Stanford senior Sarah Kunis said she and other CISAC honors students were introducing themselves to some senior White House advisors when President Barack Obama walked in the room.

“I couldn’t stop my jaw from dropping,” said Kunis. It was honor enough to have an hourlong  sit-down with National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Senior Advisor to the President Valerie Jarrett, and Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco.

The CISAC Honors Students spend their senior year working on theses that focus on critical international security issues. They were eager to get the chance to talk to the three powerful Washington advisors.

The students had just been in the audience to hear Obama address a large Stanford and Silicon Valley gathering at the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection on Feb. 13. They were then taken to a conference room in the same auditorium where Obama spoke.

“I was surprised to see Susan Rice’s nameplate, so I thought she was who the invitation referred to, but there was an empty chair with no nameplate, between her and Jarrett,” recalled Patrick Cirenza, another CISAC honors student and a research assistant for retired U.S. Gen. Jim Mattis, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Then Obama walked in the room. The students were stunned – and nervous.

“I remember how sweaty my palms were,” said Cirenza. “I already had a visceral reaction seeing him at the podium so you can only imagine being in the same room with him. His presence fills the room.”

Taylor Grossman, another CISAC honors student whose thesis looks at the incentives and payoffs of warning the public about terrorist threats, said the conversation started off with Obama asking them whether they might consider careers that would protect the digital domain.

“But then we branched out and talked about a lot of different things,” she said. “The situation in Syria, public warning systems, education, the civil-military divide. It was really a whole range of issues.”

Before being joined by Jarrett and Rice, the students spoke with Cheri Caddy, director for cybersecurity outreach and integration in the National Security Council, for about an hour.

“We asked her pretty frank questions about cybersecurity, North Korea … defensive and offensive capabilities, and getting students interested in the field,” said Grossman. “She was quite candid and provided her own opinions.”

Grossman is a research assistant for CISAC Co-Director Amy Zegart, who is also a senior fellow at Hoover and garnered a shout-out from the president during his keynote address, thanking her for helping to convene the summit.

Jarrett talked to the students about sexual assault on campus. It was the second time the honors students had met the Stanford alumna; they first met her during their two-week Honors College in Washington, D.C. before the start of their senior year.

Obama initially directed the conversation, focusing on cybersecurity. He then opened it up for questions on any topic.

CISAC Honors Students take a selfie before President Obama addresses the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection, Feb. 13, 2015.

“I told him I thought we are in the 1950s nuclear stage now with regards to cyber-deterrence,” he said. The president disagreed.

“He said, ‘That’s interesting, but I don’t think it’s the case, since there are gradations with cyber wars whereas nuclear warfare is more black and white.’”

Grossman asked the president about the role of the National Terrorism Advisory System, which replaced the color-coded Homeland Security system, and whether he envisioned a scenario in which the government would have to use it.

“He and Lisa Monaco focused on specific warning systems, which was interesting to me,” she said.

The topic turned to Syria when the president noticed that Kunis had brought along a copy of U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power’s book, “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.”

“I asked why we are not intervening in Syria and why we are not fulfilling our Right to Protect (R2P) obligation,” said Kunis. “President Obama said that the situation there was heartbreaking and that everyone looked at the problem to figure out what we should do to stop the suffering, while evaluating our interests. We cannot intervene without having a plan for the future – and we can’t overthrow governments.”

Cirenza said Obama noted that there are routine calls to intervene in Syria, but few to intervene in other nations, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, where more than 5.4 million people have died from conflict-related causes since a civil war erupted in the central African nation in 1998.

President Obama also shared his view that he doesn't believe the United States would have been locked into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as long as it has if there were a mandatory national draft in place. He asked students what they thought of instituting such a draft.

Almost none thought it a good idea.

Overall, the students said, it was the most incredible day of their Stanford careers“It’s going to be hard to look forward to much else,” said Cirenza, who now has adjustments to make to his honors thesis. “Pretty much downhill from here. Thanks, Obama.” 

Joshua Alvarez is a 2012 Stanford graduate and was a CISAC honors student.

Herb Lin has a long agenda crafted from big ideas.

As CISAC’s inaugural senior research scholar for cyber policy and security, Lin intends to make Stanford the premier hub for academic research and public policy in an effort to protect the world’s computer networks against cyber attacks.

“When I was recruited, Stanford told me to think big. So I’m thinking big,” says Lin, who comes to Stanford from the National Research Council of the National Academies in Washington, D.C., where he was chief scientist at the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board.

“Part of my job is also to find a way to build cyber connections to other parts of the campus – law, medicine, the business school, engineering – so there are a variety of interesting possibilities that I’d like to tackle.”

Even before taking up his new role at Stanford last month, Lin worked with CISAC co-director Amy Zegart to convene a three-day boot camp that brought together Silicon Valley heavyweights and congressional staffers working on critical cyber legislation.

Lin wants to launch a policy journal devoted to research about cybersecurity. He hopes to construct the university’s first undergraduate courses about the foreign policy and economic implications of cybersecurity, as well as the risk analysis of cyberspace. He will represent Stanford's efforts in public commentaries, such as the one he wrote for The Wall Street Journal about how companies can ward off hackers.

And Lin was instrumental in facilitating the Feb. 12-13 White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford University. President Barack Obama addressed the summit, the first time a sitting U.S. president conducted business on the Stanford campus in 40 years.

“Obviously the president has a great bully pulpit here, and is highlighting the importance of cybersecurity on the national policy agenda,” said Lin. “We are particularly delighted that he’s come to Stanford – which is recognition of our role in advancing the cybersecurity interests of the nation.”

Lin, who took up his new role at CISAC in January and is also a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, plans to reach across campus to help the university establish a cohesive strategy for the intersection of cyber policy and international security.

“Cyber touches many facets of life,” said Lin, who has a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. “Some of us are interested in the implications of cyber for international security and foreign relations. Others focus on how protect the nation’s critical infrastructure. Still others are trying to develop tools that can be used to make better decisions about consumer protections. I’d like to bring all of that under one coherent theme.”

Lin also helped organize the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology workshop at Stanford on Feb. 12. The roundtable, which was in coordination with the White House summit, brought together chief technology and security executives to discuss the challenges of implementing consumer protection technologies in real-world conditions.

Lin moderated a panel at that workshop about academic research that has applications for consumer protections against cyber threats. Michael Daniel, special assistant to the president and cybersecurity coordinator at the White House, gave the keynote at the workshop.

Cybersecurity has become a priority for the Obama administration. The White House in October launched the BuySecure initiative, which includes reforms such as securing payment systems and preventing identity theft. Obama also spoke about cybersecurity in his State of the Union address on Jan. 20.

“No foreign nation, no hacker, should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets or invade the privacy of American families, especially our kids,’ Obama said.

Track II Diplomacy

Just as CISAC scholars have for decades been involved in Track II diplomacy in foreign policy, nuclear arms control, and counterinsurgency, Lin would like to see Stanford build on that by facilitating dialogue with other nations about ways to protect and defend their digital networks against cyber attacks and breaches.

“CISAC, as you know, has a long tradition of having nuclear dialogue with China and Russia, even during the coldest periods of the Cold War,” said Lin. “I’d like there to be a Track II diplomacy effort for cyber based here at Stanford, which many Chinese regard as the world’s No. 1 university.  That’s a very attractive platform from which a cyber dialog can be started and sustained.”

CISAC Senior Research Scholar for Cyber Policy and Security, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, says to understand cybersecurity you must first understand the basic components of locks and keys.

Finally, Lin intends to work with academics and scientists at Columbia University and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to establish a boot camp for scholars of international relations and political science who want to work on cyber issues.

Last August, Lin worked with Zegart – who is also a senior fellow and associate director for academic affairs at Hoover – to bring in two dozen senior congressional staffers for a rigorous boot camp that paired them with military, academic and technology experts working at the highest levels of cybersecurity.

The three-day camp drew such names at Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and Facebook’s Chief Information Officer Joe Sullivan. Many of the congressional staffers said it was the first time they’d had the chance to closely interact with the very tech executives for whom they are working on protections and legislation.

Stanford announced in November it had launched the Stanford Cyber Initiative with the support of a Hewlett Foundation grant of $15 million. The initiative will take an interdisciplinary approach to address the challenges raised by cyber technologies.

Michael McFaul, director of CISAC’s parent organization, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, said Stanford is poised to lead in the cyber arena.

“We have a tradition and an ability to do things in an interdisciplinary way,” said McFaul, a professor of political science and a senior fellow at Hoover.

“I think we’re uniquely qualified and uniquely placed to tackle all those here at Stanford, especially because we sit at the heart of Silicon Valley,” said McFaul, who was the U.S. ambassador to Russia for President Obama before returning to Stanford last year. “I expect to see Stanford become the leading institution in the world for addressing cybersecurity issues.”

Readers can learn more about Stanford University’s push into cybersecurity here.

Stanford will welcome President Barack Obama to the campus Friday, Feb. 13, where he will address the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection.  The president will join top-level government officials, corporate CEOs and Stanford faculty members who will gather to discuss pressing issues at the all-day summit organized by the White House.

President Obama is expected to deliver the keynote remarks at the event, which will be held in Memorial Auditorium and in the Cemex Auditorium at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The invitation-only event will not be open to the public, but Stanford students can register for a lottery to obtain tickets.  Stanford faculty, students and staff members currently researching cyber-related issues have been invited to take part in panels and conversations.

The summit will be Webcast live in its entirety here for those unable to attend in person, and more details will be posted at WhiteHouse.gov/CyberSummit.

The event will mark the first time that a sitting U.S. President has made public remarks at Stanford since 1975, when then President Gerald Ford dedicated the Crown Quadrangle at the Stanford Law School. President Herbert Hoover addressed students at Stanford in 1932, and President Theodore Roosevelt spoke at Stanford in 1903.  President Bill Clinton was a visitor to campus during his presidency, but in his private capacity as a Stanford parent to daughter Chelsea Clinton.

The campus community can expect further information about parking and transportation changes as a result of the president's visit as event details are finalized.

President Obama announced the full-day White House cyber summit during a Jan. 13 speech and said "It's going to bring everybody together – industry, tech companies, law enforcement, consumer and privacy advocates, law professors who are specialists in the field, as well as students – to make sure that we work through these issues in a public, transparent fashion."

From increasing cybersecurity information sharing to improving adoption of more secure payment technologies, topics listed by the White House that the summit will address:

• Public-Private Collaboration on Cybersecurity;

• Improving Cybersecurity Practices at Consumer-Oriented Businesses and Organizations;

• Promoting More Secure Payment Technologies;

• Cybersecurity Information Sharing;

• International Law Enforcement Cooperation on Cybersecurity;

• Improving Authentication: Moving Beyond the Password.

The White House summit is also the next step in the President's BuySecure Initiative, which was launched in November 2014, and will help advance national efforts the government has led over the last two years with executive orders on consumer financial protection and critical cybersecurity infrastructure.

Stanford announced a major Cyber Initiative in November that will apply broad campus expertise to the diverse challenges cyber-technologies pose for virtually every facet of our personal, governmental and economic lives. Funded with a $15 million grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Stanford Cyber Initiative draws upon Stanford's experience with multi-disciplinary, university-wide initiatives to focus research on the core themes of trustworthiness, governance and the unexpected impacts of technological change.

While the agenda for the White House summit has not yet been finalized, among the Stanford faculty members and researchers invited to participate are Amy Zegart, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; Stanford Law Professor George Triantis, who chairs the Cyber Initiative; John Mitchell, vice provost for teaching and learning and professor of computer science; and Herb Lin, senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at CISAC and a Hoover research fellow. Stanford President John Hennessy is slated to open the summit and will have the honor of introducing President Obama.

Stanford is preparing for a significant media attendance for the event, and coverage is expected by major television networks and more than 200 journalists from around the world. 

Students interested in registering for the student ticket lottery can consult the Stanford Ticket Office website for further information Monday.  Registration will close Tuesday at 11:59 p.m.

We will be updating this social media story about the summit:

The United States has thrust itself and the world into the era of cyber warfare, Kim Zetter, an award-winning cybersecurity journalist for WIRED magazine, told a Stanford audience. Zetter discussed her book “Countdown to Zero Day,” which details the discovery and unraveling of Stuxnet, the world’s first cyber weapon. 

Stuxnet was the name given to a highly complex digital malware that targeted, and physically damaged, Iran’s clandestine nuclear program from 2007 until its cover was blown in 2010 by computer security researchers. The malware targeted the computer systems controlling physical infrastructure such as centrifuges and gas valves.

Reports following its discovery attributed the creation and deployment of Stuxnet to the United States and Israel. The New York Times quoted anonymous U.S. officials claiming responsibility for Stuxnet. 

Zetter began reporting on the cyber weapon in 2010.

“When the first news came out, I didn’t think much of it,” Zetter told a CISAC seminar on Monday. The title of her book refers to a “zero-day attack," which exploits a previously unknown vulnerability in a computer application or operating system.

“Watching the Symantec researchers unravel Stuxnet, I knew what fascinated me was the process and brilliance of the researchers. The detective story is what pulled me in.” 

Zetter’s book follows computer security researchers from around the world as they discover and disassemble Stuxnet over the course of months, much longer than any time spent on typical malware. The realization that Stuxnet was the world’s first cyber weapon sent shock waves throughout the tech community, yet did not create as much of a stir in mainstream society. 

“It’s funny because a lot of people still don’t know Stuxnet or haven’t even heard of it,” Zetter said. “The recent vandalization of Sony seems to have finally gotten people’s attention. It was not a case of true cyber warefare, but I'm glad that my book came out right before it happened because its perception as a nation-state attack has led to interest in all nation-state attacks, including Stuxnet. The Snowden leaks also put cyber warfare on the map.” 

“Countdown to Zero” also places Stuxnet in political context. The first version of Stuxnet was built and unleashed by the Bush administration in 2007, according to Zetter. Iran accelerated its enrichment process in 2008, leading to fears it would have enough uranium to build a bomb by 2010. President Barack Obama inherited the program; he not only continued it,but accelerated it. Another, more aggressive version of Stuxnet was unleashed in June 2009 and again in 2010. Obama gave the order to unleash Stuxnet while publicly demanding Iran to open itself up to negotiations. 

The effectiveness of the world’s first cyber weapon remains a subject of debate. The most optimistic assessment of Stuxnet is that it delayed and slowed Iran’s uranium development enough to dissuade Israel from unilaterally striking the country, and it afforded time for intelligence and diplomatic efforts. Stuxnet contributed to dissension and frustration among the upper ranks of Iran’s government (the head of Iran’s nuclear program was replaced) and bought time for harsh economic sanctions to impact the Iranian public.

“Stuxnet actually had very little effect on Iran’s nuclear program,” said Zetter. “It was premature, it could have had a much bigger effect had the attackers waited.” Iran still made a net gain in their uranium stockpile while being attacked and they are updating their centrifuges, which would make Stuxnet obsolete.

The more unsettling parts of Zetter’s book catalog security vulnerabilities in America’s public infrastructure, which could easily be victim to a Stuxnet-style attack, and consider the implications of the era Stuxnet heralded. For example, in 2001 hackers attacked California ISO, a nonprofit corporation that manages the transmission system for moving electricity throughout most of California. More recently, Zetter writes, in 2011 a security research team “penetrated the remote-access system for a Southern California water plant and was able to take control of equipment the facility used for adding chemicals to drinking water.”

The Obama administration has publicly announced that shoring up infrastructure security is a top priority. Zetter finds this ironic, because unleashing Stuxnet has opened the U.S. up to attacks using the same malware.

“When you launch a cyber weapon, you don’t just send the weapon to your enemies, you send the intellectual property that created it and the ability to launch the weapon back against you,” writes Zetter. “Marcus Ranum, one of the early innovators of the computer firewall, called Stuxnet ‘a stone thrown by people who live in a glass house.’”

More broadly, Stuxnet heralded an era of cyber warfare that could prove to be more destructive than the nuclear era. For Zetter there is also irony to the use of cyber weapons to combat nuclear weapons. She quotes Kennette Benedict, the executive director of the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,” pointing out, “that the first acknowledged military use of cyber warfare is ostensibly to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. A new age of mass destruction will begin in an effort to close a chapter from the first age of mass destruction.” 

Zetter has similar fears.

“The U.S. lost the moral high ground from where it could tell other countries to not use digital weapons to resolve disputes,” Zetter said. “No one has been killed by a cyber attack, but I think it’s only a matter of time.”

Joshua Alvarez was a 2012 CISAC Honors Student. 

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When we consider national security, we typically think of protecting our borders, securing data and preventing disease and conflict. Winning wars.

The U.S. military is increasingly thinking about the final frontier as the last stand for strategic defense.

“Space is no longer the sanctuary it was 30 years ago; it is becoming increasingly congested, contested and competitive,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, commander of the 14th Air Force and the Joint Functional Component Command for Space, within the U.S. Strategic Command.

“Our ultimate goal is to promote the safe and responsible use of space while we execute our mission of supporting the war-fighter through delivering space capabilities,” said Raymond, who recently invited a dozen scholars from CISAC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies to Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Raymond visited CISAC last year to open a dialogue on policy and strategy among Stanford scholars and the U.S. Strategic Command, one of nine unified commands in the Department of Defense. Raymond’s mandate includes space surveillance and control.

CISAC has had a long partnership with USSTRATCOM headquarters in Omaha, Neb., with fellows visiting officers there each year. Raymond is now looking to Stanford for a policy partnership with his commanders at the Air Force base on the California coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“To continue to be the best in this business we have to constantly assess our current policies and operations while always keeping an eye toward future challenges,” Raymond said. “This is where a relationship with CISAC is invaluable. I saw this as a phenomenal opportunity to provide the fellows insight into the real-world challenges we are facing in the space domain – and to help support, stimulate and develop their academic pursuits.”

CISAC Co-Directors Amy Zegart and David Relman are taking the general up on the proposal. Zegart led the delegation that toured the Joint Space Operations Center and then held senior-level policy and strategy talks with two dozen officers and NASA officials.

The off-the-record talks were lively and frank. The sessions focused on foreign counter-space threats, space policy efforts with China and Russia, the growing problem of space debris and the policy debate over the use of cube satellites.

“We naturally think about national security challenges on land, under water, in the air, and even in cyberspace,” said Zegart, who is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. “But space is playing an increasingly vital role in international security, whether it's the 23,000 pieces of debris the U.S. tracks every day that could hit vital satellites, or deliberate moves by some nations to develop counter-space capabilities. In many ways, space really is the final frontier in the international security landscape.”

Space Debris

The Joint Space Operations Center currently tracks 23,000 objects in orbit; only 1,400 of which are active payloads. Another estimated 500,000 pieces of orbital debris are too small to track. Events such as the Chinese anti-satellite missile test in 2007 and the Iridium-Cosmos collision in 2009 produced thousands of pieces of debris at already congested altitudes.

 

European Space Agency

 

“Debris in space, particularly at lower orbits, travels upwards of 17,000 mph and presents a significant danger to space assets,” Raymond said. “Last year alone, satellites operators around the world executed 121 collision-avoidance maneuvers to avoid hitting debris.”

The participants also discussed the fine balance of militarily protecting space systems against disruption, while allowing the open use of space in a globally connected economy.

U.S. Strategic Commander Admiral Cecil B. Haney spent a day at CISAC and Hoover last year and touched on the importance of space in the nation's 21st century deterrence program. He recently told a House Armed Services subcommittee that China space capabilities are now threatening U.S. strategic satellite systems. He noted Beijing conducted a test of a missile-fire, anti-satellite kill vehicle as recently as last summer.

As more countries develop space capabilities, the problem will grow, the admiral said, according to a Department of Defense news release on Feb. 6.

North Korea has been busy upgrading launch facilities, Haney said, and Iran just successfully launched a satellite into orbit after a string of failures.

Countries also are working to take away America’s strategic advantage in space, Haney said, with China and Russia warranting the most attention.

“Both countries have advanced directed-energy capabilities that could be used to track or blind satellites, disrupting key operations, and both have demonstrated the ability to perform complex maneuvers in space,” he said. Multiple countries already are frequently using military jamming capabilities designed to interfere with satellite communications and global positioning systems.

Rod Ewing, a senior FSI fellow and Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at CISAC, said after the meeting at Vandenberg that it was important to keep dialogue open with other nations about joint space operations and agreements.

“Of particular interest to me was the intersection of space command issues with those of the space programs of other countries,” Ewing said, “particularly the effort to keep track of space debris.”

U.S. Strategic Command currently has more than 50 Space Situational Awareness data-sharing agreements with partner nations, intergovernmental organizations and commercial entities worldwide. The most recent one was signed with the European Space Agency to provide the ESA with more timely and better data about satellite positions and radio-frequency details for planned orbit maneuvers.

Stephen Krasner, a senior fellow at FSI and a professor of international relations, is working on a paper about governance in space for the European Space Policy Institute and traveled with the Stanford group. He said few Americans realize how much the United States contributes to making the benefits of space available to all.

“The work of the space operations center and U.S. Strategic Command – in particular its tracking of all objects in space above 10cm and its commitment to notify all states of potential collisions – is one more example of the exceptional capacity of the American military and the contributions that the United States makes to providing global public goods.”

CubeSats: The democratization of space and proliferation of debris

Another space conundrum is the rapid growth of 3-pound satellites called CubeSats. Cal Poly and Stanford University developed specifications for the cube-shaped satellites to help graduate students perform space experiments and exploration.

There currently are some 160 CubeSats in space; another 2,000 to 2,750 are expected to launch by 2020. They are built to remain in orbit for more than 25 year, before falling back to Earth. Since 2005, the nanosatellites have been involved in more than 360,000 close approaches of less than 5 kilometers with other orbiting objects, according to a study by the University of Southampton.

“Last year alone over 100 cubesats were launched into orbit,” Raymond said. “This trend is stressing our ability to have domain awareness.”

 

 

Climate Satellite Launch

Raymond had invited the Stanford group to observe the launch of a NASA satellite that is collecting data to provide the most accurate high-resolution maps of soil moisture ever obtained. The three-year Soil Moisture Active Passive mission will map soil moisture around the world.

Though the launch was scrubbed the day the Stanford group visited, due to high winds, it went off two days later and the climate satellite is currently in orbit.

NASA is running a smart Twitter campaign @NASASMAP, which follows the work of the first Earth-observing satellite designed to collect data on saturated ground for climate scientists, weather forecasters, agricultural and water resource managers, disease and prevention experts, as well as emergency planners and policymakers.

“High-resolution, space-based measurements of soil moisture will give scientists a new capability to observe and predict natural hazards of extreme weather, climate change, floods and droughts, and will help reduce uncertainties in our understanding of Earth’s water, energy and carbon cycles,” Raymond said.

Matthew Daniels was a predoctoral fellow at CISAC last year and is now an engineer at NASA’s Ames Research Center who studies new mission concept for Earth-orbit satellites. He contributed greatly to the closed-door talks.

“I think it’s really important for engineers outside the U.S. government to talk to military and national security leaders about space projects," said Daniels, who helped create NASA-DARPA partnerships on new space projects.

“National security space projects are facing some big decisions in the years ahead,” Daniels said, such as whether to keep building the large, consolidated satellites or move some capabilities toward smaller distributed systems.

“These are decisions that involve a combination of physics, engineering, military choices and national policy," he said. “So I think it’s really important for groups like CISAC to come and have conversations with the military leadership."

Stanford political science professor Scott Sagan, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has been honored with a prestigious award from the National Academy of Sciences for his pioneering work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation.

“Sagan's work has become an integral part of the nuclear debate in the United States and overseas,” the NAS said in a statement. “He has shown, for example, that a government's decision to pursue nuclear weapons can be prompted not only by national security concerns but also because of domestic political interests, parochial bureaucratic infighting, or concerns about international prestige.”

The William and Katherine Estes Award recognizes research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances the understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war. Sagan and other NAS award winners will be honored in a ceremony on April 26 during the academy’s 152nd annual meeting.

The academy noted that Sagan has developed theories about why different types of political regimes behave differently once they acquire “the bomb.”

“Sagan and his colleagues have also investigated U.S. public attitudes about nuclear weapons and found that few Americans actually believe that there is a taboo against their use in conflicts,” the NAS said. “The possession of nuclear weapons also raises the risk of nuclear weapons accidents, and Sagan has shown that even though there has never been an accidental nuclear war, there have been many more close-calls and near-accidents than was previously known.”

Sagan and co-authors Daryl G. Press and Benjamin A. Valentino, examined the taboos, traditions and non-use of nuclear weapons in this article in the American Political Science Review. He continues to work on an original survey experiment that examines the public attitudes about the “unthinkable” use of the nuclear bomb.

Siegfried Hecker – one of the world’s leading experts on plutonium science and a senior fellow at FSI – said that he has learned greatly from Sagan over the years as colleagues and former co-directors of CISAC. The two represent the center’s foundational spirit of combing the social and hard sciences to build a safer world.  

“The beauty of Scott’s work is that he has combined rigorous political science thinking with a practical knowledge of the limits of humans and organizations to deal with the complexities and dangers of nuclear weapons,” Hecker said. “Scott’s work has convinced me that there is real science in the political science of nuclear weapons. It is appropriate that this honor comes from the National Academy of Sciences.”

Sagan said he is honored to follow in the footsteps of previous recipients of the William and Katherine Estes Award, calling them “some of my intellectual heroes.”

Among those who have won the award are Thomas C. Schelling, Alexander L. George, Robert Jervis, Robert Powell and Graham Allison.

Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, called Sagan's honor a "well-deserved recognition of a scholar who has illuminated the intersection of organizational behavior and nuclear danger."

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science and provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.