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Abstract
I will begin this talk with a short discussion of the function of warning in the US national security community, and the analytic methodology used by US intelligence agencies (in 1941 and since) to address the problem of warning. I will then present a formal model for crisis warning consisting of a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) intended to assist an intelligence analyst in deciding when to issue an alert to a foreign policy principal decision maker such as the President. The lead time demanded by the principal is a key element in the model. I will spend the remainder of the talk illustrating this warning model in the context of the brewing crisis in the Pacific from July to December 1941, and present results from test runs of the model using historical raw intelligence data from that period. While a probabilistic approach to warning is not a new idea, this research addresses three outstanding issues left unresolved from past efforts to develop such an approach:

  1. The need to process multiple dependent signals in a manner that is combinatorially feasible;
  2. Incorporation of the time dimension in which intelligence data is received into the inference, and the effect of dynamics on a warning decision where a finite horizon is imposed;
  3. Consideration of the fact that the analyst serves as an advisor to the principal decision maker but is not completely aware of the principal’s preference set.

Together with my thesis advisor, Prof Elisabeth Pate-Cornell, I am currently writing a paper that covers the presented material, and I hope to incorporate feedback from this presentation into the paper. Because the paper is currently a work in progress, I am not distributing it at this time.


David Blum attends Stanford University, where he is a 3rd year Ph.D. student in the Department of Management Science & Engineering as well as a U.S. Department of Defense SMART Scholar. He is currently developing a probabilistic model of national security crises, with the goal of improving crisis early warning. His interests also include targeting in counter-terrorism, signatures of WMD proliferation, and models of decisions made by adversarial actors as games with incomplete information. He is a graduate intern in the Counter-Proliferation Operations-Intelligence Support program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Between 2004 and 2008 David worked at the U.S. Department of Defense as an operations research analyst. He deployed twice to Iraq, in 2007 and 2008, where,  as member of Multi-National Corps Iraq, he provided direct analytic support to conventional and special operations units. He received his Master's degree from MIT in political science, concentrating in security studies, and his Bachelor's degree from Columbia University in history and physics.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

David Blum Predoctoral Fellow, CISAC Speaker
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Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Francis Gavin Director, Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security & Law Speaker University of Texas at Austin
Mira Rapp-Hooper PhD Student Speaker Columbia University
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Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Kathleen Vogel Assistant Professor of Peace Studies and of Science & Technology Studies Speaker Cornell University

Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C-327
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-9149 (650) 723-6530
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Affiliated Scholar at The Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC)
tom_fingar_vert.jpg PhD

Thomas Fingar is an affiliate at the The Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009.

From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Fingar is a graduate of Cornell University (A.B. in Government and History, 1968), and Stanford University (M.A., 1969 and Ph.D., 1977 both in political science). His most recent books are From Mandate to Blueprint: Lessons from Intelligence Reform (Stanford University Press, 2021), Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011), The New Great Game: China and South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform, editor (Stanford University Press, 2016), Uneasy Partnerships: China and Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (Stanford, 2017), and Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China’s Future, co-edited with Jean Oi (Stanford, 2020). His most recent article is, "The Role of Intelligence in Countering Illicit Nuclear-Related Procurement,” in Matthew Bunn, Martin B. Malin, William C. Potter, and Leonard S Spector, eds., Preventing Black Market Trade in Nuclear Technology (Cambridge, 2018)."

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Thomas Fingar Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow Speaker CISAC
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Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

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Postdoctoral Fellow
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Dr. Alexander Betts is the Hedley Bull research fellow in International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, where he is also director of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Global Migration Governance project. He received his MPhil (with distinction) and DPhil from the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the international politics of refugee protection and migration. His main academic focus is on understanding the conditions under which international cooperation takes place in the refugee regime and other areas of migration. In particular, the theoretical focus of his work is on the dynamics of international institutions: on a ‘horizontal' level (across issue-areas and policy fields) and on a ‘vertical' level (between the global and the national level). He has worked on a range of policy issues including forced migration and development, protracted refugee situations, and the protection of vulnerable irregular migrants.  His research has a geographical focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, and he has carried out extensive fieldwork across the region, including in South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and the DRC. He has taught a range of graduate courses including ‘International Relations Theory', ‘International Relations of the Developing World' and ‘Forced Migration and International Relations'. He is on the Executive Committee of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM). He has previously worked for UNHCR, and been a consultant to UNHCR, IOM, and the Council of Europe.

 

(Profile last updated in September 2011.)

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Alexander Betts Post-doctoral Fellow Speaker CISAC
Brenna Powell Predoctoral Fellow, CISAC; PhD Candidate, Harvard University Commentator
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Michael Sulmeyer is currently a pre-doctoral fellow at CISAC and a JD candidate at Stanford Law School, where he co-chairs the Stanford National Security Law Society and is a member of the Afghanistan Legal Education Project. He is also completing a DPhil in Politics at Oxford University about the termination of major weapons systems. As a Marshall Scholar, he received his Masters in War Studies with Distinction from King's College, London in 2005. From 2003-2004, Sulmeyer served as Special Assistant to the Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the U.S. Department of Defense. Before that, he worked as a Research Assistant at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Michael Sulmeyer Pre-doctoral Fellow, CISAC; JD candidate, Stanford Law School Speaker
Henry Rowen Co-Director, Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Commentator
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Oak Lounge

Brian Turner Award-winning poet and author of Here, Bullet Speaker
Jason R. Armagost Visiting scholar at CISAC and a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Speaker
Richard Rhodes Pulitzer Prize winning author and affiliate, CISAC Moderator
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Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose will describe how the United States has failed in the aftermaths of every major 20th-century war-from WWI to Afghanistan-routinely ignoring the need to create a stable postwar environment. He will argue that Iraq and Afghanistan are only the most prominent examples of such bunging, not the exceptions to the rule. Rose will draw upon historic lessons of American military engagement and explain how to effectively end our wars.

Gideon Rose is  the editor of Foreign Affairs. He served as managing editor of the magazine from 2000 to 2010 . From 1995 to December 2000 he was Olin senior fellow and deputy director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), during which time he served as chairman of CFR's Roundtable on Terrorism and director of numerous CFR study groups. He has taught American foreign policy at Columbia and Princeton Universities. From 1994 to 1995 Rose served as associate director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. From 1986 to 1987, he was assistant editor at the foreign policy quarterly The National Interest, and from 1985 to 1986 held the same position at the domestic policy quarterly The Public Interest. Rose received his BA from Yale University and his PhD from Harvard University.

Oksenberg Conference Room

Gideon Rose Editor, Foreign Affairs Speaker
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