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.
Jackie Kerr is a Professor in the College of Information and Cyberspace (CIC) at National Defense University (NDU). She is also a Nonresident Fellow with the Brookings Institution Foreign Policy Program and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies in the School of Foreign Service. Her work focuses on digital and emerging technologies and their current and future impacts on international politics, national security, and democracy. She has conducted research and taught on the digital politics of authoritarian regimes, the role of information technologies in civil society and protest mobilization, cyber domain strategy, global Internet governance, the role of artificial intelligence in national security and foreign policy, and on the role of digital technologies in the politics of Russia, China, and Eurasia. While at NDU, Dr. Kerr previously served as Senior Research Fellow for Defense and Technology Futures at the Center for Strategic Research (2020-2024) and the Center for Emerging Technology and Future Warfare (2024-2025) within the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS). In 2019-2020, she served as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Science and Technology Advisor to the Secretary (STAS), where she advised on digital technology policy, particularly as it pertains to human rights, democracy, and national security. From 2016 to 2019, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where she led work on cybersecurity, cyber domain strategy, and information conflict. Dr. Kerr was previously a Science, Technology, and Public Policy Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, a Visiting Scholar at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, a Cybersecurity Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and has held research fellowships in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Qatar. She also has prior professional experience as a software engineer with Comcast and Symantec. Dr. Kerr holds a PhD and MA in Government from Georgetown University, and an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and BAS in Mathematics and Slavic Languages and Literatures from Stanford University.
Karl Eikenberry, a William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at CISAC, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Lt. General in the U.S. Army (Ret.) speaks with National Georgraphic Channel in its new series: American War Generals. The two-hour show which aired on Sept. 19, 2014, reveals never-heard-before stories and insightful opinions from 11 active and retired U.S. Army generals, according to the NatGeo website. Their accounts take the viewers through the big changes that have transformed the U.S. military from the first troops to enter Vietnam to the last combat troops to exit Afghanistan, explaining the critical personal experiences that shaped their lives and the way they approached modern warfare.
You can watch Eikenberry's account and the other general's here.
Abstract: The industrial and agricultural revolutions have profoundly transformed the world. However, an unintended consequence of these revolutions is that we are affecting the climate of Earth. I will describe the rapidly changing energy landscape, an “epidemiological” approach to assessing the risks of climate change, and its impact to international security. I will then give a perspective on mitigating these risks with science, technology and policy with emphasis on developing the lowest cost solution.
About the Speaker: Steven Chu is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Physics and Molecular & Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. His research spans atomic and polymer physics, biophysics, biology, biomedicine and batteries. He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for the laser cooling and trapping of atoms.
From January 2009 until April 2013, Dr. Chu was the 12th U.S. Secretary of Energy and the first scientist to hold a cabinet position since Ben Franklin. During his tenure, he began ARPA-E, the Energy Innovation Hubs, the Clean Energy Ministerial meetings, and was tasked by President Obama to assist BP in stopping the Deepwater Horizon oil leak. Prior to his cabinet post, he was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Professor of Physics and Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, the Theodore and Francis Geballe Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University, and head of the Quantum Electronics Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories.
Dr. Chu is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academia Sinica, and is a foreign member of the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Korean Academy of Sciences and Technology. He has been awarded 24 honorary degrees, published more than 250 scientific papers, and holds 10 patents.
Steven Chu
William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Physics and Molecular & Cellular Physiology
Speaker
Stanford University
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E209
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
0
relman@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor
Professor of Medicine
Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
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MD
David A. Relman, M.D., is the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in the Departments of Medicine, and of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University, and Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System in Palo Alto, California. He is also Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford, and served as science co-director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford from 2013-2017. He is currently director of a new Biosecurity Initiative at FSI.
Relman was an early pioneer in the modern study of the human indigenous microbiota. Most recently, his work has focused on human microbial community assembly, and community stability and resilience in the face of disturbance. Ecological theory and predictions are tested in clinical studies with multiple approaches for characterizing the human microbiome. Previous work included the development of molecular methods for identifying novel microbial pathogens, and the subsequent identification of several historically important microbial disease agents. One of his papers was selected as “one of the 50 most important publications of the past century” by the American Society for Microbiology.
Dr. Relman received an S.B. (Biology) from MIT, M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and joined the faculty at Stanford in 1994. He served as vice-chair of the NAS Committee that reviewed the science performed as part of the FBI investigation of the 2001 Anthrax Letters, as a member of the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity, and as President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He is currently a member of the Intelligence Community Studies Board and the Committee on Science, Technology and the Law, both at the National Academies of Science. He has received an NIH Pioneer Award, an NIH Transformative Research Award, and was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2011.
CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 725-2705
(650) 724-2996
0
sstedman@stanford.edu
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
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PhD
Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.
In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.
In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.
In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.
His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).
Director, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law
Director, Program in International Relations
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Richard E. Behrman Professor of Child Health and Society
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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MD, MPH
Dr. Paul Wise is dedicated to bridging the fields of child health equity, public policy, and international security studies. He is the Richard E. Behrman Professor of Child Health and Society and Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology and Developmental Medicine, and Health Policy at Stanford University.He is also co-Director, Stanford Center for Prematurity Research and a Senior Fellow in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Wise is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been working as the Juvenile Care Monitor for the U.S. Federal Court overseeing the treatment of migrant children in U.S. border detention facilities.
Wise received his A.B. degree summa cum laude in Latin American Studies and his M.D. degree from Cornell University, a Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health and did his pediatric training at the Children’s Hospital in Boston.His former positions include Director of Emergency and Primary Care Services at Boston Children’s Hospital, Director of the Harvard Institute for Reproductive and Child Health, Vice-Chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and was the founding Director or the Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention, Stanford University School of Medicine.He has served in a variety of professional and consultative roles, including Special Assistant to the U.S. Surgeon General, Chair of the Steering Committee of the NIH Global Network for Women’s and Children’s Health Research, Chair of the Strategic Planning Task Force of the Secretary’s Committee on Genetics, Health and Society, a member of the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH, and the Health and Human Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Infant and Maternal Mortality.
Wise’s most recent U.S.-focused work has addressed disparities in birth outcomes, regionalized specialty care for children, and Medicaid. His international work has focused on women’s and child health in violent and politically complex environments, including Ukraine, Gaza, Central America, Venezuela, and children in detention on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Core Faculty, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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.”
Intense competition between the United States and China will be one of the significant global issues in the years to come. Stanford international security fellow Karl Eikenberry says there's no reason the two nations should repeat the "Thucydides Trap," which refers to seemingly inevitable and violent conflicts between rising and existing powers.
The United States and China can peacefully co-exist if they avoid history's most dangerous geopolitical pitfalls, according to a Stanford expert.
The key is not to presume an inevitable conflict, said Karl Eikenberry, the William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation and a faculty member of the Shorenstein Asia–Pacific Research Center.
"More often than not, the subsequent competition between the rising and status quo powers results in increasingly bitter conflicts and ultimately ends in all-out war," he wrote in a recent journal article.
A retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, Eikenberry was the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 until 2011. He also served as the defense attaché in the American embassy in the People's Republic of China. He earned an interpreter's certificate in Mandarin Chinese from the British Foreign Commonwealth Office and an advanced degree in Chinese history from Nanjing University.
Eikenberry said that colliding powers sometimes fall prey to the "Thucydides Trap," which harkens back to the Peloponnesian War from 431 B.C. to 404 B.C. when the rising Greek city-state of Athens fought the reigning city-state of Sparta. The Greek historian Thucydides famously wrote, "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable."
Today, Eikenberry wrote, pundits and experts use the term "Thucydides Trap" to describe the phenomenon of a rising power provoking so much fear in a status quo power that it ultimately leads to conflict between the two.
Economic bond
However, Eikenberry pointed out, more differences abound than similarities to Sparta and Athens in the case of the United States and China. For starters, the two countries are deeply intertwined in a global marketplace, whereas Sparta and Athens were separate economies.
"The type of economic interaction matters," Eikenberry said in an interview.
For example, on the eve of the First World War, trade among major European powers was at high levels by historical standards, he said. Yet that did not prevent the outbreak of a cataclysmic war. As for the United States and China, they have a different trading relationship than the European powers in the early 20th century.
"China and the U.S. today enjoy a high level of bilateral trade and China holds a significant amount of American debt. More stabilizing, though, would be increased mutual direct investment," he said.
Eikenbery wrote in his essay that the Sino-American relationship offers its partners particular benefits difficult to find in other countries – such as the world-leading quality of U.S. higher education and the "safe harbor" appeal of U.S. treasury notes as a safe Chinese investment.
"Athens did not hold $1 trillion worth of Spartan treasury notes. Also, huge numbers of Athenian students did not live and study in Sparta. In short, Athens and Sparta were distinct and rival city-states with very little integration or sharing of sector-specific resources or services," he said.
On top of this, Washington and Beijing are in discussions on a bilateral investment treaty, he said. "A good treaty would hopefully encourage more economic activity that in the long term would make military conflict even more costly than it already is."
Values and history count
Still, concerns exist. The differences in belief systems between the United States and China cannot be ignored when one contemplates the future, Eikenberry wrote.
"The United States places a heavy emphasis on democracy, freedom and human rights. By contrast, Chinese President Xi Jinping has cautioned party members against advocacy of constitutional democracy, universal values, civil society, neo-liberalism, media freedom, historical nihilism (excessive criticism of the party's past) and questioning reform. In China, democracy is still considered subversive," he wrote.
In the end, values and history do matter, Eikenbery said. They shape how nations perceive the world and pursue their strategic goals.
"The United States has defined itself as an exceptional nation that has championed democracy and freedom. It sees itself on the winning side of mankind. By contrast, China, feeling aggrieved and humiliated, sees a great need to restore itself to its rightful place in the world as a rich and strong nation," he wrote.
If values like freedom and democracy matter, does this bode well for the United States in its competition with China? Perhaps, Eikenberry said.
"Americans are questioning their government's performance, especially at the federal level. But the debate is over methods and processes, not whether democracy has run its course," he said in an interview.
The liberal democratic political model has proven itself over the past couple hundred of years, he noted. "States ruled by closed autocracies have had occasional good runs – sometimes for a few decades – but most have ended failures. I bet on the former," he added.
How the future unfolds for America and China depends on a proper reading of history and political context, Eikenberry said.
"Mismanaged by one or both sides, conflict is possible," he said.
But there's no need for leaders in Washington and Beijing to cast themselves as tragic actors condemned to re-enact the Peloponnesian War.
"To do so would make for a bad reading of history, poor political science and a very flimsy basis for statecraft," he said.
He would advise U.S. and Chinese leaders to focus on fixing their respective political systems. A lot is at stake, not only in both countries, but also for others around the world.
"Failure on China's part would, in the long-term, have severe consequences for its internal and global stability. Failure on America's part would erode its material and moral claim to world leadership," he said.
Meetings like this one in 2012 between President Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping can ease tensions between the two nations if leaders promote healthy interactions, according to Karl Eikenberry of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
In an article in the Federation of American Scientists' Published Interest Report (Summer 2014, Vol. 67, No. 3), Dr. Rebecca Slayton argues that current missile defense policy is founded on a problematic and dangerous concept of proven and adaptable defenses.
Abstract: In 2011 I joined a team of global security analysts at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to develop a systematic methodology for “information-driven” safeguards for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This methodology would link the IAEA’s nuclear inspection schedules, within a given state, to a heterogenous body of information about the state. As the lone physicist in the group, I was quickly fashioned as the “quantitative guy”, who would produce quantitative frameworks to make information-driven safeguards “more objective”, and “less political”. But as my quantitative contributions earned the respect of my peers, I became leery of the role they might play in the political shift I saw afoot. If safeguards was to be information-driven, then whose information would “drive” the IAEA?
In this presentation, I tell the story of my experience as the “quant guy” at LLNL in order to explore a broader question: when is it useful to deploy quantitative methods of highly complex phenomena in matters of social consequence? I borrow from a distinction commonly made in the science studies literature - between disciplinary and mechanical objectivity - to argue that quantitative models serve us best when they are used not to “remove bias” or “increase rigor”, but to aid subjective judgement and facilitate communication.
About the Speaker: Chris Lawrence received his PhD in nuclear science at University of Michigan in 2014, and has published in the fields of nuclear detection and solid-state physics. His dissertation introduced novel neutron-spectroscopy techniques for the verification of warhead dismantlement. In 2011 he worked on nuclear safeguards policy issues in the Global Security Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He is currently a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at CISAC, where he studies the creation and deployment of knowledge about nuclear programs and treaty compliance.
Encina Hall (2nd floor)
Christopher Lawrence
Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow
Speaker
CISAC
Two-dozen congressional staffers joined academic and Silicon Valley experts at Stanford’s inaugural cybersecurity boot camp to discuss ways to protect the government, the public and industry from cyber attacks, network crimes and breaches of personal privacy.
The staffers listened to presentations from 25 business and technology leaders, as well as experts in privacy, civil liberties and intelligence during the three-day boot camp. They also took part in a role-playing exercise dealing with a cyber crisis, posing as staffers from the White House, Homeland Security, the State and Defense departments, as well as private enterprise.
The idea behind the workshop was to give Capitol Hill staffers the knowledge and contacts that will help them better craft legislation and policies on cybersecurity.
“We’re 3,000 miles away from Washington and we’re at ground zero for the tech revolution,” said CISAC Co-Director Amy Zegart. She is also the Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, which co-sponsored the boot camp that that ran from Aug. 18-20.
“The boot camp is an important early step in what we envision to be a continuing, leading and lasting cyber program,” said Zegart, co-convener with Herbert Lin, chief scientist at the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council of the National Academies, who joins Stanford in January as a senior scholar for cyber research and policy at CISAC and research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Zegart had three goals for the boot camp. One was to bring together computer and social scientists across campus and across the country “to broaden and deepen our cutting-edge scholarship.”
Then, from the networking that naturally took place, Zegart hopes to create a Track II cybersecurity council that will convene regularly with leaders from the U.S. government, scholars and key stakeholders from the private industry.
“And finally, we want enhanced education programs not only for students here at Stanford, but key stakeholders for cybersecurity policy,” she said.
The presentations were videotaped and will be packaged and used for educational purposes at Stanford and eventually be made public online.
Some of the staffers said the boot camp exceeded their expectations and they were grateful for the jam-packed, 72-hour crash course in all things cyber.
“What Stanford has done really successfully here is they brought together people from D.C. who wouldn’t necessarily talk to each other, from different committees, from different sides of the aisle,” said Jamil Jaffer, Republican chief counsel and senior advisor to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. “Then from the valley community they brought lawyers, educators and technologists – you name it – from across the spectrum in a way that I’ve never seen before.”
He said he hoped CISAC and the Hoover Institution, which co-sponsored the Stanford Congressional Cyber Boot Camp, would convene the next boot camp with the New York business community as well.
“I think there’s a real opportunity to build bridges between these three major cities; I think we need to have these conversations together,” he said.
Staffers also exchanged views about the wide gap between the government and Silicon Valley tech companies with regard to privacy when they met with senior security chiefs at Google during a visit to the nearby Google X campus.
And there were plenty of lively debates about Internet security vs. privacy and whether the government should step in to police public networks.
Benjamin Wittes of Brookings and Hoover faced off with Jennifer Granick, director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society at the Law School.
“Liberty is a feature of security – and security is a feature of liberty,” Wittes said. “So the urge to think that any security measure is going to negatively impact your liberty, or conversely that anything that augments online liberty is going to have negative implications on security is a very easy, and I would say, very lazy instinct.”
Granick countered by saying most professionals in Silicon Valley do not trust the government to police the Internet without secret hacks. For example, documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden indicated the National Security Agency tapped into fiber optic cables transmitting data for Yahoo and Google.
“Last night you heard Eric Schmidt say that the NSA had hacked Google,” she said, referring to a keynote dinner conversation between the Google chairman and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at Hoover and the Freeman Spogli Institute.
The NSA has denied hacking into Google and Yahoo.
“Everyone here in Silicon Valley agrees with what he says,” she said. “Don’t fool yourself that he’s just saying that because that’s just Google marketing. Everybody at Twitter believes it; everybody at Facebook believes it. I am embedded in the privacy world and we’re all worried about consumer privacy and what these companies are doing with this information – but that doesn’t mean we trust the government to protect us.”
Aside from the government trust debate, other big takeaways were that surprisingly little is secure on the Internet and the threat of cyber attacks against the United States is one of the biggest issues facing Washington policymakers today.
They heard a warning in stark and unambiguous language from Jane Holl Lute, president of the Council on CyberSecurity and a consulting professor at CISAC.
"It's no longer possible to ignore this issue," said Lute, who until last year was deputy secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, where she was responsible for the day-to-day management of the department's efforts to prevent terrorism and enhance security. "Life online is fundamentally unsafe.”
She emphasized that the Internet is about "the power to connect, not to protect" and stressed the importance of practicing "cyber hygiene" to reduce problems. This includes monitoring the hardware and software running on a network, limiting administrative permissions, and real-time patching and monitoring of system vulnerabilities.
If organizations would just follow these steps, she said, 80 to 90 percent of cyber attacks would be prevented.
"We know a lot, but we're just not doing it,” she said.
Lute emphasized that today's world has an "existential reliance" on the Internet – more than 3 billion people in the world, including 80 percent of North Americans, have access to the Internet. All of this dependence comes against the reality that many companies and sites do not carry out basic hygiene to protect their networks.
The U.S. Senate and House staffers attending the boot camp come from both political parties and work on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Homeland Security, Appropriations, Judiciary, Energy and Commerce committees. The group also includes staffers working with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., among others.
Senior executives from Microsoft, Visa, Palantir, Palo Alto Networks and U.S. Venture Partners had a robust discussion about how their companies battle cyber crime and share network data.
Ellen Richey, global head of enterprise risk for Visa, talked about her frustration with the international organized crime rings that attack financial institutions and credit cards companies.
“And they’re using that money to finance other types of illicit activities, such as human trafficking, drugs and terrorism, yet their governments don’ t go after them, or if they do go after them, they are released due to corruption in the courts,” Richey said.
She said Visa believes that at the end of the day, it’s not possible to adopt measures that are going to adequately protect against the growing threat of cyber crimes.
“So we believe that the ultimate answer for us is to get vulnerable data out of their hands,” Richey said. “You’ve got to shrink the battlefield.”
Facebook CSO Joe Sullivan addresses the boot camp, Aug. 20, 2014.
And the staffers heard a plea by Joe Sullivan, chief security officer at Facebook, to join them in the valley’s quest for better network security.
“The pace that we work at here in Silicon Valley is amazing. It’s exciting and fun to be a part of – but it’s really scary, too,” said Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor devoted to high-tech crime. “There are challenges that we have to deal with every day and we have to have really large and nimble security teams that are thinking about the next big thing before it launches.
“The question is: are government agencies thinking about these issues? Far too often – that is not the case. Hopefully when you go back to Washington you think about how we engage companies, how we engage with government agencies, think about the roles that we all play.”
Sullivan talked about Facebook’s “white hat” program, in which the social network invites users to find security vulnerabilities and report them for a bounty.
He said they have spent $3 million in the last three years in payouts to users around the world, such as the young Palestinian man who was able to hack into Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s page to warn him of a security flaw.
“We’ve focused on encryption, we’ve hired a lot of people and we’ve looked at data center traffic and all those things,” Sullivan said. “But one of the areas where I think we’ve tried to be at the forefront is about talking about security in a more open way.”
Sullivan said he believes there’s a “disconnect” when one talks about security between the private and public sectors and consumers.
“I feel like when the government talks about security, they’re talking about surveillance,” Sullivan said. “I think when consumers talk about security, they’re talking about safety.”
The big tech companies – Facebook, Microsoft and Google – must take “full ownership” of network security, though he wishes that were not always the case.
“We honestly don’t count on any government agency anywhere in the world to make the people who use Facebook secure,” he said. “We realize we have to do it on our own. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I would suggest it’s a bad thing. I think we’d all like more help in securing our services.”
For more details about the boot camp speakers and program, visit this website.
CISAC Co-Director Amy Zegart writes in The American Interest that a strong and rising China, as well as a weak and unstable one, should concern the United States. But perhaps most troubling is the uncertainty about which scenario will eventually play out, and Washington’s strategic orientation toward Europe and the Middle East.
Facebook CSO Joe Sullivan addresses the boot camp, Aug. 20, 2014.
