Stanford University

Strategic Deterrence in the 21st Century

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Due to the overwhelming response to this event and our seating limitations, registration is now closed.

 

Admiral Cecil D. Haney, a native of Washington, D.C. is a 1978 graduate of the United States Naval Academy.

His career as a submariner includes assignments aboard USS John C. Calhoun (SSBN 630), USS Frank Cable (AS 40), USS Hyman G. Rickover (SSN 709), USS Asheville (SSN 758), and Submarine Squadron 8, culminating in command of USS Honolulu (SSN 718).

Subsequent fleet command assignments include Submarine Squadron 1 from June 2002 to July 2004, and Submarine Group 2 from October 2006 to March 2008.

Admiral Haney's shore duty tours include administrative assistant for enlisted affairs at Naval Reactors; congressional appropriations liaison officer for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Comptroller); Deputy Chief of Staff of Plans, Policies and Requirements, U.S. Pacific Fleet (N5N8); Director, Submarine Warfare Division (N87); Director, Naval Warfare Integration Group (N00X); Deputy Commander, U.S. Strategic Command and recently Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Admiral Haney holds Master's degrees in Engineering Acoustics and System Technology from the Naval Post Graduate School, and a Master's degree in National Security Strategy from the National Defense University.

Admiral Haney's decorations include the Navy Distinguished Service Medal (two awards), Defense Superior Service Medal (two awards), Legion of Merit (four awards), Navy Commendation Medal (three awards), Navy Achievement Medal (two awards), and various campaign and unit awards. In addition, he was the 1998 Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale Leadership Award recipient.

Encina Hall, 2nd floor 

Admiral Cecil D. Haney Commander Speaker USSTRATCOM
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Directors' Seminar Series

Voluntary Disengagement from Terrorism: Why Doing Nothing is a Good Policy Option for Handling (Some) Returning Foreign Fighters

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Abstract: The hundreds of young Westerners who have gone to fight with the group Islamic State in Syria/ Iraq have caused alarm among security practitioners and policy makers.

Data on Western fighters in past conflicts indicate that a little more than ten percent later turned to terrorism. The rest did not. The unprecedented and growing number of Western fighters in Syria/Iraq threatens to overwhelm the resources of the security agencies of smaller European countries. They can hardly afford to risk pushing returnees, who would otherwise have disengaged, back into the arms of extremist groups. But how to shape countermeasures so they do not work at cross-purposes with the natural disengagement processes, that appear to be at work?

This talk is based on a comprehensive review of case studies, which document voluntary disengagement from violent extremism in a Western context. It identifies broad patterns in terms of how and why individuals disengage, discusses the applicability of these insights to the returnees and discusses policy implications in terms of how to handle the homebound fighters. 

 

About the Speaker: Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen served as an executive director at the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) from 2008 to 2014. Her areas of responsibility comprised intelligence fusion and strategic terrorism threat analysis, preventive efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism, exit-interventions, and protective security efforts.

Previously, she worked as a research manager and Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). In this capacity she was embedded with Danish armed forces in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan in 2006.

Dalgaard-Nielsen is a non-resident fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She serves on the board of advisor of the Global Center on Cooperative Security, Washington DC and on the Board of Advisors of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the National Defence College in Sweden.

She holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University SAIS, an MA in political science from the University of Aarhus, and an executive MA of public management and governance from Copenhagen Business School and the University of Copenhagen. She has published widely on topics such as terrorism, radicalization, homeland security, peace-keeping operations, and transatlantic relations. 

"Promoting Exit from Violent Extremism: Themes and Approaches,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 36:3, 99-115
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Voluntary Disengagement from terrorism
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Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen Visiting Scholar Speaker CISAC
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Just a War Theory? Understanding American Public Opinion on Proportionality and Distinction in War

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Abstract: To what extent are the American public’s views on the use of force consistent with just war doctrine’s principles of proportionality and distinction? Drawing on an original survey experiment conducted on a representative sample of American citizens, we find that Americans broadly accept the ethical principle of proportionality. They are less willing to inflict collateral civilian deaths when the military importance of destroying the target is lower and more willing to accept them when doing so would avert the deaths of larger numbers of American soldiers. Nevertheless, we find that the public’s commitment to proportionality is heavily biased in favor of American interests in ways that suggest only limited support for traditional understandings of just war theory. We find little evidence that the public supports the principle of distinction (non-combatant immunity). Indeed, under certain conditions, more than two-thirds of the American public was willing to approve of intentional attacks on foreign civilians. In addition, contrary to prevailing interpretations of just war doctrine, Americans were significantly more likely to accept the collateral deaths of foreign civilians when those civilians were described as politically sympathetic with the adversary than when they were described as political opponents. The paper that will be presented, "Just a War Theory?  Understanding American Public Opinion on Proportionality and Distinction in War" is co-authored by Scott Sagan (Stanford University) and Ben Valentino (Dartmouth University).
 
About the Speaker: Scott D. 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 co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Global Nuclear Future Initiative. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University. From 1984 to 1985, he 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.  

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000) with Peter R. Lavoy and James L. Wirtz; the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009); and co-editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus, On the Global Nuclear Future (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010), with Steven E. Miller. Sagan’s recent publications include “A Call for Global Nuclear Disarmament” in Nature (July 2012); “Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons” with Daryl G. Press and Benjamin A. Valentino in the American Political Science Review (February 2013); and, with Matthew Bunn, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences occasional paper, “A Worst Practices Guide to Insider Threats: Lessons from Past Mistakes” (2014).

Sagan was the recipient of the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award in 2013. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009. 

Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
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The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg PhD

Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair 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 is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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The Digital Dictator’s Dilemma: Internet Regulation and Political Control in Non-Democratic States

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Abstract: While non-democratic states often restrict traditional civil liberties such as speech, media, and association, the degree of Internet freedom permitted varies dramatically across states.  This paper uses a mixed-method approach to analyze global patterns of Internet policy across hybrid and authoritarian regimes, and to offer a model of key causal factors and processes influencing policy choice – particularly the choice whether to adopt restrictive policies that limit Internet use and content or to permit the development of and access to a vibrant uncensored Internet.  Large-N analysis identifies global patterns of Internet restrictions and examines how these patterns appear to be changing as Internet penetration increases.  The paper also draws on research from the Russian Federation, tracing changes in domestic Internet policy choices and their relation to political instability and control, examining a critical period of policy change in a regime that had previously stood out for its relatively unrestricted Internet. 

About the Speaker: Jaclyn Kerr is a doctoral candidate in government at Georgetown University. Her research examines the Internet policies adopted by authoritarian and hybrid regimes in their attempts to adapt to the potentially destabilizing influence of growing Internet penetration.  She holds a BAS in Mathematics and Slavic Studies, and an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from Stanford University.  In 2013-2014, Ms. Kerr was a research fellow at the Center for the Study of New Media and Society at the New Economic School in Moscow, while conducting field research for her dissertation.  She has worked as a research assistant at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, has been an IREX EPS Fellow at the U.S. Embassy in Kazakhstan, a Research Fellow at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar, an IREX YLF Fellow in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and has previous professional experience as a software engineer. She joins CISAC as a Cybersecurity Predoctoral Fellow for 2014-2015.

 


The Digital Dictator's Dilemma
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Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Jaclyn A. Kerr

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jaclyn_kerr.jpg PhD

Jackie Kerr is a Professor in the College of Information and Cyberspace (CIC) at National Defense University (NDU).  She is also a Nonresident Fellow with the Brookings Institution Foreign Policy Program and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies in the School of Foreign Service.  Her work focuses on digital and emerging technologies and their current and future impacts on international politics, national security, and democracy.  She has conducted research and taught on the digital politics of authoritarian regimes, the role of information technologies in civil society and protest mobilization, cyber domain strategy, global Internet governance, the role of artificial intelligence in national security and foreign policy, and on the role of digital technologies in the politics of Russia, China, and Eurasia.  While at NDU, Dr. Kerr previously served as Senior Research Fellow for Defense and Technology Futures at the Center for Strategic Research (2020-2024) and the Center for Emerging Technology and Future Warfare (2024-2025) within the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS).  In 2019-2020, she served as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Science and Technology Advisor to the Secretary (STAS), where she advised on digital technology policy, particularly as it pertains to human rights, democracy, and national security.  From 2016 to 2019, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where she led work on cybersecurity, cyber domain strategy, and information conflict.  Dr. Kerr was previously a Science, Technology, and Public Policy Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, a Visiting Scholar at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, a Cybersecurity Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and has held research fellowships in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Qatar.  She also has prior professional experience as a software engineer with Comcast and Symantec.  Dr. Kerr holds a PhD and MA in Government from Georgetown University, and an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and BAS in Mathematics and Slavic Languages and Literatures from Stanford University. 

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Jackie Kerr Cybersecurity Predoctoral Fellow Speaker CISAC
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Biosecurity and the Concerned Molecular Biologist: What the Government Doesn't Know Could Hurt Us

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Abstract: Advances in biotechnology offer huge potential benefits to humankind, but at the same time present serious challenges to security. Professor Stearns will discuss his work as a member of JASON, an advising body that carries out studies for the US government on a wide range of topics.  Much of that work has been directed at assessing how the dissemination of sophisticated, yet inexpensive, biotechnology equipment and methods has changed how we have to think  about some of the key issues in biosecurity. 

 

About the Speaker: Tim Stearns is the Frank Lee and Carol Hall Professor of Biology at Stanford University and Professor of Genetics at Stanford Medical School.  He is the chair of the Department of Biology.  Dr. Stearns’ lab studies the structure and function of the centrosome and cilium in animal cells and the relationship of defects in these important signaling centers to human disease.  He has been recognized for his teaching of undergraduates and graduate students at Stanford, and internationally in Chile, Ghana, South Africa and Tanzania.  Dr. Stearns is a member of JASON, an independent group of scientists which advises the United States government on matters of science and technology.  

 


Encia Hall (2nd floor)

Tim Stearns Frank Lee and Carol Hall Professor and Professor of Genetics Speaker Stanford University
Seminars

Fear and Democracy: Reflections from the 1930s and 1940s on the Presidency, Congress, and National Security

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Please note that this Seminar is held on a Wednesday.

About the topic: This talk explores two primary questions: (1) the origins of the modern US national security state, and what might be called a constellation of democratic exceptions, during the late 1930s and 1940s; and (2) the patterning of congressional delegation, and the particular role played by southern Democrats in producing that period’s constellation of institutions and policies.  More speculatively, it considers subsequent patterns of continuity and discontinuity in instruments, norms, political coalitions, and the balance of congressional and presidential capacity. 

About the Speaker: Ira Katznelson has been Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University since 1994, and, since 2012, President of the Social Science Research Council. He served as President of the American Political Science Association in 2005-06, as Chair of the Russell Sage Foundation Board of Trustees from 1999-2002, and as President of the Social Science History Association in 1997-98. His most recent book, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (Liveright, 2013) has been awarded the Bancroft, Woodrow Wilson, Sidney Hillman, and J.David Greenstone Prizes. Other recent books include Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns (Cambridge University Press, 2008; written with Andreas Kalyvas); When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (W.W. Norton, 2006), and Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge After Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust (Columbia University Press, 2003). He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Ira Katznelson Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History Speaker Columbia University
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Directors' Seminar Series

Climate Change, Sustainability and International Security

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Abstract:  The industrial and agricultural revolutions have profoundly transformed the world. However, an unintended consequence of these revolutions is that we are affecting the climate of Earth. I will describe the rapidly changing energy landscape, an “epidemiological” approach to assessing the risks of climate change, and its impact to international security. I will then give a perspective on mitigating these risks with science, technology and policy with emphasis on developing the lowest cost solution.

About the Speaker: Steven Chu is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Physics and Molecular & Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. His research spans atomic and polymer physics, biophysics, biology, biomedicine and batteries. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for the laser cooling and trapping of atoms.

From January 2009 until April 2013, Dr. Chu was the 12th U.S. Secretary of Energy and the first scientist to hold a cabinet position since Ben Franklin. During his tenure, he began ARPA-E, the Energy Innovation Hubs, the Clean Energy Ministerial meetings, and was tasked by President Obama to assist BP in stopping the Deepwater Horizon oil leak. Prior to his cabinet post, he was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Professor of Physics and Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, the Theodore and Francis Geballe Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University, and head of the Quantum Electronics Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories.

Dr. Chu is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academia Sinica, and is a foreign member of the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Korean Academy of Sciences and Technology. He has been awarded 24 honorary degrees, published more than 250 scientific papers, and holds 10 patents.

Steven Chu William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Physics and Molecular & Cellular Physiology Speaker Stanford University
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Directors' Seminar Series

Progress towards Ignition on the National Ignition Facility

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Abstract: Ignition has been a long sought-after goal needed to make fusion energy a viable alternative energy source, but ignition has yet to be achieved.  For an inertially confined fusion (ICF) [1] plasma to ignite, the plasma must be very well confined and very hot, to generate extremely high pressures needed for self-heating – achieving this state is not easy!  

In this talk, we will discuss the progress towards ignition on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Northern California.  We will cover the some of the setbacks encountered during the progress of the research at NIF [2], but also cover the great advances that have been made. 
 

About the Speaker: Dr. Omar Hurricane is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and lead scientist for the High-foot Implosion Campaign on the NIF.  His research focuses on weapons physics, high energy density physics science, and plasma instability.  Dr. Hurricane has authored 60 journal publications and 60 conference papers, largely in the area of plasma physics and high-energy density physics (HEDP). He has received several awards and honors, including the U.S. Department of Energy Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for National Security and Nonproliferation (2009), five U.S. Department of Energy Defense Programs Recognition of Excellence Awards (2002, 2004, 2009 x 2, 2010), and three LLNL Directors Science & Technology awards (2010, 2011, and 2013).  Dr. Hurricane received his B.S. in Physics and Applied Mathematics from Metropolitan State University of Denver, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he was also a post-doc for four years.  Dr. Hurricane was also a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University (CISAC) in the 2010-2011 academic year. 

 


Progress towards ignition on the National Ignition Facility (NIF)
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Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Omar Hurricane Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, AX-Division Speaker Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
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Rethinking the First World War from the Perspective of International Law

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About the Topic: Re-establishing and strengthening the rule of international law in 
international affairs was a central Allied aim in the First World War. Revisionism in its many 
forms has erased this from our memory, and with it the meaning of the war. Imperial 
Germany’s actions and justifications for its war conduct amounted to proposing an entirely 
different set of international-legal principles from those that other European states recognized 
as public law. This talk examines what those principles were and what implications they had 
for the legal world order.
 
About the Speaker: Isabel V. Hull received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1978 and 
has since then been teaching at Cornell University, where she is the John Stambaugh 
Professor of History. A German historian, her work has reached backward to 1600 and 
forward to 1918 and has focused on the history of sexuality, the development of civil society, 
military culture, and imperial politics and governance. She has recently completed a book 
comparing Imperial Germany, Great Britain, and France during World War I and the impact 
of international law on their respective conduct of the war. It will appear in Spring 2014 
under the title, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law in the First World 
War. Her talk is based on this latest research.

Central Conference Room, Encina Hall (2nd Floor)

Isabel Hull John Stambaugh Professor of History Speaker Cornell University
Seminars
Directors' Seminar Series

The Cold War, Human Rights and Self-Determination

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About the Topic: During the Cold War countless peoples and movements in both the decolonizing world and the advanced industrial states mobilized under the banner of self-determination, and sought to institutionalize its status as a human right in international law. This talk, focusing on the end of European empire in the 1970s will explore why self-determination came to have such expansive and potentially disruptive meaning in the post-WWII era, serving as a short-hand for a wide range of claims to sovereignty.
 
About the Speaker: Brad Simpson is an assistant professor of history and international studies at Princeton University. His research and teaching interests are twentieth-century U.S. foreign relations and international history. His first book, Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968 (Stanford 2008) explores the intersection of anti-Communism and development thinking in shaping U.S. Indonesian relations. 
 
He is currently researching a global history of self-determination, exploring its political, cultural and legal descent through post 1945 US foreign relations and international politics. Simpson is also a founder and director of a project at the non-profit National Security Archive to declassify U.S. government documents concerning Indonesia and East Timor during the reign of General Suharto (1966-1998). He has recently published in International History Review, Cold War History, Reviews in American History, Diplomatic History, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Critical Asian Studies, and Peace and Change.

Encina Hall Basement, Room E008

Brad Simpson Assistant Professor of History and International Studies Speaker Princeton University
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