On Saturday October 7, 2023, two Iranian-backed terrorist organizations based in the Gaza Strip — Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) — inflicted the most lethal attack suffered by the State of Israel since its founding in May 1948. 

Over 1200 Israelis, overwhelmingly civilians, were murdered, 3000 wounded, and approximately 150 kidnapped into Gaza, to be used as human shields and bargaining chips. The attacks also involved unspeakable acts of sexual violence and infanticide. Retaliatory Israeli air strikes have killed over 800 Gazans so far. 

The conflict risks escalating to an all-out regional confrontation, involving several other Iranian proxies (most notably Hezbollah in Lebanon) and even a direct Iran-Israel war. This could have devastating and transformative implications for the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, and the entire international system. What led to the events of October 7? How was Israel caught so completely off guard? Did Iran order the attack? What are the possible scenarios for the conflict? And what can the Biden Administration do?

SPEAKERS

MODERATOR

About the Speaker: Colin Kahl is the Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), an interdisciplinary research hub in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also the faculty director of CISAC’s Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance, and a professor of political science (by courtesy).

Current research projects include: an examination of the role of emerging technologies (including cyber, space, and artificial intelligence and autonomy) in “integrated deterrence” vis-à-vis the People’s Republic of China (PRC); an assessment of the role of U.S.-Russia nuclear deterrence and Russian nuclear coercion in the Ukraine war; and an analysis of the utility of the concept of the “Free World” for U.S. foreign policy.

From April 2021-July 2023, Dr. Kahl served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the U.S. Department of Defense. In that role, he was the principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense for all matters related to national security and defense policy and represented the Department as a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee. He oversaw the writing of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, which focused the Pentagon’s efforts on the “pacing challenge” posed by the PRC, and he led the Department’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and numerous other international crises. He also led several other major defense diplomacy initiatives, including: an unprecedented strengthening of the NATO alliance; the negotiation of the AUKUS agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom; historic defense force posture enhancements in Australia, Japan, and the Philippines; and deepening defense and strategic ties with India. In June 2023, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III awarded Dr. Kahl the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest civilian award presented by the Secretary of Defense.

During the Obama Administration, Dr. Kahl served as Deputy Assistant to President Obama and National Security Advisor to the Vice President Biden from October 2014 to January 2017. He also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East from February 2009 to December 2011, for which he received the Outstanding Public Service Medal in July 2011.

Dr. Kahl is the co-author (along with Thomas Wright) of Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2021) and the author States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). He has also published numerous article on U.S. national security and defense policy in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, the Los Angeles Times, Middle East Policy, the National Interest, the New Republic, the New York Times, Politico, the Washington Post, and the Washington Quarterly, as well as several reports for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a non-partisan think tank in Washington, DC.

Dr. Kahl previously taught at Georgetown University and the University of Minnesota, and he has held fellowship positions at Harvard University, the Council on Foreign Relations, CNAS, and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and International Engagement.

He received his B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan (1993) and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University (2000).

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About the Event: Scholars are debating whether China’s rise will transform the current unipolar distribution of power. Although China clearly has the aggregate size to match (indeed, overtake) the United States, observers debate whether China can catch up technologically. Skeptics typically make two arguments: that 1) a large gap exists between the technological capabilities of China and the United States, and 2) that China will be unable to bridge this gap because its authoritarian institutions inhibit its innovative potential.

Jennifer Lind argues against both of these points. First, she shows empirically that China is defying pessimistic expectations by emerging as a global technological leader. China has already caught up to (and in some cases overtaken) other cutting-edge economies such as France, Israel, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Furthermore, China and the United States are engaged in a rivalry with respect to the emerging technologies of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Second, institutions arguments fail to explain the Chinese case because they neglect significant heterogeneity among authoritarian regimes: namely that while some fail to foster growth and innovation, “smart authoritarians” provide public goods, constrain leaders, allow limited civil society, and pursue other policies that encourage growth. These findings have profound implications for the future balance of power (suggesting a shift to bipolarity), and add to an authoritarian politics literature that has demonstrated the increasing adaptability and resilience of authoritarian regimes. 

About the Speaker: Professor Lind holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; a Master’s from the School of Global Policy & Strategy from the University of California, San Diego; and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Lind is the author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, a book that examines the effect of war memory on international reconciliation (Cornell University Press, 2008). She has  authored scholarly articles in International Security and International Studies Quarterly, and writes for wider audiences in outlets such as Foreign Affairs and National Interest. She has been quoted and interviewed by PBS Newshour, National Public Radio, the Washington Post, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Professor Lind is affiliated with the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard, as well as Chatham House, London. In recent years she has been a visiting scholar at Waseda University, Japan, and at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Lind has worked as a consultant for RAND and for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense. She has recently authored a book (under review) about China’s rise to great power, adaptation by authoritarian regimes, and the future of great-power politics.

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About the Event: When and how could technological advances undermine nuclear deterrence? Recent scholarship asserts that new remote sensing technologies may soon provide the capabilities needed to detect, track, and precisely target the delivery systems that constitute a nuclear-armed state’s second-strike capabilities. If true, this would have profound consequences for nuclear force structure planning and arms control. Even if such predictions are not technically feasible, exaggerated expectations generated by strategic interests or social influences could still negatively impact acquisition and force structure decisions critical to strategic stability and arms control policy. However, there has been remarkably little detailed, technical analysis to verify, refute, or qualify these claims. Furthermore, there is a lack of consensus around what type of capability would truly render a second strike vulnerable, injecting ambiguity into and ultimately constraining efforts to anticipate the disruption of new technologies.

This research informs these gaps through a mixed, sociotechnical approach. First, it provides a technical assessment of the likelihood that new sensing methods will significantly enhance accuracy in applications critical for targeting second-strike capabilities (i.e., the detection and tracking of nuclear submarines, and inertial navigation to improve missile accuracy). Second, it considers strategic narratives and social dynamics that have historically shaped conceptions of vulnerability used to justify second strike requirements. In doing so, it also identifies factors that are informing current debates over deterrence and mutual vulnerability requirements amidst technological innovation and yields a more dynamic set of policy recommendations aimed at deflating hype and mitigating arms-racing risks. This more integrated method for assessing how new technologies will impact nuclear deterrence is especially important as concerns over a great power competition reinvigorate interest in strategies that promote rapid technology innovation.

About the Speaker: Lindsay Rand is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Prior to Stanford, Lindsay was a Stanton predoctoral fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In her time at UMD, she was also the instructor of record for an undergraduate nuclear policy course and the Catherine Kelleher research fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM). She also has experience working as an adjunct research associate at the RAND Corporation, a research associate at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, a NSF fellow on the DHS Science and Technology Directorate quantum technology task force, and a research intern at the Naval Research Laboratory.

Her research draws on my interdisciplinary background in physics and policy to explore how social, political, and technological changes have contributed to the cyclical reconception of "vulnerability" in nuclear strategy and policymaking. In her dissertation, she analyzed the implications for nuclear deterrence due to quantum sensing, and leveraged technical analyses and historical case studies of previous emerging technologies to develop an integrated socio-technical analytic framework.

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About the Event: What are the domestic drivers of Iran’s nuclear strategy? Since the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran has adopted an incrementally more assertive approach in expanding various aspects of its nuclear program and limiting the IAEA’s monitoring and verification activities. Although Iran has not made the political decision to obtain a nuclear weapon, according to U.S. officials, Iran could produce enough fissile material for one bomb in less than two weeks. Experts argue that Iran’s nuclear advances are a bargaining tactic to extract economic concessions from Washington. However, as Iran approaches threshold status, its political calculations are also shifting, signaling more risk tolerance than before. The failure of the JCPOA has undermined bottom-up pressure in the form of elections and civil society movements, which had previously moderated Iran’s foreign policy. The ascendance of a hawkish government in Tehran in 2021 combined with Iran’s growing military capability within the emerging multipolar world order has hardened the Islamic Republic’s bargaining position, inching it toward the weaponization option.

About the Speaker: Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar is Associate Professor of International Affairs at Texas A&M University's Bush School of Government and Public Service and a visiting scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Project on Managing the Atom. He is the author of Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran (Columbia University Press, 2018). His articles and commentaries have appeared in Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times. Mohammad has a B.A. in social sciences from the University of Tehran, an M.A. in international relations from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in government from Georgetown University. He is currently working on a book project on Iran's nuclear politics.

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About the Event: Despite the territorial demise of the Islamic State, threat assessments over the prospect of its resurgence remain divorced from a rigorous investigation into how it came to establish de-facto statehood in the first place. What explains how a single armed group out of many came to achieve such an astounding hegemonic feat, let alone in such short order? To the extent a consensus exists on its territorial success, conventional opinion emphasizes organizational sources of rebel power – hard, soft, and institutional – combined with the structural permissiveness of the environment. But contrary to widespread belief, the Islamic State was not established as a result of military victory. Instead, it was borne out of a unique and rapid acquisition of a pre-existing Iraqi rebellion, awarding it with a rebel monopoly in Iraq and an autonomous zone of territorial control to enact statehood. This model of consolidation was made viable in 2014 as a result of the organization’s complex embeddedness within Iraq’s Sunni community – a condition that had not existed in its participation in the Syrian rebellion or for its organizational predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, in the earlier years of the Iraqi rebellion.

About the Speaker: Ramzy Mardini is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and an associate at the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts at the University of Chicago.

His research interests include international security, conflict and conflict resolution, and the politics and security of the Middle East. Based on over three years of fieldwork across multiple countries, his book project examines the role and interplay of social networks on processes of rebellion, with an empirical focus on the Islamic State. His work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Education, the Minerva Research Initiative at the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Smith-Richardson Foundation, and was a 2019-2020 USIP-Minerva Peace Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. and a 2018-2019 Fulbright Fellow in Jordan and Turkey.

Apart from his academic studies, Mardini was a nonresident fellow at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council; an adjunct fellow at the Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies; a research analyst on Iraq at the Institute for the Study of War; a Middle East analyst at the Jamestown Foundation; and a research assistant on Iran at the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan in Amman. He was also a consultant at the Dialogue Advisory Group, an Amsterdam-based organization that facilitates political dialogue between armed actors to reduce violence in active conflicts. From 2010-2011, he served at The White House within the Office of the National Security Advisor to the Vice President, and previously at the Executive Office of the President and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. He is the editor of two books, Volatile Landscape: Iraq and its Insurgent Movements and also The Battle for Yemen: Al-Qaeda and the Struggle for Stability, and has written commentary for the New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, among others.

He received a Ph.D., M.A., M.A. from the University of Chicago, where he was a William Rainey Harper Fellow within the Department of Political Science and studied international relations and comparative politics. He graduated summa cum laude with research distinction from Ohio State University. He was born in Dayton, Ohio. 

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About the Event: In the prelude to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, American intelligence had concluded the impending Russian efforts would succeed. A Department of Defense official reportedly noted that the collapse of Ukraine “might take a few days longer” than the Russians expected, but not much longer. The Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) was expected to lead the Russian military assault, eliminating Ukraine’s air defense and paving the way for Russian troops to capture Kyiv. However, in hindsight, the expectations were inflated and misinformed. What explains the failure of VKS to acquire and hold air dominance over a much weaker Ukrainian Air Force? I explore three causal factors to understand the failures of the VKS—Ukrainian resolve and innovativeness, Russian culture and its impact on the doctrine and role of VKS in Russian national security, and the role of information and intelligence integration in airpower projection.

About the Speaker: Jaganath Sankaran is an assistant professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin and a non-resident fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. He works on problems at the intersection of international security and science & technology. He has published in International Security, Contemporary Security Policy, Journal of Strategic Studies, Journal of East Asian Studies, Asian Security, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Arms Control Today, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and other outlets. The RAND Corporation and the Stimson Center have also published his research. He has served on study groups of the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) and the American Physical Society (APS) Panel on Public Affairs examining missile defenses and strategic stability. 

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About the Event: U.S. residents and international affairs elite surveyed for this project report significant reliance on news reporting for information on international affairs. They also acknowledge major gaps in international affairs coverage. Do these gaps predictably influence fundamental knowledge and perceptions of international affairs? We begin by analyzing tens of millions of recently published articles and find that 1) many major international issues receive minimal major news media attention, and 2) that many international issues, when they are reported on, are depicted in a manner that deviates from underlying empirical realities (e.g. reporting effectively stops even as crises continue). Through a series of surveys, we then analyze how these reporting patterns influence the knowledge and perceptions of international affairs of two distinct populations: 1) U.S. residents; and 2) international affairs professionals consisting of a) international relations faculty at colleges and universities across the United States, b) current and former senior U.S. government officials who collectively served across (at least) three presidential administrations on issues relating to U.S. trade, development, or national security, and c) international affairs-focused staffers at major U.S. think tanks. Results point to significant causal effects of news media reporting practices on respondents' knowledge and perceptions of international affairs. More broadly, we argue that the major news media’s role as an international affairs actor is omitted in  much international relations theorizing and empirical work.

About the Speakers: Andrew Shaver is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Merced. He is also the founding director of the Political Violence Lab. He previously completed postdoctoral research fellowships at Stanford University's Political Science Department and, separately, at Dartmouth College and earned his PhD in Public Affairs (security studies) from Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs. His research focuses broadly on contemporary sub-state conflict and appears in the American Political Science Review, American Economic Review, Annual Review of Sociology, International Organization, and Journal of Politics, amongst other outlets. Professor Shaver previously served in different foreign affairs/national security positions within the U.S. Government, including spending nearly one and a half years in Iraq during the U.S.-led war with the Pentagon. 

Professor Shaver will be joined by Shawn Robbins, an undergraduate at the University of California, Irvine and research intern with the Political Violence Lab.

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About the Event: What is a better question than where did SARS-CoV-2 come from?  
Why can we routinely forbid research with live smallpox but not influenza or coronavirus?
Why do well-intentioned elected officials believe centralized DNA synthesis screening will improve biosecurity?
How can we create or strengthen trust in biotechnology-based operations, transactions, and offerings?
We live today within a collapsing biosecurity bubble, inflated by standing down the US offensive bioweapons program under Nixon but deflating since.
Can we responsibly steward development and deployment of 21st century biotechnologies, sufficient to enable planetary-scale flourishing, without veering into Hobbesian despair? 
What lessons can be learned from what the physics and policy communities did or did not accomplish in the 1930s?  
Or the internet leaders did or failed to do in the 1980s?  
Or the AI community failed to do in the 2010s?
Are there practical paths forward besides reacting to unilateral innovators and actors?

About the Speaker: Drew Endy is a bioengineer at Stanford University who studies and teaches synthetic biology. His goals are civilization-scale flourishing and a renewal of liberal democracy. Prof. Endy helped launch new undergraduate majors in bioengineering at both MIT and Stanford and also the iGEM — a global genetic-engineering “Olympics” enabling thousands of students annually. His past students lead companies like Ginkgo Bioworks and Octant. He is married to Christina Smolke CEO of Antheia the essential medicine company. Endy served on the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) the Committee on Science Technology & Law (CSTL) the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Synthetic Biology Task Force and, briefly, the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board (DIB). He currently serves on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research. Esquire magazine recognized Drew as one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century.
 

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About the Event: India and China have engaged in strategic competition of varying intensity for several decades, which sharpened after a border crisis beginning in 2020. Since that crisis, and contemporaneous events such as the COVID pandemic, India and China have struggled to find a new equilibrium. In this presentation, Ambassador Gokhale will share his views on the broad premises upon which China's India policy appears to be based, the reasons for the current impasse in bilateral relations after 2020, and how India's relations with China are likely to evolve over the next 10 years.

About the Speaker: Ambassador Vijay Gokhale retired in 2020 as India’s senior-most diplomat. In an Indian Foreign Service career spanning almost 40 years, he served in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Taipei, as well as several other posts across Asia, before becoming India's Ambassador to China (2016-2017) and Foreign Secretary (2018-2020). He is now a Distinguished Professor at Symbiosis, Pune, and a nonresident Senior Fellow at Carnegie India, and has written three books and several policy papers on India-China relations.
 

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.