Abstract: The Army is in a period of Transition and Transformation, where the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan are supposed to be over or winding down, in theory enabling the force to rebalance and refocus our efforts. Though we have been here before with many post-war and conflict periods, the Army and DoD are in actuality presented with possibly the most complex set of challenges and threats to the Army’s mission and to national security as a whole this nation has experienced. While the Budget Control Act is currently preventing any strategic planning for operations, training, personnel forecasting and management, and R&D/Acquisition investment, all key factors for input into any strategy, the myriad threats to national security and in global competition are on the rise. Resources and focus are down; threats and competition are going up. China’s rapid development and matching need for resources, such as those in Africa and the South China Seas; a reemerging Russia, bent on disrupting NATO efforts to expand while simultaneously persisting in efforts to expand their reach in the Arctic and the Middle East and disrupt U.S. interests where it can in the “Grey Zone” of conflict; an unstable and possibly nuclear weapons-capable North Korea; an Iran that will be nuclear-armed and looking to maintain Shia hegemony in the Middle East and defeat U.S. interests in the region; and existing and emerging transnational terrorist organizations and states, such as Daesh/ISIL; innovative and widely-available technologies in cyberwarfare, unmanned aerial systems, dynamic shifts in regional and global demographics, information and liberation technology, and even the U.S. national debt round out a list of our current and future national security challenges.
SECDEF Ash Carter has articulated that the DoD is looking for a Third Offset Strategy to keep our unique hedge of capabilities against many, if not all of these threats and conditions. Unfortunately, neither the First nor Second Offset were devised as such and only came into their being once key technologies and applications were developed against a much smaller list of threats and capabilities than we face now.
The key question is then, how does the Army, with these challenges, limitations, and threats, create opportunities now that assist a Third Offset Strategy? Or at least, how are we going to fight and win our nations’ wars in the near and far-term?
About the Speaker: COL J.B. Vowell has served as an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army for over 25 years. He has had a variety of postings, including Europe, the Pacific, Iraq, Egypt, and Afghanistan. He was a combat leader in both the Surge in Iraq, 2006-2007 and the Surge in Afghanistan, 2010-2011. He currently serves as Army Chief of Staff GEN Mark Milley’s Senior Fellow to Brookings Institution, where he works to assist in the development of policy and strategy with research towards Land Warfare, 2030-2050 and the Human Domain of Battle.
COL Vowell commanded 2d battalion, 327th Infantry (“No Slack”) in the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, KY. During this 2.5-year command, COL Vowell trained and deployed his Infantry Task Force to Kunar and Nangarhar provinces in support of Operation Enduring Freedom XI in Afghanistan. During this year-long deployment, COL Vowell and his task force of more than 1,000 men and women were deployed along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, dealing with local, national and international issues at the tactical, operational and strategic levels of policy and diplomacy. The documentary film, The Hornet’s Nest, features the numerous missions and heroic fights during this challenging combat deployment.
COL Vowell then commanded 3rd Brigade Combat Team (“Rakkasans”), 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), from 2013-2015. COL Vowell led the Brigade's deployment to Afghanistan for ISAF and Operation Resolute Support (RS) from January 2015-October 2015, where his task force led the efforts to train, advise, and assist Afghan Army and Police efforts across Eastern Afghanistan to defeat Taliban, al-Qaeda, and newly-formed ISIL efforts to destabilize the country.
COL Vowell’s military and civilian education includes the United States Army Command and General Staff College, the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), and he was a War College Fellow to Stanford and CISAC from 2012-2013. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree (Biology) from the University of Alabama and a Master of Science degree in Human Resources Management from Troy State University and a Masters of Arts in Theater Operations from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
Abstract: Derek Chollet will offer his inside assessment of Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy, tackling the prevailing consensus to argue that Obama has profoundly altered the course of American foreign policy for the better and positioned the United States to lead in the future. His recent book The Long Game combines a deep sense of history with new details and compelling insights into how the Obama administration approached the most difficult global challenges. With the unique perspective of having served at the three national-security power centers during the Obama years – the White House, State Department, and Pentagon – Chollet takes readers behind the scenes of the intense struggles over the most consequential issues: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the meltdown of Syria and the rise of ISIS, the Ukraine crisis and a belligerent Russia, the conflict in Libya, the tangle with Iran, the turbulent relationship with Israel, and the rise of new powers like China. An unflinching, fast-paced account of U.S. foreign policy, The Long Game reveals how Obama has defied the Washington establishment to redefine America’s role in the world, offering important lessons for the next president.
About the Speaker: Derek Chollet served in senior positions during the Obama administration at the White House, State Department, and Pentagon, most recently as the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. He is currently a counselor and senior advisor at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, an adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Institute of War and Peace Studies, and a regular contributor to Defense One and many other publications. His previous books include America Between Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11, coauthored with James Goldgeier, and The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World, coedited with Samantha Power. He lives in Washington, DC, with his family.
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
Derek Chollet
Fmr. U.S. assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs
Department of Defense (formerly)
Abstract: Grand strategy represents a state's overarching theory of what constitutes national security and how best to produce national security. Do U.S. presidential administrations have grand strategies? If so, do these theoretical frameworks shape the actual practice of American foreign policy? This seminar addresses these questions, focusing on the grand strategies of the Bush and Obama administrations and American foreign policy in the Middle East since 9/11.
About the Speaker: Dr. Colin Kahl is the National Security Advisor to the Vice President and Deputy Assistant to the President. He is on public service leave from Georgetown University, where he is an associate professor in the Security Studies Program at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He previously served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East at the Pentagon (2009-2011), where he received the Outstanding Public Service Medal in 2011. He has published articles on U.S. foreign and defense policy in the Middle East in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, the Los Angeles Times, Middle East Policy, the National Interest, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Washington Quarterly. Kahl's previous research, including his book States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World (Princeton, 2006), focused on the causes of civil and ethnic conflict. Kahl received his B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan (1993) and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University (2000).
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
Colin Kahl
National Security Advisor to the Vice President, Deputy Assistant to the President
Office of the Vice President
Abstract: In a world that is increasingly unstable, intelligence services like the American CIA and the United Kingdom's MI6 exist to deliver security. Whether the challenge involves terrorism, cyber-security, or the renewed specter of great power conflict, intelligence agencies mitigate threats and provide decisional advantage to national leaders. But empowered intelligence services require adequate supervision and oversight, which must be about more than the narrow (if still precarious) task of ensuring the legality of covert operations and surveillance activities.
Global Intelligence Oversight is a comparative investigation of how democratic countries can govern their intelligence services so that they are effective, but operate within frameworks that are acceptable to their people in an interconnected world. The book demonstrates how the institutions that oversee intelligence agencies participate in the protection of national security while safeguarding civil liberties, balancing among competing national interests, and building public trust in inherently secret activities. It does so by analyzing the role of courts and independent oversight bodies as they operate in countries with robust constitutional frameworks and powerful intelligence services. The book also illuminates a new transnational oversight dynamic that is shaping and constraining security services in new ways. It describes how global technology companies and litigation in transnational forums constitute a new form of oversight whose contours are still undefined. As rapid changes in technology bring the world closer together, these forces will complement their more traditional counterparts in ensuring that intelligence activities remain effective, legitimate, and sustainable. To purchase the book, please click here.
About the Speakers: Samuel J. Rascoff is an expert in national security law, and serves as faculty director of the Center on Law and Security. Named a Carnegie Scholar in 2009, Rascoff came to the Law School from the New York City Police Department, where, as director of intelligence analysis, he created and led a team responsible for assessing the terrorist threat to the city. A graduate of Harvard summa cum laude, Oxford with first class honors, and Yale Law School, Rascoff previously served as a law clerk to US Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and to Judge Pierre N. Leval of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He was also a special assistant with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and an associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Rascoff’s publications include “Presidential Intelligence” (Harvard Law Review); “Counterterrorism and New Deterrence” (NYU Law Review); “Establishing Official Islam? The Law and Strategy of Counter-Radicalization” (Stanford Law Review); “Domesticating Intelligence” (Southern California Law Review), and “The Law of Homegrown (Counter-) Terrorism” (Texas Law Review).
Zachary K. Goldman is the Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security and an Adjunct Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. Previously, Zachary served as a Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the U.S. Department of Defense, and as a policy advisor in the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, where he was the subject matter expert on terrorist financing in the Arabian Peninsula and Iran sanctions. In the private sector, he was a litigator at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York.
Zachary is the co-editor of Global Intelligence Oversight: Governing Security in the Twenty-First Century, an edited volume on comparative approaches to intelligence oversight, published by Oxford University Press. He has testified before Congress and has published on national security strategy, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, and financial sanctions in outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times Chinese, the South China Morning Post, Political Science Quarterly, Cold War History, The Atlantic, The Diplomat, The National Interest, and others.
Zachary is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and a member of the Advisory Committee to the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security. He received his JD from New York University School of Law, his Masters in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and his BA from Harvard University.
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
Samuel J. Rascoff
Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Center on Law and Security
New York University School of Law
Zachary K. Goldman
Executive Director, Center on Law and Security
New York University School of Law
CISAC senior fellow Martha Crenshaw challenges statements from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that “thousands upon thousands of people” are entering the United States, “many of whom have the same thought process” as the Orlando shooter, and his assertions that they are forming “large pockets” of people who want to “slaughter us” in an OpEd for The Washington Post.
The Hoover Institution’s Working Group on Foreign Policy and Grand Strategy has produced a national security strategy that acknowledges this uncertainty and hedges as well as engages, recognizing that resources are not limitless. This strategy also endeavors to lay out the conceptual and policy road map for success
The United States is exceptionally secure. No country today presents a clear and imminent security threat in the way that Germany, Japan, or the Soviet Union did in the 20th century. In the short and medium term, there is also no alternative value system that could displace America’s conception of individual liberty and a market-oriented economy—principles that have been embraced by all of the world’s wealthy industrialized countries in Western Europe, North America, and East Asia.
It’s a quintessential Silicon Valley scene. A group of tech-savvy Stanford students are delivering a passionate pitch about a product they hope is going to change the world, while a room full of venture capitalists, angel investors and entrepreneurs peppers them with questions.
But there’s a twist. This Stanford classroom is also packed with decorated military veterans and active duty officers. And a group of analysts from the U.S. intelligence community is monitoring the proceedings live via an iPad propped up on a nearby desk.
These Stanford students aren’t just working on the latest “Uber for X” app. They’re searching for solutions to some of the toughest technological problems facing America’s military and intelligence agencies, as part of a new class called Hacking for Defense.
A student team briefs the class on a wearable sensor they're developing for an elite unit of U.S. Navy SEALs – a product they're pitching as "fitbit for America's divers."
“There’s no problems quite like the kind of problems that the defense establishment faces, so from an engineering standpoint, it has the most powerful ‘cool factor’ of anything in the world,” said Nitish Kulkarni, a senior in mechanical engineering.
Kulkarni’s team is working with an organization within the US Department of Defense to devise a system that will provide virtual assistance to Afghan and Iraqi coalition forces as they defuse deadly improvised explosive devices.
“At Stanford there’s a lot of opportunities for you to build things and go out and learn new stuff, but this was one of the first few opportunities I’ve seen where as a Stanford student and as an engineer, I can go and work on problems that will actually make a difference and save lives,” said Kulkarni.
A 21st century tech ROTC
That’s exactly the kind of “21st century tech ROTC” model of national service that Steve Blank, a consulting associate professor at Stanford’s Department of Management Science and Engineering, said he had in mind when he developed the class.
“The nation is facing a set of national security threats it’s never faced before, and Silicon Valley has not only the technology resources to help, but knows how to move at the speed that these threats are moving at,” said Blank.
MBA student Rachel Moore presents for Team Sentinel, which is working with the U.S. 7th Fleet to find better ways to analyze drone and satellite imagery.
The students’ primary mission will be to produce products that can help keep Americans and our allies safe, at home and abroad, according to Blank.
Former U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Joe Felter, who helped create the class and co-teaches it with Blank, said the American military needs to find new ways to maintain its technological advantage on the battlefield.
“Groups like ISIS, al–Qaeda and other adversaries have access to cutting edge technologies and are aggressively using them to do us harm around the world,” said Felter, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and is currently a senior research scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
“The stakes are high – this is literally life and death for our young men and women deployed in harm’s way. We’re in a great position here at Stanford and in Silicon Valley to help make the connections and develop the common language needed to bring innovation into the process, in support of the Department of Defense and other government agencies’ missions.”
Startup guru Steve Blank shares a light moment with a group of students.
The class is an interdisciplinary mix of undergraduate and graduate students, from freshman to fifth year PhD student.
“It’s like a smorgasbord of all these people coming together from different parts and different schools of Stanford, and so I think that’s just a really cool environment to be in,” said Rachel Moore, a first-year MBA student.
Moore’s team includes electrical and mechanical engineering students, and they’re working together to develop a system to enable the Navy’s Pacific Fleet to automatically identify enemy ships using images from drones and satellites.
Tough technological challenges
Months before the course start date, class organizers asked U.S. military and intelligence organizations to identify some of their toughest technological challenges.
Class co-teacher Pete Newell throws his hands up to celebrate a student breakthrough.
U.S. Army Cyber Command wanted to know if emerging data mining, machine learning and data science capabilities could be used to understand, disrupt and counter adversaries' use of social media.
The Navy Special Warfare Group asked students to design wearable sensors for Navy SEALs, so they could monitor their physiological conditions in real-time during underwater missions.
Intelligence and law enforcement agencies were interested in software that could help identify accounts tied to malicious “catfishing” attempts from hackers trying to steal confidential information.
And those were just a few of the 24 problems submitted by 14 government agencies.
Developing Solutions
The class gives eight teams of four students 10 weeks to actively learn about the problem they are addressing from stake holders and end users most familiar with the problem and to iteratively develop possible solutions or a “minimum viable product,” using a modified version of Steve Blank’s “lean launchpad methodology,” which has become a revered how-to guide among the Silicon Valley startup community.
Rachel Olney, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, tries on a military-grade dry suit on a visit to the 129th Rescue Wing at Moffett Field.
A key tenet of Blank’s methodology is what he calls the “customer discovery process.”
“If you’re not crawling in the dirt with these guys, then you don’t understand their problem,” Blank told the class.
One student team, which was working on real-time biofeedback sensors and geo-location devices for an elite team of Navy SEALS (a project they were initially pitching at “fitbit for America’s divers”), earned a round of applause from the class when they showed a slide featuring photos from a field trip they took to the 129th Rescue Wing at Moffett Field to find out what it felt like to wear a military-grade dry suit.
Rachel Olney, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, said the experience of squeezing into the tight suit and wearing the heavy dive gear gave her a better appreciation for the physical demands that Navy SEALs have to deal with during a mission.
“They’re diving down to like 200 feet for up to six to eight hours…and during that time they can’t eat, they can’t hydrate, they’re physically exerting a lot, because they’re swimming miles and miles and miles at depth and they can’t see and they can’t talk to each other,” Olney said.
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“It’s probably one of the most extreme things that humans do right now.”
Another group came in for some heavy criticism from the teaching team for failing to identify and interview enough end users.
But the next week, they were back in front of the class showing a video from a team member’s visit to an Air Force base in Fresno, where he logged some time inside the 90-pound bomb suit that explosive ordinance disposal units wear in the field.
“You can’t address a customer issue unless and until you really step into the shoes of the customer,” said Gaurav Sharma, who’s a student at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.
“That was the exact reason why I went to Fresno and wore the bomb suit, to get into the shoes of the end customer.”
Navigating the defense bureaucracy
Active duty military officers from CISAC’s Senior Military Fellows program and the Hoover Institution’s National Security Affairs Fellows program act as military liaisons for the class and help students navigate the complex defense bureaucracy.
“[The students] have really just jumped in with both feet and immersed themselves in this Department of Defense world that for so many civilians is just very foreign to them,” said U.S. Army Colonel John Cogbill, who has spent the last year as a senior military fellow at CISAC.
“I think they will come away from this experience with a much better appreciation of what we do inside the Department of Defense and Intelligence community, and where there are opportunities for helping us do our jobs better.”
Cogbill said he hoped that some of the inventions from the class, like an autonomous drone designed to improve situational awareness for Special Forces teams, could help the troops on his next combat deployment, where he will serve as the Deputy Commanding Officer of the U.S. Army’s elite 75th Ranger Regiment.
“It’s not just about making them more lethal, it’s also about how to keep them alive on the battlefield,” said Cogbill.
Students also get support from their project sponsors and personnel at the newly established Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) stationed at Moffett Field.
Tech saves lives on the battlefield
Another key member of the teaching team is Pete Newell, who was awarded the Silver Star Medal (America’s third-highest military combat decoration), for leading a U.S. Army battalion into the Battle of Fallujah, where he survived an ambush and left the protection of his armored vehicle in an attempt to save a mortally wounded officer.
Class co-teacher and Silver Star Medal recipient Pete Newell explains some of the classic reasons why military products fail in the field.
Newell said he saw first-hand the difference that technology can make on the battlefield in his next job, when he served as director of the U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, which was tasked with creating technological solutions to the troops fighting in Afghanistan.
“What I realized is that the guys on the front edge of the battlefield who were actually fighting the fight, don’t have time to figure out what the problem is that they have to solve,” Newell said.
“They’re so involved in just surviving day to day, that they really don’t have time to step back from it and see those problems coming, and what they needed was somebody to look over their shoulder and look a little deeper and anticipate their needs.”
One of the first and most urgent problems Newell faced on the job was responding to the sudden spike in IED attacks on dismounted infantry.
The Army was still using metal detector technology from the ‘50s to find mines, but the new breed of IEDs, which were often hidden inside buried milk jugs, were virtually undetectable to the outdated technology.
Former U.S. Army Colonel Pete Newell demystifies some military jargon for the class.
“They could create an improvised explosive device and a pressure plate trigger…by using almost zero metal content,” Newell said. “It was almost impossible to find.”
Newell’s solution was a handheld gradiometer, the kind of technology used to find small wires in your backyard during a construction project, paired with a ground penetrating radar that can see objects underground.
But by the time the new technology reached troops in the field last summer, more than 4,000 had been wounded or killed in IED attacks.
Newell said he hoped the class would help get life-saving technology deployed throughout the military faster.
“I think it’s important to enable this younger generation of technologists to actually connect with some of the national security issues we face and give them an opportunity to take part in making the world a safer place,” Newell said.
Tom Byers, an entrepreneurship professor in Management Science and Engineering and faculty director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, rounds out the teaching team and brings his experience in innovation education and entrepreneurship to the classroom.
Inspiring the next generation
Students said the opportunity to find solutions to consequential problems was their primary inspiration for joining the class.
“When I first came to Stanford, the hype around entrepreneurship was very much around, ‘go out, make an app, do something really fun and cool, and get rich’,” said Darren Hau, a junior in Electrical Engineering.
Students share a laugh during a class break.
“In Hacking for Defense, I think you’re seeing a lot of people bring that same entrepreneurial mindset into a problem statement that seems a lot more impactful.”
Felter said he was humbled that so many students were willing to serve in this way.
“It’s encouraging to find out that students at one of our top universities are very interested and highly motivated to work very hard and use their skills and expertise and talent and focus it on these pressing national security problems,” said Felter.
The teaching team said they planned on expanding their class to other universities across the country in the coming years, to create a kind of open source network for solving unclassified national security problems.
For military officers like Cogbill, who will likely soon be leading U.S. soldiers into combat, that’s welcome news.
“Every time you run a course, that’s eight more problems,” Cogbill said.
“If this scales across 10, 20, 30, 40 more universities, you can imagine how many more problems can be solved, and how many more lives can potentially be saved.”
Abstract: Institutions like LLNL are part of an enterprise established in the mid-twentieth century to enable teams of scientists and engineers to deliver technological capabilities to address challenges to U.S. national security. The steadily increasing pace of technological change, the reduced proportion of U.S. government funding invested in research and development relative to private sector investments, and the accelerating resources and programs for research globally have dramatically changed the context for this enterprise. Operational practices established to meet the national security needs of the last century must be updated to ensure that the national security science and technology enterprise can continue to deliver high quality capabilities to meet future threats and innovation to enhance U.S. national and economic security. Possible approaches for updating research careers and the structure of institutions include revamping policies for domestic and international partnerships, more effectively managing dual use technologies, and updating enterprise elements to draw on cutting-edge developments in academia and industry.
About the Speaker: Patricia Falcone is the Deputy Director for Science and Technology, and Chief Technology Officer, of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). From 2009 to 2015, she served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, including as the presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs. Earlier she worked at the Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA. She earned a Ph.D. working in the High Temperature Gasdynamics Laboratory in Stanford’s mechanical engineering department.
Patricia Falcone
Deputy Director for Science and Technology, and Chief Technology Officer,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The coordinated suicide bombings that killed more than 30 people and wounded 250 more at an international airport and downtown subway station in Brussels on Tuesday were “shocking but not surprising” and shared many of the hallmarks of previous European terror attacks, according to Stanford terrorism experts.
“My research shows that in general, terrorist plots in Europe involve larger numbers of conspirators than do plots in the United States,” said Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).
Belgian authorities said that as many as five people may have been directly involved in the bombings, including two Belgian-born brothers with violent criminal records, and that several suspects were linked to the same terrorist network that carried out the deadly Paris attacks last November.
“It is common for terrorist conspiracies anywhere to be formed from prior social groupings – friends and relatives,” said Crenshaw.
“The bonds that link individuals are not entirely ideological by any means. Criminal backgrounds are also not surprising. Indeed prison radicalization is a well-known phenomenon.”
A Notorious Neighborhood
Many of the suspects in the Brussels bombings had ties to the inner-city neighborhood of Molenbeek, a majority Muslim enclave of mostly Moroccan descent with a long history as a logistical base for jihadists.
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“Brussels and particularly Molenbeek is one of those places that comes up a lot when you’re talking about counter terrorism,” said Terrence Peterson, a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC.
“You do have terrorism networks that use these areas, in the same way that organized crime does, to thrive…It seems to be the place where all the networks are locating in part because Belgian security hasn’t been very effective in fighting terrorism.”
Foreign Fighters Bring the War Home
Belgium is a small nation, with a population of around 11 million people, but it has the highest per capita percentage of any Western country of foreign fighters who have joined the battle in Iraq and Syria, according to a recent report, which estimated the total number at 440.
“People were even saying it was not a matter of if, but when Belgium was attacked,” said Joe Felter, a CISAC senior research scholar and former Colonel in the U.S. Army Special Forces.
“You’ve got a high concentration of radicalized individuals in that neighborhood of Brussels, so logistically it was easier for them to recruit, plan and coordinate the execution of these attacks. Local residents loading up explosive packed suitcases in a cab and driving across town to the airport exposes them to much less risk of compromise than would a plot requiring cross border preparation and movement by foreign citizens.”
Felter said he was concerned that the Brussels bombings, for which the Islamic State group has claimed responsibility, would inspire copycat attacks in other countries.
“The real risk now is these home-grown, self-directed terrorist attacks,” he said.
“A successful attack like this, with all its media attention and publicity, is only going to inspire and motivate more attempts going forward.”
Former U.S. Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton delivers a foreign policy address at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies on March 23, 2016.
Former U.S. Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said European nations needed to do a better job of sharing intelligence to track foreign fighters as they returned home, during a foreign policy speech at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies on Wednesday.
“The most urgent task is stopping the flow of foreign fighters to and from the Middle East,” Clinton said.
“Thousands of young recruits have flocked to Syria from France, Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom. Their European passports make it easier for them to cross borders and eventually return home, radicalized and battle-hardened. We need to know the identities of every fighter who makes that trip and start revoking their passports and visas.”
Turkey’s president announced at a press conference on Wednesday that his country had deported one of the suspected Brussels bombers back to the Netherlands last year with a clear warning that he was a jihadi.
Identifying Hot Spots
Clinton said authorities also needed to work to improve social conditions in problem areas such as Molenbeek.
“There…has to be a special emphasis on identifying and investing in the hot spots, the specific neighborhoods, prisons and schools where recruitment happens in clusters as we’ve seen in Brussels,” Clinton said.
Other European countries such as Denmark, which has also been struggling to deal with a high percentage of foreign fighters, are trying to proactively to discourage citizens from travelling to Syria to fight, said Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen, former executive director of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service and a CISAC affiliate.
“Politicians are likely to talk about tougher legislation, but there are also measured voices, calling for a strong, long term preventive effort against radicalization to prevent problems from growing out of hand,” said Dalgaard-Nielsen.
Cover of the book "Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies" co-authored by Stanford Political Science professor David Laitin.
“Police need to prioritize community outreach and long term trust building to try to ensure the collaboration of minority groups and socioeconomically disadvantaged communities in the effort against terrorism.”
Stanford political science professor David Laitin, who recently published the book “Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies,” in collaboration with Claire Adida and Marie-Anne Valfort, said his research found that Muslims faced higher discrimination in the economy, in society and in the political process compared to Christians from similar immigrant backgrounds.
“But there is no evidence that higher degrees of discrimination lead Muslims into the unspeakable acts that members of an inhuman cult are performing in the name of Islam,” said Laitin, who is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences.
“From what we have tragically seen, the attractiveness of the present murderous cult does not derive from everyday discrimination," he said. "Research has shown that it is not the poor and downtrodden who are radicalized in this way; but rather reasonably educated second-generation immigrants from largely secular backgrounds.”
Europe Divided
Laitin said he expected to see many European countries tighten their border controls in response to the Brussels attacks, as well as greater support in the United Kingdom for the movement to leave the European Union in the upcoming referendum.
“The biggest short-term effect, in my judgment, will be the erosion of one of the great achievements of European integration, namely Schengen, which promised open borders throughout the continent,” Laitin said.
“I foresee greater security walls that will come to divide European countries.”
Fighting a Hostile Ideology
Felter said that while it was undoubtedly important to improve intelligence sharing and invest in greater security measures as part of concerted efforts to target ISIS and interdict future terrorist plots, the key to undermining support for and defeating ISIS was combating its perverted version of Islam.
And, he said, that effort would have to come largely from within the Islamic community itself.
“The symptoms may be suicide bombers in airports, but the root cause is this hostile ideology that’s being pushed on these at-risk individuals through aggressive radicalization and recruitment efforts carried out largely via the internet that then inspires them to carry out these self-directed, ISIS-inspired attacks,” Felter said.
“There’s got to be a longer-term effort to address the root causes of this, to discredit and delegitimize the appeal of this ideology that they’re promulgating online and through social media that’s inspiring these young men and women to go off and commit these horrible acts in the misguided belief that it is their religious obligation to do so.”
A student team briefs the class on a wearable sensor they're developing for an elite unit of U.S. Navy SEALs – a product they're pitching as "fitbit for America's divers."
MBA student Rachel Moore presents for Team Sentinel, which is working with the U.S. 7th Fleet to find better ways to analyze drone and satellite imagery.
Startup guru Steve Blank shares a light moment with a group of students.
Class co-teacher Pete Newell throws his hands up to celebrate a student breakthrough.
Rachel Olney, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, tries on a military-grade dry suit on a visit to the 129th Rescue Wing at Moffett Field.
“[The students] have really just jumped in with both feet and immersed themselves in this Department of Defense world that for so many civilians is just very foreign to them,” said U.S. Army Colonel 
Class co-teacher and Silver Star Medal recipient Pete Newell explains some of the classic reasons why military products fail in the field.
Former U.S. Army Colonel Pete Newell demystifies some military jargon for the class.
Students share a laugh during a class break.
Former U.S. Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton delivers a foreign policy address at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies on March 23, 2016.
Cover of the book "Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies" co-authored by Stanford Political Science professor David Laitin.