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About the Event: Is there a place for illegal or nonconsensual evidence in security studies research, such as leaked classified documents? What is at stake, and who bears the responsibility, for determining source legitimacy? Although massive unauthorized disclosures by WikiLeaks and its kindred may excite qualitative scholars with policy revelations, and quantitative researchers with big-data suitability, they are fraught with methodological and ethical dilemmas that the discipline has yet to resolve. I argue that the hazards from this research—from national security harms, to eroding human-subjects protections, to scholarly complicity with rogue actors—generally outweigh the benefits, and that exceptions and justifications need to be articulated much more explicitly and forcefully than is customary in existing work. This paper demonstrates that the use of apparently leaked documents has proliferated over the past decade, and appeared in every leading journal, without being explicitly disclosed and defended in research design and citation practices. The paper critiques incomplete and inconsistent guidance from leading political science and international relations journals and associations; considers how other disciplines from journalism to statistics to paleontology address the origins of their sources; and elaborates a set of normative and evidentiary criteria for researchers and readers to assess documentary source legitimacy and utility. Fundamentally, it contends that the scholarly community (researchers, peer reviewers, editors, thesis advisors, professional associations, and institutions) needs to practice deeper reflection on sources’ provenance, greater humility about whether to access leaked materials and what inferences to draw from them, and more transparency in citation and research strategies.

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About the Speaker: Christopher Darnton is a CISAC affiliate and an associate professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. He previously taught at Reed College and the Catholic University of America, and holds a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University. He is the author of Rivalry and Alliance Politics in Cold War Latin America (Johns Hopkins, 2014) and of journal articles on US foreign policy, Latin American security, and qualitative research methods. His International Security article, “Archives and Inference: Documentary Evidence in Case Study Research and the Debate over U.S. Entry into World War II,” won the 2019 APSA International History and Politics Section Outstanding Article Award. He is writing a book on the history of US security cooperation in Latin America, based on declassified military documents.

About the event: China's nuclear forces, policies, and, possibly, strategy seem to be changing dramatically, with official US estimates suggesting the country may reach peer status by the end of the decade. Policymakers and scholars alike want to understand why these changes are occurring, but determining what is changing must precede explaining why. China, like many other nuclear powers, veils its nuclear forces in secrecy. That veil, however, has been increasingly pierced by open-source intelligence. The discovery of more than three hundred ICBM silos under construction surprised many experts who long believed China was moving decisively toward mobile forces. This talk considers the relationship between models of China's decision-making and sources of information, both historical and contemporary. I compare the gaze of the intelligence community with that of scholars to create a framework for reconsidering our understanding of China's nuclear forces in the past and to suggest how open-source information could shape our understanding in the future. While focused on China's nuclear arsenal, the case illustrates a broader point: open-source analysis represents a distinct way of knowing about the world, but only when married to traditional research methods. Scholars working on other opaque policy challenges, especially in security, face similar empirical problems, and this talk offers a framework for thinking about how open-source research might contribute to their work.

About the speaker: Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is a Distinguished Scholar of Global Security at Middlebury College. He is also a member of the National Academies Committee on International Security and Arms Control and the Frontier Red Team for Anthropic. From 2022 to 2025, Dr. Lewis was a member of the U.S. Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board. He is the author of three books, The Minimum Means of Reprisal: China’s Search for Security in the Nuclear Age; Paper Tigers: China’s Nuclear Posture; and The 2020 Commission on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks on the United States.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Michael F. Joseph will present the theory and experimental chapter from his forthcoming book (Cambridge May, 2026), The Origins of Great Power Rivalries. In it, he advances a comprehensive rationalist theory of how great powers assess emerging threats; why enduring great power rivalries unfold through either delayed competition, or delayed peace; and how diplomacy functions when rising powers emerge on the scene. In an important departure from traditional realist theory, Joseph argues that countries are motivated by distinct principles - normative values that shape foreign policy beyond simple security concerns. He then integrates these complex motives into a formal model of great power rivalry to explain how rational states draw qualitative inferences about rivals' intentions by examining the historical context of their demands, not just military capabilities. Empirically, he shows that his predictions about the instances and timing of competition better fit great power rivalry cases than leading rationalist and psychological alternatives via a medium-n analysis of great power rivalries since 1850. He illuminates British reactions to Stalin at the beginning of the Cold War via an in depth historical analysis. He animates a theoretically sophisticated defense of America's approach to China in the post-Cold War era with 100s of Washington-insider interviews and a novel analysis of recently declassified estimates. He demonstrates that real life intelligence analysts integrate diplomacy, historical context and an appreciation of strategic incentives as his theory expects, by embedding a survey experiment into an intelligence simulation given to 100s of real-life intelligence analysts and national security professionals from the CIA, State Department, DOD and elsewhere. Michael is known for "hot takes," and all information he presents is his personal opinion and does not reflect the position of any government and should not be taken seriously be anyone.

About the speaker: Michael F. Joseph is an Assistant Professor at UCSD. He harnesses a decade of foreign policy experience and sophisticated research skills to resolve modern national security problems of great power competition, and technology in the intelligence community. His research was recognized with APSA's 2021 Formal Theory Section Award, the 2023 Palmer Prize, and a $450,000 NSF Grant for National Security Preparedness, among other accolades. His book is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. His articles are published or forthcoming in the APSR (x3), JOP (x2), IO, and other journals. Policy insights from this research have attracted policy-maker attention in DC, and appear in the Washington Post, War on the Rocks, and other leading outlets.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the speaker: Rachel Metz is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University. Metz’s research and teaching focus on international security, security assistance and security cooperation, military effectiveness, nuclear strategy, and methods for studying military operations. Her book project examines the United States’ approach to building militaries in partner states, and her research has been published in International Organization, International Security, Security Studies, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Strategic Studies, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, H-Diplo, War on the Rocks, Lawfare, The National Interest, and The Washington Post, among other outlets.

Metz received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was a member of the Security Studies Program. Her work has received funding from the Smith Richardson Foundation, Defense Security Cooperation University, and the Carnegie Corporation. Previously, Metz was a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, an adjunct researcher for the RAND Corporation, and a Eurasia Group Fellow with the Eurasia Group Foundation. Metz is a research affiliate at MIT.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: The threat of illicit nuclear and other radioactive materials poses a risk to international security. The analysis of post-Soviet disintegration cases of illicit trafficking suggests that those incidents were mostly opportunistic thefts resulting from a weakened security system and/or lack of strict oversight. With the growing threat of global terrorism and the emergence of various terrorist networks across the world, however, the focus has shifted to the probability of a terrorist outfit gaining access to these deadly weapons and materials, especially in South Asia. In that regard, the study identifies the role of a nuclear security regime in mitigating the risks arising from the threat of illicit trafficking incidents. It identifies a distinct nuclear security regime under the regime theory and seeks its application in a regional framework in the South Asian context. It assesses the nuclear security norms and practices of India and Pakistan and proposes a template of a regional cooperative mechanism that can be built upon the principles, norms, rules, and procedures of the nuclear security regime. The template is tailored according to the regional environment in South Asia and it has practical features that range from some ideal approaches to more realistic measures. In that regard, the proposed nuclear security regime seeks to de-securitize the nuclear security debate, which in turn, will facilitate framing nuclear security cooperation as a mutual interest and nuclear security risks as common threats even among the competitive states.

About the speaker: Sitara Noor is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at Stanford University, California. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science in July 2025 from University of Vienna. Her research interests include nuclear security, non-proliferation, and strategic stability, with a particular focus on South Asia. She was formerly a Managing the Atom Fellow at Belfer Center from 2022 to 2024. In 2023, she was a Fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome. She also held the position of Research Fellow at VCDNP in Vienna, Austria, during 2016-2017. Earlier in her career, she worked as an International Relations Analyst at Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (2008 to 2015).

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the speaker: Lisa Langdon Koch is Associate Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, specializing in international relations. She is the author of Nuclear Decisions: Changing the Course of Nuclear Weapons Programs (Oxford University Press, 2023), which won the Robert Jervis Best International Security Book Award. She has published numerous articles on topics like nuclear proliferation and foreign policy. Her research has been funded by the Stanton Foundation Nuclear Security Grant Program and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In 2023, Koch received the Glenn R. Huntoon Award for Superior Teaching. She is a 2000 Harry S. Truman Scholar.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

The Payne Lectureship is named for Frank E. Payne and Arthur W. Payne, brothers who gained an appreciation for global problems through their international business operations. Their descendants endowed the annual lecture series at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in order to raise public understanding of the complex policy issues facing the global community today and to increase support for informed international cooperation.

The Payne Distinguished Lecturer is chosen for his or her international reputation as a leader, with an emphasis on visionary thinking; a broad, practical grasp of a given field; and the capacity to clearly articulate an important perspective on the global community and its challenges.

About the speaker: Jill Hruby served as the Under Secretary for Nuclear Security at the Department of Energy from 2021 to 2025. Prior to that, Hruby had a 34-year career at Sandia National Laboratories, retiring as the Director in 2017. Hruby was the inaugural Sam Nunn Distinguished Fellow at NTI. Currently, Hruby is on boards at Lawrence Livermore and the Atomic Weapon Establishment. She is a member of the Anthropic National Security Advisory Committee, the National Academy Committee for International Security and Arms Control, among other advisory roles. This quarter, she is the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Nuclear weapons are considered a prominent international status symbol that signal military strength, technological prowess, and a state’s association with the great power club. This idea of “nuclear prestige” has affected our understanding of proliferation, nonproliferation, and nuclear modernization. Debate rages on whether nuclear prestige still exists. I contribute to this debate by arguing that nuclear prestige has never been symbolically dominant in the international community’s understanding of the bomb. I offer a theory of status symbols and demonstrate that global opposition and divided superpower messaging prevented the rise of nuclear prestige. I test my argument with a case study of contestation over the meaning of the bomb and pair it with a discourse analysis of 10,000 hand-coded observations of nuclear mentions in United Nations General Debate speeches (1946 – 2025). I contribute to our understanding of nuclear symbolism, the effectiveness of the NPT, and to our understanding of international status.

About the speaker: Kevin Bustamante is the Macarthur Hennessey Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Notre Dame where he earned his PhD in August 2024. His research agenda centers around questions of international security and racism, with a focus on nuclear politics. His work has been published in Security Studies and his book project examines the transformation of dominant racial ideas over the last two centuries.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: The 2011 Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear disaster was the worst industrial nuclear catastrophe to hit Japan. It was a major event, rated at the highest severity, which released radioactive elements into the power plant’s surrounding environment when back-up systems failed and could not sufficiently cool the nuclear reactors. At least 164,000 people were permanently or temporarily displaced. Radioactive Governance offers an ethnographic look at how the disaster was handled by Japan. Unlike prior nuclear-related narratives, such as those surrounding Chernobyl or Hiroshima, which focused on themes of harm, trauma, and victimization, the Japanese government consistently put forward a discourse of minimal or no radiation-related dangers, a gradual bringing home of former evacuees, a restarting of nuclear power plants, and the promotion of a resilient mindset in the face of adversity. This narrative worked to counter other understandings of recovery, such as those of worried citizens unsuccessfully fighting for permanent evacuation because they were afraid to go back to their homes. Providing a rich theorization of how both governments and citizens shape narratives about catastrophic events, Radioactive Governance not only displays how Fukushima became a story of hope and resilience rather than of victimization, but also how radioactive governance shifted from the nuclear secrecy that characterized the Cold War era to relying on international organizations and domestic citizens to co-manage the aftermath of disasters.

About the speaker: Maxime Polleri is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Université Laval and a member of the Graduate School of International Studies. As an anthropologist of technoscience, he studies the governance of disasters, waste and misinformation, with a primary focus on nuclear topics and a regional expertise on Japan.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Why do democratic leaders politicize foreign policy bureaucracies? While existing scholarship recognizes that leaders and bureaucrats often clash, it usually attributes these conflicts to organizational pathologies, principal-agent problems, or policy disagreements. This project develops a theory that explains when leaders attack their foreign policy bureaucracies by installing loyalists, marginalizing or purging careerists, and creating parallel agencies, a strategy I call politicization. It argues that leaders tend to politicize instead of bypassing or coordinating with the bureaucracy when two forces come together: when leaders strongly distrust the bureaucracy, fueled by intense partisan, ideological, and social conflicts, and have enough domestic political power to reshape institutions in their own image.

About the speaker: Emily Tallo is the India-U.S. security studies postdoctoral fellow at CISAC. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago in August 2025. Emily’s research centers on the domestic politics of foreign policy, focusing on how leaders, bureaucracies, and political parties shape international politics with a regional emphasis on South Asia. Before academia, Emily was a researcher at the Henry L. Stimson Center’s South Asia program in Washington, DC, and an editor of the online magazine South Asian Voices. Her commentary has been featured in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, and War on the Rocks.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.