Understanding the nature of violent conflict in the world's most dangerous flashpoints may help find ways to peace and stability, according to a Stanford expert.

Once a soldier, now a scholar, Joe Felter knows better than most the intrinsic meaning of war and conflict – he served on the front lines in the U.S. Special Forces in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the Philippines.

Today, the senior research scholar at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperationand research fellow at the Hoover Institution is on a different kind of mission: building knowledge on the subject of politically motivated conflict.

For example, how are the most casualties suffered and under what conditions? Are there patterns to why rebels are surrendering? And how do armed battles affect development and education in local communities?

Answers to these and other questions are found in the Empirical Studies of Conflict project database, which is led by Felter and Jacob Shapiro, his former Stanford political science classmate, now a professor at Princeton University. The effort focuses on insurgency, civil war and other sources of politically motivated violence worldwide. Launched last year, it currently covers the Philippines, Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, Northern Ireland, Mexico, the Israeli-occupied territories, Pakistan and Vietnam. The site includes geospatial and tabular data as well as thousands of documents, archives and interviews.

Since 2009, Felter has collaborated with colleagues at Princeton, the University of California, San Diego, and other institutions in developing the database. Today, they are advising policymakers and military leaders on how best to curb conflict, reduce civilian casualties and promote prosperity. Felter and his colleagues have outlined some of their work in this Foreign Affairs article published in January 2015.

Felter's research on Filipino insurgencies, for instance, has produced significant results. The senior officials there have invited him to brief their military on battlefield trends and counterinsurgency strategy, as Felter and his colleagues have interviewed thousands of combatants as part of the project.

What do they learn about the insurgent mindset? One Islamic militant chief talked tactics with him, then revealed that his greatest tool was his men's belief that Allah was waiting for them on the other side. Others included a Roman Catholic nun who was running guns and money to help the poor and a young college freshman recruited with the promise of $40 a month to support her family.

Pathways to peace

In the case of the Philippines, Felter had access to more than 100,000 individual reports of conflict episodes dating back to 1975 and more than 13,000 interview transcripts from rebels who were captured or had surrendered over the last 30 years. That information was coded in detail and compiled as part of the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project database. The Philippines is home to some of the most protracted Muslim separatist and communist insurgencies in the world, and that is precisely why the government is interested in learning how to thwart it.

L.A. Cicero

Crystal Lee, a Stanford senior and history major, has been Joe Felter’s research assistant since her freshman year.

"For me, it's kind of validating all the thousands and thousands of hours that went into all our coding," said Felter, adding that the information will help the Philippines government find ways to ease the costs and human suffering in the conflicts it faces.

It has been a transformational journey for Felter, who retired in 2012 from the U.S. Army as a colonel following a career as a Special Forces and foreign area officer with missions and deployments across Asia, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010-11, he commanded the International Security and Assistance Force Counter Insurgency Advisory and Assistance Team in Afghanistan.

"I spent a long time in the military deployed to environments where you could appreciate that what you were doing was having an impact," Felter said.

In higher education now, his vantage point is different from what it was on the front lines. Today, both perspective and policy are two of his main goals.

"Since I transitioned to academia, I haven't lost my commitment to trying to help practitioners in the field to better understand conflict – by using data," Felter said.

Stanford senior Crystal Lee, a history major, has been working with Felter as a research assistant since her freshman year, helping him code and compile the datasets.

"It's been really interesting for me to think about the implications that this type of data analysis has on governments and broader policy work," said Lee, who also has analyzed and reconstructed hundreds of interviews with former rebels for Felter's upcoming book.

She said that a romantic notion exists in Silicon Valley that if one uses a huge database, one can wave a magic wand and believe that so-called "big data" will solve everything. "But it's a really messy field and we've had to use best practices to make sense of the increasingly complicated picture of counterinsurgency and terrorism," she said.

Study at the local level

Felter pointed out that to truly comprehend the nature of counterinsurgency in places like the Philippines, Iraq or Afghanistan, one must realize that its roots are in local communities.

"You need to study it at the local level to really understand it," Felter said. "And the Philippines is like a petri dish for studying both insurgency and counterinsurgency because you have multiple, long-running insurgencies, each with distinct characteristics, and with an array of government and military responses to address these threats over time."

The coders are now doubling back over the dataset from 1975 to 2012 to make sure it's accurate and cleaned of any potentially sensitive details before it goes public. The data are the basis for two of Felter's ongoing book projects and dozens of working papers and journal articles.

Roots of research

A Stanford alum, Felter was in the Philippines in 2004 conducting field research as part of his doctoral dissertation when he was first able to gain access to what would become a trove of detailed incident-level data on insurgency and counterinsurgency.

John Tronco

Stanford scholar Joe Felter with members of the First Scout Ranger Regiment, Philippine Army. His research in the Philippines helps inform the Empirical Studies of Conflict database.

After bringing back the data and meeting with his faculty advisers – Stanford political science Professors David Laitin and James Fearon – he realized the extensive incident-level data could be coded in a manner that would make it a tremendous resource for scholars studying civil wars, insurgencies and other forms of politically motivated violence.

"This comprehensive conflict dataset is going to be the holy grail of micro-level conflict data," Felter said. "It has the potential to drive a significant number of publications, reports and analyses, and enable conflict researchers to develop insights and test theories that they would not have been able to do before."

The network is expanding. A dozen young scholars who were supported by funding for the Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC) project as postdoctoral fellows have now been placed in tenure-track positions at universities.

"What's unique about ESOC is that we're trying hard to make it easier for others to study conflict by pulling together everything we can on the conflicts we've studied," said Jake Shapiro, an associate professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University and the project's co-director.

On Iraq, for example, the website provides data on conflict outcomes, politics and demographics, in addition to maps, links to other useful information sources and other types of research on Iraq, he said.

Shapiro says researchers working for the Canadian Armed Forces, the World Bank and the U.S. military have already turned to the database for help. Insurgencies cost human lives and dollars, enough so that the United States and the international community are now focused on rebuilding social and political orders in those troubled countries.

As Felter put it, "We are devoted to learning from all those experiences and to making it easier for others to do so as well, so that we can all live more peacefully and safely in the future."

Research highlights

The Empirical Studies of Conflict project includes the following scholarly advances:

• Research on insurgent compensation paid during the U.S. Iraq conflict shows that pay was not based on risk factors.
• Findings show rebel violence will decrease when projects are secure and valued by community members and when implementation is conditional on the behavior of non-combatants.
• A journal article describes the preference for "certainty" in the relationship between violence and economic risk in wartime Afghanistan.

Media Contact

Beth Duff-Brown, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488,bethduff@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224, cbparker@stanford.edu

The White House announced it will host a Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford on Feb. 13, convening major stakeholders to help shape public and private sector efforts to protect consumers and companies from growing network threats.

The all-day event will include senior leaders from the White House and across federal government; CEOs from a wide range of industries including financial services, technology, retail and communications companies; law enforcement officials; and consumer advocates. Stanford faculty members and students currently researching cybersecurity issues will be involved throughout the summit.

"We are honored to host this White House summit at Stanford University and are excited to play a pivotal role in convening experts from government, industry and academia," said Amy Zegart, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford. "Stanford is very engaged in studying cyber-related issues, and we look forward to enhancing this work by sharing our expertise on the cybersecurity issues that are so critical for the United States, its consumers and its businesses."

Topics at the summit will include "increasing public-private partnerships and cybersecurity information sharing, creating and promoting improved cybersecurity practices and technologies, and improving adoption and use of more secure payment technologies," the White House said in a statement.

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.

"Stanford has tremendous depth in the information security field, which is playing a deepening role in every facet of our lives," said Stanford Law Professor George Triantis, who chairs the Cyber Initiative. "Stanford is conducting extensive research into Internet security across a wide swath of disciplines – computer science, law, engineering, medicine, political science, economics and education. Collaborations with industry and government are vital, and we applaud the White House for drawing us all together here at Stanford."

Cybersecurity is expected to be raised as a key priority by President Obama in his State of the Union address next week. 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.

Details are still being finalized for the summit at Stanford, which will feature keynote speeches, panel discussions, and small group workshops, allowing participants to build on efforts in the public and private sectors to further improve cybersecurity practices.

Stanford units expected to be involved in the summit include the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Stanford Cyber Initiative, the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Hoover Institution and the schools of Engineering, Law, Business, Medicine and Education, among others.

Karl Eikenberry, a William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at FSI, believes the humanities belong at the center of American foreign policy. The retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former ambassador to Afghanistan put cultural ventures, such as the Turquoise Mountain project, at the heart of his diplomacy.

Eikenberry continues his advocacy through his leadership on the congressionally commissioned report "The Heart of the Matter: The Humanities and Social Sciences for a Vibrant, Competitive, and Secure Nation." You can listen to him in conversation with Jerome McDonnell, long-time host of Worldview, the global affairs program on WBEZ public radio in Chicago. The program, recorded on Nov. 8, 2014, was presented in partnership with the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, as part of the 25th Anniversary Chicago Humanities Festival, Journeys.

China is building more nuclear power plants than any other country today, with 21 plants up and running, 28 under construction and another 58 planned for development. The world’s most populous country is anxious to reduce its reliance on air-polluting fossil fuels and focus on alterative sources for a growing middle-class that is consuming more energy.

This rapid expansion in the number of nuclear power plants and associated nuclear fuel-cycle operations, such as fuel fabrication, possible fuel recycling and waste disposal, pose enormous nuclear safety and security challenges. Safety concerns were exacerbated by the 2011, tsunami-induced Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.

Security concerns also stem from the fact that nuclear materials must be safeguarded to stay out of the hands of non-state actors and the facilities protected from potential terrorist attacks. These issues are of great concern to Chinese and Americans, so it stands to reason that China and the United States should want to join forces.

Four CISAC scholars – including veterans of Track II diplomacy, Siegfried Hecker and Chaim Braun – are working behind the scenes trying to get both sides to do just that.

The four traveled in October to China for meetings with Chinese scientists and policy analysts to discuss new approaches to nuclear security at a weeklong conference in Hangzhou and a one-day workshop in Beijing. The conference hosted top international nuclear energy and security experts. It was one in a continuing series featuring CISAC scholars and colleagues from several Chinese nuclear institutes and think tanks.

“We’re certainly back on a very positive slope with the Chinese,” said Hecker, a senior fellow at CISAC who first began visiting his counterparts in China in 1994 as head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. “They are very keen to foster continued cooperation on all things nuclear. It’s important in terms of national security – and it’s of great benefit to both sides.”

The Chinese have been a nuclear weapon state for decades, but are relative latecomers to nuclear electricity. While it only produces some 3 percent of the world’s nuclear energy today, China is on its way to become a world leader in nuclear power production and technology exports by 2020.

“The Chinese are taking a really pragmatic view of nuclear power,” said Jason Reinhardt, a MacArthur Nuclear Security Fellow at CISAC and national security systems analyst at Sandia National Laboratories. He traveled with Hecker and Braun to attend the conference, along with Larry Brandt, a visiting scholar at the center.

“All of us are better off if countries like China and Russia and the U.S. work together on nuclear proliferation and terrorism issues,” Reinhardt said. “So part of that is just going over there and seeing what they want to do and how they want to collaborate.”

Reinhardt is working on his Ph.D. at Stanford in decision and risk analysis with advisor Elisabeth Paté-Cornell, a professor of engineering and CISAC affiliated faculty member. He believes systems analysis can provide insights to improve capabilities to counter nuclear terrorism, facilitate nuclear agreements and reduce the risks of nuclear accidents.

“I think that the way policies are formed and the way technical information is used to inform policies is very different in China, as a matter of history and culture,” Reinhardt said. “So I’m trying to create a compelling story as to why systems analysis is a great way to collaborate between countries.”

Reinhardt said China and the United States have different priorities and approaches to nuclear security, with Beijing placing a high priority on preventing radiological and power plant attacks. The United States has done much since 9/11 to protect its nuclear power plants. Washington’s concerns are focused more on terrorist attacks with nuclear bombs and the potential of radiological, dirty bomb attacks. 

What is systems and risk analysis with regard to nuclear security?

Systems analysis is a structured scientific approach to tough problems, used to inform decision-making, Reinhardt said. One of the best sets of tools available – particularly when there is a lot of uncertainty – is decision and risk analysis.

And nuclear security is rife with uncertainty. What might an attack look like? Who are the attackers? What would the consequences be? How might the attackers change their strategy given our investments in countermeasures?

The questions are many and the connections complex. Risk analysis can borrow from probability theory, game theory and economics to bring some order to this chaos and provide insights that can inform policymakers.

“Systems analysis is using science and engineering techniques to answer policy questions for government,” said Reinhardt, whose work at Sandia includes projects with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security focusing on countering nuclear terrorism, promoting international engagement, and strengthening border security.

“We talk about concepts and taxonomies and ways to organize thinking, then mathematical models to help explore trade-offs – and then there are physical models and we go out in the field and experiment to try and get smarter,” Reinhardt said. “All of these help us understand the implications of proposed policies.”

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Reinhardt gave a presentation in China in which he proposed a joint study to develop a common framework. Moving forward, the study would primarily be academically focused in an effort to inform policymakers – not to set policy.

“I said that building a common framework for analysis and exercising those together would be a really powerful tool for creating collaboration at a very high level,” he said. “The United States and China have cooperated in areas of nuclear security in the past. These new efforts will build on that success and take them to a new cooperative level.”

He suggested they begin to work together to create a model that would:

1. Develop a list of potential attack scenarios, compile a list of potential perpetrators, and estimate probabilities of attack;
2. Compare the efficacies of different types counterterrorism measures to ward off radiological terrorism attacks;
3. Determine which countermeasures can and should be the focus of collaborative technical research;
4. And determine the next steps to develop Chinese and U.S. collaborations on countermeasures.    

The CISAC team will follow up with their Chinese colleagues during a visit in February and work to bring a young Chinese researcher to the center during the first half of the academic year.

“They’re trying to understand what they can implement to reduce internal and regional nuclear risks,” he said. “This requires that you first consider how to understand, assess, and measure these risks. Doing that together, I think we can come up with some answers that are valuable to both countries.”

A Growing Focus on Nuclear Power and Climate Change

The meetings in China came just as Washington and Beijing announced a landmark pact to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions by the world’s two largest consumers of energy. China is increasingly turning to nuclear power to address the adverse consequences of fossil fuels. As China expands its research and dependence on nuclear power – which in turn will cut down on greenhouse gas emissions – CISAC intends to help the Asian powerhouse protect its nuclear energy resources from potential accidents and deliberate attacks.

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Braun, a consulting professor at CISAC and an expert on nuclear proliferation smuggling rings and power plants around the world, also attended the conference and was invited along with Hecker to visit the Qinshan Nuclear Station about 50 miles southwest of Shanghai.

“For me, the visit to Qinshan’s Phase 3 plant was especially exciting, as I worked on the early phases of the construction of Qinshan Phase 3 while at Bechtel,” said Braun, who earlier in his career belonged to the Bechtel Power Corporation’s Nuclear Management Group and led studies on plant performance and maintenance.

Braun said Qinshan Phase 3 is now used as an experimental station to explore reprocessed uranium recycling and experiment with an alternate nuclear fuel, namely thorium.

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, China leads the global clean-energy race, and last year attracted $54.2 billion in investment for alternative energies. That includes exporting safe, reliable nuclear technology to other countries that want to do the same.

“Russia and China are the two most important technological relationships we should be building right now,” Reinhardt said. "Any prospects for the future of arms control and reductions are all predicated on continued relationships with Russia and China.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry also commanded the U.S.-led coalition forces there, as a three-star Army general during the height of the war in the mid-2000s. In this in-depth story by the National Journal, the consulting professor at FSI and William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at CISAC, tells that writer that as he lectures college students today, he recognizes that few of them will ever serve in the U.S. Armed Forces.

With the last troops now leaving Afghanistan – ending the longest war in American history – the former commander has deeply mixed feelings about the state of the all-volunteer military, since the draft of young American men ended in 1973.

He says thousands of young men and women, all of whom had volunteered to fight, lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the American people don’t seem to know much – nor much care about – the wars fought over there, beyond thanking those soldiers for their service when they bump into them returning home from duty at airports and bus stations.

“Somehow, we have to find ways to reconnect the American people and their armed forces,” Eikenberry says, “so that there is a more direct and visceral understanding of the political, social, and economic costs of war.”

Suraya Omar first became intrigued by nuclear technology as a Stanford undergrad and CISAC honors student. Today she’s helping build nuclear engines for the U.S. Navy.

Omar’s fascination began in the popular MS&E course, Technology and National Security, taught by CISAC’s Siegfried Hecker and William J. Perry, the former head of the Los Alamos National Lab and U.S. secretary of state, respectively.

“I loved the class,” said Omar, who graduated with a BS in materials science and engineering in 2012 and a MS&E master’s degree in 2013. “The nuclear-related topics were interesting because it's a powerful technology and interesting from an engineering standpoint – but crazy complex from a safety and security perspective.”

Omar serves in the U.S. Navy as an engineer in the Naval Reactors Headquarters (NR) in Washington, D.C. The NR provides program management and technical expertise to the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program, which builds nuclear propulsion plants for aircraft carriers and submarines. The NR oversees everything from their design to installment and operation.

Building nuclear engines, more than most things, requires stringent attention to minute details. That’s where Omar comes in.

“When the engineer responsible for an item receives a request for approval, they send that to all the sections that have a stake in that decision,” Omar said. “So my workday involves reading a lot of incoming proposals and background material, then asking questions, such as: `Is the recommended material appropriate for the application? Are there corrosion or structural concerns?’ and then discussing with other engineers and making recommendations.”

Omar says this also entails a lot of contact with the national nuclear laboratories to discuss upcoming and ongoing test programs “or get a more detailed technical perspective.”

The Naval Reactors Headquarters is one of the more prestigious components of the U.S. Navy, due to its polished reputation for implementing efficient management practices and maintaining a rigorous technical culture. Congress and presidential administrations often tap NR staffers for consultation and higher office; their skills and training also make NR engineers highly sought after by private enterprise.

Omar credits CISAC with inspiring her to follow a career in nuclear engineering. The prestigious honors program has taken Stanford seniors from more than 21 different majors and programs since its inception in 2000. More than 150 students have graduated from the yearlong program, which launches in Washington, D.C. with a two-week policy brainstorming college, and culminates with a thesis that deals with a major international security issue.

Suraya Omar during the CISAC Honors Graduation ceremony in June 2012.

Omar, who was advised by Hecker, wrote her thesis about “Critical Concerns: Evaluating the safety of North Korea’s new light water reactor.”

“Besides solidifying my interest in nuclear applications, participating in the CISAC thesis program helped me quickly recognize areas I don’t completely understand when doing research, and taught me how to be scrupulous in pursuing those questions thoroughly,” she said.

While she was completing her MS degree at Stanford, she joined the Nuclear Propulsion Officer Candidate Program and interviewed with NR in Washington, D.C. just after graduation. Today she holds the rank of Ensign (O-1), a junior commissioned officer in the United States Navy.

Omar is committed to Naval Reactors Headquarters until 2019 and enjoys being part of the community.

“Since so many big and small decisions come through NR, we deal with a lot of minutiae,” she said. “But it’s always encouraging to remember that our decisions have a direct impact on the fleet, and that it’s the diligent attention to detail that has ensured safe naval nuclear operations since the beginning of the program,” she said.

Nonetheless, she has her eye to the future.

“I may stay on after 2019, but I'm also interested in pursuing something in strategic diplomacy or nuclear security and safety on a more global level,” she said.

Joshua Alvarez was a CISAC Honors Student for the 2011-2012 academic year.

American deterrence, though traditionally centered on the nuclear triad, is becoming ever more integrated and dependent on other technologies in space and the cyber world, Admiral Cecil D. Haney, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, told a Stanford audience.

Haney, appointed to lead USSTRATCOM by President Barack Obama last year, made a daylong visit to Stanford on Tuesday, holding seminars and private meetings with faculty, scholars and students at the Hoover Institution and the Center for International Security and Cooperation. His seminar at CISAC focused on strategic deterrence in the 21st century.

Admiral Haney has made it USSTRATCOM’s goal, in accordance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the 2010 START Treaty, to reduce America’s nuclear weapons stockpile. But he sees a world where maintaining a deterrent is still necessary.

“As we work to continue our nation’s goal of reducing the role of our nation’s nuclear weapons, we find other nations not only modernizing their strategic capabilities but also promoting them,” he said. Russia, Iran, and China attracted particular concern. Haney declined to estimate how much the U.S. can reduce its stockpile without hurting its deterrent posture.

While the nuclear triad is still the foundation of American deterrence, space and cyberspace technology are now fully integrated with nuclear platforms, making cyber and space security indispensable.

“Deterrence is more than just the triad,” said Haney. “We are highly dependent on space capabilities, more so than ever before. Space is fully integrated in our joint military operations as well as in our commercial and civil infrastructure. But space today is contested, congested, and competitive.” 

Haney said there are more than 20,000 softball-sized objects orbiting Earth.

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“Only about 1,000 of those objects are satellites, the rest is debris, increasing threats to our operational satellites as they travel at speeds exceeding 17,000 mph,” he said. The Joint Space Operation Center receives an average of 30 collision alerts per day.

Damage to some of our satellites could have devastating impacts on our economy, communications and infrastructure. Rival nations also pose space security challenges.

According to the U.S. government, China recently tested an anti-satellite missile. This follows a 2007 test when China successfully destroyed one of its satellites, and consequently created a cloud of debris that still poses a threat to international satellites.

“Keeping assured access to the space domain is a full-time job,” Haney said.

Likewise cybersecurity. America’s increasing reliance on cyberspace for both military and civilian purposes has created security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by both state and non-state actors. Haney cited the recent attacks on J.P. Morgan and Sony, Russia and China’s attacks on regional rivals, and non-state terror groups.

“We have benefited enormously from advanced computer capabilities, but it has opened up threat access to our critical infrastructure,“ Haney said. “As we confront terrorist groups we all know that they are not only using cyber for recruiting and messaging – but also to seek weapons of mass destruction.”

In a Q&A session after his talk during the CISAC seminar, a variety of concerns were raised about the USSTRACOM mission, including triad modernization, the ongoing personnel issues that have been in the news, and missile defense.

FSI Senior Fellow Scott Sagan asked about the recent spate of personnel problems at U.S. nuclear silos. Haney said a full review of personnel and procedures, ordered by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, was completed and changes have been enacted.

“We are trying to positively reinforce our workforce and I am getting a lot of positive feedback from operators,” Haney said. “We are having monthly conversations that include operational officers. When I visit sites I don’t just meet with commanders, I have meals with smaller groups of lower-ranking personnel.”

Haney previously served as commander of the Pacific Fleet. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he has personal experience with America’s nuclear deterrent as he served in submarines armed with nuclear ballistic missiles, which, in addition to land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and strategic bombers, make up part of the United States’ nuclear triad.

USSTRATCOM is one of nine unified commands that have control of forces from all four branches of the U.S. military. The command’s well-known responsibility is command and control of America’s nuclear arsenal, a role it inherited from the Cold War-era Strategic Air Command. Since its establishment in 1992, USSTRATCOM has been assigned additional responsibilities, most notably cyberspace and outer space.

You can listen to the audio of his presentation here.

Joshua Alvarez was a CISAC Honors Student during the 2011-2012 academic year.

CISAC's Scott Sagan is the chair of a new project by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, called the New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology and War.  The project convenes an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners (political scientists, philosophers, ethicists, lawyers, physicians, historians, soldiers, and statesmen) in a series of small workshops to explore the intricate linkage between the advancement of military technology and the moral and ethical considerations of the deployment of such capabilities in war and in postwar settings.

The project will produce a multidisciplinary Dædalus issue that will inform the debate surrounding the acceptable use of modern instruments of war and will provide a useful teaching tool for both universities and military service academies.

You can read more about the project on the AAA&S website here.

President Barack Obama has nominated former Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, a visiting scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, as his next secretary of defense.

Carter joined Stanford earlier this academic year as the Payne Distinguished Visitor at FSI and a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Carter, who has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, served in the Clinton and Obama administrations and is well known in academic and technology circles.

 “Ash is rightly regarded as one of our nation’s foremost national security leaders,” Obama said at a ceremony in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

“As a top member of our Pentagon team for the first five years of my presidency, including his two years as deputy secretary, he was at the table in the Situation Room; he was by my side navigating complex security challenges that we were confronting,” Obama said. “I relied on his expertise, and I relied on his judgment.”

Carter, if confirmed as the nation’s 25th defense secretary, will succeed Chuck Hagel, who announced his resignation on Nov. 24.

“I accept the offer because of the deep respect and admiration that Stephanie and I have for the men and women in uniform," Carter said, referring to his wife, Stephanie Carter. “If confirmed for this job, I pledge to you my most candid, strategic advice.”

Carter stepped down from his post at the Pentagon late last year after serving two years as the deputy secretary of defense. As the agency’s second-ranking civilian, he oversaw a $600 billion budget and 2.4 million uniformed and civilian personnel. From 2009 to 2011 Carter was the undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.

As the Defense Department’s chief weapons buyer, he was widely credited with dumping outdated weapons systems and orchestrating a plan to cut $500 billion in defense spending over the next decade. He also helped to push through speedy production of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle – known as the MRAP – which is believed to have saved thousands of American soldiers in Afghanistan.

“President Obama has made an excellent choice in nominating Ash Carter as his next Secretary of Defense,” said FSI Senior Fellow Michael McFaul, who worked with Carter for several years in the Obama administration while McFaul was Washington's ambassador to Moscow. “There is no one in the country more qualified for that position than Ash.”

Carter is the Payne Distinguished Visitor at FSI, responsible for delivering several lectures, including the annual Drell Lecture sponsored by FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

“We congratulate Ash on his critical new assignment,” said FSI Director Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar. “The Institute has benefited enormously from his experience as a scholar and public servant, his accessibility, and his engagement at Stanford. We're grateful for his contributions to our research and teaching on international security and other global challenges.”

Though he has no uniformed military service, Carter is an expert at strategic military affairs and nuclear weapons policy. He earned his bachelor’s degrees in physics and in medieval history from Yale in 1976, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. He was a Rhodes Scholar and received his doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford in 1979.

“Ash Carter is a superb choice,” said CISAC Co-Director Amy Zegart, who is also a senior fellow at Hoover. “His extraordinary talent, energy, and integrity are evident in everything he does. Though we will miss having him at CISAC, we take great comfort in knowing that Stanford's loss is the nation's gain. Ash will serve with honor and distinction.”

Carter joined the Defense Department from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was a professor and chair of the International Relations, Science, and Security faculty.

Carter’s connection with the technology business dates to his previous position as a senior partner at Global Technology Partners, where he advised major investment firms on technology and defense. He is currently working with several companies in Silicon Valley.

He was a physics instructor at Oxford, a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University and M.I.T., and an experimental research associate at Brookhaven and Fermilab National Laboratories. From 1993 to 1996, Carter served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, responsible for policy regarding the former Soviet states, strategic affairs, and nuclear weapons policy.

Carter recently joined the Markle Foundation to help lead the "Economic Future Initiative" to develop groundbreaking ideas for empowering Americans in today’s networked economic landscape.

“Ash Carter is an excellent choice to lead the Department of Defense,” said John Raisian, director of the Hoover Institution. “While we will miss having his scholarly expertise at Hoover, our country is gaining a great mind and true leader.”