The routine employment of torture on the popular television series 24 has given rise to the charge that the program lends verisimilitude to  the questionable premise that torture is a legitimate and effective means of interrogation. A growing body of evidence suggests the critics' charge is correct. Indeed, the Dean of the US Military Academy at West Point grew sufficiently concerned about the pernicious effects 24 was having on his cadets that he traveled to California to meet with the show's creators to ask them to tone down the use of torture on the program. The Intelligence Science Board has echoed the critics' concerns, arguing that similar reality-distorting attitudes towards torture can be seen in the public at large. But how and why can a wholly fictional program like 24 actually influence political reality? Is this case something of an exception, or more akin to the rule?  Unfortunately, evidence suggests that fiction and other socially constructed portrayals of political reality-including propaganda, false flag operations and conspiracy theories-have long exercised demonstrable effects on political reality, often in unforeseen and unintentional ways.

Through the lens of the invasion panic that gripped Great Britain in the late nineteenth century, Greenhill will explore how and why national security-related "social facts"-i.e., things that are deemed to be "true" simply because they are widely believed to be true-can become broadly adopted and disseminated and, by extension, thereby influence the development and conduct of national security policy. Greenhill will further explore what this historical case can tell us about the theoretical and policy implications such "social facts" may hold for the threats we face today, including terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Kelly M. Greenhill is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Tufts University and Research Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. She holds a Ph.D. and an S.M. from M.I.T., a C.S.S. from Harvard University, and a B.A. from UC Berkeley. Greenhill previously held pre- or post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard University's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and at CISAC.

Her work has appeared in a variety of venues, including the journals International Security, Security Studies, and International Migration as well as in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and in briefs prepared for the U.S. Supreme Court. Greenhill has two books shortly forthcoming with Cornell University Press: the first, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion and Foreign Policy, focuses on the use of large-scale population movements as instruments of state-level coercion; and the second, Sex, Drugs and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict (co-edited with Peter Andreas), examines the politicization and manipulation of crime and conflict-related statistics. She is currently at work on a new book, a cross-national study that explores why, when, and under what conditions, fiction, so-called "social facts" and other non-factual sources of information-such as rumors, conspiracy theories and propaganda-materially influence the development and conduct of national security policies.

Lynn Eden is Associate Director for Research at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford. In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Abstract
In order to eliminate nuclear weapons, the world will first have to pass through a regime of "low numbers" in which the US and Russian arsenals contain hundreds of weapons. The conclusion of the New START agreement, along with President Medvedev and President Obama's intention to work on a successor treaty, have brought this prospect forward. Many Western and Russian analysts worry that such a world might be unstable. However, in spite of these fears, the "low numbers problem" has attracted surprisingly little attention in the past (perhaps because the prospect of deep reductions always seemed so remote). In this talk, I will argue that the most likely type of instability is rearmament. I will examine potential drivers of rearmament and discuss steps to ensure that its likelihood can be minimized.

James M. Acton is an associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment specializing in nonproliferation and disarmament. A physicist by training, Acton’s research focuses on the interface of technical and political issues, with special attention to the civilian nuclear industry, IAEA safeguards, and practical solutions to strengthening the nonproliferation regime.

Before joining the Endowment in October 2008, Acton was a lecturer at the Centre for Science and Security Studies in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. There he co-authored the Adelphi Paper, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons, with George Perkovich and was a consultant to the Norwegian government on disarmament issues. Prior to that, Acton was the science and technology researcher at the Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC), where he was a participant in the UK–Norway dialogue on verifying the dismantlement of warheads.

Acton’s other previous research projects include analyses of IAEA safeguards in Iran, verifying disarmament in North Korea, preventing novel forms of radiological terrorism, and the capability of Middle Eastern states to develop nuclear energy. He has published in Jane’s Intelligence Review, Nonproliferation Review, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Survival, and the New York Times. In the UK, he appeared regularly on TV and radio, including on the BBC programs Newsnight, Horizon, and the Six O’clock News.

This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that oil causes international contention by explaining how the high costs of petroleum conquest deter territorial aggression. In oil-rich territories, interstate violence is inspired by other factors. The claim is tested through an examination of Nigeria and Cameroon's dispute over the Bakassi Peninsula, drawing on the author's fieldwork in both countries.

Emily Meierding is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a predoctoral fellow at CISAC. Her dissertation examines how the presence of petroleum resources affects the initiation and escalation of international territorial disputes. She has conducted dissertation research and language study in Syria, Morocco, Nigeria and Cameroon. Meierding holds a BA in History from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a MA in Political Science from the University of Chicago.

Jessica Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the Political Science Department at Stanford University.  Her research is on the relationship between democracy and development, particularly in her region of interest, francophone West Africa.  She studies the impact of decentralization and local democracy on political accountability and public goods outcomes.   She received her BA in Political Science from Yale University and has also spent time in Washington, DC working at the Center for Global Development. 

Steve Coll is president of New America Foundation, and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. Previously he spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent and senior editor at The Washington Post, serving as the paper's managing editor from 1998 to 2004. He is the author of six books, including The Deal of the Century: The Break Up of AT&T (1986); The Taking of Getty Oil (1987); Eagle on the Street, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the SEC's battle with Wall Street (with David A. Vise, 1991); On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia (1994), Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004); and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008).

Mr. Coll's professional awards include two Pulitzer Prizes. He won the first of these, for explanatory journalism, in 1990, for his series, with David A. Vise, about the SEC. His second was awarded in 2005, for his book, Ghost Wars, which also won the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross award; the Overseas Press Club award and the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book published on international affairs during 2004. Other awards include the 1992 Livingston Award for outstanding foreign reporting; the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for his coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone; and a second Overseas Press Club Award for international magazine writing. Mr. Coll graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Cum Laude, from Occidental College in 1980 with a degree in English and history. He lives in Washington, D.C.