Stanford University

Drell Lecture 2022: The President's Nuclear Button

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LECTURE RECORDING

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Currently, the president alone can authorize a nuclear strike while only Congress can declare war. Is it time to update our Cold War-era nuclear use policies?

Congressman Ted W. Lieu represents California’s 33rd Congressional District. In his fourth term in Congress, he sits on the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees. A former active-duty officer in the U.S. Air Force, Congressman Lieu established himself as a leader on the environment; cybersecurity; civil liberties; government ethics and veterans. Four times, he has introduced legislation to prevent the president from launching a nuclear first strike without congressional approval.

Bechtel Conference Center
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

Congressman Ted Lieu
Seminars
Drell Lecture

Russia’s ambitions, Ukraine’s resistance, and the West’s response

Authors
Steven Pifer
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Steven Pifer: President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, his government, but also the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, continue to defiantly work in Kyiv, and they’re showing the determination that you’ve seen over the last two and a half weeks by the Ukrainians to resist the Russian attack. 

Read the rest at Brookings

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On March 15, as the Russia-Ukraine war neared the three-week mark, Brookings experts held a discussion on developments in the conflict so far and what might be coming.

Are We Dumb about Intelligence?

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Amy Zegart
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Q&As
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Amy Zegart is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a professor of political science at Stanford University, and the author of a new book, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence. In this frank conversation, Zegart grades American intelligence-gathering operations, recent and historical, and compares them to their counterparts in China and Russia. Professor Zegart also discusses Silicon Valley’s crucial role in these operations and how they often conflict with the politics of the people running tech companies. Finally, Zegart discusses the crucial ability of the intelligence community to recruit the next generation of spies and analysts, some of whom may be her own students.

Watch with Uncommon Knowledge 

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Dr. Amy Zegart
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Amy Zegart on the Capabilities of American Intel Gathering

Long in the Making: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine

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Rose Gottemoeller
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Q&As
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A week before Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, unleashing the biggest military operation in Europe since World War II, three experts on Russia—Rose Gottemoeller, chief U.S. negotiator for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and former NATO deputy secretary-general; Olga Oliker, program director for Europe and Central Asia for the International Crisis Group; and Thomas Graham, distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former U.S. presidential adviser on Russia—were interviewed on Zoom and email by Carol Giacomo, chief editor of Arms Control Today, about the origins of the crisis and what an eventual solution might involve. Their comments, made as U.S. and European leaders were still working for a diplomatic solution, have been edited for clarity and length.

Read the rest at Arms Control Today

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Rose Gottemoeller
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A week before Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, unleashing the biggest military operation in Europe since World War II, three experts on Russia were interviewed on Zoom and email by Carol Giacomo, chief editor of Arms Control Today, about the origins of the crisis and what an eventual solution might involve.

International Security and Cooperation on the 60th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Authors
Rose Gottemoeller
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Q&As
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Rose Gottemoeller, the Steven C. Házy lecturer at the Center for International Security and Cooperation in Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and research fellow at the Hoover Institution, leads a conversation on international security and cooperation.

Watch with the Council on Foreign Relations

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The Cuban Missile Crisis dealt not only the United States and the Soviet Union, but other countries around the world, what I call a short, sharp shock. We recognized how devastating would be the effect of nuclear war, and we decided we really did need to talk together about how we were going to control and limit those risks.

How Credible Nuclear Security Guarantees Backfire

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For spring quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

                                                                                           

About the Event: Existing literature posits that the main challenge for nuclear security guarantees lies in making the promise of protection sufficiently credible. If allies do not believe their guarantor will actually come to their aid, they may seek alternate means of protection, including by investing in nuclear infrastructure. Credible security guarantees, on the other hand, are thought to reassure allies. In contrast to this approach, Dr. Sukin argues that credible nuclear guarantees can backfire. These guarantees can cause clients to fear that their guarantors will drag them into a precipitous nuclear conflict. Fears of nuclear escalation by their guarantor can drive clients to distance themselves from their alliance or seek stronger independent nuclear capabilities. Using survey experiments and case studies of U.S. alliances in East Asia and Europe, this project explores the risks of credible U.S. nuclear security guarantees.


About the Speaker: Dr. Lauren Sukin is currently a MacArthur Nuclear Security Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. In September 2022, she will join the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science as an Assistant Professor of International Relations. Dr. Sukin holds a Ph.D. (2021) and M.A. (2020) from the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. She also holds A.B.s from the Departments of Political Science and Literary Arts at Brown University (2016). Dr. Sukin’s research examines issues of international security, focusing on the role of nuclear weapons in international politics.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person. 

Lauren Sukin
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

Researcher Perceptions of Current and Future AI

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For spring quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

About the Event: Artificial intelligence (AI) has enormous potential for both positive and negative impact, especially as we move from current-day systems towards more capable systems in the future. However, as a society we lack an understanding of how the developers of this technology, AI researchers, perceive the benefits and risks of their work, both in today's systems and impacts in the future. In this talk, Gates will present results from over 70 interviews with AI researchers, asking questions ranging from "What do you think are the largest benefits and risks of AI?" to "If you could change your colleagues’ perception of AI, what attitudes/beliefs would you want them to have?"


About the Speaker: Dr. Vael Gates is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. They study perceptions of AI safety, and are currently interviewing technical AI researchers to understand their views about risks from AI. They previously completed their PhD at UC Berkeley, formalizing and testing computational models of social collaboration.

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Vael Gates
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

Recent Advances in the Development of an Alternative Global Rare Earth Supply Chain

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For spring quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

SEMINAR RECORDING

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About the Event: With China's rapid rise and the reemergence of Russia as a major power, the global stage is set for multipolar competition for critical metals that support a variety of advanced technologies and provide the foundation for energy transitions, communication, and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. While the sources of rare earth elements (REEs) are slowly expanding, the REEs are finding accelerated demand in more applications, such as in electric vehicle batteries and permanent magnet motors. Consequently, many national initiatives are designed to respond to growing demand by discovering new ore deposits, finding substitute elements for specific applications, developing separation and extraction technologies, or recycling end-of-life (EOL) products. Despite these national initiatives, the current global REE supply chain is still highly imbalanced and tightly controlled by just a few countries. Such an imbalance of the critical metals supply chain poses a significant challenge to the energy transition and national security of many countries worldwide. With an in-depth analysis, this research offers insights into the current progress in developing an alternative REE supply chain and the possibilities of future strategic, technological, and economic international engagements.
 

About the Speaker: Dr. Gorakh Pawar is a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Dr. Pawar holds a doctorate in Mining Engineering and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Pawar is researching the global imbalanced critical material supply chain that poses a significant challenge to the energy transition and national security of many countries worldwide. Dr. Pawar is also a research scientist at the Idaho National Laboratory of the United States Department of Energy and a recipient of the Early Career Exceptional Achievement Award of Idaho National Laboratory. Dr. Pawar has spearheaded many projects resolving the fundamental scientific bottlenecks in advancing clean energy technologies.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person. 

Gorakh Pawar
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

The Weapons the West Used Against Putin

Authors
Amy Zegart
News Type
Commentary
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine looks like a horrific Cold War throwback. Once again, a strongman rules in Moscow, Russian tanks are rolling across borders, and a democratic nation is fighting for its survival, street by street, day by day, armed with little more than Molotov cocktails and a fierce belief in freedom. For all the talk of emerging technologies and new threats, the violence in Ukraine feels raw and low-tech, and the world suddenly looks old again.

And yet, amid all these echoes of the past, Russia’s invasion has ushered in one development that is altogether new and could dramatically change geopolitics in the future: the real-time public disclosure of highly classified intelligence.

Read the rest at The Atlantic

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Never before has the United States government revealed so much, in such granular detail, so fast and so relentlessly about an adversary, Amy Zegart writes. What are the implications of this new strategy?

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