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

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/bphwqcK97zY

About the Event: A struggle is currently being waged for the soul of the West: to determine whether America and Europe can recover instincts for joint action or if they are doomed to pursue divergent paths. Much damage has been inflicted during the past four years, but the election of Joe Biden as president augurs well for the prospect of potentially the most trans-Atlanticist administration in decades. Yet, reinvigorating and reimagining the trans-Atlantic relationship will be an uphill battle. Success in that will affect, among other things, the West's ability to deal with Russia.

Based on their book, Partners of First Resort: America, Europe, and the Future of the West, David McKean and Bart M. J. Szewczyk will lay out a path for a trans-Atlantic renaissance to restore a community based on the same liberal objectives that animated the West and built a more peaceful, prosperous, and politically inclusive world order. America and Europe still need each other as partners of first resort, out of strategic necessity and commonality of interests. Moreover, the world needs a vibrant and energetic West to protect its fundamental values from illiberal forces. Modernizing the institutional links will help better address common challenges.

About the Speakers: 

David McKean served as Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State, and U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg. He is currently a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. He is the author of four acclaimed political histories and biographies, and a forthcoming book: Watching Darkness Fall: Franklin Roosevelt and His Ambassadors in Europe (St. Martin’s Press, 2021)  

Bart M.J. Szewczyk (SHEF-chick) served as Member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State and Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, as well as Adviser on Global Affairs at the European Commission’s think-tank. He is adjunct professor at Sciences Po in Paris and author of two forthcoming books: Europe’s Grand Strategy (Palgrave Macmillan 2020) and European Sovereignty and Legitimacy(Routledge 2020).

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/7uGcI3qswDw

About the Event: As relations between the West and Russia have sharply deteriorated in recent years, Germany has taken a leading role in shaping Europe's policy response, particularly that of the European Union.  That has included a tougher approach toward Kremlin misbehavior, such as various economic and other sanctions.  At the same time, Berlin has sought to keep an open line of communication with Moscow.

Amb. Thomas Bagger will discuss how Berlin views the challenge posed by Russia and how the West should respond.

About the Speaker: Thomas Bagger holds the rank of ambassador and is Diplomatic and Foreign Policy Advisor to the President of the Federal Republic of Germany.  He joined the German diplomatic service in 1992 and has served abroad in Prague, Ankara and Washington.  Before taking up his current position, he headed the Foreign Ministry's Policy Planning Office.    

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

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/eGGzDeiGtIc

About the Event: Research on social media and politics has largely focused on two very different political contexts: authoritarian regimes and “normal” democratic polities. However, many countries’ political systems exist between these extremes: there is both “normal” online mobilization and efforts at manipulation that emanate in whole or in part from state-linked actors. In this article, we focus on a country with such a system: Pakistan. We investigate the politics of social media in the run-up to Pakistan’s 2018 general election. The campaign involved both intense, large-scale electoral mobilization and recurrent, credible allegations of influence by the country’s politically powerful army. We analyze millions of Twitter posts in English and Urdu by major political actors and their followers in Pakistan before and just after the 2018 election to identify patterns of 1) normal mobilization and 2) coordinated manipulation. Several findings emerge. First, the main political parties were highly active on social media, with the eventually-victorious Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) of Imran Khan showing a noticeable edge in online enthusiasm that matches the substantial victory of the PTI in the election. Second, there was a noticeable “dissident sphere” on Twitter, seeking to get around a campaign of censorship and media influence by the military. However, dissidents’ messages were largely swamped by the broader party competition and narratives favorable to the PTI and the military. Third, we find evidence of coordinated activities. This appears to have largely favored the PTI and pro-military messages, which saw a substantially higher rate of amplification. Finally, we see evidence of narrative alignment between the PTI and the military – the clusters of their followers seemed to advance pro-PTI and anti-PML-N messages; pro-PTI and anti-PML-N narratives were pervasive in the PML-N and dissident clusters.

About the Speakers: 

Asfandyar Mir is a Postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. His research interests are in international security with current work focusing on counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, drone warfare, US counterterrorism policy, South Asia security issues, misinformation dynamics, and Al-Qaida. Some of his research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals, such as International Security, International Studies Quarterly, and Security Studies. My commentary has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, H-Diplo, Lawfare, and Washington Post Monkey Cage.

Tamar Mitts is Assistant Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs and a Faculty Member at the Data Science Institute and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. Her research applies machine learning and text analysis methods to study political behavior in the digital age, and has been published in the American Political Science Review, International Organization, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and Political Science Research and Methods, among other outlets.

Paul Staniland is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a nonresident scholar in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research focuses on political violence and international security in South Asia. Staniland’s first book, Networks of Rebellion: Explaining Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse, was published by Cornell University Press in 2014, and his second book, Armed Politics: Violence, Order, and the State in South Asia, will be published by Cornell in 2022.

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

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/Q6-ErAxGmQ0

About the Event: While research into why repression varies has thrived, essentially no effort has been made to examine stopping large-scale applications once underway. We put forward a new theoretical framework that conceptualizes repressive behavior as a rare/slow-changing process that is unlikely to terminate unless it is perturbed by a significant cost. As such, we maintain that repression is more likely ended by democratization than from diverse factors commonly espoused in the literature and policy community (e.g., military intervention, naming/shaming, international law and economic sanctions). Investigating a new database regarding 239 high-level repression spells for the period 1976-2007, we find that democratization is associated with spell-termination, while there is little systematic pacifying influence for other factors. Additionally, we find that non-violent movements for change largely drive democratization but that these movements have little direct impact on state repression themselves.

Draft Paper

About the Speaker: Christian Davenport is a Professor of Political Science and Faculty Associate at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo and Elected Fellow at the American Association for the Arts and Sciences. Primary research interests include political conflict, measurement, racism and popular culture. He is the author of seven books and author of numerous articles appearing in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science and the Annual Review of Political Science (among others). He is the recipient of numerous grants (e.g., 12 from the National Science Foundation) and awards.

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

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/5-om1-NWqv0

About the Event: Traditional international law is not sufficient for the oversight of emerging uses of the space environment, such as in situ resource utilization and increased militarization and weaponization. The US is pushing the boundaries through innovative contracting, governance instruments such as the Artemis Accords and new institutions such as the Space Force to test the space governance system. This presentation outlines a framework for organizing the system as a whole, including international agreements, national space policy and stakeholder interactions and interrelations.

About the Speaker: Aganaba is an assistant professor for the School for the Future in Innovation in Society with a courtesy appointment at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.

She is most known in her industry for promoting the regulation of technologies to be utilized against climate change. This has expanded to the use of satellites to measure greenhouse gas emissions.

She has received the Young Space Leaders Award from the International Astronautical Federation. She has served as the executive director of the World Space Week Association and trainee legal officer for the Nigerian Space Research and Development Agency.

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

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/xUgzxG7MQa0

About the Event: The development and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies by the US military, and the ramifications of their adoption, has been the subject of many recent articles in both the popular as well as academic literature. Much of what has been said about them is speculative and even sensationalist, especially in regards to AI-enabled weapons. While at one time the US Department of Defense (DoD) was the driving force behind American science and technology research, and perhaps it still is in the case of certain niche technologies, there is no question that university and private sector research are advancing the state-of-the-art in AI, and the DoD is following behind. To that end, it is reasonable to assume that the majority of DoD AI technologies are sourced from industry using a combination of traditional acquisition vehicles, as defined in the Federal Acquisition Regulations, as well as non-traditional engagements, for example via the Defense Innovation Unit in Silicon Valley. In this talk I will summarize a number of recent public Requests for Information (RFIs) and Requests for Proposals (RFPs) to industry coming out of the DoD. I will use these RFIs and RFPs as a means to gauge the ‘state’ of AI in the DoD. My goal is to gain insight into what the DoD is actually trying to do with AI from amidst the public’s imagination and fear of what is possible, in order to better inform the public debate over AI ethics, governance, and other ramifications.

About the Speaker: Dr. David Blum is the Principal Data Scientist at Next Tier Concepts, where he supports the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the US Intelligence Community as a principal investigator, as well as a Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Economics Program, where he teaches a course titled "Real Risk" covering the tools of probabilistic risk analysis and warning. He has more than 14 years of experience performing operations research and risk analysis for the US national security community. He previously served as Technical Director of the Operations Research and Systems Analysis Division for the Department of Defense's Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Office (JIDO), where he oversaw the production of operations research analysis to support current military operations, and as an operations research scientist for several Defense Department and Intelligence Community offices. His assignments ranged from strategic assessments of future military force mixes, to tactical analyses to inform counter-terrorism operations, to development of automated processors for technical data exploitation at the national scale. He held a predoctoral fellowship at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, a Global Security graduate scholarship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and was a member of Stanford's Engineering Risk Research Group. He received his doctorate from Stanford University in management science and engineering, his Master's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in political science, and his Bachelor's degree from Columbia University in history and physics, and has co-edited a book titled Counterterrorism and Threat Finance Analysis during Wartime. His research interests include crisis early warning and predictive analytics. 

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

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/tcWqulaKXy0

About the Event: Since the end of World War II, the United States has set out to oust governments in the Middle East on an average of once per decade—in places such as Iran, Afghanistan (twice), Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Though pursued for a wide range of reasons, these operations all failed to achieve their ultimate goals, produced a range of unintended and even catastrophic consequences, carried heavy financial and human costs, and often left the countries in question worse off than they were before. Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East gives readers a look at the U.S. experience with regime change over the past seventy years, and an insider’s view on U.S. policymaking in the region at the highest levels.

Book Purchase:  https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Long-Game-Promise-Regime/dp/1250217032

About the Speaker: Dr. Philip Gordon is the Mary and David Boies Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.  From 2013-15, he served as Special Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region.  As the most senior White House official focused on the greater Middle East, he worked closely with the President, Secretary of State, and National Security Adviser on the full range of geopolitical, economic, and security issues facing the region.  From 2009-13, Dr. Gordon served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  In that position he was responsible for 50 countries in Europe and Eurasia as well as for NATO and the European Union (EU).  He is the author of Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East, published October 6, 2020.    

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

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/yyZ54SgGuz4

About the Event: We are beginning to understand that globalization has strategic consequences. Countries are using their position in globalized networks to "weaponize interdependence," through their dominance of information and financial networks. In this talk, Henry Farrell will discuss the research and policy agenda of weaponized interdependence, addressing such questions as: What areas of the global economy are most vulnerable to unilateral control of information and financial networks? How sustainable is the use of weaponized interdependence? What are the possible responses from targeted actors? And how sustainable is the open global economy if weaponized interdependence becomes a default tool for managing international relations?

Book Purchase:   https://amzn.to/3d29F4a

About the Speaker: Henry Farrell is SNF Agora Institute Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, 2019 winner of the Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Politics and Technology, and Editor in Chief of the Monkey Cage blog at the Washington Post. His book (with Abraham Newman) Of Privacy and Power: The Transatlantic Fight over Freedom and Security, was published in 2019 by Princeton University Press, and has been awarded the 2019 Chicago-Kent College of Law / Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize and the ISA-ICOMM Best Book Award. In addition he has authored or co-authored 34 academic articles, as well as several book chapters and numerous non-academic publications. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.