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. 

Is 'Proliferation-Proof Technology' an Oxymoron?

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I will provide an overview of current ideas for devising a nuclear fuel cycle that minimizes proliferation risks, ranging from alternatives to the current method of spent fuel reprocessing to novel reactor designs.  While the ultimate conclusion should not be a surprise - 'proliferation-proof technology' in indeed an (double) oxymoron - it is nevertheless important to recognize the role that probabilistic risk assessment can and should play in assessing the relative merits of proposed technologies.

Dr. Robert Rosner is a visiting professor at CISAC for 2009-2010.  He is the William E. Wrather Distinguished Service Professor in the departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics at the University of Chicago.  Dr. Rosner recently stepped down as Director of Argonne National Laboratory, where he had also served as Chief Scientist.

Professor Rosner's research is mostly in the areas of plasma astrophysics and astrophysical fluid dynamics and magnetohydrodynamics (including especially solar and stellar magnetic fields); high energy density physics; boundary mixing instabilities; combustion modeling; applications of stochastic differential equations and optimization problems; and inverse methods.

"I have continued research interest overlap with the DOE/ASCI Flash Center at Chicago (which I led for its first five years); this Center has been a pioneer in the development of computational astrophysics codes with broad applicability to other disciplines; and I have been closely involved in that Center's research activities in flame modeling and interfacial mixing. I have also been involved with a Wisconsin/Chicago/Princeton NSF-supported Physics Frontier Center focusing on problems lying at the boundary of astrophysics and laboratory plasma physics, mostly in areas related to magnetohydrodynamic instabilities in low Prandtl number fluids (such as liquid metals, or stellar interiors).

"In addition over the past 7+ years -- through my work at Argonne National Laboratory - I became heavily involved in issues related to science and technology policy and management, especially in areas related to energy, climate, and modeling and simulations, national security, as well as (via my chairmanship of the Department of Energy National Laboratory Directors' Council as well as my work with the Council on Competitiveness) with national policy issues related to STEM workforce development, nuclear and renewable energy technology development, and the role of national laboratories in scientific, technological, and industrial competitiveness, including the relationship between national laboratories, academia, and industry."

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Robert Rosner CISAC Visiting Professor Speaker
Seminars

Special IPS-CISAC Seminar - A Realistic Approach to Nuclear Disarmament

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Achilles Zaluar is Minister-Counselor of Political Affairs at the Brazilian Embassy to the United States in Washington, D.C. From 2008-09 Zaluar served as Minister-Counselor of Multilateral and International Security Affairs at the Brazilian Embassy to the United States. Zaluar has previously held positions as Deputy Head of the Division for United Nations Affairs (DNU), 2003-06, and assistant at the Theory of International Relations Chair of the Rio Branco Institute, 2002-03. From 1997-98 Zaluar served as a member of the team that drafted the position papers and presidential message for Brazil’s accession to the NPT. Zaluar has held posts at the Brazilian Embassy to the U.S, Washington, 2006-present; Brazilian Mission to the United Nations, New York, 1995-98; and the Brazilian Embassy to Paraguay, Asuncion, 1998-2001. In 1993 Zaluar served as secretary of the interagency group that drafted Brazil’s export control law. From 1991 to 1994, he worked on non-proliferation and export control, including Brazil’s relations with the MTCR and NSG control regimes, and US-Brazil issues. Zaluar received a Bachelor in Mathematics at Rio Catholic University in 1985, graduated in Diplomacy from the Rio Branco Institute, Brazil’s diplomatic academy, in 1991, and received a Master in Public Administration (MPA/MC) at the Harvard Kennedy School, in 2002.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Achilles Zaluar Minister-Counselor, Political Affairs, Brazilian Embassy to the United States, Washington Speaker
Seminars

Whitfield Diffie

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Whitfield Diffie is a consulting scholar at CISAC. He was a visiting scholar in 2009-2010 and an affiliate from 2010-2012. He is best known for the discovery of the concept of public key cryptography, in 1975, which he developed along with Stanford University Electrical Engineering Professor Martin Hellman. Public key cryptography, which revolutionized not only cryptography but also the cryptographic community, now underlies the security of internet commerce.

During the 1980s, Diffie served as manager of secure systems research at Northern Telecom. In 1991, he joined Sun Microsystems as distinguished engineer and remained as Sun fellow and chief security officer until the spring of 2009.

Diffie spent the 1990s working to protect the individual and business right to use encryption, for which he argues in the book Privacy on the Line, the Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption, which he wrote jointly with Susan Landau. Diffie is a Marconi fellow and the recipient of a number of awards including the National Computer Systems Security Award (given jointly by NIST and NSA) and the Franklin Institute's Levy Prize.

Scott D. Sagan named Caroline S.G. Munro Professor

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CISAC Co-Director Scott D. Sagan has been named The Caroline S.G. Munro Memorial Professor in Political Science. A member of Stanford's faculty since 1987, Sagan's research focuses on nuclear security and the emerging terrorist threat; nuclear proliferation, particularly in South Asia; ethics and international relations; and accidents in complex organizations. Before coming to Stanford, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as a special assistant to the Director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. He has served as a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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: A Debate Renewed (W.W. Norton, 2002). He is co-editor with Peter R. Lavoy and James L. Wirtz of Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000) and the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009). His most recent publications include "The Case for No First Use" in Survival (June 2009) and "Good Faith and Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations" in George Perkovich and James A. Acton's (eds.) Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (Carnegie Endowment, 2009).

Sagan received Stanford's Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching in 1996, and the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1998. As part of CISAC's mission of training the next generation of security specialists, he established Stanford's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies. He earned a bachelor's degree with high honors in government from Oberlin College and holds a doctorate in political science from Harvard University.

The Caroline S.G. Munro Memorial Professorship in Political Science

The Caroline S.G. Munro Chair was established by the Board of Trustees in 1981 in recognition of Mrs. Munro's farsighted commitment to strengthening scholarship and teaching at Stanford.

A series of gifts during her lifetime and a bequest endowing the William Bennett Munro Memorial Fund in 1973 in honor of her late husband--a professor of history and government at Harvard and the California Institute of Technology--were sufficient to support the William Bennett Munro Professorship in Political Science; the William Bennett Munro Memorial Lectures; and the Caroline S.G. Munro Memorial Professorship.

Caroline Sanford Gorton and William Bennett Munro were married in 1913. They had one child, William Bennett Munro, Jr., who graduated from Stanford in 1937. Their granddaughter, Jane Bruce Munro, was a member of the Class of 1968.

In accordance with Mrs. Munro's preferences, the professorship may be awarded in either political science or history.

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'The Global Nuclear Future' -- special edition of Daedalus journal

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CISAC Co-Director Scott D. Sagan and Steven E. Miller of Harvard's Belfer Center have jointly edited a special two-volume issue of Daedalus, the quarterly journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, on "The Global Nuclear Future."

Volume 1 was published in October 2009. It includes the following articles by CISAC scholars:

Volume 2, which will be published in Winter 2010, will feature the following articles by CISAC scholars:

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Why Democracy Matters

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Condoleezza Rice is the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution and professor of political science at Stanford University.

From January 2005 to 2009, she served as the 66th secretary of state of the United States. Before serving as America's chief diplomat, she served as assistant to the president for national security affairs (national security adviser) from January 2001 to 2005.

Rice joined the Stanford University faculty as a professor of political science in 1981 and served as Stanford University's provost from 1993 to 1999. She was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution from 1991 to 1993 and returned to the Hoover Institution after serving as provost until 2001. As a professor, Rice won two of the highest teaching honors: the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.

She has authored and coauthored several books, including Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995), with Philip Zelikow, The Gorbachev Era (1986), with Alexander Dallin, and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984).

Rice served as a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the Transamerica Corporation, and the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan. She was a founding board member of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund for schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California, and was vice president of the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula. In addition, she has served on several local and national boards of foundations and charitable organizations.

She currently serves as a member of the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In addition, she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Rice earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981.

CISAC Conference Room

Condoleezza Rice Speaker
Seminars

Weighing the Case For a Convention to Limit Cyberwarfare

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The United States must take steps to protect its critical national infrastructure against serious cyberattack. One step might be to negotiate a multilateral convention to limit such attacks by states, which are the most likely source of an attack at the level of greatest concern. Although verification of compliance would be difficult, the convention in and of itself might be worthwhile for its norm-setting value, to be a restraining factor in the offensive decisions of other states, and as a necessary step in obtaining fuller international cooperation in controlling the general cyberthreat.

On the other hand, the U.S. military believes that cyberattack in its own hands may be an important addition to its war-making capacity. It may be unwilling to limit that capacity, particularly as the understanding of cyberwarfare potential is still being formed.

Balancing these conflicting objectives will require a full debate and executive decision. This process will have to be carried out by a special high-level government group because of the sensitive and fragile nature of certain aspects of the information involved.

One model of a convention that could serve as a starting point would commit the parties to no-first-use of cyberattack directed at elements of another party's critical infrastructure if the disruption from that attack was intended to be widespread, long-lasting, or severe. One reason for these thresholds is to differentiate continuing, manageable lower-level attacks from those that constitute a serious violation by a state-party. All the terms in this commitment could be defined in an Understanding Annex, as in the ENMOD Convention, and would be the subject of negotiation. The convention would also preclude assistance to others in conducting prohibited attacks.

Because the cyberthreat is evolving rapidly and is difficult to define, any proposed solution is very unlikely to address the problem effectively for the long term or perhaps even the medium term. On the other hand, it may be important to constrain this form of warfare in the relatively early stages of its development. The type of limited convention described in this article strikes an appropriate balance by establishing some important initial parameters that could serve as the basis for more comprehensive agreements in the future.

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