Stanford University

Biden puts US national security first in extending New START Treaty

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Extending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, with Russia was one of President Biden’s first foreign policy acts after he took the oath of office on Jan. 20. The treaty would have otherwise ended on Feb. 5, leaving the U.S. and Russia without any agreed upon limits on their strategic nuclear forces for the first time since 1972. When relations are as bad as they are now between Moscow and Washington, U.S. national security would suffer from severe uncertainty over an unconstrained Russian nuclear arsenal.

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Extending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, with Russia was one of President Biden’s first foreign policy acts after he took the oath of office on Jan. 20. The treaty would have otherwise ended on Feb. 5, leaving the U.S. and Russia without any agreed upon limits on their strategic nuclear forces for the first time since 1972.

The Political Economy of the Abe Government and Abenomics Reforms: Innovation, Agriculture, and Energy Policy

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This event is being held virtually via Zoom. Please register for the webinar via the following link: https://bit.ly/3t6AfRu

This event is part of Shorenstein APARC's winter webinar series "Asian Politics and Policy in a Time of Uncertainty."

The government of Abe Shinzo, which ruled Japan from 2012 to 2020, represents an important turning point in Japanese politics and political economy. Abe became the longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history, reversing a trend of short-lived leaders. His government not only stands out for its longevity, but also for its policies: Abe implemented a variety of significant changes, among the most important being a series of economic reforms to reinvigorate Japan’s economy under the banner of “Abenomics.” Drawing on a recently published book co-edited by Takeo Hoshi and Phillip Lipscy, The Political Economy of the Abe Government and Abenomics Reforms and featuring the authors of the relevant chapters, this panel will examine three areas of structural reform that were prioritized under Abenomics: innovation, agriculture, and energy. Moderated by Kiyoteru Tsutsui, the Director of the Japan Program, the panel will also consider the implications of these reforms for the post-Abe era that began with the Suga government in September 2020. 

SPEAKERS

Takeo HoshiTakeo Hoshi (University of Tokyo), is Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo. His research area includes corporate finance, banking, monetary policy and the Japanese economy. Hoshi is also Co-Chairman of the Academic Board of the Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance (Tsinghua University). His past positions include Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and Pacific Economic Cooperation Professor in International Economic Relations at University of California, San Diego. He received the 2015 Japanese Bankers Academic Research Promotion Foundation Award, the 2011 Reischauer International Education Award of Japan Society of San Diego and Tijuana, the 2006 Enjoji Jiro Memorial Prize of Nihon Keizai Shimbun, and the 2005 Japan Economic Association-Nakahara Prize. His book Corporate Financing and Governance in Japan: The Road to the Future (MIT Press, 2001) co-authored with Anil Kashyap received the Nikkei Award for the Best Economics Books. He co-authored The Japanese Economy (MIT Press, 2020) with Takatoshi Ito. His book on the political economy of the Abe administration co-edited with Phillip Lipscy is published from Cambridge University Press in 2021. Other publications include “Will the U.S. and Europe Avoid a Lost Decade? Lessons from Japan’s Post Crisis Experience” (Joint with Anil K Kashyap), IMF Economic Review, 2015; and “Zombie Lending and Depressed Restructuring in Japan” (Joint with Ricardo Caballero and Anil Kashyap), American Economic Review, December 2008. Hoshi received his B.A. from the University of Tokyo in 1983, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988. 

Phillip Lipscy
Phillip Lipscy (University of Toronto), is associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He is also Chair in Japanese Politics and Global Affairs and the Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Japan at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. His research addresses substantive topics such as international cooperation, international organizations, the politics of energy and climate change, international relations of East Asia, and the politics of financial crises. He has also published extensively on Japanese politics and foreign policy. Lipscy’s book from Cambridge University Press, Renegotiating the World Order: Institutional Change in International Relations, examines how countries seek greater international influence by reforming or creating international organizations. Before arriving to the University of Toronto, Lipscy was assistant professor of political science and Thomas Rohlen Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. Lipscy obtained his Ph.D. in political science at Harvard University and received his M.A. in international policy studies and B.A. in economics and political science at Stanford University.

Kenji Kushida
Kenji Kushida (Stanford University), is a research scholar with the Japan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Kushida’s research and projects are focused on the following streams : 1) how politics and regulations shape the development and diffusion of Information Technology such as AI; 2) institutional underpinnings of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, 2) Japan's transforming political economy, 3) Japan's startup ecosystem, 4) the role of foreign multinational firms in Japan, 4) Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster. He spearheaded the Silicon Valley - New Japan project that brought together large Japanese firms and the Silicon Valley ecosystem. He has published several books and numerous articles in each of these streams, including “The Politics of Commoditization in Global ICT Industries,” “Japan’s Startup Ecosystem,” "How Politics and Market Dynamics Trapped Innovations in Japan’s Domestic 'Galapagos' Telecommunications Sector," “Cloud Computing: From Scarcity to Abundance,” and others. His latest business book in Japanese is “The Algorithmic Revolution’s Disruption: a Silicon Valley Vantage on IoT, Fintech, Cloud, and AI” (Asahi Shimbun Shuppan 2016). Kushida has appeared in media including The New York Times, Washington Post, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Nikkei Business, Diamond Harvard Business Review, NHK, PBS NewsHour, and NPR. He is also a trustee of the Japan ICU Foundation, alumni of the Trilateral Commission David Rockefeller Fellows, and a member of the Mansfield Foundation Network for the Future. Kushida has written two general audience books in Japanese, entitled Biculturalism and the Japanese: Beyond English Linguistic Capabilities (Chuko Shinsho, 2006) and International Schools, an Introduction (Fusosha, 2008). Kushida holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. His received his MA in East Asian Studies and BAs in economics and East Asian Studies with Honors, all from Stanford University.

Patricia Maclachlan

Patricia L. Maclachlan (University of Texas), received her PhD in comparative politics from Columbia University in 1996 and is now Professor of Government and the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her publications include Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen Activism (Columbia University Press, 2002), The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West (Cornell University Press, 2006), which she co-edited with Sheldon Garon, and The People’s Post Office: The History and Politics of the Japanese Postal System, 1871-2010 (Harvard University East Asia Center, 2011). Her current research focuses on the political economy of Japanese agriculture and the reform of the agricultural cooperative system; her book on the topic, co-authored with Kay Shimizu, is forthcoming from Cornell University Press. Maclachlan currently serves on the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and the United States-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON), the American Advisory Committee of the Japan Foundation, and the editorial board and board of trustees of the Journal of Japanese Studies.

Kay Shimizu

Kay Shimizu (University of Pittsburgh). Shimizu's research addresses institutional design and their effects on economic governance with a special interest in central local relations, property rights, and the digital transformation.  Her publications include Political Change in Japan: Electoral Behavior, Party Realignment, and the Koizumi Reforms (coedited with Steven R. Reed and Kenneth McElwain) as well as articles in Socio-Economic Review, Journal of East Asian Studies, Current History, and Social Science Japan Journal.  She is the author, with Patricia L. Maclachlan, of a forthcoming book on agricultural cooperative reform from Cornell University Press. Shimizu received her Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.  She contributes regularly to the public discourse on international relations and the political economy of Asia and has been a fellow at the Mike and Maureen Mansfield Foundation, the National Committee on U.S. China Relations, and the U.S.-Japan Foundation.

Trevor Incerti
Trevor Incerti (Yale University), is a PhD Candidate in Political Economy.  His research focuses on the ways individuals, businesses, and interest groups use politics for private gain. His work has been published in the American Political Science Review and British Journal of Political Science, among other outlets. Prior to Yale, he has worked as a Data Scientist for TrueCar, Inc., as an economic consultant at Compass Lexecon, and as a researcher at Stanford University. Incerti holds B.A. degrees in Political Economy and Asian Studies (Japan) from UC Berkeley. 

MODERATORS 

Kiyoteru Tsutsui

Kiyoteru Tsutsui (Stanford University), is Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor and Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, where he is also Director of the Japan Program, a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a Professor of Sociology. He is the author of Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-editor of Corporate Responsibility in a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor of The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming 2021). 

 

 

 

 

 

Via Zoom Webinar.

Register at: https://bit.ly/3t6AfRu

Takeo Hoshi <br><i>Professor of Economics at the University of Tokyo</i><br><br>
Phillip Lipscy <br><i>Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto</i><br><br>
Kay Shimizu <br><i>Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh and a Visiting Scholar at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Japan</i><br><br>
Patricia Maclachlan <br><i>Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Texas at Austin</i><br><br>
Kenji Kushida <br><i>Research Scholar with the Japan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University</i><br><br>
Trevor Incerti <br><i>Yale University, PhD Candidate in Political Economy</i><br><br>
Kiyoteru Tsutsui <br><i>Stanford University, Director of APARC Japan Program</i><br><br>
Panel Discussions
Japan Colloquium Series

The Biden Presidency and Ukraine

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In a December 2020 New York Times interview, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed Joe Biden’s election as U.S. president. Zelensky observed that Biden “knows Ukraine better than the previous president” and “will really help strengthen relations, help settle the war in Donbas, and end the occupation of our territory.”[1]

While Zelensky’s comments may prove overly optimistic, there is little reason to doubt that the Biden presidency will be good for Ukraine. The incoming president knows the country, and he understands both the value of a stable and successful Ukraine for U.S. interests in Europe and the challenges posed to Ukraine and the West by Russia. That might—might, not will, but might—help break the logjam on the stalemated Donbas conflict, which Zelensky of course would welcome. Perhaps less welcome to the Ukrainian president may be Biden’s readiness to play hardball to press Kyiv to take needed but politically difficult reform and anti-corruption steps. Ukraine’s success as a liberal democracy depends not just on ending its conflict with Russia but also on combating corruption and advancing still necessary economic reforms.

U.S.-Ukraine Relations under Trump

In one sense, U.S. policy toward Ukraine during the Trump administration had its strengths. It continued political and military support for Kyiv, including the provision of lethal military assistance that the Obama administration had been unwilling to provide. It maintained and strengthened Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia. And it took further steps to bolster the U.S. and NATO military presence in central European states on Ukraine’s western border.

However, Donald Trump never seemed committed to his administration’s policy. His primary engagement on Ukraine was his bid to extort Kyiv into manufacturing derogatory information on his Democratic opponent, a bid that led to his impeachment.[2] Beyond that, Trump showed no interest in the country and consistently refused to criticize Vladimir Putin, who has inflicted more than six years of low-intensity war on Ukraine.

The Biden presidency will end this dichotomy in Washington’s approach to Kyiv. The president and his administration will align on policy. That new predictability will mean that Ukrainian officials no longer have to worry about late night presidential tweets or the subjugation of U.S. policy interests to the president’s personal political vendettas.

Two Challenges Confronting Ukraine

As Biden takes office, two principal challenges confront Ukraine. The conflict with Russia poses the first.[3] In March 2014, in the aftermath of the Maidan Revolution, Russian military forces seized Crimea. Weeks later, Russian security forces instigated a conflict in Donbas, masked poorly as a “separatist” uprising. The Kremlin provided leadership, funding, heavy weapons, ammunition, other supplies and, when necessary, regular units of the Russian army. Now in its seventh year, that conflict has claimed the lives of some 13,000 people.

While Moscow illegally annexed Crimea, it has not moved to annex Donbas. It appears instead to want to use a simmering conflict in that eastern Ukrainian region as a means to put pressure on, destabilize and disorient the government in Kyiv, with the goal of making it harder for the government to build a successful Ukrainian state and draw closer to Europe. (Moscow has interfered elsewhere in the post-Soviet space to try to maintain a Russian sphere of influence.)

Without the Kremlin’s cooperation, Kyiv on its own cannot resolve the conflict in Donbas, and Crimea poses an even harder question. However, meeting the second of the challenges facing Ukraine—implementation of reforms and anti-corruption measures needed to build a fair, robust and growing economy—lies largely within Kyiv’s purview. Unfortunately, after a good start by Zelensky and his first government, reforms have stagnated, oligarchs retain undue political and economic influence (including within Zelensky’s Servant of the People party), and the judicial branch remains wholly unreconstructed.[4] Among other things, this depresses much-needed investment in the country.

Progress Toward a Resolution in Donbas?

The Biden presidency might well play a more active role in the moribund negotiating process regarding Donbas. As co-chairs of the “Normandy process,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have had little success of late in implementation of the 2015 Minsk agreement, which laid out a path to a settlement and restoration of full Ukrainian sovereignty over Donbas.[5] Unfortunately, it appears that the Kremlin calculates that the benefits of keeping Kyiv distracted currently outweigh the costs, including of Western sanctions.

Zelensky believes that a more active U.S. role could change that calculation and inject momentum into the process. At a minimum, the Biden presidency should appoint a special envoy to coordinate with the Germans and French, and, more broadly, with the European Union, Britain, Canada and others on Western support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. That position has gone unfilled since September 2019.

Whether Biden, who will face many demands on his time, will choose to engage personally is a different question. He knows Ukraine, having traveled there six times when he served as vice president. And, unlike Trump, who sought quick victories, Biden understands that solving a question like Donbas would require an investment of his time over a sustained period. It would make sense if it became clear that his engagement would shake up things in a way that would increase the prospects of a settlement and return of Donbas to Ukrainian sovereignty.

At first glance, the Kremlin might not welcome that kind of U.S. involvement, but there are good arguments for it. First of all, the United States is Ukraine’s strongest Western supporter, and Washington’s voice carries considerable weight in Kyiv. Second, Russia’s current conflict against Ukraine is not just about Donbas; it is also about Ukraine’s place in Europe, that is, where the country fits between Russia and institutions such as the European Union and NATO.[6] Addressing that question will require diplomatic finesse. Given the trans-Atlantic relationship, which will be revived under Biden, it is difficult to see such a geopolitical discussion taking place without American participation.

As for Crimea, Ukraine cannot at present muster the political, diplomatic, economic and military leverage to effect the peninsula’s return. Still, the U.S. government knows how to do non-recognition policy.[7] It did so for five decades with regard to the Baltic states’ incorporation into the Soviet Union. The Biden presidency will remain supportive of Kyiv’s claim to Crimea and not recognize its annexation by Russia—and the White House will express this view.

Domestic Reform

After an encouraging start on reform, Zelensky wavered in 2020. He has to do more, and Biden can be helpful, though in a manner the Ukrainian president may not appreciate. A big part of the problem is that Zelensky himself seems to have lost his way. Ruslan Ryaboshapka, his reformist first prosecutor general, observed that “Instead of fighting oligarchs, [Zelensky] chose to peacefully coexist with them.”[8] Biden could well prove the kind of friend that Ukraine needs now: supportive but direct with Zelensky on what must be done, and ready to push him to take politically hard measures that he might prefer to avoid.

Biden has already shown that he can do this. As vice president in the Obama administration, he had the lead on U.S. engagement with Ukraine. When necessary, he applied “tough love,” famously withholding a one-billion-dollar loan guarantee until then-President Petro Poroshenko fired a prosecutor general who was viewed widely, inside and outside of Ukraine, as corrupt.[9]

A dose of such tough love now seems necessary with Kyiv. One question concerns access to low interest credits under Ukraine’s stand-by agreement with the International Monetary Fund.[10] The IMF conditions disbursements of those credits on how Ukraine implements reform commitments that it made to secure the agreement. The Biden administration should, and almost certainly will, back the IMF in insisting that Ukraine needs to deliver on its commitments in order to secure additional disbursements.

Likewise, the Biden administration should make more bilateral U.S. assistance conditional on Ukraine tackling particular reforms. In doing so, it should consult and coordinate closely with the European Union, which has greater assistance resources available. Introducing a higher degree of conditionality to Western assistance programs could usefully ratchet up the pressure on the leadership in Kyiv to take reform steps that are in the country’s broader interest but opposed by key oligarchs or political groups who stand to lose from such reforms.

Priority should go to encouraging reform of the judicial branch, including the Constitutional Court, which has a core of judges who appear beholden to special interests. The high court reversed earlier laws requiring members of parliament and government officials to disclose their assets and could threaten other reforms.[11]

At home, the Biden administration can assist Ukraine by implementing a ban on anonymous shell companies by requiring disclosure of who actually forms companies in the United States as contained in the Corporate Transparency Act, part of the National Defense Authorization Act.[12] This will make it more difficult for corrupt Ukrainians to shelter ill-gotten gains in U.S. assets.

The Biden presidency is good news for Ukraine and those who wish to see it develop into a modern European state. It will mean more high-level but hard-nosed U.S. support. That could lead to greater progress on reform within the country. And, with some imaginative diplomacy and luck, it might even help break the logjam with Russia over resolving the fate of Donbas.

 

[1] Kramer, Andrew E. “With Trump Fading, Ukraine's President Looks to a Reset With the U.S.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, December 19, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/world/europe/trump-zelensky-biden-ukr....

[2] Nichols, Tom. “Trump Is Being Impeached over an Extortion Scheme, Not a 'Policy Dispute'.” USA Today. Gannett Satellite Information Network, January 30, 2020. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/01/30/trump-impeachment-blac....

[3] Masters, Jonathan. “Ukraine: Conflict at the Crossroads of Europe and Russia.” Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations, February 5, 2020. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-crossroads-europe-and-....

[4] Iliyas, Boktakoz. “Anti-Corruption Backtracking in Ukraine – Has Ze Reform Moment Passed?” Control Risks. Control Risks Group Holdings Ltd., December 17, 2020. https://www.controlrisks.com/our-thinking/insights/anti-corruption-backt....

[5] “Ukraine Walks a Tightrope to Peace in the East.” International Crisis Group, January 29, 2020. https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/eastern-europe/ukraine/ukraine-walks-tightrope-peace-east.; “Ukraine Ceasefire: New Minsk Agreement Key Points.” BBC News. BBC, February 12, 2015. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31436513.

[6] Tefft, John F. “ Reflections on Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. in the Post-Soviet World.” American Foreign Service Association, n.d. https://www.afsa.org/reflections-russia-ukraine-and-us-post-soviet-world.

[7] Pompeo, Michael R. “Crimea Is Ukraine.” U.S. Department of State. U.S. Department of State, February 26, 2020. https://www.state.gov/crimea-is-ukraine-3/.

[8] Kranolutska, Daryna, and Volodymyr Verbyany. “Ukraine's Leader Is Being Broken by the System He Vowed to Crush.” Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, December 16, 2020. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-17/ukraine-s-leader-is-b....

[9] Subramanian, Courtney. “Explainer: Biden, Allies Pushed out Ukrainian Prosecutor Because He Didn't Pursue Corruption Cases.” USA Today. Gannett Satellite Information Network, October 3, 2019. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/03/what-really-happ....

[10] “IMF Executive Board Approves 18-Month US$5 Billion Stand-By Arrangement for Ukraine.” International Monetary Fund. International Monetary Fund Communications Department, June 9, 2020. https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/06/09/pr20239-ukraine-imf-exec....

[11] “Ukraine's Constitutional Court Attacks Anti-Corruption Laws.” The Economist. The Economist Newspaper, November 14, 2020. https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/11/14/ukraines-constitutional-cour....

[12] Pearl, Morris. “Commentary: Congress Just Passed the Most Important Anti-Corruption Reform in Decades, but Hardly Anyone Knows about It.” Fortune. Fortune Media IP, December 26, 2020. https://fortune.com/2020/12/26/ndaa-2021-shell-companies-corporate-trans....

 

Originally for Stanford International Policy Review

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In a December 2020 New York Times interview, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed Joe Biden’s election as U.S. president. Zelensky observed that Biden “knows Ukraine better than the previous president” and “will really help strengthen relations, help settle the war in Donbas, and end the occupation of our territory.”

Is Indonesian Democracy In Decline?

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This event is part of Shorenstein APARC's winter webinar series "Asian Politics and Policy in a Time of Uncertainty."

In the 2010s, amid signs of rising illiberalism around the world, Indonesia seemed exceptional—an established democracy bucking the trend.  In 2019, however, at a conference in Canberra, experts on Indonesia from Australia, Asia, and the United States argued otherwise. Their variously skeptical views were recently published in a book alarmingly entitled Democracy in Indonesia: From Stagnation to Recession?  In this webinar, a co-editor of the volume will discuss its subtitle with an analyst of Indonesian politics who did not contribute to the book.

Panelists:

Eve Warburton 4X4
Eve Warburton is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include democratic representation, identity, and the political economy of policymaking in young democracies, with a focus on Southeast Asia and especially Indonesia. In addition to Democracy in Indonesia (2020), her work has appeared in the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Democratization, Electoral Studies, Pacific Affairs, the Journal of East Asian Studies, and as chapters in several books. She is currently working on her first book manuscript, Reclaiming What's Ours: The Business and Politics of Resource Nationalism in Indonesia. She received her doctorate in international studies from the Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia and Pacific Affairs in 2018.  Her master’s and undergraduate degrees are respectively from Columbia University and the University of Sydney.

Tom Pepinsky 4X4
Tom Pepinsky is Tisch University Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. His fields are comparative politics and international political economy, with a focus on emerging markets and a special interest in Southeast Asia. His work on Indonesia includes, as co-editor, Piety and Public Opinion: Understanding Indonesian Islam (2018). He has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Democracy, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics, among other venues, including an online platform, New Mandala: New Perspectives on Southeast Asia. He is an active co-founder of the Southeast Asia Research Group (seareg.org), which showcases new research by young scholars on Southeast Asian politics, and he serves on the steering committee of the Association for Analytical Learning on Islam and Muslim Societies (aalims.org).  His PhD in political science is from Yale University.

Southeast Asia Program Director Don Emmerson, who has also worked on Indonesia, will moderate the discussion.

Via Zoom Webinar
Register: https://bit.ly/39mafJU

Eve Warburton Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asia Research Institute, the National University of Singapore.
Tom Pepinsky Tisch University Professor in the Department of Government, Cornell University and a Nonresident Senior Fellow, the Brookings Institution.
Seminars

Recommendations for the New Administration

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A new administration and Congress provide a key opportunity to improve US cybersecurity and the governance of digital technologies. Yet the challenges appear daunting: viral disinformation, widespread privacy violations, algorithms biased by race, class and gender, ransomware running rampant, and unprecedented tech company scale and market dominance. Additionally, the US faces a persistent deficit in skilled cybersecurity workers, a lack of diversity in the field, and a public with wildly unequal broadband internet access.  Meanwhile, competition among governance regimes, specifically between the United States, Europe and China, has raised the stakes over whether democracies or authoritarian governments will set the rules for the internet. The policy choices made by the new administration will play a pivotal role in shaping our global future. On February 24 at 10am PST, join Kelly Born and Marietje Schaake of Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, Michael Daniel of the Aspen Institute’s Cyber Group, and Karen Kornbluh for the German Marshall Fund to discuss cyber policy priorities for the new administration.

 

REGISTER

Marietje Schaake

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Marietje Schaake is a non-resident Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She is a columnist for the Financial Times and serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards as well as the UN's High Level Advisory Body on AI. Between 2009-2019 she served as a Member of European Parliament where she worked on trade-, foreign- and tech policy. She is the author of The Tech Coup.


 

Non-Resident Fellow, Cyber Policy Center
Fellow, Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
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Karen Kornbluh
Michael Daniel
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Matt Masterson

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Matt Masterson

Matt Masterson is a former non-resident policy fellow with the Stanford Internet Observatory. He served as Senior Cybersecurity Advisor at the Department of Homeland Security, where he focused on election security issues. He previously served as a Commissioner at the Election Assistance Commission from December 2014 until March 2018, including serving as the Commission’s Chairman in 2017-2018. Prior to that, he held staff positions with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office, where he oversaw voting-system certification efforts and helped develop an online voter registration system. Matt holds a law degree from the University of Dayton School of Law and BS and BA degrees from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

As part of his Stanford Internet Observatory fellowship, Matt compiled and published an oral history of the 2020 election, "The Guardians of Democracy."

Former Non-Resident Fellow, Stanford Internet Observatory

From Policy to Practice: Lessons on How to Implement Equity

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Join the REDI Task Force for the next event in the "Critical Conversations: Race in Global Affairs" series for a conversation with Howard University Higher Education Leadership and Policy Studies professor, Dr. Sosanya Jones. 

As we enter into a new decade and presidential administration with unprecedented attention to racial equity, we must ask ourselves how to move from anti-racist, equity policy goals to practices that help us achieve those goals. This conversation with Dr. Jones will outline the challenges and lessons of diversity and inclusion work, based on empirical research and professional practice, to illuminate a path toward institutional change. 

There will be time for a Q&A following the dialogue. This event will be recorded and uploaded to the REDI website.

About the Speaker:

Sosanya Jones Headshot

Dr. Sosanya Jones is an assistant professor of Leadership and Policy Studies at Howard University where she teaches courses on diversity, governance, higher education policy, and qualitative research. Her research interests focus on the nexus between policy and practice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. In particular, her work draws upon the practical knowledge and voices of policy makers and institutional practitioners in order to glean insight about policy formation, adoption, and implementation and its connection to equity, diversity and inclusion practices in higher education. Dr. Jones’ research has appeared in The Review of Higher Education, The American Behavioral Scientist, International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, and Interest Groups and Advocacy. A 2015-2016 Fulbright Visiting Chair at the University of Alberta, Dr. Jones currently serves as an executive member of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE)'s Council for Public Policy in Higher Education (CPPHE).

Register here: https://stanford.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0kcO6pqzMoG9TrzTu06gCz43M0KnX2JFCj

 
Professor of Education
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Critical Conversations

European Defense and Security: EU-NATO and Transatlantic Dynamics

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

 

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

 

About the Event: The Trump Presidency has changed transatlantic security relations permanently and fundamentally.  Former UK Ambassador to NATO Sir Adam Thomson, currently Director of the European Leadership Network, will look at the implications for relations between NATO and the European Union at the start of President Biden’s term.  Although some progress on NATO-EU cooperation has been made in the past few years, it was in the shadow of the challenges that Trump posed to both organizations.  Washington and America’s European allies and partners will need to repair the damage to the transatlantic relationship and take a new approach to working together. 

 

About the Speaker: Sir Adam Thomson has been the Director of the European Leadership Network since 2016. The ELN is an independent, non-partisan, network of leaders from all across the continent dedicated to a safer Europe.

Adam had a 38 year diplomatic career in the British Diplomatic Service. His final posting was as the UK Ambassador to NATO 2014 - 2016. From 2010 Adam served as British High Commissioner to Pakistan and between 2002 and 2006 he was British Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York.  Other postings included Moscow (1981-3), NATO (1983-6) and Washington DC (1991-5). He headed the Foreign Office’s Security Policy Department 1998 – 2002.

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Adam Thomson Director The European Leadership Network
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Research Seminar Series

Heal the Transatlantic Technology Policy Rift to Combat China's Digital Authoritarian Model

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Eileen Donahoe
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The incoming Biden-Harris foreign policy team recognizes well that technology now sits at the epicenter of geopolitics: all aspects of government power — military, economic, and normative — increasingly derive from dominance in technology. The new U.S. team also recognizes that the transatlantic alliance should be working together to drive a 21st-century digital agenda that reflects democratic values. Unfortunately, during the Trump administration, the prospect of such cooperation diminished. Instead, the transatlantic rift over technology policy has grown. Disagreements over government surveillance, private sector data collection and sharing, platform content restrictions, digital competition, and protection of fundamental freedoms like privacy and free expression mean that Europe and the United States find themselves increasingly at odds

Just this summer, the EU Court of Justice struck down the Privacy Shield arrangement, negotiated during the Obama-Biden administration to facilitate cross-border data transfers, putting $7 trillion in digital trade at risk. Instead of democratic unity, some European leaders have embraced a concept of “digital sovereignty” (similar to the Chinese concept of “cyber sovereignty”) in the face of a perceived technology cold war between the U.S. and China. .

No doubt, a democratic regulatory framework for digital services is long overdue. This should be a focal point for the new administration.
Eileen Donahoe
Executive Director, GDPi

Ironically, one area of agreement seems to be the threat posed by dominant U.S. technology companies. Last month, the European Union unveiled new regulation that would impose fines of up to 10 percent of revenue on large “gatekeeper” companies -- a euphemism for US “Big Tech” -- that abuse their market power. In the waning days of the Trump administration, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Facebook and launched an investigation into data collection at nine companies. At a time when Europe and the United States are divided on many tech issues, they have converged on one point: big tech companies are bad for democracies.

No doubt, a democratic regulatory framework for digital services is long overdue. This should be a focal point for the new administration. The heart of that framework should be protection of fundamental rights to privacy, free expression, freedom of assembly and association, as well as transparency and accountability mechanisms that support user’s procedural rights.

But policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic need to be careful not to hit the wrong target. The real threat to democracies isn’t the size or dominance of U.S. tech companies: it’s China’s rapidly spreading model of digital authoritarianism. Rather than focusing primarily on competition within their borders, Europe and the United States need to raise their sights and consider the much more ominous competitive threat posed by Chinese technological dominance.

The global tech race is about far more than market competition – it is a normative battle. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) understands that geopolitical and normative power stem from dominance in digital technologies. It has focused on becoming a global innovation powerhouse through fusion of its civil-military tech R&D and direct support of its tech industry. The immensity of Beijing’s investment in emerging technologies is staggering, with no less than 16 different “Manhattan Project”-scale initiatives in fields as varied as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cryptography, 5G, facial recognition, and genomics.

As China’s tech industry grows, so does its ability to set international norms and standards that reflect authoritarian values and interests. Beijing has deployed ground-breaking technology for repression, most notably against the Uighur minority in Xinjiang, where an unprecedented system of mass surveillance monitors the movement of people, phones, and vehicles to detect inappropriate activity that merits investigation or detention. At the same time, China presumes state control over all data and seeks to normalize its concept of “cyber sovereignty” (a concept uncomfortably close to the EU’s chosen term “digital sovereignty”) which rejects outside scrutiny of its use of technology to violate human rights.

Most concerningly, Beijing’s dominance in technology has translated into greater clout in the international diplomatic realm. Its influence has been visible in tech standard setting bodies like the ITU, where it has sought to embed its preferred protocols in next generation interoperability standards. At the UN Human Rights Council, China succeeded in convincing a majority of countries not to criticize its repressive uses of technology in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

To combat the rise of China’s model of digital authoritarianism, Europe and the United States cannot focus solely on technology challenges within their own borders. They must overcome their own tech policy divisions and embrace responsibility to develop a democratic digital strategy that attracts global support. The agenda must simultaneously drive innovation and solidify a normative framework for governance of data and technology that protects fundamental rights. In an olive branch to the incoming Biden Administration, the EU proposed to set a joint transatlantic tech agenda. It then turned around to sign a massive trade deal with China. These mixed signals could send us in the wrong direction. The Biden administration should seize the first entrée and set up a process to immediately seek concrete progress on our shared technology interests. To be effective, such an agenda must emphasize three core areas.

First, the U.S. and E.U. must develop a joint plan to protect critical supply chains and invest in emerging technologies. This should include concrete mechanisms for U.S.-EU cooperation on innovation and increased joint investment in emerging technology research.

Second, the plan must articulate a democratic approach to cross-border data protection and a shared framework for governance of digital society consistent with universal human rights principles. A new process could be established to reconcile diverging policies on privacy and free expression, as well as norms on use of data and technology by governments and the private sector.

Third, transatlantic partners must reenergize their international diplomacy and develop a coordinated strategy to combat China’s influence in both tech standards and norm setting bodies. The United States and Europe must attract, and then leverage, the combined power of democratic coalitions at multilateral institutions to push back against China’s encroaching influence. Incorporating technology innovation as part of international development efforts will add to the attraction. 

A shared technology agenda can provide a new underpinning for the transatlantic alliance, on par with collective defense and a commitment to democratic values and principles. Regulation for regulation’s sake will only weaken democracies’ already waning dominance in digital technologies, and with it, our collective ability to set the international normative agenda on everything from artificial intelligence to cloud computing. Digital sovereignty that prevents collaboration is not the way forward. Working together to secure a democratic digital domain should be the ultimate goal. In this effort, U.S. tech companies are not the enemy.

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Eileen Donahoe

Executive Director, Global Digital Policy Incubator
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Top Technology Policy Priorities for the New Administration

Now is the time to rally the world around a democratic vision of digital society.
Top Technology Policy Priorities for the New Administration
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Our EU partners must resist the impulse to digital sovereignty.

Europe’s Digital Services Act

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What rules for the web? That question has been given new urgency on January 6th. The European Union, at the end of 2020, proposed the Digital Services Act (DSA). This new legislation aims at creating clarity about the responsibility of tech platforms and intermediaries. European rules, just as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) did, will likely have ripple effects worldwide. Is there room for transatlantic alignment? How do values translate into enforceable rules? Can fundamental rights and economic growth go hand in hand? And who keep the gatekeepers in check? We will dive into the proposed Digital Services Act with leading European experts.

Join Stanford Cyber Policy Center's Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director and former Member of European Parliament in conversation with the CPC’s Daphne Keller, Director of the Center for Internet and Society, Guillermo Beltrà Navarro, European Union’s Digital Policy Lead, Eliška Pírková, Access Now’s Europe Policy Analyst and Joris van Hoboken, Professor of Law at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels.

 

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Daphne Keller

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Daphne Keller is the Director of Platform Regulation at the Stanford Program in Law, Science, & Technology. Her academic, policy, and popular press writing focuses on platform regulation and Internet users'; rights in the U.S., EU, and around the world. Her recent work has focused on platform transparency, data collection for artificial intelligence, interoperability models, and “must-carry” obligations. She has testified before legislatures, courts, and regulatory bodies around the world on topics ranging from the practical realities of content moderation to copyright and data protection. She was previously Associate General Counsel for Google, where she had responsibility for the company’s web search products. She is a graduate of Yale Law School, Brown University, and Head Start.

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FILINGS

  • U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief on behalf of Francis Fukuyama, NetChoice v. Moody (2024)
  • U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief with ACLU, Gonzalez v. Google (2023)
  • Comment to European Commission on data access under EU Digital Services Act
  • U.S. Senate testimony on platform transparency

 

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Director of Platform Regulation, Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology (LST)
Social Science Research Scholar
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Marietje Schaake

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Marietje Schaake is a non-resident Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She is a columnist for the Financial Times and serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards as well as the UN's High Level Advisory Body on AI. Between 2009-2019 she served as a Member of European Parliament where she worked on trade-, foreign- and tech policy. She is the author of The Tech Coup.


 

Non-Resident Fellow, Cyber Policy Center
Fellow, Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
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Guillermo Beltrà Navarro
Joris van Hoboken
Eliška Pírková
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