Stanford University

All Internet is Local: Information Pools and Search Engine Representation of International Affairs

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About the Event: How do perceptions of international affairs vary between countries? To what extent do technology companies mediate these perceptions? International relations scholarship has largely neglected the role of internet search engines, yet they are a ubiquitous method by which people seek information about the world. This study conducts a large-scale audit of Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) for various topics related to international affairs. Our preliminary results indicate three patterns. First, variation in localized results strongly correlates with user language, suggesting that language is a primary factor mediating people’s exposure to information about international affairs. Second, we find significant differences in the reach of ideological content, including state propaganda as well as material from transnational advocacy networks. Finally, we trace how SERPs change in response to salient events. Analyzing results related to the 2022 Ukraine crisis generated both before and after the Russian invasion, we find that geographic clustering in the content of SERPs becomes more substantial following the invasion, suggesting an increase in localization. Substantively, this analysis contributes to several literatures, including the role of technology in international politics, surveillance capitalism, and AI governance. Methodologically, this paper is the first in the field (to our knowledge) to use SBERT, a state-of-the-art natural language processing model for sentence embeddings.

About the Speaker: Rochelle Terman is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science with a designated emphasis in Gender & Women’s Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Before coming to Chicago, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Her research interests focus on international norms, human rights, and computational social science.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

William J. Perry Conference Room

Rochelle Terman University of Chicago
Seminars
Research Seminar Series
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Russia, Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s War

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SEMINAR RECORDING

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About the Event: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reflects the decision of one man:  Vladimir Putin.  He has made a series of major miscalculations -- from underestimating the tenacity and determination of the Ukrainians to the strength and unity of the Western response in support of Ukraine -- but he seems to be doubling down.  We will have a conversation with Fiona Hill, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, on what is driving Putin, what he might do next, and what might cause him to change course.

About the Speaker: Fiona Hill is a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She recently served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. From 2006 to 2009, she served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at The National Intelligence Council. She is author of “There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century” and co-author of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin." Hill holds a master’s in Soviet studies and a doctorate in history from Harvard University. She also holds a master’s in Russian and modern history from St. Andrews University in Scotland.

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

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

Fiona Hill Brookings Institution
Seminars
European Security Initiative

The Russia-Ukraine War: Would Putin Go Nuclear?

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

SEMINAR RECORDING

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About the Event: After more than three months of fighting, Russian military forces have failed to prevail in Ukraine, and a drawn-out war of attrition appears increasingly likely.  Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have made implied nuclear threats.  Would the lack of battlefield success lead the Kremlin to consider use of nuclear weapons?  CISAC scholars Rose Gottemoeller, David Holloway and Scott Sagan will discuss the possibility of Russian nuclear use, what the Kremlin might do, and how the West should react.

About the Speakers:

Rose Gottemoeller is the Steven C. Házy Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation. Before joining Stanford Gottemoeller was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019, where she helped to drive forward NATO’s adaptation to new security challenges in Europe and in the fight against terrorism.  Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. While Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance in 2009 and 2010, she was the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation.

David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into seven languages, most recently into Chinese. The Chinese translation is due to be published later in 2018. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.

Scott Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He also serves as Chairman of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Sagan has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

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

Rose Gottemoeller
David Holloway
Scott Sagan
Seminars
European Security Initiative

From Bagram Airfield to Baghdad and Back Again: a U.S. Military Doctor’s Experience in Two Wars

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

SEMINAR RECORDING

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About the Event: Following 9/11 the U.S. lead the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and ended with our withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.  We also removed Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq in 2003 and we fought there until the end of 2011.  Our military healthcare system was engaged from the very beginning and provided support that enabled the success of our combat operations and saved lives of Coalition Forces, host nation nationals, and enemy combatants. Mortality from combat injuries was reduced from 24% during the Vietnam War to 10% in OEF and OIF.  Lessons learned from these conflicts have been translated to the civilian world and are reviewed.  The skilled and compassionate care that the US provided to thousands of host nation nationals and our engagement with civilian healthcare in both Afghanistan and Iraq built good will that will, hopefully, be remembered.

About the Speaker: Dr. Dean Winslow, MD is Professor of Medicine with appointments in the Divisions of Hospital Medicine and Infectious Diseases and is a Senior Fellow (courtesy) at CISAC/Freeman Spogli Institute. He has served on the Stanford faculty since 1998 and served from 2003-2008 as Co-Director of Stanford's Infectious Diseases Fellowship Training Program. He was in private practice in Wilmington, Delaware where he started the state’s first multidisciplinary clinic for HIV patients in 1985. In 1988 he joined the DuPont Company where he worked both as a bench scientist on HIV drug resistance then later designed the clinical trials supporting FDA approval of efavirenz. In 1999 he became Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at Visible Genetics Inc. and led the FDA clearance of the TRUGENE HIV-1 drug resistance test. Dr. Winslow joined the staff at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in 2003, where he served as Chief of the Division of AIDS Medicine and later as Chair of the Department of Medicine. In 2015 he was appointed Academic Physician-In-Chief at Stanford/ValleyCare and Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at Stanford. He was a Resident Fellow in Robinson House 2013-2017 and was visiting faculty at Oxford University in 2017. He was Lead Physician for the US Antarctic Program of the National Science Foundation 2019-2020 based at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. He is a participant on the National Security Task Force of the Hoover Institution. He served as a flight surgeon in the USAF and Air National Guard from 1980-2015 retiring as a colonel. After 9/11 he deployed twice to Afghanistan and 4 times to Iraq supporting combat operations.  In 2008 he served as commander of the USAF EMEDS in Baghdad during the surge. He has logged 1150 military flying hours including 431 combat hours/263 combat sorties.  He has extensive operational experience in fighter, tactical airlift, and combat rescue missions. His 39 military decorations include the Legion of Merit, 3 Air Medals, 4 Aerial Achievement Medals, and the Air Force Combat Action Medal.

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

Dean Winslow
Seminars
Directors' Seminar Series

The Russia-Ukraine War: A View from Kyiv

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

SEMINAR RECORDING

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About the Event: The war that Russia inflicted on Ukraine is now well into its third month, with little sign the Kremlin has given up on its hope of achieving a victory on the battlefield.  Ukraine has impressed the world with the determination and tenacity of its resistance to the Russian invasion.  Vitaliy Sych, a long-time Kyiv-based journalist, will share his perspective on how the Ukrainian government, military and people are holding up in the face of Russia’s aggression.  

About the Speaker: Vitaliy Sych launched his career as a journalist with the Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s English-language newspaper in 1997, becoming business editor, then nation editor in 2000.  He later moved to the Korrespondent weekly magazine, helping to build it into one of the most respected media outlets in Ukraine.  He and a large part of the editorial team left Korrespondent in 2013 when a new owner imposed a stifling editorial policy, and they founded NV, a new weekly magazine that quickly earned a reputation for reliable and accurate reporting.  In addition to the magazine, NV now manages a news site and talk radio. 

Virtual 

Vitaliy Sych
Seminars
European Security Initiative

Explaining Indian Military Strategy in the Kargil War

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

SEMINAR RECORDING

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About the Event: What explains the consistent patterns – and exceptions – in Indian wartime strategy? In most of its wars, the Indian military has used a similar military strategy – to gain limited advantage on the battlefield as a way of consolidating the strategic status quo. The key exception was the eastern theater in the 1971 war, in which it sought – and won – battlefield decision to effect a major territorial revision. Much of contemporary international relations scholarship elides questions of strategy altogether, treating combat as an abstract contest of material power or resolve. Scholarship that does deal with strategy often seeks to explain consistency through strategic culture, or evolutions in military doctrine; but cannot explain patterns and exceptions in wartime behavior. This paper offers an explanation of military strategy as a function of the state’s geopolitical risk assessment and its military’s organizational preferences. Dr. Tarapore illustrates the argument with a detailed case study of the 1999 Kargil war, in which India was cautioned by the risk of nuclear retaliation, and the military pursued a tightly limited campaign. This research has implications not only for our understanding of Indian strategic behavior, but also theoretical debates on conventional deterrence and conflict processes.

About the Speaker: Dr. Arzan Tarapore is the South Asia research scholar at Stanford University's Asia-Pacific Research Center, and a senior nonresident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research. His research focuses on military strategy, Indian defense policy, and Indo-Pacific security issues. He previously held research positions at the RAND Corporation, the East-West Center in Washington, and the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. Prior to his scholarly career, he served for 13 years in the Australian Defence Department. Arzan holds a PhD in war studies from King's College London.

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

Arzan Tarapore
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

Health Security Beyond Epidemics

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

SEMINAR RECORDING

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About the Event: Over the past decade, global health threats such as pandemics have been increasingly framed as national security threats due to their perceived potential to exacerbate conflict, increase poverty and terrorism, and ability to inspire fear. Such elements of securitization can now be viewed as permanent features of public health governance. While the articulation of health issues as global threats has led to an increase in global health financing, it has also diverted funds from fundamental public health concerns - such as widely prevalent chronic diseases - towards infectious diseases such as Ebola and Covid-19. This panel approaches health security beyond epidemics from two novel perspectives: bioethics and humanitarianism. Using expert qualitative interviews, we explore the ethical implications of the increasing securitization of health and its effects on medical humanitarian action in the middle East. This seminar will be moderated by Paul H. Wise.

About the Speakers:

Dr. Frances Butcher is a Predoctoral Fellow at CISAC and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oxford’s Ethox Centre and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities.  By background, she is a Specialty Registrar (physician) in public health undertaking dual clinical-research training. Frances has a medical degree from Brighton and Sussex Medical School, an MA in Bioethics and Society from King’s College London, and an MSc in Global Health Science from the University of Oxford. She was also a 2019 Fellow on the Johns Hopkins Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Program.

Dr. Sigrid Lupieri holds a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge. Her research investigates how security concerns and foreign policy agendas shape humanitarian action in the Middle East. Focusing on the Syrian refugee response in Jordan, her book project traces the effects of security and diplomatic interests on humanitarian health spending, and on the allocation of resources. Dr. Lupieri holds an MPhil in History from the University of Cambridge and an M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University. Previously, she worked as a journalist in Armenia, Georgia, and Germany, and as a UN officer in New York and New Delhi.

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

Frances Butcher
Sigrid Lupieri
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

Adapting to a Changing World: Managing the Promise and Peril of Emerging Technologies and the Nuclear Nexus

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

SEMINAR RECORDING

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About the Event: We live in a world of rapid technological change. Society has come to rely on new and emerging technologies for just about everything, yet many of the technologies with the most profound potential for good also have the potential to be used for destructive purposes. New warfighting domains have opened up in outer space and cyberspace. Advances in artificial intelligence are transforming the threat landscape. How should we be thinking about these issues and what can we do to reduce the risk that accidents or miscalculation will lead to inadvertent escalation—especially at the nuclear nexus? This talk will examine the state of play of international discussions on these issues and offer recommendations for the future.   

About the Speaker: Dr. Karen Miller is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation from Los Alamos National Laboratory. She also serves as the U.S. representative on the IAEA Director General’s Standing Advisory Group on Safeguards Implementation. From 2019 to 2021, Dr. Miller was a Technical Advisor in the State Department's Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. Prior to her assignment at the State Department, she spent a decade at Los Alamos working on the end-to-end development of monitoring and verification systems for nuclear-related agreements. She also has experience as a Program Manager for a data science portfolio in the lab’s Global Security Directorate. Dr. Miller has a B.S. and Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Texas A&M University.  

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

Karen Miller
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

Guarding Against the Authoritarian Executive: The Effectiveness of Legal Constraints on U.S. Presidential Power

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

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About the Event: As constitutional democracies in the United States and around the world struggle to cope with a rising wave of authoritarian challenges, many pro-democracy scholars and advocates in the United States have looked to law reform as a means of bolstering substantive and structural checks on executive power - from anti-corruption measures to limits on the President’s ability to invoke emergency authorities or deploy military force. But these reform efforts arise against a wholly unsettled debate about the function and effectiveness of existing institutional and legal checks, many of which proved deeply vulnerable to evasion during the presidency of Donald Trump.  Using the example of domestic and international laws designed to regulate presidential recourse to military force, Pearlstein will discuss her findings on the operation of existing legal constraints inside the executive branch, and suggest broader lessons for calibrating our understanding of law’s ability to constrain the impulses of authoritarian leaders.

About the Speaker: Deborah Pearlstein is Professor of Constitutional and International Law and Co-Director of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University.  Her work on national security and structural constraints on state power has been the subject of repeated testimony before Congress from war powers to executive branch oversight, and she today serves on the U.S. State Department Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation, an expert board that helps ensure the timely declassification and publication of government records surrounding major events in U.S. foreign policy. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Professor Pearlstein clerked for Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, then for Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court. Before embarking on a career in law, Pearlstein served in the White House from 1993 to 1995 as a Senior Editor and Speechwriter for President Clinton.

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

Deborah Pearlstein
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

Current Challenges and Tensions in Israel's National Security

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

REGISTRATION

Zoom

(Open to all)


In Person

(Stanford faculty, visiting scholars, staff, fellows, and students only)

                                                                                           

About the Event: This seminar will review key challenges facing Israel in the near term – such as the Iranian Nuclear Program and Iranian establishment in Syria - and will present the main dilemmas in formulating policy in the face of each challenge.

About the Speaker: Major General (ret.) Amos Yadlin joined the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center as a Senior Fellow after 40 years of service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). He served as a fighter pilot for 33 years, ultimately becoming Deputy Commander of the Israeli Air Force. He then earned the rank of Major General, served as a commander of the IDF Military Colleges and the National Defense College, Defense Attaché to the United States, and Chief of the Military Intelligence Directorate. He was Executive Director of the Institute for National Security Studies from 2011 to 2021; under his leadership it was named the number one think tank in the Middle East and North Africa by the University of Pennsylvania’s Global Go To Think Tank Index Report in 2020.

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

Amos Yadlin
Seminars
Research Seminar Series
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