About the Speaker: Eric Schwartz became Dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota in October 2011, after a 25-year career in senior public service positions in government, at the United Nations and in the philanthropic and non-governmental communities. 

Prior to his arrival in Minnesota, he was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration. Working with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he served as the Department of State’s principal humanitarian official, managing a $1.85 billion budget, as well as State Department policy and programs for U.S. refugee admissions and U.S. international assistance worldwide. 

From 2006 through 2009, Schwartz directed the Connect U.S. Fund, a multi-foundation – NGO collaborative seeking to promote responsible U.S. engagement overseas. From August 2005 through January 2007, he served as the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Deputy Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery.  In that capacity, he worked with the Special Envoy, former President Clinton, to promote an effective recovery effort. Before that appointment, Schwartz was a lead expert for the congressionally mandated Mitchell-Gingrich Task Force on UN Reform. In 2003 and 2004, he served as the second-ranking official at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. 

Information is available on the World Affairs Council of Houston website. 

November 19, 3:45PM
Breakout Session

Following a decade of war, the departure of all U.S. troops from Iraq and a significant drawdown of troops in Afghanistan are all but imminent.  These drawdowns – and the framework in which these drawdowns transpire – will have major implications for U.S. national security, bilateral and regional relations, and the image of the U.S. in the world.  We will be joined by Dr. Dan E. Caldwell, a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Pepperdine University and the author of Vortex of Conflict: U.S. Policy Toward Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq; Ms. Anja Manuel, Principal at RiceHadley Group LLC; and Mr. Frederic Wehrey, Senior Policy Analyst at the RAND Corporation, to discuss these timely issues.

Information on the event is available at: http://www.pacificcouncil.org/page.aspx?pid=730

There are currently 60 nuclear reactors under construction worldwide with nearly half of these projects being built in China. There is no doubt that East Asia is emerging as a leader in the international nuclear community where China and the Republic of Korea (ROK) are playing major roles as a result of their aggressive new plant build programs. Both China and South Korea present very interesting case studies where the former is rapidly building up domestic expertise in nuclear construction while the latter has gone one step further in capitalizing successfully on a nuclear export business. Both countries have relied heavily on external commercial support in building up this expertise. In the case of South Korea, the “Koreanization” of nuclear power took place in the 1980’s and 1990’s, first with a large number of Western builds and ultimately a complete indigenization of pressurized water reactor technology through a technology transfer with Combustion Engineering. The Chinese domestic nuclear program has been largely influenced by Western vendors as well; however, there has been significantly less emphasis on exporting the technology up to now as they master the imported technologies for their domestic program. The recent AP1000 technology transfer between Westinghouse Electric Company and China has opened up unique transnational learning opportunities between the United States and China where the lessons learned building the first AP1000 plants in China will be shared with the two U.S. utilities now embarking on new plant construction at the Vogtle and V.C. Summer sites, in Georgia and South Carolina, respectively. This talk will review both the historical experiences of exporting nuclear technology to the ROK and China, as well as the progress being made by these countries in absorbing the technology. Further, the AP1000 passive plant technology will be summarized as an example of the general trend for future designs in response to the reactor accidents at Fukushima Dai-ichi in March 2011. Finally, the advanced construction techniques being used to build AP1000 plants in both the U.S. and China will be highlighted along with their benefits in delivering new plants on schedule.

About the speaker: Dr Matzie is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Westinghouse Electric Company and was responsible for all Westinghouse research and development undertakings and advanced nuclear plant development. He is also on the Board of PBMR Pty Ltd. and Chairman of the Board Technical Committee. In that role, he assures proper oversight of the design, safety, licensing, research and development, and quality aspects of the PBMR enterprise.

Previously, Dr Matzie was responsible for the development, licensing, detailed engineering, project management, and component manufacturing of new Westinghouse light water reactors and was also the Executive in charge of Westinghouse replacement steam generator projects and dry spent-fuel-canister fabrication projects. He became a Senior Vice President in 2000, when Westinghouse purchased the nuclear businesses of ABB. His career has been devoted primarily to the development of advanced nuclear systems and advanced fuel cycles, and he is the author of more than 120 technical papers and reports on these subjects.

About the topic: What could queueing theory, the science of customer flows and delays in service systems, possibly offer towards understanding and countering terrorism? In terror queue models, newly hatched terror plots correspond to newly arriving customers, the number of ongoing terror plots corresponds to the queue of customers waiting to receive service, undercover agents or informants correspond to service providers, customer service is initiated when a terror plot is detected, and service is completed when the plot is interdicted. Not all plots are interdicted; successful terror attacks correspond to customers who abandon the queue without receiving service! Building upon these ideas, we will focus our attention upon a simple observation: other things being equal, the number of ongoing terror plots increases with the duration of time from plot initiation until execution or interdiction (whichever comes first), yet no estimate of the probability distribution governing terror plot duration has appeared in the open literature. Starting with a review of US terrorism-related indictments, lower and upper bounds for the initiation date of 30 distinct Jihadi plots were identified in addition to the date of arrest or an attempted/actual terror act. Accounting for the censoring and truncation effects inherent with these data; the estimated mean duration equals 9 months, while 95% of all plots are estimated to fall between 1 and 25 months. These estimates suggest that in the United States, on average approximately three ongoing Jihadi terror plots have been active at any point in time since 9/11/2001.

About the Speaker: Edward H. Kaplan is the William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Management Sciences, Professor of Public Health, and Professor of Engineering at Yale University’s School of Management who is currently on sabbatical as Distinguished Visiting Professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. The author of more than 125 research articles, Kaplan received both the Lanchester Prize and the Edelman Award, two top honors in the operations research field, among many other awards. An elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academies, Kaplan’s current research focuses on the application of operations research to problems in counterterrorism and homeland security. 

Karl Eikenberry is the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Within FSI he is an affiliated faculty member with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and an affiliated researcher with the Europe Center. Before coming to Stanford, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 to July 2011, where he led the civilian side of the surge directed by President Obama to reverse Taliban momentum and help set the conditions for transition to full Afghan sovereignty.

Prior to his appointment as Chief of Mission in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a 35-year career with the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant General in 2009.  His operational posts include service in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and Afghanistan, where he served as Commander of the American-led Coalition Forces from 2005-2007.

Ambassador Eikenberry also served in various political-military positions, including service as Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels.

His military awards include the Defense Distinguished and Superior Service Medals, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Ranger Tab, Combat and Expert Infantryman badges, and master parachutist wings. He has received numerous civilian awards as well.

Amb. Eikenberry is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, holds master's degrees from Harvard University in East Asian Studies and Stanford University in Political Science, and was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

He is a trustee of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Council of American Ambassadors. He recently received the George F. Kennan Award for Distinguished Public Service from the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. He has published numerous articles on U.S. military training, tactics, and strategy and on Chinese military history and Asia-Pacific security issues.