Evgeny Morozov is a Yahoo! fellow at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service Yahoo! fellow at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. His presentation sought to challenge a number of assumptions that are often made about the relationship between the web, nation states and democracy.

Assumption: It is much harder to censor online content than traditional media; effective censorship is impossible
Subverting content online results in less evidence and can be done with less visibility than the subversion of traditional media like newspapers. The same tools that in the West allow filtering content for child pornography can also be used effectively to filter political content in China and Russia. Some states are finding other creative ways of censoring content online; for example Saudi Arabia recently enlisted the help of 200 ‘flaggers' to create a version of You Tube that does not include content deemed to be offensive to the cultural and moral standards of the country.

Assumption: The growth of the internet will inevitably result in the decline of the nation state
In fact, most states, including authoritarian ones, are investing in techniques to use online tools to increase their own legitimacy and spread their favored ideology. A number of recent examples were cited to highlight this:

• China is paying web users to generate pro government content online. Dubbed the ‘50 cent party' (the amount users are paid for each positive comment) there are reported to be 280,000 active members
• Russia currently spends more money on propaganda than it does fighting unemployment. A good example is an online viral documentary (War 08.08.08) produced after last year's war with Georgia and supposedly made using footage from cell phones confiscated from Georgian soldiers. The film became a viral sensation and helped to promote the Kremlin's version of events
• Iranians are running blogging workshops in Qom seminaries to ensure that online discourse about religious matters doesn't get out of hand.

The internet also gives these regimes new powers to detect potential dissent earlier by monitoring blogs and forums. Using social networking sites, regimes can also glean how individuals are connected to one another and so uncover whole activist networks.

Enough connectivity combined with the availability of the right devices = democracy.
Web enthusiasts are prone to over-simplify matters, assuming that sufficient provision of internet technology in countries like Iran and China will automatically result in overthrowing of dictators and the ushering in of democracy. This ignores the fact that access to information is not the same thing as activism; that protests can now be organized more easily does not mean they will be. There remains a huge role for traditional civil society organizations in moving such countries towards democracy. Evgeny warns that we need to be wary of projecting our own obsessions onto this debate - citing the way many jumped on the use of Twitter in Iran recently. In reality it is difficult to link the use of Twitter with the planning of protests.

John D. Ciorciari was a Shorenstein Fellow at APARC in 2007-08 and an affiliate of APARC and SEAF in 2008-09 while a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution.   Upon leaving Stanford he took up a position as an assistant professor in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

A main purpose of the Shorenstein Fellowship is to enable post-docs to revise their dissertations for publication.  John did exactly that.  In 2010 Georgetown University Press will publish The Limits of Alignment in the Global South:  Southeast Asia since 1975.  Congratulations, John!

During his association with SEAF John also finished co-editing and co-authoring a monograph on the (in)famous Khmer Rouge trials in Cambodia.  In 2009 the Documentation Center of Cambodia published the result:  On Trial: The Khmer Rouge Accountability Press.

On Trial is dedicated to “the victims of [Pol Pot’s grossly misnamed] Democratic Kampuchea and to promoting a legal accountability process that will honor their memories and provide their families with justice.”

Sophal Ear, an assistant professor at the US Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey) and himself a survivor of Pol Pot’s regime praised On Trial as an “excellent,” “thoughtful,” “timely,” and “essential book.”

The renowned historian of Cambodia David Chandler—a professor emeritus at Monash University (Australia) and a former SEAF speaker—also lauded the book: 

“This invaluable collection of essays, sponsored by the Cambodian NGO that has pioneered research on the Khmer Rouge era, provides a wealth of information about the so-called Khmer Rouge Tribunal.  On Trial is accessible, well researched, and passionately engaged with the innumerable tragedies of the Khmer Rouge period.  Its authors argue that the ongoing trials may possibly lead toward deeper reconciliation and certainly a deeper knowledge of what happened throughout the country in those horrific years.”

Other publications stemming from John’s time at Stanford include these three wide-ranging titles, all published in January 2009: 

“The Balance of Great-power Influence in Contemporary Southeast Asia,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (9: 1), pp. 157-196; International Politics and the Mess in Myanmar, JPRI Working Paper No. 114, Japan Policy Research Institute; and An Asian Monetary Fund in the Making? SCID Working Paper No. 378, Stanford Center for International Development.

While at Stanford in 2008-09 John also gave off-campus presentations on topics including Asian security, Cambodian history, and alignment politics at Columbia, Princeton, and Chicago, among other universities, and the International Studies Association, among other professional-society venues.

Future Shorenstein Fellows take note:  John Ciorciari is a tough act to follow.  SEAF wishes him the best of success in his future endeavors.

Anticipating Opportunities: Using Intelligence to Shape the Future
"We spend $45 billion annually to reduce uncertainty, to help us combat threats to our nation, our people, and our security," said Payne Distinguished Lecturer Thomas Fingar in his third Payne lecture on October 21, devoted to anticipating the future -- "not for purposes of prediction but for purposes of shaping it."  Noting that strategic intelligence treats the future neither as "inevitable or immutable," Fingar employed real-life examples from his career in national intelligence (most recently as deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and chairman of the National Intelligence Council) to explore concrete ways intelligence can be used to move developments in a more favorable direction.

Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World examined the trends which will "drive, shape and constrain" individuals, governments, and nations around the world. Among prominent trends, he cited globalization, which will provide unprecedented prosperity but greater inequality; the rise of the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India, and China; the rise of new powers such as Indonesia, Turkey, and Iran; and the coming demographic boom, which will add 1.2 billion people to the world, with less than 3 percent of that occurring in the West.

The Geopolitical Implications of Climate Change.  Instructed by the Congress to provide an assessment of the impact of global climate change, given controversy about the imminence of the threat and man's role in it, the NIC studied which regions and countries would be most dramatically affected by climate change, with a focus on water, food production, and changes in weather patterns. The results remain classified, because of the potential impact on vulnerable countries. 

The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. This estimate, attacked from both the right and the left, concluded with a moderate to high degree of confidence that Iran had not obtained sufficient fissile material from external sources (to make a bomb) and that its fastest route to produce a nuclear weapon would be through domestic production of enriched uranium. The NIE also judged that Iran had halted the weaponization portions of its nuclear program in 2003, but had retained the option to pursue a weapon and whether to do so was a "political decision" which could be made at any time.

CISAC is pleased to announce fellows and visitors in residence at the Center during the 2009-10 academic year.

• Max Abrahms
  University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Political Science
  Strategic Logic of Terrorism
• Undraa Agvaanluvsan
  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Nuclear Experimental Group
  Energy, Security, and Economic Implications of Nuclear Industry Development in Mongolia
• Chaim Braun
  CISAC
  Nuclear Power Growth and its Nonproliferation Implications in India, the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula, and South America
• Sarah Zukerman Daly
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science
  Guns, Politics or Bankruptcy: Disentangling the Determinants of Armed Organizations Post-war Trajectories
• Matthias Englert
  Darmstadt University of Technology, Interdisciplinary Research Group in Science Technology and Security
  Managing the Proliferation Risks of Gas Centrifuges - Technical and Political Measures
• Andrea Everett
  Princeton University, Department of Politics
  Responding to Catastrophe: Democratic Society and the Origins of Humanitarian Intervention
• Kelly Greenhill
  Tufts University and Research Fellow, Harvard University
  Fear Factor: Understanding the Origins and Consequences of Beliefs about National Security and the Threats We Face
• Tom Isaacs
  Director, Office of Planning and Special Studies, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  Internationalization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle and the Role of the U.S.
• Joseph Martz
  Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Katherine Marvel
  University of Cambridge, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
  Nuclear Energy in Africa: Utility, Feasibility, and Security
• Emily Meierding
  University of Chicago, Department of Political Science
  Fueling Conflict, Facilitating Peace: Oil & International Territorial Disputes
• Eric Morris
  Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies
  Civilian Capacity for Peace Operations
• Charles Perrow
  Yale University, Department of Sociology
• Brenna Powell
  Harvard University, Department of Government and Social Policy
  Normalizing Security After Conflict: Jobs for the Boys and Justice for the Hoods
• Arian Pregenzer
  Sandia National Laboratories, Department of Cooperative International Programs
  International Technical Cooperation to Support Arms Control and Nonproliferation: Review of Past Approaches, Identification of Lessons Learned, and Recommendations for the Future
• William Reckmeyer
  San Jose State University, Department of Anthropology
  Systemic Connections: Developing an Integrated National Strategy to Promote International Security and Cooperation
• Jefferey Richardson,
  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  Science as a Tool for International Engagement
• Robert Rosner
  University of Chicago, Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics, and Laboratory Director, Argonne National Laboratory
• Jan Stupl
  University of Hamburg, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy
  Missile Technology Control Regime
• Michael Sulmeyer
  Stanford Law School
• Phil Taubman
  Former Associate Editor and Reporter, The New York Times
• Jianqun Teng
  China Arms Control and Disarmament Association
  Nuclear Free World Initiative in the Context of Sino-U.S. Relations
• John Vitacca
  United States Air Force
  Nuclear Policy Issues
• Gang Zhao
  Chinese Academy of S & T for Development (CASTED)
  Deepening the China-U.S. Relationship through Collaboration in Science and Technology with Particular Attention to Alternative Energy Solutions
• Yunhua Zou
  General Armaments Department, People's Liberation Army, China
  Space Arms Control; Security Cooperation with China; U.S.-China Relations