Stanford University

Security

FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.

Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions. 

Private Location-Based Services

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Location-based services from are quickly gaining popularity. Many such services track the user's location and make use of it as needed. While tracking raises privacy concerns, it is believed to be unavoidable if users want the benefits of location-based services. In this talk I will give several examples of services that provide location-based functionality without learning the user's location. Our goal is to show that privacy and functionality are not always in conflict. We will also discuss our experiences with deploying these mechanisms in the real world. This is joint work with Arvind Narayanan, Mike Hamburg, and Narendran Thiagarajan.

About the speaker: Dr. Boneh heads the applied crypto group at the Computer Science
department at Stanford University. Dr. Boneh's research focuses on applications of cryptography to computer security. His work includes cryptosystems with novel properties, security for mobile devices, web security, digital copyright protection, and cryptanalysis. He is the author of over a hundred technical publications in the field and a recipient of the Packard Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Award, the RSA award, and the Terman Award.

CISAC Conference Room

Dan Boneh

Not in residence

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Rajeev Motwani Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Electrical Engineering
Co-director of the Stanford Computer Security Lab
Co-director of the Stanford Cyber Initiative
Affiliate Faculty at CISAC
dabo.jpg MA, PhD

Professor Boneh heads the applied cryptography group and co-direct the computer security lab. Professor Boneh's research focuses on applications of cryptography to computer security. His work includes cryptosystems with novel properties, web security, security for mobile devices, and cryptanalysis. He is the author of over a hundred publications in the field and is a Packard and Alfred P. Sloan fellow. He is a recipient of the 2014 ACM prize and the 2013 Godel prize. In 2011 Dr. Boneh received the Ishii award for industry education innovation. Professor Boneh received his Ph.D from Princeton University and joined Stanford in 1997.

Dan Boneh Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Stanford University and CISAC Affiliate Speaker
Seminars

Organizational legacies of violence Conditions favoring insurgency onset in Colombia, 1964–1984

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Abstract

Why do insurgencies erupt in some places and not in others? This article exploits an original violent event database of 274,428 municipality-month observations in Colombia to determine the conditions favoring organized violence at the subnational level. The data cast doubt on the conventional correlates of war: poverty, rough terrain, lootable natural resources, and large, sparsely distributed populations. The evidence suggests that rebellions begin not in localities that afford sanctuaries, impoverished recruits, and abundant finances, but instead in regions providing receptacles of collective action: the organizational legacies of war. Specifically, the data indicate that regions affected by past mobilization are six times more likely to experience rebellion than those without a tradition of armed organized action. The significant correlation between prior and future mobilization is robust across different measurements of the concepts, levels of aggregations of the data, units of analysis, and specifications of the model. These include rare events and spatial lag analyses. These results highlight the need for micro conflict data, theory disentangling the causes of war onset from those of war recurrence, and a reorientation away from physical geography and back to the human and social geography that determines if rebellion is organizationally feasible. The findings suggest new avenues of research on the post-war trajectories of armed organizations, the causes of repeated war, and the micro-foundations of rebellion.

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Journal of Peace Research
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Sarah Z. Daly
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US Policy Toward Afghanistan, What’s Next?

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

Anja Manuel

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Affiliate
photo.jpeg JD

Former diplomat, author, and advisor on foreign policy, Anja Manuel is Co-Founder and Principal along with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, a strategic consulting firm that helps US companies navigate international markets. 

Anja is the author of the critically acclaimed This Brave New World: India, China, and the United States, published by Simon and Schuster, and numerous articles and papers.

She is the Executive Director of the Aspen Strategy Group and Aspen Security Forum, a premier bipartisan forum on foreign policy in the United States.

From 2005 to 2007, she served as an official at the U.S. Department of State, as Special Assistant to the Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, responsible for Asia policy.  

Earlier in her career, Anja was an attorney at WilmerHale, working on Supreme Court and international cases and representing clients before the US Congress, Supreme Court, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, and the SEC.  She began her career as an investment banker at Salomon Brothers in London.  

A cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School and Stanford University, Anja also lectured and was a research affiliate at Stanford University from 2009 - 2019, and 2024-now, teaching courses on US Foreign Policy in Asia and Technology Policy. 

Anja is a frequent speaker on foreign policy and technology policy, is a commentator for TV and radio (NBC/MSNBC, Bloomberg News, Fox Business, BBC, NPR, etc.), and writes for publications ranging from the Washington Post, New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, and Fortune, among others.

Anja currently serves on the corporate boards of Ripple Labs Inc. and Hims & Hers Health, Inc. and the Applied Materials Secure Innovation Advisory Board.   Additionally, she is a former member of the Defense Policy Board for the U.S. Department of Defense 

She has serves/d on the boards/advisory boards of National Committee on US-China Relations, CARE.org, Center for a New American Security, Flexport Inc., Synapse Inc., and the boards of the Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc., American Ditchley Foundation, and formerly Governor Brown’s California Export Council. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Anja lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children.

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Anja Manuel Affiliate, CISAC Speaker
Dan Caldwell Distinguished Professor of International Relations Speaker Pepperdine University
Frederic Wehrey Senior Policy Analyst Speaker the RAND Corporation
Panel Discussions

WAR: Ethical Challenges on the Horizon

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Stanford's two-year Ethics and War series will come to a close on May 16 with "WAR: Ethical Challenges on the Horizon."


What upcoming challenges will force leaders to rethink the balance between morality and war?
What will this ethical debate look like?
How do these paradigm shifts impact national security?

 

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website. 

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Oak Lounge

Charles Dunlap Maj. General, USAF (Ret.), Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, Duke Panelist

Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
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The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg PhD

Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, where he previously served as the social science co-director. He is the Inaugural Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellow for Nuclear Ethics and Security at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (2026-2027). Sagan also serves as co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, he was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

Former co-director, Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Scott D. Sagan Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Political Science, Stanford Panelist
Debra Satz Philosophy, and Center for Ethics in Society, Stanford Panelist
Scotty McLennan Dean for Religious Life, Stanford Moderator
Seminars
Stanford Ethics & War Series

Performance of "Reykjavik" and post-performance panel

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In October 1986, a historic summit meeting was held at Reykjavik, Iceland, between the United States, under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan, and the Soviet Union, under the leadership of President Mikhail Gorbachev. What began as a summit with an agenda of limited reduction of nuclear weapons and human rights quickly transformed into a discussion by the two leaders advocating for elimination of all nuclear weapons. The prospect of a world without nuclear weapons had never before been held at such a high level and has never been held since. These negotiations were truly historic and in many ways groundbreaking in helping to end the Cold War.

Reykjavik, a one-act play, written by Richard Rhodes, is a dialogue taken from the actual transcripts of the negotiations between the two presidents. Rhodes is the author or editor of twenty-four works of history, memoir, and fiction, including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award. A past visiting scholar at MIT and Harvard University, he is presently an associate of the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. 

The play runs for seventy-five minutes and will be followed by a question-and-answer session on May 8 with Richard Rhodes and on May 9 with a panel of nuclear security experts led by Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists.

This program is co-sponsored by the Federation of American Scientists, the Fund for Peace Initiatives, the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Bowen H. McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, and Stanford Continuing Studies.

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website. 

CEMEX Auditorium, Zambrano Hall
Knight Management Center
Stanford, CA 94305, USA

Charles Ferguson President, Federation of American Scientists Host
Seminars
Stanford Ethics & War Series

Performance of "Reykjavik" and post-performance Q&A

-

In October 1986, a historic summit meeting was held at Reykjavik, Iceland, between the United States, under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan, and the Soviet Union, under the leadership of President Mikhail Gorbachev. What began as a summit with an agenda of limited reduction of nuclear weapons and human rights quickly transformed into a discussion by the two leaders advocating for elimination of all nuclear weapons. The prospect of a world without nuclear weapons had never before been held at such a high level and has never been held since. These negotiations were truly historic and in many ways groundbreaking in helping to end the Cold War.

Reykjavik, a one-act play, written by Richard Rhodes, is a dialogue taken from the actual transcripts of the negotiations between the two presidents. Rhodes is the author or editor of twenty-four works of history, memoir, and fiction, including The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award. A past visiting scholar at MIT and Harvard University, he is presently an associate of the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. 

The play runs for seventy-five minutes and will be followed by a question-and-answer session on May 8 with Richard Rhodes and on May 9 with a panel of nuclear security experts led by Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists.

This program is co-sponsored by the Federation of American Scientists, the Fund for Peace Initiatives, the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Bowen H. McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, and Stanford Continuing Studies.

 

For additional information on the series, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War series website. 

 

CEMEX Auditorium, Zambrano Hall
Knight Management Center
Stanford, CA 94305, USA

Richard Rhodes Playwright, Author and Affiliate at CISAC Speaker
Seminars
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