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.
When We Began to "Think Globally": Radioactive Fallout, the Cold War, and the Making of a Global Environmental Problem, 1945-1963
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ABOUT THE TOPIC: The Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 is known as the first nuclear arms control agreement. One of its declared aims, however, is environmental, namely "to put an end to the contamination of man's environment by radioactive substances." At the beginning of the atomic age, however, few voiced concerns about the worldwide dispersion of radioactive fallout. How did we come to reappraise that contamination as a global problem requiring a global solution? I will argue that the problem of fallout was not only born global as a material fact, but also globalized as a social-epistemic process thanks to the Cold War, which transformed scientific knowledge, ethical outlooks, technological conditions, and political incentives by the time when the PTBT was concluded.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Toshihiro Higuchi (Ph.D. in History, Georgetown) is an ACLS New Faculty Fellow and Associate Lecturer at the History of Science Department, University of Wisconsin—Madison. Higuchi held a postdoctoral fellowship at CISAC in 2011-12. He will move to the University of Kyoto in June 2014 as a research assistant professor. His current book project traces the science and politics of worldwide contamination by radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear-weapons testing as one of the first truly global environmental problems.
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Toshihiro Higuchi
ACLS New Faculty Fellow and Associate Lecturer, History of Science Department, University of Wisconsin - Madison
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The Digital Economy: Potential, Perils, and Promises
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International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children/Thomson Reuters
MetaPhone: The NSA Three-Hop
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MetaPhone is a crowdsourced study of phone metadata. If you own an Android smartphone, please consider participating. In an earlier post, we reported how automated analysis of call and text activity can detect private relationships.
Does the National Security Agency have court authority to pour over your phone records? Quite possibly.
According to declassified documents, the NSA operates under a rote legal procedure for querying domestic phone metadata. The agency begins by identifying a “seed” number, with reasonable and articulable suspicion of terrorist activity. Next, the NSA has discretion to follow up to three degrees of calling separation (“hops”). The NSA is authorized to retrieve a complete set of phone records at each hop, and just one call in the past five years appears sufficient to make a hop.
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Our Red Lines and Theirs
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If the Syrian civil war and, in particular, the horrific Ghouta attack this August have reminded the world of the persistent danger of chemical weapons, it is worth remembering that this is not the first time the United States has confronted a Middle Eastern dictator armed with weapons of mass destruction. During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein possessed large stockpiles of chemical weapons, which he had used frequently in his 8-year war with Iran during the 1980s. And yet Iraq did not use these weapons against the U.S.-led coalition forces, even as they soundly defeated the Iraqi army, pushing it from Kuwait. For two decades, the question has been, why no
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Foreign Policy
What is synthetic biology and why does it matter?
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About the topic: Products developed using recombinant DNA methods account for over $300 billion in annual U.S. domestic revenues, underlying a so-called “bioeconomy” that has grown 10-15% annually since the invention of genetic engineering ~40 years ago. Yet most of biotechnology has not been imagined let alone made true. I will review the last decade of work to make biology easier to engineer, from basic science to applied tools. Particular attention will be given to two underlying trends that are having policy impacts beyond research labs: (i) interconversion of physical genetic material and digital sequence information via advancing DNA sequence and synthesis tools, (ii) coordination of labor across time and place via technical standards supporting composition, measurement, and data exchange.
About the speaker: Drew works on “synthetic biology.” His group invented genome refactoring to both study and extend the utility of bacteriophage. His team also realized non-volatile chromosomal digital data storage, amplifying genetic logic gates, and cell-cell communication via engineered DNA messaging. He led the BIOFAB team that engineered a professional collection of reliably reusable standard biological parts and started the BioBricks Foundation (BBF) as a charity supporting development of a free-to-use language for programming life to benefit all people and the planet. In 2013 Drew was recognized by the White House for the BBF’s contributions to “open science” and received the Seymour Benzer lectureship from the US NAS.
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Drew Endy
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endy@stanford.edu
Martin Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
Faculty Co-Director of Degree Programs, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design
Faculty of Bioengineering, Stanford University
Core Faculty, Center for International Security and Cooperation
Drew Endy is a bioengineer at Stanford University who studies and teaches synthetic biology. His goals are civilization-scale flourishing and a renewal of liberal democracy. Prof. Endy helped launch new undergraduate majors in bioengineering at both MIT and Stanford and also the iGEM — a global genetic-engineering “Olympics” enabling thousands of students annually. His past students lead companies like Ginkgo Bioworks and Octant. He is married to Christina Smolke CEO of Antheia the essential medicine company. Endy served on the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) the Committee on Science Technology & Law (CSTL) the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Synthetic Biology Task Force and, briefly, the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board (DIB). He currently serves on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research. Esquire magazine recognized Drew as one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century.
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Hecker receives AAAS Award for Science Diplomacy
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CISAC and FSI Senior Fellow Siegfried Hecker has been awarded the prestigious Science Diplomacy Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his dedication to building bridges through science.
Hecker, director emeritus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and CISAC co-director from 2007-2012, was honored at the AAAS’s annual conference in Chicago for his “lifetime commitment to using the tools of science to address the challenges of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism and his dedication to building bridges through science during the period following the end of the Cold War."
In nominating Hecker for the 2013 award, Glenn E. Schweitzer, director of the Office for Central Europe and Eurasia at the National Academies, noted that Hecker has been particularly effective in working with government officials and scientific colleagues in Russia, Kazakhstan and North Korea.
"For over two decades, Dr. Hecker has worked on international nuclear security activities and fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials," said AAAS Chief International Officer Vaughan Turekian.
Schweitzer wrote in his nomination that Hecker's activities can be judged on two outcomes: responsible handling of nuclear materials and prevention of dangerous materials from falling into the wrong hands. "On both counts, he scores very high on anyone's ledger," Schweitzer wrote. "In addition, his openness and respect for the views of others have won important friends for the United States around the world."
More details about the award and Hecker's work can be read here.
Please join CISAC in congratulating Hecker for this honor.
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Why Nuclear Weapons Became Unsustainable: Modernization Theory, International Norms, and the Environmental Roots of the Nuclear Taboo, 1958-1968
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Philippines military recognizes Felter for counterterrorism work
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CABANATUAN, Philippines – CISAC Senior Research Fellow Joe Felter co-teaches the popular class, “Face of Battle,” which dissects several of the great American battles such as Gettysburg and Little Bighorn.
Few of his students, however, likely know of his connection to the little-known, ongoing battles raging across the world in southern Philippines.
Felter was awarded the Assaulter Badge on Feb. 8 by the Philippines Army in recognition of his support in forming the country’s first counterterrorism unit. The Light Reaction Battalion has been battling terrorists and rebels in the Southeast Asian nation for a decade.
Felter, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel, worked closely with Brig. Gen. Dionisio Santiago, the now-retired Philippine Armed Forces chief of staff, to form the elite unit during his stint as a U.S. military attaché in Manila.
Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Dionisio Santiago, former chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, looks on as Felter receives his award. Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Dionisio Santiago, former chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, looks on as Felter receives his award. Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Dionisio Santiago, former chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, looks on as Felter receives his award. Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Dionisio Santiago, former chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, looks on as Felter receives his award. |
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Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Dionisio Santiago, former chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, looks on as Felter receives his award. |
The battalion, which fights communist and Islamic militants in the restive south – where more than 40 years of insurgency has taken thousands hostage and claimed more than 150,000 lives – will be expanded to a regiment of 1,500 soldiers.
Felter received the honor during a 10th anniversary celebration of the unit, which was initially trained, equipped and sustained by the U.S. Special Forces.
“It was a real privilege to help the Philippine military establish this counterterrorist unit,” Felter said. “I have so much respect for all they do here and the challenging missions they take on, so it feels great to receive this honor on this special day.”
The ceremony was held at Fort Magsaysay in Cabanatuan, the storied city where the Japanese imprisoned Filipino and American survivors of the brutal Bataan Death March. Filipino and U.S. forces liberated some 500 POWs at the end of World War II in what has become known as The Great Raid. The two militaries remain closely allied today.
The certificate that accompanied his badge of honor says Felter “exerted tremendous effort” in convincing the U.S. government of the need for a counterterrorism unit in the Philippines. Once he did so, he helped activate and train the unit – and kept on the U.S. Special Forces to remain involved.
“Col. Felter has exemplified the essence of soldiery in the fight against terrorism, earning him the admiration, gratitude and respect of the officers, men and women of the Light Reaction Battalion and making him worthy of the honor of being a member of the Counter Terrorist Brotherhood,” reads the certificate.
Felter has spent a decade building an unprecedented database with Filipino military colleagues and coders which tracks tens of thousands of terrorist attacks in the Philippines since 1975. His Empirical Studies of Conflict project is also building insurgency data in Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, Pakistan and Vietnam.
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