About the Event: Can efforts to counter a revolution also be revolutionary? The Algerian War fractured the French Empire, destroyed the legitimacy of colonial rule, and helped launch the Third Worldist movement for the liberation of the Global South. In this discussion of his new book, Terrence G. Peterson highlights how the conflict also quietly helped to transform the nature of modern warfare.

The French war effort was never defined solely by repression. As this talk details, it also sought to fashion new forms of surveillance and social control that could capture the loyalty of Algerians and transform Algerian society. Hygiene and medical aid efforts, youth sports and education programs, and psychological warfare campaigns all attempted to remake Algerian social structures and bind them more closely to the French state. In tracing the emergence of such programs, Peterson reframes the French war effort as a radical project of armed social reform that sought not to preserve colonial rule unchanged, but to revolutionize it in order to preserve it against the global challenges of decolonization.

As Peterson will make clear, French officers' efforts to transform warfare into an exercise in social engineering not only shaped how the Algerian War unfolded from its earliest months, but also helped to forge a paradigm of warfare that dominated strategic thinking during the Cold War and after: counterinsurgency.

About the Speaker: Terrence G. Peterson is a historian of modern Europe with a focus on decolonization, migration, and warfare. His first book, Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency (Cornell University Press, September 2024) examines how French officers sought to counter demands for Algerian independence from France by transforming war into an exercise in armed social reform. His current work examines the nearly seventy-year history of the Rivesaltes Camp in southern France to understand why migrant detention camps emerged as a quintessential tool of modern governance and remain so today.

Peterson’s work appears in a number of peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Social History, the Journal of Contemporary History, French Politics, Culture & Society, and the Journal of North African Studies, as well as in a book for popular audiences in France entitled Colonisations: Notre histoire (Colonizations: Our History). He has also written for the popular outlets War on the Rocks and the Huffington Post.

Peterson’s work has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the American Historical Association, the Society for French Historical Studies, the Doris G. Quinn Foundation, and the Council for European Studies. In 2021, he received an FIU Top Scholar Award for teaching, and in 2024 he received a Society for Military History Vandervort Prize for outstanding journal article in the field of military history. He currently serves as Secretary for the Western Society for French History and Board Member of the Remembering Spaces of Internment (ReSI) research network.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the Event: When scholars and policymakers consider how technological advances affect the rise and fall of great powers, they draw on theories that center the moment of innovation—the eureka moment that sparks astonishing technological feats. In Technology and the Rise of Great Powers, Jeffrey Ding offers a different explanation of how technological revolutions affect competition among great powers. Rather than focusing on which state first introduced major innovations, he investigates why some states were more successful than others at adapting and embracing new technologies at scale. Drawing on historical case studies of past industrial revolutions as well as statistical analysis, Ding develops a theory that emphasizes institutional adaptations oriented around diffusing technological advances throughout the entire economy.

Examining Britain’s rise to preeminence in the First Industrial Revolution, America and Germany’s overtaking of Britain in the Second Industrial Revolution, and Japan’s challenge to America’s technological dominance in the Third Industrial Revolution (also known as the “information revolution”), Ding illuminates the pathway by which these technological revolutions influenced the global distribution of power and explores the generalizability of his theory beyond the given set of great powers. His findings bear directly on current concerns about how emerging technologies such as AI could influence the US-China power balance.

About the Speaker: Jeffrey Ding is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. He primarily researches U.S.-China competition and cooperation in emerging technologies. His book, Technology and the Rise of Great Powers: How Diffusion Shapes Economic Competition, was published in 2024 with Princeton University Press. Previously, Jeff was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the Event: The Russian system is different than our own, in ways that matter. Yet, longstanding assumptions and understandings about how policy is made are outdated and misleading, and overlook festering internal dynamics which increasingly influence Russian decisions and actions. Analysts and policymakers should take stock and re-calibrate accordingly.

Lunch to be provided for registered attendees.

About the Speaker: Steedman Hinckley served seven presidents analyzing and advising on Soviet/Russian affairs at the departments of state and defense, the US embassy in Moscow, the White House, and the intelligence community. He retired in 2023 as a member of CIA’s senior analytic service. He holds a B.A. in Russian and Soviet Studies from Wesleyan University and an M.Phil. in policy analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School. 

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the Event:  In the summer of 2022, India and the United States set upon a new course to redefine their relationship. It came to be known as The Initiative on Critical Emerging Technology (iCET). The iCET has challenged generally accepted norms on and around regulation, in both countries. It has leveraged innovation capital, and allowed different channels of connections to be born as a result of the larger sense of purpose that shapes the iCET: a determination to secure supply chains, deepen technology and economic ties, and to build a common and trusted ecosystem. How has the iCET fared thus far? Where has it failed? What are the different channels of cooperation that have been born as a result of the iCET?

About the Speaker: Rudra Chaudhuri is the director of Carnegie India. His research focuses on the diplomatic history of South Asia, contemporary security issues, and the important role of emerging technologies and digital public infrastructure in diplomacy, statecraft, and development. He and his team at Carnegie India chair and convene the Global Technology Summit, co-hosted with the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. He is the author of Forged in Crisis: India and the United States Since 1947, and multiple scholarly and policy articles. He served as a lecturer and a senior lecturer at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London from 2009 to 2022. In 2012 he established the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office’s (FCDO) Diplomatic Academy for South Asia at King’s College London, and served as its founding director from 2013 to 2022. He holds a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London. In February 2024, he was nominated as a visiting senior research fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.

No RSVP required

Please join the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance on Tuesday, May 14th at 3 PM Pacific for a talk with Liina Kamm, a Global Digital Governance Fellow at Stanford University for spring 2024 and a senior researcher at Cybernetica, a deep-tech company in Estonia. At this event, co-sponsored by Stanford University Libraries, Liina will be presenting her research on the blueprints for deploying privacy-enhancing technologies in e-government. 

About the session:
Liina Kamm's public talk at Stanford, “Blueprints for Deploying Privacy Enhancing Technologies in E-Government,” hosted by Stanford's Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance, will address how governments are increasingly becoming providers of data-driven services to both citizens and organizations. As the number of these services grows, governments will store greater amounts of personal and company data. Data minimization and data protection can be legal obligations, especially for governments that have passed data protection and privacy regulations. However, even without such regulations, it is a good information security practice for organizations to only process as much data as is necessary. This talk will give an overview of how we put together a privacy-enhancing technology (PET) concept and roadmap for e-government, including motivations, an adoption strategy, and blueprints for services that benefit from PETs.
 
Liina Kamm is a Global Digital Governance Fellow at Stanford University for spring 2024 and a senior researcher at Cybernetica, a deep-tech company in Estonia. Her research focuses on the uptake of privacy-enhancing technologies, enabling privacy-preserving statistical analysis for social sciences and genomics, and the security and privacy of AI systems. Her current work also includes leading and managing research projects and consulting industry and public sector organizations on the uptake of privacy-enhancing technologies and AI risk management. She is Cybernetica’s PI for the Horizon Europe project CHESS (Cyber-security Excellence Hub in Estonia and South Moravia) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) project PAI-MACHINE on machine-optimizing machine learning algorithms for secure multi-party computation. She also leads the research group on the security and privacy of AI in the Estonian Centre of Excellence for AI. Liina received her PhD in computer science (cryptography) from the University of Tartu (Estonia).

About the Event: In the digital age, mass atrocity crimes are increasingly promoted and organized online. Yet, little attention has been afforded to the question of whether offensive cyberspace operations and big data analytics might be used for human protection purposes. Specifically: How might cyber-operations and online influence campaigns help protect populations from genocides, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansings? In this talk, I introduce the concept of ‘cyber humanitarian interventions’ to disrupt potential perpetrators’ means and motivations for atrocities. I will also navigate the most pressing ethical objections to deploying cyber humanitarian interventions, and identify which moral agents, precisely, are responsible for their deployment. This includes states, coalitions, international organizations, individuals, civil society, and – of course – Big Tech.

About the Speaker: Rhiannon Neilsen is the Cyber Security Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. Her research focuses on digital technologies in conflict (specifically cyber, social media, and AI), mass atrocities, disinformation, and the ethics of war. Previously, Rhiannon was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Australian National University, a Research Consultant for the Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict (ELAC) at the University of Oxford, and a Visiting Fellow at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Please join the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance on Thursday, April 25th at 10 AM Pacific for a talk with Kairi Talves, a visiting scholar from the Estonian Military Academy. At this event, co-sponsored by Stanford University Libraries, Kairi Talves will be presenting her research about the role of technology in strengthening national security and resilience in small countries

About the session:
Kairi Talves' public talk at Stanford, “The role of technology in the security and resilience of small states: the example of Estonia ”, hosted by Stanford's Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance, will address the role technology plays in today's society, including its impact on the security and defense of countries. In the future, the level of technological innovation and the ability to adopt new technologies will increasingly affect the balance of power and the formation of alliances between the states. In this perspective, for the small countries that are not shaping major technological trends or defining future global threats, it is important to find strategic modes of action. The presentation will draw on the research of Estonia to discuss the role of technology in shaping the national security and resilience of a small state in the face of a superior adversary. It reflects on the opportunities and challenges related to the factors of Estonian technological and societal development after regaining its independence in the 1990s.
 
Kairi Talves, currently a Global Digital Governance Fellow at Stanford University, is a Scientific Adviser at the Estonian Ministry of Defence and a Visiting Researcher at the Estonian Military Academy. She has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Tartu. Her main research interests cover the different aspects of technology in society: societal development and change (e.g., technological developments) and their social impact, people’s attitudes and coping in the context of rapid societal changes, public acceptance of technology and technology in the military: risks, trust, acceptance, ethical aspects, challenges of human-machine interaction, cognitive warfare, innovation of military organizations, technology, and states’ power balance. She has published a number of research papers in international journals and chapters in edited volumes. Together with Prof. Dierk Spreen from the University of Bundeswehr Munich, she is the co-editor of the book “Technology in the Military Now: Sociological, Cultural, and Ethical Perspectives,” which is planned to be published in Springer in 2025.

About the Event: Catastrophic, civilization-threatening climate change is a genuine possibility within the coming century. This talk will consider evidence that a variety of climate tipping points and other planetary boundaries have already been crossed, and that climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases may be considerably higher than recent IPCC estimates. Further, modeling of cascading risks – such as how multiple tipping points might interact if thresholds are crossed – suggests that the full impact of anthropogenic environmental change remains unknown and likely underestimated.  Meanwhile, a widespread focus on high-level international and national governance obscures how denial, disinformation, and multi-layered, subnational governance processes are delaying and derailing changes needed to reach Paris Agreement goals. The talk will end with reflections on ways forward. 
 
About the Speakers: Paul N. Edwards is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Director of the Program on Science, Technology & Society, and Co-Director of the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative, as well as Professor of Information and History (Emeritus) at the University of Michigan. Edwards is the author of A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010) and The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (MIT Press, 1996), and co-editor of Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (MIT Press, 2001), as well as other books and numerous articles. With Janet Vertesi, he co-edits the Infrastructures book series for MIT Press. Edwards recently served as a Lead Author for the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2021).

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the Event: The emergence of generative language models, such as the one powering ChatGPT, has sparked widespread interest due to its potential implications for the future of work and society at large. The drive to automate decision-making is reaching high-stakes applications like military applications and mental health care, where non-zero error rates lead to individual failures with dire consequences and the potential to cause wide-scale harm. Thus, it is time to scrutinize and ask whether we should use language models in high-stakes decision-making scenarios. In this talk, I will dissect the question by studying how human decision-making differs from language models, if language models add their own dynamics to conflict situations, and whether they can recognize emergency/high-stakes user queries. 
 
About the Speaker: Max Lamparth is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Stanford Center for AI Safety, and the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative at Stanford University. He is advised by Prof. Steve Luby, Prof. Paul Edwards, and Prof. Clark Barrett.

With his research, he wants to make AI systems more secure and safe to use to avoid individual and wide-scale harm. Specifically, he is focusing on how to improve the robustness and alignment of language models, how to make their inner workings more interpretable, and how to reduce the potential for misuses.

Max received his Ph.D. in August 2023 from the Technical University of Munich and previously a B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the Event: Every moment of every day, we see, engage, and construct with biology. From gene editing with CRISPR in a lab to making yogurt under kitchen counters, engineering with biology permeates all aspects of our lives. However, not everyone sees biology as around us, in us, and of us. The 21st century may be the century of biotechnology, but it is also the time when many do not feel empowered to engage. People have been disenfranchised from innovating with biology at a moment of crisis: climate change, pandemics, and global inequality afflict millions. But what if everyone could access the tools and knowledge to see, understand, and construct effective biological solutions to their own problems, in their own communities? What if biology was by and for everyone?

Biology for Everyone, a collaborative research project led by Dr. Callie Chappell and their interdisciplinary team, envisions (1) creating publicly accessible labs at the local level, such as in public libraries (LABraries) and (2) professional pathways (LABrarians) and curricula for a national community biology training program. This CISAC seminar will present results from a series of working groups convening a diverse group of scientists, educators, academics, activists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and artists to deliberate on a national strategy to advance biology for everyone (BIO4E).

About the Speaker: Dr. Callie Chappell is a Bio Security and Innovation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. Their research focuses on expanding participation, innovation, and imagination in American bioeconomy through community engagement. Previously, they were involved in leading BioJam, a collaboration between community organizations in Salinas, CA and Stanford University, to reimagine bioengineering through the lens of youth leadership, culture, and creativity. Dr. Chappell received their PhD from Stanford University in Biology, where they were a Fellow with the Center for Evolutionary and Human Genomics (CEHG), a graduate ethics fellow with the McCoy Family Center for Ethics, BioFutures Fellow with the Department of Bioengineering, and National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Fellow. During their PhD, Dr. Chappell was also a Mirzayan Science and Technology Fellow with the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, Catherine S. McCarter Science Policy Fellow with the Ecological Society of America (ESA), and president of the Stanford Science Policy Group. In addition to their research and policy work, Dr. Chappell is also a professional artist and arts educator.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.