that event is to demonstrate how synthetic biology can be used to address pressing global issues.

As the article states, whether it’s an accidental outbreak or a biological attack, the FBI seeks to create a culture of trust and transparency with the biotech community. Palmer discussed this topic recently at the Biofabricate conference for synthetic biology and design in New York City.

As Palmer noted, biological attacks are a historical reality. In 1984, cult members poisoned patrons of 10 salad bars in Oregon with salmonella, sickening more than 750 people. And in 2001 shortly after the 9/11 attacks, anthrax spores that were mailed to newsrooms and government offices killed five people. While other incidents may have simply failed, it seems prudent to prepare for future attacks that could be even more deadlier.

Enter the FBI's foreay into the biotech community. Collaboartion between the public and private sectors is increasing in this area. As Palmer said, examples exist of iGEM students acting as "white hat biohackers" to help biotech companies detect weaknesses in their systems that  all in collaboration with the FBI, Palmer says. 

“There’s the overall sense that the government has acknowledged that it is not necessarily the center of influence in technological development,” Palmer told the publication. “We’re going to start seeing many more examples of partnerships between the government and the private sector where you wouldn't have necessarily expected them before. People should be willing to give them a chance.” 

To Palmer, the key to the collaboration is open communication. She reports progress with the FBI and biotech community on this front. Palmer herself asks the FBI questions about its involvement and interest in biotech dangers. So far, they have “been willing to have more of those conversations,” she said. The true test will come when the relationship is finally tested by what Palmer describes as a “triggering event,” either a situation where there is reason to believe a biotech has occurred or one in which the FBI is prying a bit too much into the lives of biologists. Palmer said that if the relationship doesn’t withstand this type of challenge, the trust between the FBI and the community would weaken, and communication would break down.

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Reality stands in the way of a quickly transformed U.S.-Russia relationship, Stanford historian Norman Naimark said. Naimark, an expert in Russian history and faculty affiliate at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), anticipates that "strategic constraints" will set in for the incoming Trump administration as it begins to understand some of the fundamental differences between Moscow and Washington.

The relationship between the two longtime global rivals may not change as fast or dramatically as some suggest, Naimark said. In fact, “deals” may be harder to make with the Putin regime in Russian than Trump anticipates.

CISAC recently interviewed Naimark on the subject of future U.S.-Russia ties:

How might the election of Donald Trump change the U.S.-Russia relationship?

There are many important things we do not yet know about the future Trump administration. How will his foreign policy team reflect (or not) the views of the Republican establishment, including the vice president, on issues towards Russia? How wedded is Trump to his campaign rhetoric and promises about Russia? How influential will the new president be in the making of foreign policy, when his interests and self-proclaimed competence clearly relate to domestic issues? How ready will the Trump administration be to reverse long-standing U.S. treaty and alliance obligations, both formal and informal?

Answers to those questions would help us assess the range of possibilities for any changes in Russian-American relations, which are presently worse than at any time since the beginning of the 1980s, the period of what some call the “second Cold War.” If Hillary Clinton had won the election, one could have been fairly certain that relations would have continued at their present parlous, if steady state, with both sides taking actions to undermine the other, while criticizing the other’s motives. Some commentators have suggested that the Trump victory opens a door for concessions on the part of the Americans – on Crimea, on Ukraine, on Syria, on sanctions, on NATO troops in the eastern member nations – that might encourage Putin to respond accordingly, improving the tone and content of Russian-American relations.

But I would caution against thinking that this will come fast, if it comes at all, or that the impact will be groundbreaking or of significant duration. There are some fundamental differences between Moscow and Washington that reflect deep and abiding issues. For example, both look at Russia’s “sphere of influence” from opposite perspectives: while Putin seeks to expand and consolidate it, the U.S. follows a revived containment policy. “Deals” may be harder to make with Russia under these circumstances than Trump anticipates.

If U.S. foreign policy establishment generally holds skeptical views of the Putin regime, how difficult will it be for Trump to strike off on his own in reshaping the relationship?

The history of American foreign policy since the Second World War has demonstrated that the president and his immediate advisors can have enormous influence on the flow of events. Again, nothing happens at once, independent of a cumbersome process of formulating and executing policy changes. But profound shifts do happen and they can alter the trajectory of American foreign policy. Still it is important to remember that Putin’s determined anti-American stance has Russian domestic political determinants that will impede change, even if President-elect Trump initiates steps to improve the character of the relationship.

What are the biggest flashpoints or challenges between Russia and the U.S.?

Ukraine, Syria, and the lifting of sanctions are probably at the top of the list, though the recent slippage of the arms control regime is a matter of great concern. The problems associated with Ukraine – both the issue of the illegal annexation of Crimea and the Russian destabilization of and military interference in Donbass – have been “handed off” by Washington to the Europeans in general and Germany, with Angela Merkel in the lead, in specific.

The Minsk II sanctions are a European initiative to get the Russians to conform to international norms on a Ukrainian settlement. Trump could hardly make a deal with Putin about Ukraine without serious European input.

Syria is different, though the constraints here also seem extremely difficult to overcome, given the U.S.’ principled opposition to strengthening Assad in power. Secretary of State John Kerry’s dogged attempts to come to an agreement with the Russians about Syria involved, as best we know, a number of important American concessions. Though both the United States and the Russian Federation are deeply hostile to ISIS, and it makes sense for both to join forces to attack the terrorist entity, the maintenance of the Assad regime would be very hard for the U.S. foreign policy and military establishment to accept.

Why does Putin seemingly think Trump is better for Russia than Hillary Clinton would have been?

Some of it is personal: Trump and Putin have said positive things about one another, though these exchanges were based in part on a mistranslation of a supposed compliment to Trump by Putin. Trump has been more conciliatory about dictators and has explicitly promised better relations with Russia. But the issues go deeper. Trump has indicated that he would reduce the United States’ support of NATO and reevaluate U.S. support of Ukrainian interests, both of which would weaken the American position in Europe, one of Moscow’s major foreign policy goals.

The Russian president also welcomes Trump’s readiness to recalibrate American involvement in Syria. Meanwhile, Clinton was seen as having tried to undermine Putin’s election to the Russian presidency in 2012 and as supporting an aggressive democratization program in Russia. She is the personification for him of the liberal, internationalist, and interventionist wing of the Washington foreign policy establishment that advocates, in his view, the Americanization of the international order.

With this said, Putin is surely nervous about Trump’s inconsistencies and volatility, which could exacerbate rather than calm Russian-American tensions.

What does history tell us about the U.S.-Russia relationship and what may happen in the future?

Since the beginning of the Cold War (some might argue since the Russian Revolution, almost a century ago), the relationship between the U.S. and Russia has been fraught with deep tensions and mutual hostility. The Cold War was a very dangerous period of relations, when proxy wars, dramatic international crises, and the potential use of nuclear weapons dominated the relationship. One of the major disappointments of the post-Cold War period is the unsuccessful integration of the Russian Federation in the international system as a force for peace and stability. Putin is an important part of the story. But there are also deep historical and structural reasons for this problem and they will not be solved by the waving of an American president’s magic wand. Though both countries are changing, we may have to wait a good long while for the Putin-era enmity to disappear.

Naimark is also the Donald Andrews Whittier Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies in the history department, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and an affiliated faculty fellow at the Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He recently published a new book, Genocide: A World History.

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MEDIA CONTACTS

Norman Naimark, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 723-2674, naimark@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Amy Zegart, co-director of CISAC, wrote the following op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle:

Donald Trump’s stunning win has made many wonder: Just how dangerous could a Trump foreign policy be? There are plenty of reasons to be afraid, very afraid.

Marjorie Kiewit, a former CISAC researcher and longtime supporter, passed away at her home in Boston on Nov. 12, 2016.  She was 95.

Kiewit was a researcher for the Center for International Security and Cooperation under John W. Lewis, CISAC co-founder and the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics. She was also a generous and enthusiastic supporter of CISAC’s mission to make the world safer through knowledge and education.

Lewis said, “Marjorie worked throughout CISAC in its formative years and supported with wonderful gifts the entire center. In the last 10 years or so, she primarily supported my project (the Project on Peace and Cooperation in the Asian-Pacific Region), but she embraced the overall center's commitment to peace.”

For example, Lewis and his co-author acknowledge the support of Kiewit that made this 2016 research paper on China’s interests in the South China Sea possible. Always maintaining such connections after her two-plus decades at Stanford, Kiewit worked on campus at the Northeast Asia-United States Forum and then CISAC. She also served as a member of Stanford’s Board of Visitors for the Institute of International Studies. 

One Stanford colleague said Kiewit possessed an “intuitively correct understanding of the world events and world leaders.”  Another described her as “engaged, intelligent and relevant to how we faced extraordinary challenges and opportunities with the Chinese, North Koreans and Russians. She brought light and joy into all of our work."

Roots and results

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Kiewit maintained her association with Stanford for over three decades until her death, during which time she traveled with high-level delegations to China, Russia, and North and South Korea and cultivated close relationships with Chinese educators and senior policy makers to share ideas and proposals in the field of educational and foreign policy. She was also the founder and served as longtime chairperson of the Helios Foundation, which supports charitable institutions throughout the world and promotes philanthropy for future generations. She spent the last 20 years living in Boston to be near family, which was always a priority in her life, her family stated.

Kiewit was preceded in death by her two husbands; parents; two brothers, John and William Harkins; and her daughter, Linda Jacob.  She is survived by her sister, Barbara Belle of Belleville, Wis.; her daughters Barbara (Jack) Aalfs of Sioux City, Iowa and Nancy (Tom) McLoughlin of Mystic, Conn.; her son John (Lynne) Buchanan of Appleton, Wis.; her son-in-law Jonah Jacob of Boston; and seven grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, and three step-grandchildren. 

A celebration of Kiewit's life will be held next summer in Appleton, Wis.  Donations in her memory may be made to the Marjorie Buchanan Kiewit Scholarship Fund at Lawrence University. The address is:

Development Office, Lawrence University

711 E. Boldt Way

Appleton, WI 54911