Stanford University

Governance

FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling. 

FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world. 

FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.

The Shadow War

-

About the Topic: Osama bin Laden’s demise was merely one sensational moment in the first decade of America’s shadow war, the transformation of the national security apparatus into a machine calibrated for man-hunting operations. Beyond the “big wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq, America has pursued its enemies with killer robots and special operations troops, sent privateers on assassination missions and to set up clandestine spying networks, and relied on mercurial dictators, unreliable foreign intelligence services and ragtag proxy armies. A new military-intelligence complex has emerged: the soldiers have become spies and spies have become soldiers.

The CIA, created as a Cold War espionage service, is now more than ever a paramilitary agency ordered by the White House to kill off America’s enemies: from the sustained bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan and the deserts of Yemen and North Africa, to the simmering clan wars in Somalia. For its part, the Pentagon has turned into the CIA, dramatically expanding spying missions in the dark spaces of U.S. foreign policy.

About the Speaker: Mark Mazzetti is a national security correspondent for The New York Times, based in the newspaper's Washington DC bureau. In 2009, he shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the intensifying violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Washington's response, and he has numerous other major journalism awards including the George Polk Award (with colleague Dexter Filkins) and the Gerald R. Ford Prize for defense reporting. Mazzetti has also written for the Los Angeles Times, U.S. News & World Report, and The Economist.

CISAC Conference Room

Mark Mazzetti National Security Correspondent, The New York Times Speaker
Seminars

Why U.S. national security needs the humanities and social sciences

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

CISAC’s Karl Eikenberry, William J. Perry, Scott D. Sagan, and J.B. Vowell joined fellow experts and policy leaders to analyze the importance of humanities and social science education for national security and international relations. They were convened by a national commission charged by Congress with illuminating ways of maintaining excellence in the humanities and social sciences.

Hero Image
Soldier reading afghanistan logo2
A soldier in Afghanistan takes time out to read.
Reuters
All News button
1

Cyber Security of Industrial Control Systems – What Does It Mean to National Security?

-

Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) are used throughout the industrial infrastructure and military applications. These systems are designed to be highly reliable and safe, but were not designed to be cyber secure. Moreover, many of these systems do not even have cyber logging or forensics. Consequently, these systems, which constitute the “soft underbelly” of the American economy and defense, can enable a “cyber Pearl Harbor” to occur without having the capability of even knowing the impacts were cyber-induced. Stuxnet and Aurora have demonstrated that cyber can be used as a weapon to damage or destroy engineering equipment and systems.

To date, there have been more than 225 actual control system cyber incidents worldwide affecting electric power, water, chemicals, pipelines, manufacturing, mass transit, and even aircraft. Most of the incidents have been unintentional. Selected unintentional incidents will be addressed at the ICS Cyber Security Conference (http://www.icscybersecurityconference.com/). However, there have been a number of targeted cyber attacks. The Stanford presentation will focus on Stuxnet and Aurora. It will address the lack of air-gaps, insecureable legacy ICSs, lack of cyber forensics, and cultural issues between IT and Operations that can enable these attacks to occur and evade detection.

Joseph Weiss is an industry expert on control systems and electronic security of control systems, with more than 35 years of experience in the energy industry. Mr. Weiss spent more than 14 years at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) where he led a variety of programs including the Nuclear Plant Instrumentation and Diagnostics Program, the Fossil Plant Instrumentation & Controls Program, the Y2K Embedded Systems Program and, the cyber security for digital control systems. As Technical Manager, Enterprise Infrastructure Security (EIS) Program, he provided technical and outreach leadership for the energy industry's critical infrastructure protection (CIP) program. He was responsible for developing many utility industry security primers and implementation guidelines. He was also the EPRI Exploratory Research lead on instrumentation, controls, and communications.

CISAC Conference Room

Joseph Weiss Consultant Speaker Applied Control Solutions
Seminars

Anne Clunan

0
Affiliate
clunan.jpeg

Anne Clunan is Associate Professor at the Institute for Regional and International Security (IRIS) at the Naval Postgraduate School and a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Her interests focus on intersections among globalization, governance, emerging technologies, rising powers, international change and national security. She has published on Russia’s security interests; international status and rising powers; globalization and sovereignty; ungoverned spaces and non-state actors; technology and international change; biological weapons and biotechnology; nanotechnology and national competitiveness; and terrorism financing. Her work has been published in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Political Science Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, and Cambridge, Oxford and other academic presses.  She is author of The Social Construction of Russia’s Resurgence: Aspirations, Identity, and Security Interests and co-editor of Ungoverned Spaces: Alternative Governance in an Era of Softened Sovereignty and Terrorism, War or Disease? Clunan led for twenty years an international NGO operating in 26 countries transitioning from communism. She has worked in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Department of State, and the British Houses of Parliament. She is the recipient of the Velvet Revolution Award from the Czech and Slovak governments, and the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency Director’s Award for Outstanding Service. She earned her Ph.D. in political science at the University of California, Berkeley.

CV
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label

Making China's Nuclear War Plan

Paragraphs

Abstract:

For the last decade of Mao Zedong’s rule in China, his revolutionary thinking dominated all strategic planning and operations and directly shaped the policies of the strategic rocket forces, the Second Artillery. Only in the mid-1980s did Mao’s legacy give way to concepts governing nuclear forces throughout the world and permit the development of China’s first nuclear strategy and acceptance of the principles of nuclear deterrence. Step by step, the ever-more complex command-and-control mechanisms of the People’s Liberation Army adopted and refined new roles for its nuclear and conventional missiles to support peacetime diplomacy, to manage military crises, and to pursue combat readiness. The authors examine the evolution of China’s overall defense strategy, with a focus on central elements of today’s nuclear war plan and how they are operationalized. They seek to answer this question: How did conventional missiles change nuclear strategy, the organization of the combined conventional-nuclear missile forces for both deterrence and combat, and the relationship of the Second Artillery to the other military commands?

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Authors
External URL

Shiri Krebs

0
Affiliate
shirikrebs_headshot.jpg

Shiri Krebs is a Professor of Law at Deakin University and Director of the Centre for Law as Protection. She is also the Chair of the Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict, an affiliate scholar at Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and co-lead of the Australian Government Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CSCRC) Law and Policy Theme. In 2024, she was appointed as a Visiting Legal Fellow at the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Her research on drone warfare and predictive technologies in counterterrorism and armed conflict is currently funded by a 3-year Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA fellowship and an Alexander von Humboldt Experienced Researcher Fellowship at the University of Hamburg.

Prof Krebs’ research projects on international fact-finding, biases in counterterrorism decision-making, and human-machine interaction in drone warfare, have influenced decision-making processes through invitations to brief high-level decision-makers, including at the United Nations (CTED, Office of the Secretary-General), the United States Department of Defense, and the Australian Defence Force.

Her recent research awards include the David Caron Prize (American Society of International Law, 2021), the ‘Researcher of the Year’ Award (Australian Women in Law Awards, 2022), the Australian Legal Research Awards (finalist, Article/Chapter (ECR), 2022), and the Vice-Chancellor’s Researcher Award for Career Excellence (Deakin, 2022).

Before joining Deakin University, Prof Krebs has taught in several law schools, including at Stanford University, University of Santa Clara, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she won the Dean’s award recognizing exceptional junior faculty members.

She earned her Doctorate and Master Degrees from Stanford Law School, as well as LL.B. and M.A., both magna cum laude, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

CV
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label

Matthew Daniels

0
Affiliate
1-RSD13_085_0211a.jpg

Dr. Matthew Daniels is a technology and policy leader in Washington and New York. He has held technical, leadership, and strategy roles at the White House, NASA, and Department of Defense. His work focuses on space security, exploration, and technology strategy.

At the White House, Matt led initiatives on space and national security, Lunar exploration, US-India space cooperation, and planetary defense. He has also served as Senior Advisor to the Director of Net Assessment, focusing on space and nuclear security; the DOD's Tech Director for AI, overseeing the DOD's broad AI R&D portfolio; and a senior technical advisor in the office of the NASA Administrator, focusing on deep space exploration and development. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Matt started as an engineer at NASA, received his Ph.D. from Stanford, and was a fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He has twice been a recipient of Department of Defense Distinguished Service medals. For his work on planetary defense, Asteroid 22028 Matthewdaniels, discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey, is named for him. 

Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label

Perry outlines the good and bad news about energy and national security

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs
William J. Perry, in a talk at the "Innovations for Smart Green Cities: What's Working, What's Not, What's Next" conference, explained how a lack of investment in energy research and development continues America's addiction to foreign oil. He illustrated how game-changing research and events could shake up the industry.
All News button
1

The Good News About Energy

Dr. William J. Perry discussed game changers in energy at the "Innovations for Smart Green Cities: What's Working, What's Not, What's Next" conference. The event was hosted by the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business on June 26-27, 2012. Perry is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (at FSI and Engineering) and Co-director of the Preventive Defense Project at CISAC, a FSI Senior Fellow and CISAC Faculty Member. 

 

A video of the talk is available on YouTube. 

William J. Perry

(650) 725-6501
0
Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at FSI and Engineering
rsd15_078_0380a.jpg MS, PhD

William Perry is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at Stanford University. He is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Hoover Institution, and serves as director of the Preventive Defense Project. He is an expert in U.S. foreign policy, national security and arms control. He was the co-director of CISAC from 1988 to 1993, during which time he was also a part-time professor at Stanford. He was a part-time lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at Santa Clara University from 1971 to 1977.

Perry was the 19th secretary of defense for the United States, serving from February 1994 to January 1997. He previously served as deputy secretary of defense (1993-1994) and as under secretary of defense for research and engineering (1977-1981). Dr. Perry currently serves on the Defense Policy Board (DPB). He is on the board of directors of Covant and several emerging high-tech companies. His previous business experience includes serving as a laboratory director for General Telephone and Electronics (1954-1964); founder and president of ESL Inc. (1964-1977); executive vice-president of Hambrecht & Quist Inc. (1981-1985); and founder and chairman of Technology Strategies & Alliances (1985-1993). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

From 1946 to 1947, Perry was an enlisted man in the Army Corps of Engineers, and served in the Army of Occupation in Japan. He joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps in 1948 and was a second lieutenant in the Army Reserves from 1950 to 1955. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1997 and the Knight Commander of the British Empire in 1998. Perry has received a number of other awards including the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal (1980 and 1981), and Outstanding Civilian Service Medals from the Army (1962 and 1997), the Air Force (1997), the Navy (1997), the Defense Intelligence Agency (1977 and 1997), NASA (1981) and the Coast Guard (1997). He received the American Electronic Association's Medal of Achievement (1980), the Eisenhower Award (1996), the Marshall Award (1997), the Forrestal Medal (1994), and the Henry Stimson Medal (1994). The National Academy of Engineering selected him for the Arthur Bueche Medal in 1996. He has received awards from the enlisted personnel of the Army, Navy, and the Air Force. He has received decorations from the governments of Albania, Bahrain, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Poland, Slovenia, and Ukraine. He received a BS and MS from Stanford University and a PhD from Pennsylvania State University, all in mathematics.

Director of the Preventive Defense Project at CISAC
FSI Senior Fellow
CISAC Faculty Member
Not in Residence
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label
William J. Perry Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (at FSI and Engineering) and Co-director of the Preventive Defense Project at CISAC; FSI Senior Fellow; CISAC Faculty Member Speaker
Lectures
Subscribe to Governance