* 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.

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

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/iqrz3Y3VmZ8

About the Event: Since the start of the Trump era, the United States and the Western world has finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it? 

Central and Eastern European states, however, have been aware of the threat for years. Nina Jankowicz has advised these governments on the front lines of the information war. The lessons she learnt from that fight, and from her attempts to get US congress to act, make for essential reading. 

How to Lose the Information War takes the reader on a journey through five Western governments' responses to Russian information warfare tactics - all of which have failed. She journeys into the campaigns the Russian operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.

Book Purchase:  https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/how-to-lose-the-information-war-9781838607685/

Discount Code: NINAJ30

About the Speaker: Nina Jankowicz studies the intersection of democracy and technology in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the author of How To Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict (Bloomsbury/IBTauris). Ms. Jankowicz has advised the Ukrainian government on strategic communications under the auspices of a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship. Her writing has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and others. She has testified before Congress on multiple occasions and is a frequent television and radio commentator on disinformation and Russian and Eastern European affairs. Prior to her Fulbright grant in Ukraine, Ms. Jankowicz managed democracy assistance programs to Russia and Belarus at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. She received her MA in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, and her BA from Bryn Mawr

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

Seminar Recording:  https://youtu.be/lxMWuFvq2NU

About the Event: It has become increasingly clear that the Kremlin poses a security challenge to the West, with relations between the United States and Europe, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other, having fallen to their lowest point since the end of the 1980s.  In particular, Moscow seeks to overturn the post-Cold War European security order, which it believes disadvantages Russian interests.  The Russian challenge includes both foreign and domestic policy aspects, as the Kremlin augments traditional political and military tools with more sophisticated efforts to exploit and widen divides within Western societies.

Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, will discuss the challenge posed by Russia and the motives behind it.

About the Speaker: 

Fiona Hill is a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She recently served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. From 2006 to 2009, she served as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at The National Intelligence Council. She is co-author of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin” (Brookings Institution Press, 2015).

Prior to joining Brookings, Hill was director of strategic planning at The Eurasia Foundation in Washington, D.C. From 1991 to 1999, she held a number of positions directing technical assistance and research projects at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, including associate director of the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, director of the Project on Ethnic Conflict in the Former Soviet Union, and coordinator of the Trilateral Study on Japanese-Russian-U.S. Relations.

Hill has researched and published extensively on issues related to Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, regional conflicts, energy, and strategic issues. Her book with Brookings Senior Fellow Clifford Gaddy,“The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold,” was published by Brookings Institution Press in December 2003, and her monograph, “Energy Empire: Oil, Gas and Russia’s Revival,” was published by the London Foreign Policy Centre in 2004. The first edition of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin” was published by Brookings Institution Press in December 2013, also with Clifford Gaddy.

Hill holds a master’s in Soviet studies and a doctorate in history from Harvard University where she was a Frank Knox Fellow. She also holds a master’s in Russian and modern history from St. Andrews University in Scotland, and has pursued studies at Moscow’s Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages. Hill is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/VJgMJyNz3F4

About the Event: Join David Sanger, National Security Correspondent for the New York Times, Amy Zegart, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies, Monica M. Ruiz, Program Fellow for the Cyber Initiative and Special Projects at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Alex Stamos, Adjunct Professor at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies, Michael McFaul, Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Herb Lin, Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, for a panel discussion of The Perfect Weapon, an HBO documentary special based on the best-selling book by New York Times national security correspondent David E. Sanger, which is now available to stream on HBO Max. Directed by John Maggio, the film explores the rise of cyber conflict as a primary way in which nations now compete with and sabotage one another. Cheap, invisible and devastatingly effective, cyber weapons are the present and future of geopolitical conflict – a short-of-war pathway to exercising power. The Perfect Weapon draws on interviews with top military, intelligence and political officials for a comprehensive view of a world of new vulnerabilities, particularly as fear mounts over how cyberattacks and influence operations may affect the 2020 U.S. election, vulnerable power grids, America’s nuclear weapons arsenal, and the global networks that are the backbone of private enterprise. The film also explores how the U.S. government is struggling to defend itself from cyberattacks while simultaneously stockpiling and using the world's most powerful offensive cyber arsenal.

Watch the film trailer HERE.

About the Speakers: 

Dr. Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University.  His research interests relate broadly to policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, and he is particularly interested in the use of offensive operations in cyberspace as instruments of national policy and in the security dimensions of information warfare and influence operations on national security.  In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Senior Fellow in Cybersecurity (not in residence) at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University; and a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. In 2016, he served on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.  Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

Dr. Michael McFaul is Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995.

Dr. McFaul also is as an International Affairs Analyst for NBC News and a columnist for The Washington Post. He served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). Continue Reading >>>

Monica M. Ruiz is the Program Fellow for the Cyber Initiative and Special Projects at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In her work on the Cyber Initiative, she supports efforts to build a more robust cybersecurity field and improve policy-making. She also manages the foundation’s portfolio of Special Projects grants, part of a pool of flexible funds that allow the foundation to respond to unanticipated opportunities, explore potential initiatives, collaborate with other funders and facilitate cross-pollinating work across the foundation’s programs.

Prior to joining the foundation, Monica was the first recipient of the Boren Fellowship to travel to Estonia, where her research focused on cybersecurity issues and she studied the Russian language. Earlier in her career, she worked at U.S. Southern Command in the J9 Partnering Directorate, where she served as the military education coordinator between the Command and partners in the region.

Born in Ecuador and raised in Miami, she holds a bachelor’s degree from Florida International University and a master’s degree from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

David E. Sanger is a national security correspondent and  senior writer for the New York Times, a contributor to CNN and an adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government. In a 38-year reporting career for The Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2017 for international reporting. His latest book, “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age,’’ published in 2018, examined the emergence of cyberconflict as the primary way large and small states are competing and undercutting each other, changing the nature of global power. An HBO documentary based on the book will air in the Fall of 2020.

He is also the author of two Times best sellers on foreign policy and national security: “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power,” published in 2009, and “Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power,” published in 2012. For The Times, Mr. Sanger has served as Tokyo bureau chief, Washington economic correspondent, White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush administrations, and chief Washington correspondent. He co-teaches “Central Challenges in American National Security, Strategy and the Press” at Harvard.

Alex Stamos is a cybersecurity expert, business leader and entrepreneur working to improve the security and safety of the Internet through his teaching and research at Stanford University. Stamos is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford’s Freeman-Spogli Institute and a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution.

Prior to joining Stanford, Alex served as the Chief Security Officer of Facebook. In this role, Stamos led a team of engineers, researchers, investigators and analysts charged with understanding and mitigating information security risks to the company and safety risks to the 2.5 billion people on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. During his time at Facebook, he led the company’s investigation into manipulation of the 2016 US election and helped pioneer several successful protections against these new classes of abuse. As a senior executive, Alex represented Facebook and Silicon Valley to regulators, lawmakers and civil society on six continents, and has served as a bridge between the interests of the Internet policy community and the complicated reality of platforms operating at billion-user scale. In April 2017, he co-authored “Information Operations and Facebook”, a highly cited examination of the influence campaign against the US election, which still stands as the most thorough description of the issue by a major technology company. Continue Reading >>>

Dr. Amy Zegart is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies (FSI), professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University, and a contributing editor to The Atlantic. She is also the Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where she directs the Robert and Marion Oster National Security Affairs Fellows program. From 2013 to 2018, she served as co-director of the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and founder and co-director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Program. She previously served as the chief academic officer of the Hoover Institution.

Her areas of expertise include cybersecurity, US intelligence and foreign policy, drone warfare, and political risk. An award-winning author, she has written four books. These include Bytes, Bombs, and Spies: The Strategic Dimensions of Offensive Cyber Operations (2019) coeditor with Herb Lin; Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity (2018) with Condoleezza Rice; Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and Origins of 9/11 (2007), which won the National Academy of Public Administration’s Brownlow Book Award; Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC (1999); and Eyes on Spies: Congress and the US Intelligence Community (Hoover Institution Press, 2011). She has also published in leading academic journals, including International Security, the Journal of Strategic Studies, and Political Science Quarterly. Continue Reading >>>

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

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/UOHyKJR5d1w

About the Event: 

In 2017, former diplomat Elizabeth Shackelford wrote a pointed resignation letter to her then boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. She had watched as the State Department was gutted, and now she urged him to stem the bleeding by showing leadership and commitment to his diplomats and the country. If he couldn’t do that, she said, “I humbly recommend that you follow me out the door.” In The Dissent Channel, Shackelford chronicles how the challenges facing the State Department under the current administration, while extreme, are not new. In this live-streamed conversation, Shackelford will discuss the costs of a government unwilling to face mistakes or correct its course. She will also discuss how to build a more accountable foreign policy, through greater public engagement, more effective congressional oversight, and a State Department culture more open to dissent. In her book, The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age, she shares her personal experience as a diplomat trying to push back against the status quo and offers insight into the State Department’s long history of overlooking others who have tried to do the same. 

Moderating the discussion will be Rose Gottemoeller, Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and CISAC. Gottemoeller served as Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019 and prior to that as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State for nearly five years. While Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance in 2009 and 2010, she was the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation.

Book Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Dissent-Channel-American-Diplomacy-Dishonest/dp/1541724488

About the Speakers: 

Elizabeth Shackelford was a career diplomat in the U.S. State Department until December 2017, when she resigned in protest of the Trump administration. During her tenure with the Foreign Service, Shackelford served in the U.S. embassies in Warsaw, Poland, and Juba, South Sudan; the U.S. Mission to Somalia; and Washington, D.C. For her work in South Sudan during the outbreak of civil war, Shackelford received the Barbara Watson Award for Consular Excellence, the State Department's highest honor for consular work. Shackelford is a non-resident fellow with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Moderated by: Rose Gottemoeller is the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation. Gottemoeller was Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019. Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. Gottemoeller was also the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation in 2009 and 2010.

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

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/ryBtzvLI0QQ

About the Event: Despite the importance of understanding how refugee crises end, we know little about when and why refugees, who were forced to emigrate, return home. We study the drivers of refugees’ decision-making using original observational and experimental survey data from a representative sample of approximately 3,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon. We find that conditions in a refugee’s home country are much more important than the situation in the host country in shaping return intentions. Specifically, our findings suggest that refugees’ decisions are influenced primarily by safety and security in their place of origin, their economic prospects, the availability of public services, and their personal networks. Confidence in information is also important: we find that several drivers of return---safety, services, and networks---only impact intentions among people who have high confidence in their information. By contrast, the conditions in hosting countries–so-called “push'” factors–play a negligible role in the process of refugee return. Even in the face of outright hostility and poor living conditions, refugees are unlikely to return unless the situation at home improves significantly.

About the Speakers: 

Ala’ Alrababa’h is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Stanford University, a graduate fellow at the Immigration Policy Lab, and a junior scholar at the International Policy Scholars Consortium and Network. His research combines fieldwork, machine learning, and experimental methods to study issues related to authoritarian media, political violence, and migration and refugees. His research has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Political Science Research and Methods, and International Studies Quarterly. Prior to arriving at Stanford University, Ala’ was a Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Jeremy Weinstein is Professor of Political Science, Fisher Family Director of Stanford Global Studies, and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University. He also is faculty co-director of the Immigration Policy Lab and the Data for Development Initiative. In addition, he is a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C.

His research focuses on civil wars and political violence; ethnic politics; the political economy of development; democracy and accountability; and migration. He is the author of Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge University Press), which received the William Riker Prize for the best book on political economy. He is also the co-author of Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action (Russell Sage Foundation), which received the Gregory Luebbert Award for the best book in comparative politics.

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

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/4X0CfpgDSoQ

About the Event: This ambitious and incisive book presents a new vision for American foreign policy and international order at a time of historic upheaval. The United States global leadership crisis is not a passing shock created by the Trump presidency or COVID-19, but the product of forces that will endure for decades. Amidst political polarization, technological transformation, and major global power shifts, Lissner and Rapp-Hooper convincingly argue, only a grand strategy of openness can protect American security and prosperity despite diminished national strength. Disciplined and forward-looking, an openness strategy would counter authoritarian competitors by preventing the emergence of closed spheres of influence, maintaining access to the global commons, supporting democracies without promoting regime change, and preserving economic interdependence. The authors provide a roadmap for the next president, who must rebuild strength at home while preparing for novel forms of international competition. Lucid, trenchant, and practical,An Open World is an essential guide to the future of geopolitics.

Book Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Open-World-America-Contest-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0300250320/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=an+open+world&qid=1588687676&sr=8-4

About the Speaker: Rebecca Lissner is an Assistant Professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College and a Non-Resident Scholar at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies. Previously, Dr. Lissner held research fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, the Council on Foreign Relations, and International Security Studies at Yale University. Dr. Lissner’s research and writing focuses on international security and American foreign policy. She is the co-author of An Open World: How America Can Win the Contest for Twenty-First-Century Order (Yale University Press, 2020) and is working on a second book examining the effects of military interventions on American grand strategy. Her scholarship has been published in Political Science Quarterly, the Texas National Security Review, Survival, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and International Peacekeeping. Her policy writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Quarterly, among other publications. Dr. Lissner received an AB in Social Studies from Harvard University and an MA and PhD in Government from Georgetown University.