The Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC) addresses critical challenges to international security through methodologically rigorous, evidence-based analyses of insurgency, civil war and other sources of politically motivated violence. The project is comprised of leading scholars from across the country from a variety of academic disciplines. ESOC aims to empower high quality of conflict analysis by creating and maintaining a repository of micro-level data across multiple conflict cases and making these data available to a broader community of scholars and policy analysts.
Calling cybercrimes “the threat of the future,” former FBI Director Robert Mueller said federal investigators and businesses need to share information collected online in order to find and thwart hackers trying to disrupt Web-based networks.
“The intelligence that can be and is being collected by the private sector has to be made available in some way, shape or form to the federal government,” Mueller said. “And that which we pick up has to be made available to the private sector. If we do not get that kind of collaboration, we will replicate what we had before 9/11 when we had stovepipes and inadequate ways of sharing information.”
Mueller – who took over the FBI a week before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and left the job two months ago – made his comments Friday while delivering the Payne lecture at Stanford.
“Terrorism remains today our primary threat,” Mueller said. “But tomorrow, it will probably be cyber and its various iterations.”
He said cybercrimes present a new challenge to law enforcement agencies because perpetrators are often anonymous and their motives are not always clear.
A hacker could be associated with a terrorist organization, an activist group or “an 18-year-old in his garage here in Silicon Valley who has the talent and capability and wants to make a point.”
And if the bad guy can’t be easily fingered, it’s difficult to know who should investigate the crime – the FBI, CIA, NSA or another agency. In order to pool federal resources, Mueller said a task force composed of 18 agencies works to examine cyber threats.
But their efforts to safeguard online financial, government, corporate and educational systems will go only so far without the expertise, knowledge and information gathered by Internet service providers.
“It is going to be the relationships with the private sector that are going to be absolutely critical to any success we can have in addressing cyber attacks,” he said.
Mueller’s lecture capped his weeklong visit at Stanford. He was invited by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Law School to spend the academic year as a consulting professor and as the Payne Distinguished Lecturer.
The Payne Lectureship is named for Frank E. Payne and Arthur W. Payne, brothers who gained an appreciation for global problems through their international business operations. The position is given to someone with an international reputation as a leader, with an emphasis on visionary thinking; a broad, practical grasp of a given field; and the capacity to clearly articulate an important perspective on the global community and its challenges.
FSI Director Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar called Mueller a “perfect fit for Stanford.”
“His career embodies what I take to be the ethos of this university –practical yet principled; sensitive to complexity but also to the value of clarity and focus,” Cuéllar said.
Mueller will make several visits to Stanford during the year, spending his time working with FSI and law school scholars to develop research agendas on emerging issues in international security. He will hold graduate seminars and deliver a major lecture at the law school and work with students and fellows at the Haas Center, the law school and the Graduate School of Business. He will also mentor honors students at FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.
As the FBI’s longest-serving director after J. Edgar Hoover, Mueller presided over some of the most drastic changes in the agency’s history.
The Sept. 11 attacks forced the FBI to change its priorities, placing the hunt for global terrorists at the top if its list. The counterterrorism and counterintelligence missions meant hiring more analysts and replacing the FBI’s more traditional targeting of mobsters, murderers and white-collar criminals.
Recalling his first briefing to George W. Bush after the terrorist attacks, Mueller said he began by telling the president what his agents were doing to investigate. He had been on the job for about a week, and started giving a rundown of command centers that were set up, evidence that was being collected and interviews being conducted.
“I’m about two or three minutes into it and President Bush stops me and says, `Bob, that’s all well and good,’” Mueller said. “That’s what the FBI has been doing for the hundred years of its existence. My question to you is: What is FBI doing to prevent the next terrorist attack?”
The question stumped the new director.
“I had not prepared for that question,” he said.
And it’s a question he answered continuously during the Bush and Obama administrations, and one that led to his reorganization of the FBI.
“Over those 12 years, the question has not changed,” Mueller said. “The question from both of the presidents to the FBI, to the CIA, to the community when it comes to counterterrorism is: What have you done to prevent the next terrorist attack?”
Despite hundreds of aboveground nuclear tests, the effects of a ground-level, low-yield nuclear detonation in a modern urban environment remain the subject of scientific debate. In support of the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Office of Health Affairs, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has provided detailed consequence modeling in support community preparedness activities. Details on effects specific to several cities was provided to that community's emergency response personal and managers. Block by block detailed analysis of observable effects, potential casualties, infrastructure effects, and response issues. Additionally, visualization aids for response organizations trying to understand the event was requested and developed at the community's request. These products provide first person points of view and described the dynamic nature of the event as it changes in both time and space and have greatly enhanced Federal, State, and local planning efforts.
Brooke Buddemeier is an associate program leader in the Global Security Directorate of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). He supports the Risk and Consequence Management Division in their efforts to evaluate the potential risk and consequence of radiological and nuclear terrorism. Brooke is a council member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) and served on the scientific committees which developed Commentary No. 19 - Key Elements of Preparing Emergency Responders for Nuclear and Radiological Terrorism (2005) and NCRP Report # 165 – Responding to a Radiological or Nuclear Terrorism Incident: A Guide for Decision Makers (2010).
From 2003 through 2007, Brooke was on assignment with the Department of Homeland Security’s as the WMD emergency response and consequence management program manager for Science and Technology’s emergency preparedness and response portfolio. He supported FEMA and the Homeland Security Operations Center as a radiological emergency response subject matter expert. He also facilitated the department’s research, development, test, and evaluation process to improve emergency response through better capabilities, protocols, and standards. Prior to that, he was part of LLNL’s Nuclear Counterterrorism Program and coordinated LLNL’s involvement in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Radiological Assistance Program for California, Nevada, and Hawaii. RAP is a national emergency response resource that assists federal, state and local authorities in the event of a radiological incident. As part of RAP’s outreach efforts, Brooke has provided radiological responder training and instrumentation workshops to police, firefighters, and members of other agencies throughout the nation and abroad. Brooke has also provided operational health physics support for various radiochemistry, plutonium handling, accelerator, and dosimetry operations.
He is Certified Health Physicist who received his Master’s in Radiological Health Physics from San Jose State University and his B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
CISAC Conference Room
CISAC Affiliate and South Asia expert Anja Manuel gives an eyewitness account of Pakistan's historic May 2013 election. Manuel served as an international election monitor in Lahore, and gives a unique perspective on modern Pakistan. She gives her observations on country's first democratic election, paricularly on women.
Following Pakistan's historic elections held in May 2013, CISAC Visiting Scholar Rifaat Hussein discusses next steps for Islamabad's foreign policy, particularly in relations with India, a new nuclear policy shift, and a more stable presence in South Asia.
Two of CISAC's scholars, William J. Perry and Jeremy Weinstein, received honors in recognition of their groundbreaking work in international affairs.
Paying homage to William J. Perry's lifetime commitment to national security, the National Defense University renamed its Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies in a ceremony with U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Ashton Carter and Acting Perry Center Director Ken LaPlante.
At a meeting of regional defense ministers in 1996, then-U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry proposed the establishment of a center where civilian and military leaders in the Western Hemisphere could collaborate on defense and international security. Today, the Perry Center is the pre-eminent academic institution for defense and security issues affecting the Americas. Perry is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at FSI and a CISAC faculty member.
Professor Jeremy M. Weinstein received the prestigious Karl Deutsch Award from the International Studies Association, following in the foosteps of four other CISAC scholars who have received the award. The ISA recognizes scholars younger than 40 - or within 10 years of defending their dissertation - who have made the most significant contributions to the study of international relations and peace.
Weinstein, former Director for Development and Democracy on the National Security Council staff at the White House, is a leading international scholar in the study of civil war, political violence, international political economy and democracy. He is an associate professor of political science and a CISAC affiliated faculty member.
In an homage to William J. Perry's lifetime commitment to national security, the National Defense University has renamed its Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies. U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Ashton Carter and Acting Perry Center Director Ken LaPlante gave remarks.
At a meeting of regional defense ministers in 1996, U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry proposed creating a center where civilian and military leaders in the Western Hemisphere could collaborate on defense and international security issues. Today, the Perry Center is the pre-eminent academic institution for defense and security issues affecting the Americas.
The Stanford Law School celebrated CISAC Co-Director Tino Cuéllar’s new book, Governing Security: The Hidden Origins of American Security Agencies, which was recently published by Stanford University Press.
“I love a book party because we’re all devoted to the advancement of knowledge, but we all know it’s really hard to do and it’s not always appreciated when we do it,” Stanford Law School Dean Mary Elizabeth Magill told a gathering of law faculty to honor the book by Cuéllar, a law professor who also will be the next director of CISAC’s umbrella organization, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The law faculty were also honoring law professor Michele Landis Dauber’s new book, “The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State.”
Cuéllar’s book explores the history of two major federal agencies: the Roosevelt-era Federal Security Agency – today the Department of Health and Human Services – and the Department of Homeland Security, established in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Through the stories of both agencies, Cuéllar shows how Americans often end up choosing security goals through overlapping ambitions and conflicts over agency autonomy, presidential power and gut reactions to national security crises.
“More than other academic monographs which tend to be dry, impersonal affairs, I could see the person behind the prose in this book,” David Engstrom, an assistant law professor, told the gathering. “In the introduction, Tino crafts a beautiful metaphor by noting how easy it is to stand just to the north of the United States-Mexico border and to think that it’s somehow timeless, and to forget that it was state action that made that border such a consequential part of the social world for so many people. Now as you read, you soon realize that this book really isn’t about nation-state borders, in that sense, but rather about the border between domestic policy and national security and about the boundaries between public agencies.
“But then you also realize,” Engstrom continued, “Who better than Tino, who grew up along that U.S.-Mexico border, first to see and then to show us how seemingly arbitrary borders and boundaries can, through administrative action, become so consequential.”
