For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

(Stanford faculty, visiting scholars, staff, fellows, and students only)

Seminar Recording

About the Event: We consider how the U.S. news media reports on international affairs. Analyzing ≈40 million news articles published between 2010 and 2020, we explore whether the American news media report differently on various international affairs topics based on partisan leanings. We then analyze ≈25 million articles published by top online news sites to determine whether collective reporting shows disparities between the level of attention afforded major global issues and objective measures of their human costs (e.g. numbers of individuals killed). We find that left- and right-leaning news outlets tend to report on international affairs at similar rates but differ significantly in their likelihood of referencing particular issues. We find further strong evidence that the frequency of reporting on the international issues we study tracks only modestly with their associated human costs. Given evidence U.S. public and policymakers dependence on news reports for foreign affairs information, our findings raise fundamental questions about the influence of these reporting biases.

Draft Paper

About the Speakers: Andrew Shaver is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Merced. He is a CISAC affiliate and a former postdoctoral research fellow within Stanford’s political science department. He is the founding director of the Political Violence Lab and focuses broadly on contemporary sub-state conflict. His research appears in outlets including the American Political Science Review, American Economic Review, Annual Review of Sociology, and Journal of Politics. Dr. Shaver has served in different foreign affairs/national security positions within the U.S. Government. He completed his PhD in Public Affairs at Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs.

Amarpreet Kaur is a recent graduate of University of California, Merced with a bachelor in Public Health and a minor in Political science. Kaur has been working the lab for a year under the guidance of Professor Shaver. Kaur has aspirations to go on and get a PhD in Health Policy.

Robert Kraemer is a graduate student of data science at the University of Denver. Prior to this, Kraemer earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has been working in the Political Violence Lab with Professor Shaver for over a year, developing his research and analytic skills.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

About the Event: How do rising powers like China manage to build power in international systems dominated by one or more established great powers? International relations theory provides some answers, but most assume emulation of successful approaches. This paper leverages the established business literature on how new companies gain market share in markets dominated by established companies to develop a new theory of power accumulation. I argue that only under very narrow circumstances can rising powers build power and influence through emulation. Instead, China has built enough power over the past 25 years to be considered a great power competitor by doing things differently. Specifically, it exploits US blind spots, maneuvers in areas of strategic uncertainty and engages in entrepreneurial actions. I demonstrate that Chinese military strategy exhibits these components in its responses to key pillars of US foreign policy strategy like global power projection, foreign military intervention, and in conventional and nuclear posture decisions. The findings have significant implications for great power competition as well as for power transition theory.

About the Speaker: Oriana Skylar Mastro is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University where her research focuses on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination, and coercive diplomacy. She is also Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an inaugural Wilson Center China Fellow. She continues to serve in the United States Air Force Reserve for which she works as a strategic planner at INDOPACOM. For her contributions to U.S. strategy in Asia, she won the Individual Reservist of the Year Award in 2016. She has published widely, including in Foreign Affairs, International Security, International Studies Review, Journal of Strategic Studies, The Washington Quarterly, The National Interest, Survival, and Asian Security. Her book, The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime, (Cornell University Press, 2019) won the 2020 American Political Science Association International Security Section Best Book by an Untenured Faculty Member. She holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University. Her publications and other commentary can be found on twitter @osmastro and www.orianaskylarmastro.com.

For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

(Stanford faculty, visiting scholars, staff, fellows, and students only)

Seminar Recording

About the Event: There is never a good time for a pandemic but Covid-19 may have hit at the worst possible moment. In the decade before the virus, China had grown more dictatorial and assertive; populist nationalists held power in the United States, India, and Brazil; geopolitical tensions heightened—not just between China and the United States but also within the west; and the very notion of an objective truth was increasingly called into question. In Aftershocks, Colin Kahl and Tom Wright draw on interviews with officials from around the world to document how the world responded, or failed to respond, to a global crisis in an age of rivalry and nationalism. They shed new light on China’s lack of cooperation with the international community, how the Trump administration failed to rally an international coalition to deal with the pandemic, how Covid-19 brought the EU close to collapse, the role of central banks in averting a financial crisis, and the impact on the developing world. They also provide a pathway for how the world can prepare for the next pandemic. 

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About the Speaker: Thomas Wright is the Director for the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow at the Strobe Talbott Center for Strategy, Security, and Technology at the Brookings Institution. He is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a non-resident senior fellow at the Lowy Institute. His latest book, co-authored with Colin Kahl, is Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order (St Martin’s Press, 2021). He is also the author of All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21^st Century and the Future of American Power (Yale University Press 2017).

For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

Seminar Recording                                                                                           

About the Event: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was founded in 1988 to provide scientific background for the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since then, it has released six major assessment reports. The Sixth Assessment, released in August 2021, prompted the UN Secretary-General to call it a “code red for humanity.”

As one of 234 Lead Authors of the IPCC Sixth Assessment’s physical science report, I will present some of its main conclusions. We’ll dive below the level of headline statements to examine some major scientific innovations since the last IPCC report in 2013. I’ll talk about my personal experience of the 3-year assessment process, including the most intensive peer review in the history of science; here I will also talk about the significance and the future of peer review in general. Finally, I’ll showcase some tools this new report provides for policy analysis at the regional scale, and discuss its implications for international and global security.

About the Speaker: Paul N. Edwards is William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Director of the Program on Science, Technology & Society at Stanford University. and Professor of Information and History (Emeritus) at the University of Michigan. Edwards is the author of A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010), The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (MIT Press, 1996) and co-editor of Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (MIT Press, 2001), as well as other books and numerous articles. He edits the MIT Press book series, Infrastructures, and co-directs the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative. Edwards served as one of 234 lead authors for the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Working Group I), released in August 2021.

*For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. This event is part of the year-long initiative on “Ethics & Political Violence” jointly organized by the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. This event is hosted by CISAC and is co-sponsored by McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society.

All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. This event is part of the year-long initiative on “Ethics & Political Violence” jointly organized by the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. This event is hosted by CISAC and is co-sponsored by McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society.

For more information and registration visit: https://ethicsinsociety.stanford.edu/events/home-land-security-deradicalization-and-journey-back-extremism

For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

About the Event: Nuclear nonproliferation has been a pressing societal need since the development of nuclear weapons. Preventing the further spread of nuclear capabilities that could lead to a nuclear weapons program is a crucial mission that requires both technical and policy advances. Several international treaties have been put into place to curb the expansion of nuclear capabilities. Nevertheless, there are states that may be pursuing elements of an overt or covert nuclear weapons program. New science and technology developments are needed to verify the existing or proposed treaties in this area and to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again.

In this presentation, I will discuss these challenges and some of the recent advances in science and technology that contribute to solving them. I will present our Consortium for Monitoring, Technology, and Verification (MTV), a consortium of 14 universities and 13 national laboratories working together on these issues. I will highlight research projects including our studies on the fundamental emissions from nuclear fission and the development of new detection systems for nuclear materials detection, localization, and characterization. These systems were shown to aid the International Atomic Energy Agency in its nuclear safeguards and verification activities that have direct relevance to nuclear security. I will also talk about our efforts in furthering diversity, equity, and inclusion, which are crucial for building teams that can successfully address these societal issues.

About the Speaker: Professor Sara Pozzi earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in nuclear engineering at the Polytechnic of Milan, Italy in 1997 and 2001, respectively. She is a Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences and a Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan where she has graduated 25 Ph. D. students as advisor or co-advisor. Her research interests include the development of new methods for nuclear materials detection, identification, and characterization for nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and national security programs. She is the founding Director of the Consortium for Verification Technology (CVT) 2014-2019 and the Consortium for Monitoring, Technology, and Verification (MTV) 2019-2024, two large consortia of multiple universities and national laboratories working together to develop new technologies needed for nuclear treaty verification.

In 2018, Professor Pozzi was named the inaugural Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) for the UM College of Engineering. In this capacity, she heads the DEI implementation committee and works to ensure that the students, faculty, and staff are increasingly diverse, everyone is treated equally, and everyone is included.

She is the recipient of many awards, including the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management (INMM) Vince J DeVito Distinguished Service Award and the Department of Energy Outstanding Mentor Award, and is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society, the INMM, and the IEEE.

*For fall quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

This event is hosted by the Hoover Institution and co-sponsored by CISAC.

Registration required to attend in person.

Event and Registration Link: https://www.hoover.org/events/spies-lies-and-algorithms

About the Event: Spying has never been more ubiquitous―or less understood. The world is drowning in spy movies, TV shows, and novels, but universities offer more courses on rock and roll than on the CIA and there are more congressional experts on powdered milk than espionage. This crisis in intelligence education is distorting public opinion, fueling conspiracy theories, and hurting intelligence policy. In Spies, Lies, and Algorithms, Amy Zegart separates fact from fiction as she offers an engaging and enlightening account of the past, present, and future of American espionage as it faces a revolution driven by digital technology.

Drawing on decades of research and hundreds of interviews with intelligence officials, Zegart provides a history of U.S. espionage, from George Washington’s Revolutionary War spies to today’s spy satellites; examines how fictional spies are influencing real officials; gives an overview of intelligence basics and life inside America’s intelligence agencies; explains the deadly cognitive biases that can mislead analysts; and explores the vexed issues of traitors, covert action, and congressional oversight. Most of all, Zegart describes how technology is empowering new enemies and opportunities, and creating powerful new players, such as private citizens who are successfully tracking nuclear threats using little more than Google Earth. And she shows why cyberspace is, in many ways, the ultimate cloak-and-dagger battleground, where nefarious actors employ deception, subterfuge, and advanced technology for theft, espionage, and information warfare.

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About the Speaker: 

Amy Zegart is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. She is also a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Chair of Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence and International Security Steering Committee, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She specializes in U.S. intelligence, emerging technologies and national security, grand strategy, and global political risk management.