* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/xUgzxG7MQa0

About the Event: The development and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies by the US military, and the ramifications of their adoption, has been the subject of many recent articles in both the popular as well as academic literature. Much of what has been said about them is speculative and even sensationalist, especially in regards to AI-enabled weapons. While at one time the US Department of Defense (DoD) was the driving force behind American science and technology research, and perhaps it still is in the case of certain niche technologies, there is no question that university and private sector research are advancing the state-of-the-art in AI, and the DoD is following behind. To that end, it is reasonable to assume that the majority of DoD AI technologies are sourced from industry using a combination of traditional acquisition vehicles, as defined in the Federal Acquisition Regulations, as well as non-traditional engagements, for example via the Defense Innovation Unit in Silicon Valley. In this talk I will summarize a number of recent public Requests for Information (RFIs) and Requests for Proposals (RFPs) to industry coming out of the DoD. I will use these RFIs and RFPs as a means to gauge the ‘state’ of AI in the DoD. My goal is to gain insight into what the DoD is actually trying to do with AI from amidst the public’s imagination and fear of what is possible, in order to better inform the public debate over AI ethics, governance, and other ramifications.

About the Speaker: Dr. David Blum is the Principal Data Scientist at Next Tier Concepts, where he supports the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the US Intelligence Community as a principal investigator, as well as a Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Economics Program, where he teaches a course titled "Real Risk" covering the tools of probabilistic risk analysis and warning. He has more than 14 years of experience performing operations research and risk analysis for the US national security community. He previously served as Technical Director of the Operations Research and Systems Analysis Division for the Department of Defense's Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Office (JIDO), where he oversaw the production of operations research analysis to support current military operations, and as an operations research scientist for several Defense Department and Intelligence Community offices. His assignments ranged from strategic assessments of future military force mixes, to tactical analyses to inform counter-terrorism operations, to development of automated processors for technical data exploitation at the national scale. He held a predoctoral fellowship at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, a Global Security graduate scholarship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and was a member of Stanford's Engineering Risk Research Group. He received his doctorate from Stanford University in management science and engineering, his Master's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in political science, and his Bachelor's degree from Columbia University in history and physics, and has co-edited a book titled Counterterrorism and Threat Finance Analysis during Wartime. His research interests include crisis early warning and predictive analytics. 

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/tcWqulaKXy0

About the Event: Since the end of World War II, the United States has set out to oust governments in the Middle East on an average of once per decade—in places such as Iran, Afghanistan (twice), Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Though pursued for a wide range of reasons, these operations all failed to achieve their ultimate goals, produced a range of unintended and even catastrophic consequences, carried heavy financial and human costs, and often left the countries in question worse off than they were before. Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East gives readers a look at the U.S. experience with regime change over the past seventy years, and an insider’s view on U.S. policymaking in the region at the highest levels.

Book Purchase:  https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Long-Game-Promise-Regime/dp/1250217032

About the Speaker: Dr. Philip Gordon is the Mary and David Boies Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.  From 2013-15, he served as Special Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region.  As the most senior White House official focused on the greater Middle East, he worked closely with the President, Secretary of State, and National Security Adviser on the full range of geopolitical, economic, and security issues facing the region.  From 2009-13, Dr. Gordon served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  In that position he was responsible for 50 countries in Europe and Eurasia as well as for NATO and the European Union (EU).  He is the author of Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East, published October 6, 2020.    

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/yyZ54SgGuz4

About the Event: We are beginning to understand that globalization has strategic consequences. Countries are using their position in globalized networks to "weaponize interdependence," through their dominance of information and financial networks. In this talk, Henry Farrell will discuss the research and policy agenda of weaponized interdependence, addressing such questions as: What areas of the global economy are most vulnerable to unilateral control of information and financial networks? How sustainable is the use of weaponized interdependence? What are the possible responses from targeted actors? And how sustainable is the open global economy if weaponized interdependence becomes a default tool for managing international relations?

Book Purchase:   https://amzn.to/3d29F4a

About the Speaker: Henry Farrell is SNF Agora Institute Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, 2019 winner of the Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Politics and Technology, and Editor in Chief of the Monkey Cage blog at the Washington Post. His book (with Abraham Newman) Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Fight over Freedom and Security, was published in 2019 by Princeton University Press, and has been awarded the 2019 Chicago-Kent College of Law / Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize and the ISA-ICOMM Best Book Award. In addition he has authored or co-authored 34 academic articles, as well as several book chapters and numerous non-academic publications. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/iqrz3Y3VmZ8

About the Event: Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it? 

Central and Eastern European states, however, have been aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading. 

How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics - all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.

Book Purchase:  https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/how-to-lose-the-information-war-9781838607685/

Discount Code: NINAJ30

About the Speaker: Nina Jankowicz studies the intersection of democracy and technology in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the author of How To Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict (Bloomsbury/IBTauris). Ms. Jankowicz has advised the Ukrainian government on strategic communications under the auspices of a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship. Her writing has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and others. She has testified before Congress on multiple occasions and is a frequent television and radio commentator on disinformation and Russian and Eastern European affairs. Prior to her Fulbright grant in Ukraine, Ms. Jankowicz managed democracy assistance programs to Russia and Belarus at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. She received her MA in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, and her BA from Bryn Mawr

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Seminar Recording:  https://youtu.be/lxMWuFvq2NU

About the Event: It has become increasingly clear that the Kremlin poses a security challenge to the West, with relations between the United States and Europe, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other, having fallen to their lowest point since the end of the 1980s.  In particular, Moscow seeks to overturn the post-Cold War European security order, which it believes disadvantages Russian interests.  The Russian challenge includes both foreign and domestic policy aspects, as the Kremlin augments traditional political and military tools with more sophisticated efforts to exploit and widen divides within Western societies.

Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, will discuss the challenge posed by Russia and the motives behind it.

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 co-author of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin” (Brookings Institution Press, 2015).

Prior to joining Brookings, Hill was director of strategic planning at The Eurasia Foundation in Washington, D.C. From 1991 to 1999, she held a number of positions directing technical assistance and research projects at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, including associate director of the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, director of the Project on Ethnic Conflict in the Former Soviet Union, and coordinator of the Trilateral Study on Japanese-Russian-U.S. Relations.

Hill has researched and published extensively on issues related to Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, regional conflicts, energy, and strategic issues. Her book with Brookings Senior Fellow Clifford Gaddy,“The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold,” was published by Brookings Institution Press in December 2003, and her monograph, “Energy Empire: Oil, Gas and Russia’s Revival,” was published by the London Foreign Policy Centre in 2004. The first edition of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin” was published by Brookings Institution Press in December 2013, also with Clifford Gaddy.

Hill holds a master’s in Soviet studies and a doctorate in history from Harvard University where she was a Frank Knox Fellow. She also holds a master’s in Russian and modern history from St. Andrews University in Scotland, and has pursued studies at Moscow’s Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages. Hill is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/UOHyKJR5d1w

About the Event: 

In 2017, former diplomat Elizabeth Shackelford wrote a pointed resignation letter to her then boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. She had watched as the State Department was gutted, and now she urged him to stem the bleeding by showing leadership and commitment to his diplomats and the country. If he couldn’t do that, she said, “I humbly recommend that you follow me out the door.” In The Dissent Channel, Shackelford chronicles how the challenges facing the State Department under the current administration, while extreme, are not new. In this live-streamed conversation, Shackelford will discuss the costs of a government unwilling to face mistakes or correct its course. She will also discuss how to build a more accountable foreign policy, through greater public engagement, more effective congressional oversight, and a State Department culture more open to dissent. In her book, The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age, she shares her personal experience as a diplomat trying to push back against the status quo and offers insight into the State Department’s long history of overlooking others who have tried to do the same. 

Moderating the discussion will be Rose Gottemoeller, Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and CISAC. Gottemoeller served as Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019 and prior to that as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State for nearly five years. 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.

Book Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Dissent-Channel-American-Diplomacy-Dishonest/dp/1541724488

About the Speakers: 

Elizabeth Shackelford was a career diplomat in the U.S. State Department until December 2017, when she resigned in protest of the Trump administration. During her tenure with the Foreign Service, Shackelford served in the U.S. embassies in Warsaw, Poland, and Juba, South Sudan; the U.S. Mission to Somalia; and Washington, D.C. For her work in South Sudan during the outbreak of civil war, Shackelford received the Barbara Watson Award for Consular Excellence, the State Department's highest honor for consular work. Shackelford is a non-resident fellow with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Moderated by: Rose Gottemoeller is the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation. Gottemoeller was Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019. Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. Gottemoeller was also the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation in 2009 and 2010.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/ryBtzvLI0QQ

About the Event: Despite the importance of understanding how refugee crises end, we know little about when and why refugees, who were forced to emigrate, return home. We study the drivers of refugees’ decision-making using original observational and experimental survey data from a representative sample of approximately 3,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon. We find that conditions in a refugee’s home country are much more important than the situation in the host country in shaping return intentions. Specifically, our findings suggest that refugees’ decisions are influenced primarily by safety and security in their place of origin, their economic prospects, the availability of public services, and their personal networks. Confidence in information is also important: we find that several drivers of return---safety, services, and networks---only impact intentions among people who have high confidence in their information. By contrast, the conditions in hosting countries–so-called “push'” factors–play a negligible role in the process of refugee return. Even in the face of outright hostility and poor living conditions, refugees are unlikely to return unless the situation at home improves significantly.

About the Speakers: 

Ala’ Alrababa’h is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Stanford University, a graduate fellow at the Immigration Policy Lab, and a junior scholar at the International Policy Scholars Consortium and Network. His research combines fieldwork, machine learning, and experimental methods to study issues related to authoritarian media, political violence, and migration and refugees. His research has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Political Science Research and Methods, and International Studies Quarterly. Prior to arriving at Stanford University, Ala’ was a Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Jeremy Weinstein is Professor of Political Science, Fisher Family Director of Stanford Global Studies, and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University. He also is faculty co-director of the Immigration Policy Lab and the Data for Development Initiative. In addition, he is a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C.

His research focuses on civil wars and political violence; ethnic politics; the political economy of development; democracy and accountability; and migration. He is the author of Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge University Press), which received the William Riker Prize for the best book on political economy. He is also the co-author of Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action (Russell Sage Foundation), which received the Gregory Luebbert Award for the best book in comparative politics.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/4X0CfpgDSoQ

About the Event: This ambitious and incisive book presents a new vision for American foreign policy and international order at a time of historic upheaval. The United States global leadership crisis is not a passing shock created by the Trump presidency or COVID-19, but the product of forces that will endure for decades. Amidst political polarization, technological transformation, and major global power shifts, Lissner and Rapp-Hooper convincingly argue, only a grand strategy of openness can protect American security and prosperity despite diminished national strength. Disciplined and forward-looking, an openness strategy would counter authoritarian competitors by preventing the emergence of closed spheres of influence, maintaining access to the global commons, supporting democracies without promoting regime change, and preserving economic interdependence. The authors provide a roadmap for the next president, who must rebuild strength at home while preparing for novel forms of international competition. Lucid, trenchant, and practical,An Open World is an essential guide to the future of geopolitics.

Book Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Open-World-America-Contest-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0300250320/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=an+open+world&qid=1588687676&sr=8-4

About the Speaker: Rebecca Lissner is an Assistant Professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College and a Non-Resident Scholar at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies. Previously, Dr. Lissner held research fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, the Council on Foreign Relations, and International Security Studies at Yale University. Dr. Lissner’s research and writing focuses on international security and American foreign policy. She is the co-author of An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for Twenty-First-Century Order (Yale University Press, 2020) and is working on a second book examining the effects of military interventions on American grand strategy. Her scholarship has been published in Political Science Quarterly, the Texas National Security Review, Survival, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and International Peacekeeping. Her policy writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Quarterly, among other publications. Dr. Lissner received an AB in Social Studies from Harvard University and an MA and PhD in Government from Georgetown University.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/bUXHbUj5uxE

About the Event: While most civil wars today are fought within Muslim-majority states and, frequently, by armed groups that self-identify as Islamic, we know little about the relationships between and amongst Islamic humanitarian law, Western (treaty-based) humanitarian law, and the rhetoric and behavior of Islamic armed groups. Our legal analysis suggests that, while there is a great deal of overlap between Western and Islamic humanitarian law, this overlap is not perfect. Our empirical analysis, which focuses on both the words and behaviors of Islamic armed groups, suggests similarly mixed results. Specifically, we find that, on average, Islamic armed groups do not appear to be more or less compliant with Western or Islamic humanitarian law than non-Islamic armed groups when it comes to civilian targeting and child soldiering. While they often appeal to Islamic humanitarian law, Islamic armed groups appear to be bound by similar political and military – rather than religious or legal – constraints to non-Islamic armed groups.

About the Speaker: Tanisha Fazal is Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict.  Fazal’s current book project analyzes the effect of improvements in medical care in conflict zones on the long-term costs of war.  She is the author of State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation (Princeton University Press, 2007), and Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict (Cornell University Press, 2018.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/C6FVf4CoowM

About the Event: U.S. Strategy in the Asian Century presents a new vision for the United States to navigate a region of immense consequence that is in the midst of profound change. As competition between China and the United States intensifies and questions about the sustainability and reliability of American power deepen, Washington must adapt its approach in order revitalize its power, reestablish its leadership, and rebuild the liberal order for the 21st century.

Book Purchase:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/0231197659/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_9sClFb5GYPYCM

About the Speaker: Abraham M. Denmark is Director of the Asia Program and a Senior Fellow at the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Denmark previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia, for which he received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service. He has been named as an Honorary Rear Admiral in the Navy of the Republic of Korea and received the Order of the Resplendent Banner from the Republic of China (Taiwan).