* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Register in advance for this webinar: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/8416226562432/WN_WLYcdRa6T5Cs1MMdmM0Mug

About the Event: Is there a place for illegal or nonconsensual evidence in security studies research, such as leaked classified documents? What is at stake, and who bears the responsibility, for determining source legitimacy? Although massive unauthorized disclosures by WikiLeaks and its kindred may excite qualitative scholars with policy revelations, and quantitative researchers with big-data suitability, they are fraught with methodological and ethical dilemmas that the discipline has yet to resolve. I argue that the hazards from this research—from national security harms, to eroding human-subjects protections, to scholarly complicity with rogue actors—generally outweigh the benefits, and that exceptions and justifications need to be articulated much more explicitly and forcefully than is customary in existing work. This paper demonstrates that the use of apparently leaked documents has proliferated over the past decade, and appeared in every leading journal, without being explicitly disclosed and defended in research design and citation practices. The paper critiques incomplete and inconsistent guidance from leading political science and international relations journals and associations; considers how other disciplines from journalism to statistics to paleontology address the origins of their sources; and elaborates a set of normative and evidentiary criteria for researchers and readers to assess documentary source legitimacy and utility. Fundamentally, it contends that the scholarly community (researchers, peer reviewers, editors, thesis advisors, professional associations, and institutions) needs to practice deeper reflection on sources’ provenance, greater humility about whether to access leaked materials and what inferences to draw from them, and more transparency in citation and research strategies.

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About the Speaker: Christopher Darnton is a CISAC affiliate and an associate professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. He previously taught at Reed College and the Catholic University of America, and holds a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University. He is the author of Rivalry and Alliance Politics in Cold War Latin America (Johns Hopkins, 2014) and of journal articles on US foreign policy, Latin American security, and qualitative research methods. His International Security article, “Archives and Inference: Documentary Evidence in Case Study Research and the Debate over U.S. Entry into World War II,” won the 2019 APSA International History and Politics Section Outstanding Article Award. He is writing a book on the history of US security cooperation in Latin America, based on declassified military documents.

Please note: the start time for this event has been moved from 3:00 to 3:15pm.

Join FSI Director Michael McFaul in conversation with Richard Stengel, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. They will address the role of entrepreneurship in creating stable, prosperous societies around the world.

Reception to follow panel

About the event: This January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock one second forward to 89 seconds to midnight - the closest it has been in its nearly 80-year history. The experts that set the Doomsday Clock each year look at a variety issues such as climate change, the misuse of biological science, and a variety of emerging technologies. But central to the decision on how to set the Clock is nuclear risk, where the threats continue to grow.

Arms control structures and measures, built over the course of the last half-century, are crumbling and major powers have refused to engage in sustained, substantive dialogue on reducing nuclear risk. Proliferation risks are on the rise and it seems as if the world is poised at the starting line of a full-fledged multi-state nuclear arms race. Adding to the complication, emerging and disruptive technologies threaten to upend longstanding theories on deterrence and stability.

The outlook seems bleak, but with signals from President Trump and others about the need to talk or even "denuclearize," is there hope for a new era of arms control?

Join four leading experts from the Bulletin to discuss the panoply of current nuclear risks, as well as the methods and tools for reducing them.

About the speakers: 

Jerry Brown was sworn in as governor of California on January 3, 2011, and was reelected in 2014. Brown previously was elected governor in 1974 and served two terms, during which time he established the first agricultural labor relations law in the country, started the California Conservation Corp and promoted renewable energy. In 1970, he was elected California secretary of state. Brown began his career as a clerk at the California Supreme Court. In 1998, he reentered politics and was elected mayor of Oakland, serving two terms from 1999 to 2007. Brown founded the Oakland School for the Arts and the Oakland Military Institute, which serve students from the 6th grade through the 12th grade. He was also elected California attorney general in 2006. Brown graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his bachelor’s degree in classics and earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 1964.

Alexandra Bell is the president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. A noted policy expert and former diplomat, she oversees the Bulletin's publishing programs, management of the Doomsday Clock, and a growing set of activities around nuclear risk, climate change, and disruptive technologies.  Before joining the Bulletin, Alexandra Bell served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Affairs in the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability (ADS) at the U.S. Department of State. Previously, she has worked at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and the Council for a Livable World, Ploughshares Fund, and the Center for American Progress. Bell received a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the New School and a Bachelor’s degree in Peace, War and Defense from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 2001-2003, she was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica. Bell is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University.  His research interests relate broadly to policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, and he is particularly interested in the use of offensive operations in cyberspace as instruments of national policy and in the security dimensions of information warfare and influence operations on national security.  In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Senior Fellow in Cybersecurity (not in residence) at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University; and a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. In 2016, he served on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.  Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

Rose Gottemoeller is the William J. Perry Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute. Before joining Stanford Gottemoeller was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019, where she helped to drive forward NATO’s adaptation to new security challenges in Europe and in the fight against terrorism.  Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. While Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance in 2009 and 2010, she was the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation. Prior to her government service, she was a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with joint appointments to the Nonproliferation and Russia programs. She served as the Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center from 2006 to 2008, and is currently a nonresident fellow in Carnegie's Nuclear Policy Program. At Stanford, Gottemoeller teaches and mentors students in the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy program and the CISAC Honors program; contributes to policy research and outreach activities; and convenes workshops, seminars and other events relating to her areas of expertise, including nuclear security, Russian relations, the NATO alliance, EU cooperation and non-proliferation. 

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

The 2025 Stanford Existential Risk Initiative (SERI) Symposium will explore the risks that emerge from the intersection of complex global challenges and the policies designed to mitigate them. The event will bring together leading experts and researchers from across the Bay Area who specialize in a range of global risks, including artificial intelligence, climate change, biosecurity, and nuclear threats.

This symposium will provide an interdisciplinary platform for participants to engage in discussions around the policies and solutions needed to address these large-scale, existential risks. Attendees will gain insights from diverse perspectives as they collaborate to find innovative approaches to safeguard our future.

Agenda to follow.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

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

About the event: Climate change has been deemed the greatest threat to global public health, yet critical gaps remain in understanding how this anthropogenic phenomenon impacts health-relevant infrastructure and decision-making. My research leverages ecological principles and data science to address a subset of these gaps at the intersection of extreme environmental change and adaptive interventions for planetary and human health. In this talk, I present work evaluating how rising temperatures affect the design and deployment of vector-borne disease prevention strategies, using Aedes aegypti mosquitoes as a case study. I discuss the methodological challenge of predicting how unprecedented ecological perturbations drive disease persistence and transmission, leveraging historical dengue outbreaks to interrogate the capacity of data-driven methods for forecasting explosive, environmentally sensitive epidemiological events. Finally, I outline how economic forces contribute to and can mitigate anthropogenic change, focusing on the role of targeted investments in antibiotic research and development to reduce ecological contamination and address the growing crisis of antimicrobial resistance. Throughout, I highlight the utility of scientific software for advancing equity and efficiency in human and planetary health management. 

About the speaker: Dr. Váleri Vásquez is a Biotechnology Innovation and International Security Fellow at Stanford University, with appointments in the Department of Biology and the Center for International Security and Cooperation. Her research develops mathematical frameworks to render infectious disease management more robust to environmental uncertainty, as well as scientific software to guide strategic policymaking in public health. Dr. Vásquez completed her PhD at the University of California Berkeley in August 2023, with an emphasis in Computational Data Science and Engineering. Prior to her doctorate she specialized in international climate policy at the U.S. Department of State, serving on the senior team shaping the 2015 Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Dr. Vásquez holds an MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and an MS in Energy and Resources, both from UC Berkeley. She earned her BA from the College of William and Mary.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Studies have found that voters in democratic countries are far more reluctant to use military force against democracies than against nondemocracies. This pattern may help explain why democracies almost never wage war against other democracies. In an important contribution, Rathbun, Parker, and Pomeroy (2024) propose that the apparent democratic peace in public opinion is an artifact of failing to account for race. Rather than democracy itself influencing support for war, they argue, the term “democracy” cues assumptions about the adversary’s racial composition, and those racialized assumptions are the true drivers of support for war. We reevaluate RPP’s evidence, concluding that their data do not support their predictions. In fact, their novel experiments provide powerful evidence that democracy affects support for war, independent of race. Our findings contribute to major debates about both regime type and race in international relations, as well as the design and interpretation of survey experiments.

About the speaker: Jessica L. P. Weeks is Professor of Political Science and H. Douglas Weaver Chair in Diplomacy and International Relations in the Department of Political Science at UW-Madison. Her research has appeared in journals including the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, International Organization, and World Politics. Her book, Dictators at War and Peace, explores the domestic politics of international conflict in dictatorships. Weeks was the 2018 recipient of the International Studies Association Karl Deutsch Award, recognizing the scholar under 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the study of international relations. Professor Weeks received a B.A. in political science from The Ohio State University in 2001, a Master’s degree in international history from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in 2003, and a PhD in political science from Stanford University in 2009.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

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

About the event: What explains the current US arsenal of unmanned systems? Why, for example, is the contemporary arsenal dominated by aerial unmanned systems versus the munitions that dominated earlier developments? This book challenges traditional explanations for the proliferation of unmanned systems that focus on capacity or structure. Instead, this book argues that beliefs and identities shape the structures and capacities chosen when the United States invests in weapon systems. In particular, it traces beliefs about technological determinism and military revolutions, force protection and casualty aversion, and service identities to explain why the United States has invested so heavily in remote-controlled unmanned aerial platforms over the last three decades. In doing so, the book illustrates how ideas become influential to ultimately manifest in budget lines, detailing the policy entrepreneurs, critical junctures, and path dependencies that shape the lifecycle of beliefs about unmanned weapon systems. The book begins by providing a historical overview of US unmanned systems investments, taking an expansive view of unmanned technologies from land mines to missiles and drones from the Revolutionary War to contemporary investments. It then leans on theories of norms, ideas, and influence to detail the role of the Office of Net Assessment, Vietnam, 9/11, and armed service identity in building the United States’ current unmanned arsenal. Finally, it concludes with what this case of unmanned technologies reveals about US support to Ukraine as well as contemporary weapons debates about cyber, information technology, space, and hypersonic missiles.

About the speaker: Jacquelyn Schneider is the Hargrove Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, and an affiliate with Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology, national security, and political psychology with a special interest in cybersecurity, autonomous technologies, wargames, and Northeast Asia. She was previously an Assistant Professor at the Naval War College as well as a senior policy advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

Dr. Schneider is an active member of the defense policy community with previous positions at the Center for a New American Security and the RAND Corporation. Before beginning her academic career, she spent six years as an Air Force officer in South Korea and Japan and is currently a reservist assigned to US Space Systems Command. She has a BA from Columbia University, MA from Arizona State University, and PhD from George Washington University.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the Event: Our speaker, Ambassador Juan Carlos Pinzón, will explore the intricate intersections of geopolitics, national security, and organized crime in the context of a rapidly evolving global landscape. He will examine the shift toward global power competition, the growing influence of the Global South, and the implications for national security in areas such as geoeconomics, trade, and technological rivalry. His discussion will delve into the socio-economic roots of organized crime, its entanglement with transnational networks, and its role in fueling proxy wars and political instability.

Key themes that Ambassador Pinzón will develop in this talk include the transformation of criminal organizations into national security threats, their influence over communities, and their capacity to undermine democratic institutions. He will also analyze when organized crime expands into or allies with terrorist networks and armed non-state actors. Ambassador Pinzón will conclude by considering policy options for confronting transnational organized crime through international cooperation.

About the Speaker: Juan Carlos Pinzón is currently a John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. visiting professor at Princeton University. He was previously Colombia's Minister of Defense and ambassador to the United States on two occasions. He served as ambassador to the United States between 2021 and 2022, celebrating 200 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries and between 2015 and 2017 strengthening the bilateral relationship. Previously, during 2018 and 2021 he was president of ProBogotá, a private non-profit entity for the promotion of public policies and long-term strategic projects for Colombia's capital region. During the period from 2011 to 2015 he served as Colombia's youngest Minister of Defense at a critical moment in the country's history.

In addition to these positions, he has also held other positions such as Chief of Staff to the President of Colombia from 2010 to 2011, Vice Minister of Defense from 2006 to 2009, Senior Advisor to the Executive Director of the World Bank from 2004 to 2006, Vice President of the Colombian Banking Association from 2003 to 2004, Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Finance from 2000 to 2002. In the 2018 national elections he served as presidential and vice-presidential candidate.

Juan Carlos Pinzón is an Economist from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, with a master's degree in economics from the same institution, and a master degree in Public Policy from Princeton University and Honoris Causa in National Security and Defense from the Colombian War College. Pinzón has also taken advanced courses in strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, science and technology policy at Harvard University, and smart cities at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Finally, he has several awards and over 60 decorations such as the Grand Cross of the Order of Boyacá and the Distinguished Public Service Medal from the U.S. Department of Defense.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

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

About the event: How AI might be used in nuclear command and control is the subject of much discussion in national security circles.  But this debate—important though it has been—obscures many other ways that AI could be used or should not be used across the entire nuclear weapons enterprise.  (In this talk, the nuclear weapons enterprise also encompasses nuclear weapons, their delivery systems, the associated command and control and the links of these entities to AI in systems not usually associated with nuclear weapons.)  Key attributes of AI and the nuclear weapons enterprise will be reviewed, principles for thinking about AI in the nuclear weapons enterprise discussed, and specific guidelines for assessing the wisdom of AI in any given nuclear application proposed.

About the speaker: Herbert Lin is senior research scholar and Hank J. Holland Fellow at Stanford University whose research interests are at the intersection of national security and emerging technologies. He is Chief Scientist Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academies and serves on the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Lin was a member of President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity (2016) and the Aspen Commission on Information Disorder (2020).  He was also a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee, where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: We use survey experiments to explore a variety of different contexts and how they affect the choices a decision maker might have to make about using nuclear weapons. One set of surveys explores the relationship between expected casualties and the willingness to use nuclear weapons. The result is clearly increasing support for nuclear use as expected casualties in a difficult conventional war increase. We also explore how the alternatives given to a decision maker influence choice. More specifically, we show that when the option not to launch nuclear weapons is presented along with three options to use those weapons, more people select not to launch. Overall, we also find clear evidence of consistent differences between democrats and republicans as well as a strong relationship between decision makers’ punitive tendencies and their support for using nuclear weapons. Implications for risk management and policy will be discussed.

About the speakers:

Rose McDermott:
Rose McDermott is the David and Mariana Fisher University Professor of International Relations at Brown University and a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She directs the Watson Postdoctoral Program. She works in the area of political psychology. She received her Ph.D.(Political Science) and M.A. (Experimental Social Psychology) from Stanford University and has also taught at Cornell and UCSB. She has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and the Women and Public Policy Program, all at Harvard University, and has been a fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences twice. She is the author of six books, a co-editor of two additional volumes, and author of over two hundred academic articles across a wide variety of disciplines encompassing topics such as American foreign and defense policy, experimentation, national security intelligence, gender, social identity, cybersecurity, emotion and decision-making, and the biological and genetic bases of political behavior.

Paul Slovic:
Paul Slovic is a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and a founder and President of Decision Research. After 47 years, he has rejoined the Oregon Research Institute as a senior scientist. He holds a B.A. from Stanford University (1959) and an M.A (1962) and Ph.D. (1964) from the University of Michigan. He studies human judgment, decision making, and the psychology of risk. With colleagues worldwide, he has developed methods to describe risk perceptions and measure their impacts on individuals and society. His recent work examines "psychic numbing" and the failure to respond to mass human tragedies. He is a past President of the Society for Risk Analysis and in 1991 received its Distinguished Contribution Award. In 1993 he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association He was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016. In 2022, Dr. Slovic received the Franklin Institute’s Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in the Science of Decision Making.

Sharon Weiner:
Sharon K. Weiner is an Associate Professor in the School of International Service at American University as well as a Visiting Researcher for the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. Sharon's research, teaching, and policy engagement are at the intersection of organizational politics and U.S. national security. Her current work focuses on the theory, practice, and social construction of deterrence, the politics of U.S. nuclear weapon modernization programs, and larger issues of civil-military relations. Her most recent book, Managing the Military: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and Civil-Military Relations (Columbia University Press, 2022) analyzes the power of the JCS chairman to help or hinder the president's ability to implement their defense policy preferences.  She also collaborates with Moritz Kutt (Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg) on The Nuclear Biscuit (thenuclearbiscuit.org), a virtual reality experience involving a nuclear crisis. The project analyses how people make high stakes national security decisions under conditions of uncertainty.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.