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.
Abstract: Adjudication of national security poses complex challenges for courts. In Judicial Review of National Security, David Scharia explains how the Supreme Court of Israel developed unconventional judicial review tools and practices that allowed it to provide judicial guidance to the Executive in real-time. In this book, he argues that courts could play a much more dominant role in reviewing national security, and demonstrates the importance of intensive real-time inter-branch dialogue with the Executive, as a tool used by the Israeli Court to provide such review. This book aims to show that if one Supreme Court was able to provide rigorous judicial review of national security in real-time, then we should reconsider the conventional wisdom regarding the limits of judicial review of national security.
About the Speaker: Dr. David Scharia (PhD, LLM) heads the Legal and Criminal Justice Group at the United Nations Security Council Counter Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED). Before joining the United Nations, Dr. Scharia worked at the Supreme Court division in the Attorney General office in Israel where he was lead attorney in major counter-terrorism cases. Dr. Scharia served as a Member of the experts’ forum on "Democracy and Terrorism” established by Israel leading think-tank the Israel Democratic Institute. He was National Security Scholar-in-Residence at Columbia Law School and currently serves as a member of the professional board of the International Institute for Counter Terrorism (ICT). Dr. Scharia is a renowned expert on law and terrorism and the author of two books.
Encina Hall (2nd floor)
David Scharia
Coordinator of the Legal and Criminal Justice Group at the United Nations Security Council Counter Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED)
Speaker
United Nations Security Council
Abstract: In the early morning hours of March 28, 1979, began a series of events that led to a partial meltdown of the reactor core at Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant and the worst accident in the history of the commercial nuclear power industry in the United States. Catalyzed by this event, the industry leadership formed an independent oversight entity, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, resourced its technical staffing, and ceded significant authorities to it in the areas of operational oversight, training and accreditation, the sharing of operational experience and provision of assistance to plants in need. As the former President and CEO of INPO, Admiral Ellis will discuss the requirements for effective self-regulation, specifically, and consider the issues surrounding broader employment of the concept.
About the Speaker: James O. Ellis Jr. is an Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a CISAC Affiliate. He retired as president and chief executive officer of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), a self-regulatory nonprofit located in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 18, 2012. In 2004, Admiral Ellis completed a thirty-nine-year US Navy career as commander of the United States Strategic Command. In this role, he was responsible for the global command and control of US strategic and space forces.
His sea service included carrier-based tours with three fighter squadrons and command of the USS Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. His shore assignments included commander in chief, US Naval Forces, Europe, and Allied Forces, Southern Europe, where he led United States and NATO forces in combat and humanitarian operations during the 1999 Kosovo crisis.
Ellis holds two masters’ degrees in aerospace engineering and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Self-regulation in the US Commercial Nuclear Power: Why Does It Work And Why Can’t It Be Replicated?
Admiral James O. Ellis Jr. is the Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he oversees both the Global Policy and Strategy Initiative and the George P. Shultz Energy Policy Working Group. He retired from a 39-year career with the US Navy in 2004. He has also served in the private and nonprofit sectors in areas of energy and nuclear security.
A 1969 graduate of the US Naval Academy, Ellis was designated a naval aviator in 1971. His service as a navy fighter pilot included tours with two carrier-based fighter squadrons and assignment as commanding officer of an F/A-18 strike fighter squadron. In 1991, he assumed command of the USS Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. After selection to rear admiral, in 1996, he served as a carrier battle group commander, leading contingency response operations in the Taiwan Strait.
His shore assignments included numerous senior military staff tours. Senior command positions included commander in chief, US Naval Forces, Europe, and commander in chief, Allied Forces, Southern Europe, during a time of historic NATO expansion. He led US and NATO forces in combat and humanitarian operations during the 1999 Kosovo crisis.
Ellis’s final assignment in the navy was as commander of the US Strategic Command during a time of challenge and change. In this role, he was responsible for the global command and control of US strategic and space forces, reporting directly to the secretary of defense.
After his naval career, he joined the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) as president and chief executive officer. INPO, sponsored by the commercial nuclear industry, is an independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote the highest levels of safety and reliability in the operation of commercial nuclear electric generating plants. He retired from INPO in 2012.
Ellis is also the former board chair of Level 3 Communications and served on the board of Lockheed Martin Corporation and Dominion Energy. In 2006, he became a member of the Military Advisory Panel to the Iraq Study Group. In 2009, he completed three years of service on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board. A former board chair of the nonprofit Space Foundation, in 2018 he was appointed chairman of the Users’ Advisory Group to the Vice President’s National Space Council, where he served until 2022.
Ellis holds a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was inducted into the school’s Engineering Hall of Fame in 2005. He completed US Navy Nuclear Power Training and was qualified in the operation and maintenance of naval nuclear propulsion plants. He is a graduate of the Navy Test Pilot School and the Navy Fighter Weapons School (Top Gun). In 2013, Ellis was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for “contributions to global nuclear safety.”
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James O. Ellis Jr
Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and CISAC Affiliate
Speaker
Hoover Institution, CISAC
In an age of terrorism, where should a democratic society draw the line on government surveillance? Edward Snowden’s explosive disclosures about the National Security Agency’s intelligence-collection operations have ignited an intense debate about the appropriate balance between security and liberty in America. In a special series this year, nationally prominent experts will explore the critical issues raised by the NSA’s activities, including their impact on our security, privacy, and civil liberties. This timely series will address one of the most challenging questions the nation faces today as it tries to strike the right balance between safety and liberty.
The Security Conundrum will look behind and beyond the headlines, examining the history and implementation of the NSA operations, the legal questions generated by them, the media’s role in revealing them, and the responsibility of Congress to oversee them. It will also address the NSA’s uneasy and evolving relationship with Silicon Valley. Each session in the series is designed to explore these issues from a different vantage point. The guest speakers, in conversation with Stanford scholars, will probe the problems, explain the political, legal, and technological contours of the NSA actions, and outline ways to preserve the nation’s security without sacrificing our freedoms.
An Evening with Senator Mark Udall
Mark Udall was the senior US Senator from the state of Colorado from 2009–2015. During his tenure in the US Senate, Senator Udall held various national security committee assignments, both with the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. An active member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Udall gained notoriety for his vocal opposition to NSA surveillance programs in the wake of the Edward Snowden disclosures in June of 2013. However, as early as 2011, Senator Udall called on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify material related to US government surveillance. Following the Snowden revelations, Senator Udall advocated for adopting the recommendations from the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, as well as substantively reforming the NSA.
In a conversation with Amy Zegart, CISAC Co-Director and Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Senator Udall will provide a lawmaker’s perspective on the oversight of controversial NSA programs. He will discuss the divide between security and civil liberties, as well as his thoughts on reform of US intelligence collection activities.
Ticket information: Admission is free but advance registration is required. Doors open at 6:30 PM; no entry after 7:40 PM. Registration is limited to 1 ticket per person. A photo ID will be required at the door.
The Security Conundrum is co-sponsored by Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Hoover Institution, Stanford Continuing Studies, Stanford in Government, and the Stanford Law School.
CEMEX Auditorium
Knight Management Center
641 Knight Way, Stanford University
Mark Udall
Former US Senator, State of Colorado
Speaker
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E216
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
(650) 725-9754
(650) 723-0089
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zegart@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
amy zegart headshot.png
PhD
Dr. Amy Zegart is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. The author of five books, she specializes in U.S. intelligence, emerging technologies, and national security. At Hoover, she leads the Technology Policy Accelerator and the Oster National Security Affairs Fellows Program. She also is an associate director and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI; a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute; and professor of political science by courtesy, teaching 100 students each year about how emerging technologies are transforming espionage.
Her award-winning research includes the leading academic study of intelligence failures before 9/11: Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11 (Princeton, 2007) and the bestseller Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence (Princeton, 2022), which was nominated by Princeton University Press for the Pulitzer Prize. She also coauthored Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity, with Condoleezza Rice (Twelve, 2018). Her op-eds and essays have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Politico, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.
Zegart has advised senior officials about intelligence and foreign policy for more than two decades. She served on the National Security Council staff and as a presidential campaign foreign policy advisor and has testified before numerous congressional committees. Before her academic career, she spent several years as a McKinsey & Company consultant.
Zegart received an AB in East Asian studies from Harvard and an MA and a PhD in political science from Stanford. She serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, and the American Funds/Capital Group.
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Amy Zegart
Co-Director, CISAC, Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Moderator
International Security in a Changing World has been CISAC’s signature course since its inception in 1970. Thousands of Stanford students have taken the popular class, which has changed over time from a course focused on U.S.-Soviet arms control to one that analyzes an array of international security challenges and includes a two-day simulation of an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council.
In a series of videotaped lectures packaged on a new YouTube channel, Security Matters, some of Stanford’s leading professors, former government officials and other scholars from around the world lecture on everything from cybersecurity to lessons learned from the Cold War.
The 30 classroom and office lectures – broken into 157 shorter clips – are free and are for curious minds of all ages and professions. The lectures come almost entirely from the 2014 winter term of International Security (PS114S), co-taught by Zegart and Crenshaw.
“This series is the first in what we hope will be a continuing experiment of new modes and methods to enhance our education mission,” said Zegart. “We have two goals in mind: The first is to expand CISAC's reach in educating the world about international security issues. The second is to innovate inside our Stanford classrooms.”
The lectures survey the most pressing security issues facing the world today. Topics include cybersecurity, nuclear proliferation, insurgency and intervention, terrorism, biosecurity, lessons learned from the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis – as well as the future of U.S. leadership in the world.
CISAC co-director David Relman, a Stanford professor of microbiology and immunology, co-chaired a widely cited study by the National Academy of Sciences on globalization, biosecurity and the future of the life sciences. In his lecture, “Doomsday Viruses,” Relman talks about the dark side of the life sciences revolution and his concerns that biological knowledge in the wrong hands could threaten human life on a large scale.
The video modules are part of a new living-lecture library that would enable future Stanford students to learn from lectures that came before them.
“Imagine comparing what Martha Crenshaw had to say about terrorism in 2005 to 2015,” Zegart said, “or assigning an online module from one speaker as homework and hearing a contending perspective from an in-person lecture the following class. These modules make it possible for us to capture analysis of pressing international security issues at key moments in time and harness them for future learning.”
Zegart, who is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, notes that all the lecturers involved in the Security Matters series volunteered their time so that not only Stanford students could learn from them, but viewers from around the world.
“Whether you’re a policymaker or an interested citizen, an avid follower of politics or a curious newcomer … this series is intended for you,” she tells prospective online students in this lecture overview:
Each lecture is introduced with a brief overview of the key points and a bit of background about the speaker.
The Security Matters videos have been packaged under these five themes:
Crenshaw, who has been teaching for more than four decades, said this is her first foray into the world of online education.
“We hope that you’ll find these discussions as stimulating as we do and as generations of Stanford students have done over the years,” she tells prospective online students in the series overview. “But unlike our Stanford students – you won’t have to take a final exam.”
Follow the Twitter hashtag #SecurityMatters for updates on the @StanfordCISAC Twitter feed as we roll out the lectures. Or dip into the entire lecture series here on our YouTube channel, Security Matters, and then check the playlist for topics.
By emphasizing casualty reduction as a goal without regard to the importance of battlefield victory, the U.S. Army risks developing inappropriate military doctrine.
This paper addresses the factors motivating Chinese conventional arms sales and speculates on means to influence them. The author describes the history of China's weapons exports and examines various supply- and demand-side reasons for such transfers. In developing both explanations, the author tries to identify recurring pattems in the global arms trade. The paper concludes that if China manages to sustain its extraordinary rate of development, it will demand a larger role in shaping the international order and that there will be an increased use of arms transfers to realize security, versus strictly economic objectives.
On December 7, 2011–the seventieth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor–the Academy convened a panel of scholars at Stanford University to discuss the military and international relations. The article provides an edited transcript of the discussion, which served as the Academy’s 1979th Stated Meeting.
This article draws from the annual lecture in ‘U.S. Security in the 21st Century Series,’ sponsored by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy; it was delivered by the author on September 27, 2012, in New York City. It explores the U.S. military’s role in the making of American foreign policy by examining the degree of influence, identifying reasons why policy formulation may be imbalanced, and speculating on possible long-term consequences of excessive reliance on military power. Central to the arguments presented is the erosion of appropriate levels of executive, congressional, and media oversight of the American armed forces.
The protracted campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have diminished America’s appetite for waging wars to end tyranny or internal disorder in foreign lands. Military interventions have traditionally been a source of controversy in the United States. But America’s appetite for the dispatch of armed forces has been diminished greatly by factors that have primarily emerged in the twenty-first century. These include, most painfully, the protracted campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq that have made US political and military leaders more cautious about waging wars to end tyranny or internal disorder in foreign lands. Read more here.
If there is one thing Americans should have learnt from their recent wars, it is that they do not have the wisdom, resources or staying power to dictate political outcomes. Not long ago Washington aspired to build prosperous democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today it would be satisfied if they simply hung together as countries.President Barack Obama says the US should recognise that the world is “messy”. His strategy has been to avoid doing “stupid stuff”. And yet he is again trying to put a more ambitious face on American policy, asserting this month that the US would “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the al-Qaeda offshoot known as Isis. Air strikes quickly followed. Read more here.
