Abstract
Despite the promise, the majority of mobile technology solutions are only meeting the needs of a small percentage of organisations who could benefit from them. In his talk, Ken Banks will discuss how he empowers grassroots NGOs, provide the history and background to FrontlineSMS, and highlight some of the challenges in developing mobile tools which work in resource-constrained environments

Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the last 16 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning text messaging-based field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organisations. Ken graduated from Sussex University with honours in Social Anthropology with Development Studies, and was awarded a Stanford University Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow in 2008. In 2009 he was named a Laureate of the Tech Awards, an international awards program which honours innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. Ken's work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Institute, and he is the current recipient of a grant from the Hewlett Foundation

Summary of the Seminar
Ken Banks, the founder of kiwanja.net, spoke about the importance of technology solutions that meet the needs of those working in the developing world and his own work in this area through FrontlineSMS.

While current excitement in the technology world may be focused on increasing centralization through cloud computing, this means little to people working in the developing world where internet connectivity is unavailable or unreliable.  Too little investment is going into building tools that will genuinely assist the work many non-profits are doing now.

Ken developed FrontlineSMS to tap into the potential of mobile phones, which are now widely available and used in the developing world. This is a two way communication system that can be used anywhere where there is a mobile phone signal.  FrontlineSMS is available as a free download and Ken's approach has been not to dictate implementation but rather to allow people to use this very general tool in whatever ways meet their particular needs. This has resulted in diverse applications, for example:

• Monitoring election practices in Nigeria in 2007
• Sending security alerts to humanitarian workers in conflict areas of Afghanistan
• Encouraging young people to take part in elections in Azerbaijan
• Updating local people on the location of speeches during President Obama's visit to Ghana

There is also great potential to combine FrontlineSMS with traditional media, such as radio, that is already widespread throughout Africa, to make this much more interactive.

Ken offered a number of points of guidance for those thinking about designing technology with social applications:

• Work with the equipment that people already have at their disposal
• Make equipment easy to assemble and intuitive
• Price it at a level people can afford
• Think about how use can be replicated - how will other NGOs find out about it?
• Assume a situation of no internet connectivity
• Where possible, give users an ability to connect with others - for example through a forum (this has been particularly successful at FrontlineSMS, with a third of those who download the software joining the online community)
• Don't let a social science approach dominate - it is much better to think in a multi-disciplinary way
• Use technology that is appropriate to the context - don't bring in tools that require knowledge and equipment not already held in the community
• Collaborate, don't compete. Sometimes NGOs can rush to do the same things; examples of genuine cooperation are hard to find

Looking ahead, Ken will be developing functionality for FrontlineSMS that makes use of internet connectivity where this is available. He is also working on finding additional funding to help organizations pay for text messages.

Jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Center for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies, and The Stanford Institute for Creativity & the Arts (SiCa).

David E. Hoffman is a contributing editor at the Washington Post and has been a journalist for 30 years. He came to Washington in 1977 to cover Congress, and later served as the Washington correspondent for the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury-News. He covered Ronald Reagan's campaign for the presidency in 1980, and was national economics correspondent for Knight-Ridder Newspapers. In 1982, he came to The Washington Post to cover the Reagan presidency. As a White House correspondent, he covered the major U.S.-Soviet summits of the Reagan years, including Geneva and Reykjavik, as well as domestic policy and politics. After Reagan left office, he covered the George H. W. Bush presidency. Later, he was diplomatic correspondent at the time the Soviet Union collapsed, and then served as Jerusalem correspondent, covering the Oslo peace accords. From 1995 to 2001, he served as Moscow bureau chief. His first book, based on reporting in Moscow, was The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia (PublicAffairs, 2002). On returning to Washington in 2001, he was Foreign editor and then Assistant Managing Editor for Foreign news, managing the Post's foreign service, until 2009.

The term laser weapon implies the use of a laser as part of a so-called directed energy weapon (DEW). In that case, the laser energy is causing the target damage. Military research led to the development of experimental lasers with continuous output powers up to 140 kW in 1966 and two Megawatts in 1980. However, those systems were huge and not part of laser weapon systems.

Since the 1980s the development in the military continued. Remarkably, civilian lasers, developed for industrial machining, have now reached output powers, which can be useful for DEW applications, too. Recently, several prototypes came into operation. On the one hand, there are industry-funded projects that use civilian of-the-shelf industrial lasers. On the other hand, there is government-funded research, which aims at high power laser systems. Major defense companies in the United States and elsewhere are working on both tracks.

Anti-satellite (ASAT) laser engagements would be a revolutionary laser application, as they would in principle enable an option of attacks on satellites with only minor debris. At the moment, attacking satellites implies the use of missiles with kinetic or explosive warheads. A kinetic impact creates debris, which would be harmful to the attacker's space assets, too. For that reason, space faring nations are discouraged from using kinetic energy attacks.

This fact enacts a kind of "natural" arms control. Lasers could change this situation, if they are used to heat up satellites just to a point where their electronics are damaged or only to impair their sensors. Hence, attacks on satellites would be more likely, if laser DEW with anti-satellite capabilities are fielded in peacetime. In a time of crisis, this would create additional political instabilities, as satellites are important early warning and reconnaissance assets.  A deployment of laser ASATs could eventually lead to an arms race in space. In order to make this scenario less likely arms control mechanism could be implemented.

This talk will focus on the technological background of laser ASATs. After a short introduction into recent technological developments, it will be examined whether current laser technology has the ability to endanger satellites. To achieve this, a physics-based method has been devised to assess laser DEW engagements. Damage mechanisms as well as possible distinctions between industrial laser setups and laser weapons will be examined in greater detail.  Options for controlling laser ASATs and obstacles for the implementations of such controls will be introduced.

Jan Stupl is a Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. His research concerns the current developments in laser technology regarding a possible application of lasers as an anti-satellite weapon (ASAT), as well as the proliferation of ballistic missiles. The research on laser ASATs focuses on damage mechanisms, the potential sources and countries of origin of laser ASATs and ways to curb their international proliferation. Regarding missiles, Jan is interested in the methods which are used to acquire ballistic missiles and possible ways to control this process.

Before coming to CISAC, Jan was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Peace Research and Security Policy (IFSH) at the University of Hamburg, Germany. His PhD dissertation was a physics-based analysis of future of High Energy Lasers and their application for missile defense and focused on the Airborne Laser missile defense system. This work was jointly supervised by the IFSH, the Institute of Laser and System Technologies at Hamburg University of Technology and the physics department of Hamburg University, where he earned his PhD in 2008.

Jan studied physics at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany and at Warwick University in Coventry, UK. He concluded his undergraduate physics degree with a thesis in laser physics, receiving a German National Diploma in Physics in 2004. His interest in security policy and international politics was fuelled by an internship at the United Nations in New York in 2003.

Clay Moltz joined the National Security Affairs faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in June 2007. Since November 2008, he has held a joint appointment with the Space Systems Academic Group at NPS. He currently teaches Space and National Security, Nuclear Strategy and National Security, International Relations, and Northeast Asian Security. Prior to his appointment at NPS, he served for 14 years in various positions at the Monterey Institute’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies, including: deputy director from 2003-2007, director of the Newly Independent States Nonproliferation Program from 1998-2003, and founding editor of The Nonproliferation Review from 1993-98. He was also a faculty member in the Monterey Institute’s Graduate School of International Policy Studies.

Dr. Moltz received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds an M.A. in Russian and East European Studies and a B.A. in International Relations (with Distinction) from Stanford University. Dr. Moltz worked previously as a staff member in the U.S. Senate and has served as a consultant to the NASA Ames Research Center, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment. He held prior academic positions at Duke University and at the University of California, San Diego.

What happens to armed organizations after they sign peace accords? Why do they dissolve, return to war, or form non-violent political parties? This seminar addresses and seeks to explain this empirical variation in former armed groups’' trajectories, using extensive micro-level data on the Colombian paramilitaries. In so doing, it seeks to contribute an organizational-level study of peace-building. The trajectories explored in this seminar fundamentally shape prospects for peace, state-building, and democratization, influence post-war patterns of human rights abuses, and impact the legalization of war economies.

Sarah Zukerman Daly is a 2009-2010 Predoctoral Fellow and Visiting Scholar.  She is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sarah holds a BA (2003) with Distinction in International Relations from Stanford University and a MS (2004) with Distinction in Development Studies from the London School of Economics. She is also an alumna of the 2002-2003 CISAC Undergraduate Honors Program.

Sarah's dissertation analyzes variation in demilitarized groups' post-war trajectories. Specifically, it asks, why, in the aftermath of peace agreements, do armed actors form political parties, remilitarize, or go out of business? Her other current projects seek to explain sub-national variation in insurgency onset in Colombia; state strategies towards ethnic minorities in the former Soviet Union; and the role of emotions in transitional justice.

This talk will address alternative options for European ballistic missile defense, including the now cancelled Polish-Czech option and the recently announced Obama plan for a phased deployment of Standard Missile 3 interceptors in and around Europe. This talk will also address recent Iranian progress in developing medium-range ballistic missiles and possible missile defense cooperation with Russia.

Dean Wilkening is a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University and worked at the RAND Corporation prior to coming to Stanford. His major research interests include nuclear strategy and policy, arms control, the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons, bioterrorism, ballistic missile defense, and energy and security. His most recent research focuses on the broad strategic and political implications of ballistic missile defense deployments in Northeast Asia, South Asia and Europe. Prior work focused on the technical feasibility of boost-phase ballistic missile defense interceptors. His recent work on bioterrorism focuses on understanding the scientific and technical uncertainties associated with predicting the outcome of hypothetical airborne biological attacks and the human effects of inhalation anthrax, with the aim of devising more effective civil defenses. He has participated in, and briefed, several US National Academy of Science committees on biological terrorism and consults for several US national laboratories and government agencies.