Dr. Janar Pekarev, a Stanford Global Digital Governance Fellow, will present his research exploring the impact of AI on military decision-making and the nuances of AI-driven command and control. His work uses simulated scenarios with AI feedback ranging from accurate to intentionally flawed. It measures decision accuracy, decision time, and user confidence to determine how varying AI feedback influences the quality and speed of decisions.

The research integrates a machine learning model and an override-rule module within an end-user interface. It operationalizes key principles of the laws of war—distinction, proportionality, and military necessity—through scenario simulations and a blend of qualitative and quantitative metrics. A stepwise experimental design enables a close examination of human-machine interaction dynamics, particularly how the transparency of AI reasoning affects human trust, decision-making biases, and ethical judgments under uncertainty. Though conceptual at this stage, the intent is to facilitate broad empirical validation and interdisciplinary collaboration, thereby augmenting our understanding of adaptive, transparent, and ethically grounded human-machine teaming in military operations.

The Global Digital Governance Fellows program is a joint initiative with Stanford Libraries, Vabamu, and Estonia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

About the Author

Dr. Janar Pekarev is a Global Digital Governance Fellow in the Program in Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Janar holds the rank of Major with more than 20 years in the Estonian military. He is a Fellow at the Estonian Military Academy and a member of multiple NATO STO research groups, including SAS-MSG-ET-FV (Emerging and Disruptive Technology) and NATO STO SAS-160 (Ethical, Legal, and Moral Impacts of Novel Technologies on NATO’s Operational Advantage), as well as an Estonian Ministry of Defence project on cognitive warfare against a superior adversary. Holding a PhD in Sociology and a BA in Law from the University of Tartu, he adopts an interdisciplinary approach that integrates law, military science and technology, and sociology. His research focuses on human-machine teaming within the military domain, with particular emphasis on AI weaponization and the moral programming of the use of force. He has contributed to the field through numerous publications in journals and presentations at academic conferences.

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About the event: How can states use military force to achieve their political aims without triggering a catastrophic nuclear war? How has China coped with this dilemma? While other nuclear-armed countries have preferred the traditional options of threatening to use nuclear weapons or fielding capabilities for decisive conventional military victories, China has instead chosen to rely on information-age weapons—offensive cyber capabilities, counterspace capabilities, and precision conventional missiles—to coerce its adversaries. In Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security (Princeton University Press, 2025) Fiona Cunningham explains this distinctive aspect of China’s post–Cold War deterrence strategy using an original theory of strategic substitution. When crises with adversaries created leverage deficits that highlighted the inadequacy of China’s existing military capabilities, China pursued information-age weapons that promised to provide coercive leverage against adversaries more quickly and credibly than the traditional options adopted by other nuclear-armed states. Drawing on hundreds of original Chinese-language sources and interviews with experts in China, the book provides new insights into the information-age technologies that are reshaping how states gain coercive leverage.

About the speaker: Fiona Cunningham is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests lie at the intersection of technology and conflict, with a focus on China. Fiona’s first book Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security (Princeton University Press, 2025) examines China’s distinctive approach to the dilemma of coercing an adversary under the shadow of nuclear war, which relies on substitutes for nuclear threats. Her research has been published in International Security, Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, The Texas National Security Review, and The Washington Quarterly.

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About the event: The foundations of American power are eroding due to a failure to adapt to a new era in which knowledge and technological innovation are the primary sources of national strength. Traditional measures of power—military might, natural resources, and economic scale—are increasingly insufficient. Instead, intangible assets such as education, research capacity, and control over emerging technologies determine long-term geopolitical influence. The United States is losing ground in these areas, with declining K–12 educational outcomes, reduced federal investment in basic research, outdated immigration policies, and growing reliance on private-sector actors whose interests may diverge from national objectives. Meanwhile, global competitors—particularly China—are rapidly expanding their innovation capacity. The U.S. must look toward a strategic shift in policy to enhance knowledge power through educational reform, immigration modernization, increased public research funding, and improved coordination between government, academia, and industry.

About the speaker: Amy Zegart is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, professor of political science by courtesy at Stanford University, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She is also a senior fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Zegart is an internationally recognized expert in U.S. intelligence, emerging technologies, and global political risk management. In addition to her research and teaching, Zegart led Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), founded the Stanford Cyber Policy Program, and served as chief academic officer of the Hoover Institution. At Hoover, Zegart currently serves as the Director of the Robert and Marion Oster National Security Affairs fellows program and as Director of the Technology Policy Accelerator, which produces the annual Stanford Emerging Technology Review. Before coming to Stanford, she was professor of public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a McKinsey & Company consultant. Zegart has served on the National Security Council staff and as a presidential campaign foreign policy advisor. She frequently advises senior U.S. officials on intelligence and emerging technology matters. She is the author of five books, including the bestseller Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence; Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity, co-authored with Condoleezza Rice; and Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11. Zegart holds a bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies from Harvard University and a doctorate in political science from Stanford University. She serves on the boards of Kratos Defense & Security Solutions and the Capital Group. Zegart is based in Stanford, CA.

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Limited number of lunches available for registered guests on day of event.

About the event: The advent of generative artificial intelligence and associated innovation in the broader AI domain has the potential to create transformative opportunities globally, automating routine tasks and shortening the timeline to understand and potentially solve complex problems while permitting humans to focus on challenges that require human creativity and problem-solving. There is no doubt, likewise, that the broad adoption and use of AI will result in some significant shifts in the workforce and could enhance challenges in domains like cybersecurity, misinformation and disinformation, and others. Additionally, there are significant questions about how to achieve broad adoption given concerns raised by many about trust, safety, and security in this domain. The key question facing policymakers, then, is what they ought to do in the fairly early days of the AI revolution, and whether the adoption of broad-based AI regulatory frameworks like those adopted by the European Union is the right initial step.

This presentation will evaluate and challenge the claim that broad-based regulation is the correct initial approach and even long-term approach to this rapidly expanding and increasingly publicly accessible domain of innovation.  The presentation will evaluate the innovation environments in jurisdictions where regulatory action is the initial move versus those that take a more limited approach during the lifecycle of rapid innovation. Specifically, the presentation will compare and contrast the regulatory approaches taken in the United States and the EU historically in the technology domain and seek to assess their impact on innovation or the relative lack thereof in those jurisdictions while drawing out some insights for policymakers in the AI domain.

The presentation will also assess whether key issues raised in the AI domain might be addressed through private sector action alone--which there is strong reason to believe they can--and, if policymakers nonetheless determine that some government action is needed, what approaches to such action can help ensure that broad innovation continues to be incentivized effectively.   The presentation will close on a set of recommendations for policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic—and around the globe—for expanding and protecting innovation in this critical domain while also ensuring that legitimate concerns are accounted for and addressed, as well as identifying issues for further research and evaluation.

About the speaker: Jamil N. Jaffer is the Founder and Executive Director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, where he also teaches national security law, cybersecurity, and counterterrorism. He is a Venture Partner at Paladin Capital and serves on multiple corporate and advisory boards in cybersecurity, technology, and national security.

Previously, Jamil held leadership roles at IronNet Cybersecurity, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the House Intelligence Committee. He served in the Bush Administration as an Associate Counsel to the President and at the Justice Department’s National Security Division. Jamil holds degrees from UCLA, the University of Chicago Law School, and the Naval War College.

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About the event: Conflicts and crises between nations play out in cyberspace. For many years, policy practitioners have proposed a parallel between nuclear deterrence and cyber deterrence. Over the last decade, practical lessons learned from cyber offenses and defense across policy and operations contradict any parallel to nuclear deterrence theory. Indeed, it is better to think of offensive cyber attacks as a new form of warfare, playing out across offense and defense. AI is about to supercharge both sides of this equation through everything from identifying vulnerabilities and exploits to managing cyber operations. This talk will discuss the lessons learned across offense and defense, based on the lecturer’s experiences in the policy and operational arenas at the White House’s National Security Council, NSA and USCC.

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: Anne Neuberger is an internationally recognized expert in cyber warfare and cybersecurity, risk and emerging technologies. She served as Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technologies in the Biden Administration, coordinating national policy, and led NSA’s intelligence operations as well as its cybersecurity mission, in addition to serving as NSA’s Chief Risk Officer. She also initiated and led the successful effort to convene 71 countries to combat trans-national cyber threats like ransomware, and money laundering via cryptocurrencies. Prior to her time in government (which included a stint at the Pentagon and Navy), Ms. Neuberger held several positions related to technology and operations at a large financial services firm.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Autonomous weapons systems (AWS) have sparked significant debate in international politics and research, especially regarding their ‘critical functions’ of target selection and engagement without human intervention or control. As a response to potential ethical and legal concerns, as well as security-related risks, AWS have been subject to an ongoing international regulation process at the United Nations since 2014. The primary focus of this process has been on maintaining human control over the use of force. However, since its initiation more than a decade ago, no regulatory framework has been agreed upon and core concepts, such as human control, are still highly contested.

Anna's research investigates why the regulation of AWS have not been successful (so far) by analyzing the co-production of weapons technology and arms control politics. In this talk, she shows that it is not solely determined by state interests. Rather, it is influenced by a complex interplay of knowledge production practices and discourses both within and outside of these processes. Moreover, with recent developments in and applications of artificial intelligence (AI), new questions about the nature of human-machine relations in war come to the fore, further complicating the regulatory landscape.

About the speaker: Anna-Katharina Ferl is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the Stanford Existential Risk Initiative (SERI) at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the regulation of artificial intelligence and autonomy as well as the practices of knowledge production in international security. Anna received her PhD from the University of Frankfurt in 2024 and previously worked as a researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). In addition to academic publications, she has also contributed to several policy reports on topics such as German arms control policies and gender-specific aspects of new technologies in international security.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Research shows that women are less likely to protest and have less cellphone access than men. Since studies indicate that cellphones can boost protest participation, we ask whether the gender gap in mobile ownership influences gender disparities in protest turnout. We find that the growing gender digital divide in cellphone ownership exacerbates the participation gap. We use survey data from Africa to show that where women systematically own fewer cellphones than men, they protest less frequently than men. We use a variety of methodological techniques to address concerns of endogeneity. We also probe one mechanism underpinning this relationship; we demonstrate that women who do not own cellphones face a political information disadvantage that limits their engagement. We conclude that unequal cellphone access further entrenches women’s position on the political margins.

This paper was co-authored with Tiffany Barnes, Emily Rains and Jingwen Wu.

About the speaker: Jakana Thomas is Associate Professor in the School of Global Policy and Strategy and Department of Political Science at University of California San Diego. Her research focuses on political violence and conflict processes with an emphasis on understanding women’s participation in and experiences with contentious politics. Her work has been published at the leading Political Science and International Relations journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics and International Organization, among other outlets. She is PI on a Blue Shield Foundation funded project examining Californians’ experiences with violence across their lifespans (CalVEX).

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: In this talk, Elena Kempf shares material from her forthcoming book on the history of weapons prohibitions in international law from the 1860s to the 1970s.

She argues that weapons prohibitions during this period emerged as a central site of contestation about the limits of the legitimate application of new technologies to war. These debates involved diplomats and international lawyers, but also medical professionals, scientists, and journalists. From their efforts, two ways of justifying a prohibition on a weapon emerged. The first repurposed the old legal concept of unnecessary suffering to newly weigh wounding against the abilities of military surgeons. The second was based on the specter of injury to global systems like shipping lines or the obliteration of major cities.

To revisit the early history of weapons prohibitions under international law is to uncover an expansive vocabulary that might animate future efforts at prohibition or control. This history also reveals the limits of outlawing weapons under international law. Law and technology changed at different velocities, leading to persistent distortions between moral-legal expectations and technical realities. In addition, the project of weapons prohibitions remained fragile, contested by techno-optimist, militarist, and pacifist critics.

About the speaker: Elena Kempf is the Old Dominion Career Development Assistant Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on the legal regulation of modern weapons of war. She is currently completing a manuscript on the history of weapons prohibitions in international law from the 1860s to the 1970s. She is also drafting a paper on the history of the concept of unnecessary suffering and superfluous injury. Prior to joining MIT, she was a postdoctoral fellow with the Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law at UC Berkeley Law School, and a lecturer with the Department of History at Stanford University. Professor Kempf earned her PhD in History from UC Berkeley in 2021.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Studying the social construction of norms has been a fashionable way to approach understanding European Union politics. Indeed, following the outbreak of the Ukrainian war (2022- present day), scholars of the EU have published a large number of articles exploring norm-driven politics. Many scholars of the EU have seen its engagement with Ukraine as driven by common norms and/or a shared identity. However, this talk will argue that self-interest in the form of the balance of threat assessments of individual countries remains the most crucial factor in understanding patterns of support for Ukraine, as well as explaining the percentage of GDP spent on the military by EU member states. Moreover, defense priorities are driven by a broader set of threats than just that posed by Russia. This talk will further explore how free riding and defense spending are determined by states’ interests in survival rather than shared norms or solidarity. This talk will suggest that scholars should pay greater attention to smaller ad hoc alliances between states that share specific threats, a neglected dimension of the current security environment in Europe.

About the speaker: Stig Jarle Hansen was a Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) before joining Stanford in 2024. At NMBU, he led Norway’s only master's program in International Relations. In 2016-2017, he was a Renee Belfer fellow at Harvard University. He is also a senior nonresident associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. His work is at the intersection of crime, security, and great power politics.

Professor Hansen’s books have received good reviews in Foreign Policy (the best book of the year) and The Economist, and Newsweek published a chapter of one of them. He has contributed to Jane’s Intelligence Review, the MES Insights of the United States Marine Corps, and West Point’s CTC Sentinel. He has commented for CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, Reuters, CCTV 4, and many other international media outlets.

Professor Hansen has also given presentations to various defense and governance institutions, including the NATO Intelligence Fusion Center, NATO Defense College in Rome, United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), has testified in hearings in the British House of Commons, and has been invited to give presentations to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He is a board member of the RAAD institute in Mogadishu, the Abaad center in Aden, and a member of the editorial board of Small Wars and insurgencies.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Weaponized conspiracy theories and social media disinformation have increased exponentially since Facebook’s Frances Haugen testified before the Senate in 2021. Since January 6, 2021, QAnon has been portrayed by government agencies (DHS 2021, FBI 2019), think tanks (Moonshot CVE 2020, Soufan Group 2021) and the mainstream media as dangerous with the “potential for terrorist violence.” This talk will explore the origins of the conspiracy theory, discuss how foreign adversaries of the US weaponize and leverage QAnon to exacerbate polarization and how the conspiracy theory targets LGBTQ+ community and revives racist stereotypes from the period of reconstruction and antisemitic tropes.

Latest article: LGBTQ+ Victimization by Extremist Organizations: Charting a New Path for Research

About the speaker: Mia Bloom is an International Security Fellow at the New America and Professor at Georgia State University. Bloom conducts research in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia and speaks eight languages. Bloom is the author of six books and over 80 articles on violent extremism including Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (Columbia 2005), Living Together After Ethnic Killing (Routledge 2007) Bombshell: Women and Terror (UPenn 2011) and Small Arms: Children and Terror (Cornell 2019) and Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon with Sophia Moskalenko (Stanford 2021). Her next book, Veiled Threats: Women and Jihad was published by Cornell University Press in January 2025. Bloom is a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has held appointments at Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, and McGill Universities. She serves on the Counter-Radicalization boards of the Anti-Defamation League, the UN Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate (UNCTED), Women Without Borders and several working groups for the Global Internet Forum for Counter Terrorism (GIFCT). Bloom has a PhD in political science from Columbia University, Masters in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and Bachelors in Russian, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from McGill, and her Pre-Doctorate from Harvard’s Center for International Studies and a Post-Doctorate from Princeton.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.