Stanford University

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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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
Seminars

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
Seminars
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
Seminars
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
Seminars

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
Seminars

Demystifying Postcolonial International History: Revelations from the Algerian Front of the Third World's Cold War

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Abstract: Despite growing interest in the phenomenon of Third World internationalism, the post-colonial world’s contribution to modern international history is still greatly under-appreciated. Important South-South dynamics are neglected in order to privilege a North-South framework of analysis, while excessive preoccupation with the discourse of the 1955 Bandung Conference obscures the substantive and changing nature of the Third World project. However, new evidence from countries like Algeria and the former Yugoslavia now make it possible to re-examine “Third Wordlism” as a geopolitical project and diffuse ideology. This paper argues that Third Worldism evolved from a subversive transnational phenomenon into a conservative and state-centric international one. By determining the nature of decolonization—that is, the universalization of the sovereign state model—Third Worldist forces helped to reshape the entire contemporary international system. Moreover, by stoking international tensions for their own advantage (contrary to the public rhetoric of the Non-Alignment Movement), countries like Algeria played an under-appreciated role in prolonging and globalizing the Cold War.

About the Speaker: Jeffrey James Byrne studied at Yale University and the London School of Economics, and is now Assistant Professor of history at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He writes on the international history of the twentieth century, with a particular interest in Africa, the Middle East, decolonization, and the connections between developing countries. His work has been published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Diplomatic History, and numerous essay collections. His first book, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria and the Third World’s Cold War, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2015.

Africa's Cold War
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Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Jeffrey Byrne Assistant Professor, Department of History Speaker University of Britsh Columbia
Seminars

Delegation to the Device: What happens when we deploy quantitative models for complex matters of concern?

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Abstract: In 2011 I joined a team of global security analysts at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to develop a systematic methodology for “information-driven” safeguards for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This methodology would link the IAEA’s nuclear inspection schedules, within a given state, to a heterogenous body of information about the state. As the lone physicist in the group, I was quickly fashioned as the “quantitative guy”, who would produce quantitative frameworks to make information-driven safeguards “more objective”, and “less political”. But as my quantitative contributions earned the respect of my peers, I became leery of the role they might play in the political shift I saw afoot. If safeguards was to be information-driven, then whose information would “drive” the IAEA? 
 
In this presentation, I tell the story of my experience as the “quant guy” at LLNL in order to explore a broader question: when is it useful to deploy quantitative methods of highly complex phenomena in matters of social consequence? I borrow from a distinction commonly made in the science studies literature - between disciplinary and mechanical objectivity - to argue that quantitative models serve us best when they are used not to “remove bias” or “increase rigor”, but to aid subjective judgement and facilitate communication.
 
 
About the Speaker: Chris Lawrence received his PhD in nuclear science at University of Michigan in 2014, and has published in the fields of nuclear detection and solid-state physics. His dissertation introduced novel neutron-spectroscopy techniques for the verification of warhead dismantlement. In 2011 he worked on nuclear safeguards policy issues in the Global Security Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He is currently a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at CISAC, where he studies the creation and deployment of knowledge about nuclear programs and treaty compliance.

Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Christopher Lawrence Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow Speaker CISAC
Seminars

"Radioactive Knowledge: State Control of Scientific Information in Post Soviet Kazakhstan"

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About the Topic: Four decades of Soviet nuclear testing left behind a legacy of radioactive contamination in a sizable area of contemporary Kazakhstan. My research examines the social consequences and lasting implications of this on local populations living in a village of Koyan. Taking the 1949-1989 Soviet atomic weapons program and the secretive Cold War context as my starting point, I investigate local understandings of health and livelihood on a landscape marred by atomic testing and one continuously inhabited by rural Kazakhs for generations. I demonstrate that since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the advent of free market reforms in Kazakhstan a new kind of post-socialist identity has appeared. Furthermore, in order to navigate this post-Soviet social order and cultural marginalization, people in Koyan have “embraced” nuclear pollution as something natural in their environment. Specifically, they see their own survival as proof that they have evolved to fit a radioactive ecosystem. My Kazakh colleagues say “clean air is our death,” meaning that moving away from these damaged ecosystems will kill them. Emerging strategies for survival reflect a new social order in Kazakhstan: that order embraces a nuclear future by agreeing to accept funding to become a Global Nuclear Fuel Bank and a dumping ground for much of the West’s toxic waste, while at the same time publicly lamenting its Soviet nuclear past. I address how people in Koyan have learned to engage with the nuclear test site’s past, present state practices, scientific expertise and authority, and how health, suffering, and notions of well-being constitute a new post-socialist identity.

 

About the Speaker: Magdalena Stawkowski received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her dissertation, “Radioactive Knowledge: State Control of Scientific Information in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan,” is based on sixteen months of field work in the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site region and is an ethnographic account of the local understandings of health, livelihood, and suffering among rural ethnic Kazakh communities. In it, Magdalena traces the lesser-known history of the Soviet nuclear program from the perspective of people who were most affected by its military-industrial complex, exploring how they cope with their own present-day toxic environments. She is a recipient of an award for outstanding contribution to the anti-nuclear movement by Olzhas Suleimenov, the Ambassador of Kazakhstan to UNESCO, Kazakh poet, and the founder of the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Anti-Nuclear Movement in Kazakhstan. Magdalena’s recent co-authored article appeared in the Journal of the History of Biology and is titled “James V. Neel and Yuri E. Dubrova: Cold War Debates and the Genetic Effects of Low Dose Radiation.”

Encina Hall (2nd floor)

Magdalena Stawkowski Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow Speaker CISAC
Seminars
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