When some 140 Stanford students and faculty recently gathered to simulate an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, they had some real-world data that had never been used before: satellite images of Iran’s Arak nuclear facility.

Students at the two-day simulation for CISAC’s signature class, “International Security in a Changing World,” were given this hypothetical allegation: Iran has violated the conditions of the November 2013 deal on its nuclear program by moving material between its nuclear facilities.

As the students were debating how to handle the allegation – purposely injected into the simulation in the form of a leak to heighten tensions – mock representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency provided the delegations with satellite images that indicated no movement at the nuclear facility in question.

While the emergency was phony, the premise was very real. As were many of the documents, reports and satellite images used by the students and faculty to craft their stands and trip up their opponents as they played out their roles.

Skybox Imaging, a 5-year-old Silicon Valley firm started by four Stanford grads, provided the satellite images taken just days before the simulation in early February. The co-founders of Skybox established the information and analytics firm in 2009 using a business plan they developed as students in the class, “Technology Venture Formation.”

One of those co-founders, Dan Berkenstock, had also taken “International Security in a Changing World” as well as another popular class, “Technology and National Security,” co-taught by CISAC faculty member and former Secretary of Defense William Perry and Senior Fellow Siegfried Hecker.

Berkenstock, who was working on his Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics, became fascinated by ways technology might aid international security.

“The class became a major inspiration in starting Skybox,” Berkenstock said. “I was interested in satellites and the kind of data that they could create on the technical side, but I was really interested in much more of the analyses of those images and the stories that were locked within them.”

He said he realized that they could take the value of satellite imagery and “help people make better and safer decisions.”

Skybox, based in Mountain View, designed, built and then launched its first satellite, SkySat-1, from Russia last November. Two more satellites are scheduled to launch later this year; another six next year. The firm intends to eventually have 24 satellites in orbit to see any spot on earth multiple times a day. They also have produced the first high-resolution video from space.

“It’s about being able to monitor the ebb and flow of natural resources, the production of commodities, the activities of new construction and damage to old infrastructure and transportation,” Berkenstock said. “All those things, they define not just security; they really define our global economy. How many cars were there in the Walmart parking lot before the storm? How many tanks were there in a military base in Syria?” 

Students were given two images that showed Iran's Arak nuclear facility on two different dates.

Students were given two images that showed Iran's Arak nuclear facility on two different dates. Photo Credit: Skybox Imaging

CISAC co-director, Amy Zegart, who co-teaches “International Security in a Changing World” with CISAC’s terrorism expert, Martha Crenshaw, said the Skybox images injected a dose of reality to the simulation.

“Students could see up close and personal just what satellite imagery of one of Iran's nuclear facilities looks like, what it shows, what it can't, what questions it raises,” she said. “Typically, students in international security classes see grainy satellite images from the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. It's important history, but it's distant. Skybox gave us fresh images from Iran's Arak reactor. The imagery was real, important, immediate, and cool.”

Zegart, one of the country’s leading intelligence experts, said Skybox is at the forefront of a “tectonic shift in intelligence.”

“It used to be that all the most important sources and methods of detecting threats like nuclear weapons programs rested in the hands of governments,” she said. “Not anymore. Enterprising companies, NGOs, and even individuals are producing and assessing information like never before – using commercial satellite images, smart phones, Google, you name it.”

Policymakers don’t control information like they used to, Zegart said. They have to find creative ways to harness new tools to understand security threats.

“Real world leaders are grappling with this new information universe, and we wanted Stanford students to grapple with it, too,” she said.

Keshav Dimri, a CISAC honors student who played the role of the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, said the students did indeed grapple with the rapidly changing data they were given during the simulation.

“The use of satellite images was definitely a challenge because it forced us to back up our political rhetoric with technical data,” said Dimri, a history major. “The use of satellite imagery required many of us to leave our political science comfort zones and examine, analyze and quickly react to new data – the sort of spontaneous thinking we might need in a real negotiation.”

In the end, Dimri persuaded the class the allegations about movement at Iran’s nuclear plant were unfounded. While not resolving all of the outstanding historical issues, the students passed a resolution that allowed Tehran and the rest of the world to move forward.

Stanford Law School Professor Allen Weiner plays the UN Secretary-General.

Stanford Law School Professor Allen Weiner plays the UN Secretary-General. Photo Credit: Rod Searcey

CISAC and FSI Senior Fellow Siegfried Hecker has been awarded the prestigious Science Diplomacy Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his dedication to building bridges through science.

Hecker, director emeritus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and CISAC co-director from 2007-2012, was honored at the AAAS’s annual conference in Chicago for his “lifetime commitment to using the tools of science to address the challenges of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism and his dedication to building bridges through science during the period following the end of the Cold War."

In nominating Hecker for the 2013 award, Glenn E. Schweitzer, director of the Office for Central Europe and Eurasia at the National Academies, noted that Hecker has been particularly effective in working with government officials and scientific colleagues in Russia, Kazakhstan and North Korea.

"For over two decades, Dr. Hecker has worked on international nuclear security activities and fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials," said AAAS Chief International Officer Vaughan Turekian.

Schweitzer wrote in his nomination that Hecker's activities can be judged on two outcomes: responsible handling of nuclear materials and prevention of dangerous materials from falling into the wrong hands. "On both counts, he scores very high on anyone's ledger," Schweitzer wrote. "In addition, his openness and respect for the views of others have won important friends for the United States around the world."

More details about the award and Hecker's work can be read here.

Please join CISAC in congratulating Hecker for this honor.

When Michael McFaul steps down from his post as Washington’s ambassador to Moscow later this month, he will return to Stanford where he is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a former director of the institute’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).

Announcing his decision this week to leave Russia following the Winter Olympics, McFaul wrote on his blog that "it is time to come home."

"We are immensely proud of the service Michael McFaul has rendered in these past five years of steering U.S. policy toward Russia, first at the National Security Council and then for the past two years as U.S. Ambassador to Russia," said CDDRL Director Larry Diamond. "During this time, he has navigated skillfully through some of the toughest challenges in U.S. foreign policy, showing that it is possible for the United States to advance its strategic interests while also standing up for its values of freedom, democracy and an open society."  

At Stanford, McFaul will resume his academic activities as a professor in the department of political science, a resident faculty member at CDDRL and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

"Ambassador McFaul's return is a sterling opportunity for Stanford and FSI," said FSI Director Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar. "His unique experience as a diplomat and a leading scholar are enormous assets to our centers and educational programs, and to the entire university."

McFaul has worked in the Obama administration for the past five years, and was tapped as ambassador in 2011. He arrived in Russia with the mandate to reset relations with Moscow, which proved to be challenging in a political climate marked by increasing tensions between the two countries. From the ban on U.S. adoptions to the Edward Snowden affair, McFaul faced many setbacks as he embarked on his political mandate.

Nevertheless, McFaul leaves Moscow citing major gains in improving trade and tourism between the two countries, having worked to secure Russia's membership to the World Trade Organization and a new visa regime. He was also integral to negotiating the historic agreement with Russia to eliminate Syrian chemical weapons.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry praised McFaul's service in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, "From the New START Treaty to securing Russian cooperation on Iran’s nuclear program, to resupplying our troops in Afghanistan and expanding our trade, there’s scarcely an issue in our bilateral agenda that didn’t benefit from Mike’s steady hand and good old fashioned willpower."

Kerry continued to commend McFaul's deep commitment and engagement with Russian civil society on human rights and the independent media, which often invoked tension with the Russian government.

McFaul was a trailblazer in public diplomacy, using the social media platforms Twitter and Facebook to connect to audiences in Russia and beyond. In his blog, McFaul admits to never having sent a tweet before his time as ambassador but now reaches over 60,000 followers through his Twitter account.

"He grasped the importance of social media in an information age, but he also grasped a much more essential truth: that all people everywhere should be able to express themselves and, ultimately, determine how they are governed," said Kerry. "That’s an enduring conviction, and Mike leaves behind an enduring legacy."

William J. Perry was only 18 when he found himself surrounded by death, a young U.S. Army mapping specialist in Japan during the Army of Occupation. The atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and World War II had just come to an end. 

“The vast ruins that once had been the great city of Tokyo – nothing, nothing had prepared me for such utter devastation that was wrought by massive waves of firebombing rained down by American bomber attacks,” said Perry, who was then shipped off to the island of Okinawa in the aftermath of the last great battle of WWII.

More than 200,000 soldiers and civilians had been killed in that closing battle of 1945, codenamed Operation Iceberg. 

“Not a single building was left standing; the island was a moonscape denuded of trees and vegetation,” Perry told a rapt audience during a recent speech. “The smell of death was still lingering.” 

The young man quickly understood the staggering magnitude of difference in the destruction caused by traditional firepower and these new atomic bombs.

 “It had taken multiple strikes by thousands of bombers and tens of thousands of high explosive bombs to lay waste to Tokyo,” he recalls. “The same had been done to Hiroshima and then to Nagasaki with just one plane – and just one bomb. Just one bomb. 

“The unleashing of this colossal force indelibly shaped my life in ways that I have now come to see more clearly,” said Perry, who would go on to become the 19^th secretary of defense. “It was a transforming experience. In many ways – I grew up from it.” 

William J. Perry in 1945 in his U.S. Army Air Corps uniform.

William J. Perry in 1945 in his U.S. Army Air Corps uniform.  Photo Credit: U.S. Army

Now, nearly seven decades later, the 86-year-old Perry has come full circle. His new winter course will take students back to his fateful days in Japan after the United States became the first – and last – nation to use atomic weapons. He’ll go through the Cold War, the arms race and expanding nuclear arsenals, and today’s potential threats of nuclear terrorism and regional wars provoked by North Korea, Iran or South Asia. 

Living at the Nuclear Brink: Yesterday & Today (IPS 249) – to serve as the backdrop for an online course at Stanford next year – concludes with the declaration Perry made in 2007: The world must rid itself entirely of nuclear weapons. And students will get a primer on how to get involved in organizations that are working on just that. 

“They did not live through the Cold War, so they were never exposed to the dangers and therefore it doesn’t exist to them; it’s just not in their world,” Perry said of millennial and younger students. “I want to make them aware of what the dangers were and how those dangers have evolved.”

Perry and former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, both Democrats, joined former Republican Secretaries of State George P. Shultz and Henry A. Kissinger in launching a series of OpEds in The Wall Street Journal (the first in 2007) that went viral. Together they outlined how nations could work together toward a world without nuclear weapons.

“I think I have some responsibility since I helped build those weapons – and I think that time is running out,” Perry said in an interview. 

Perry helped shore up the U.S. nuclear arsenal as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, procuring nuclear weapons delivery systems for the Carter administration. Later, as secretary of defense for President Bill Clinton, his priority became the dismantling of nuclear weapons around the world. 

Today, he works on the Nuclear Security Project along with Shultz, Kissinger and Nunn. Former New York Times correspondent Philip Taubman documents their bipartisan alliance in the book, “The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb.” That fifth cold warrior is Sidney Drell, the renowned Stanford physicist and co-founder of CISAC. 

Taubman, a consulting professor at CISAC, will guest lecturer in Perry’s class, along with CISAC’s Siegfried Hecker, David Holloway, Martha Crenshaw and Scott Sagan. Other speakers are expected to include Shultz, a distinguished fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution; Andrei Kokoshin, deputy of the Russian State Duma; Ashton B. Carter, who just stepped down as deputy secretary of defense; Joseph Martz of the Los Alamos National Laboratory; and Joeseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund.

The world is far from banning the bomb. According to the Ploughshares Fund, an estimated 17,300 nuclear weapons remain in the global stockpile, the majority of which are in Russia and the United States.

                                                                                                CyperusMedia.com

President Barack Obama declared shortly after taking office in his first foreign policy speech in Prague that because the United States was the only country to have used nuclear weapons, Washington “has a moral responsibility to act.” 

“So today, I state clearly and with conviction, America’s commitment to seek the peace

and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” Obama said back in May 2009. 

Perry – a senior fellow at CISAC who received his BS and MS from Stanford and a PhD from Pennsylvania State University, all in mathematics – laments the regression of the movement to dismantle the nuclear legacy of the Cold War. 

Obama has so far not acted on his pledge in his contentious second term, as China and Russia expand their stockpiles. North Korea and Iran are attempting to build nuclear weapons and India and Pakistan are building more fissile material. The U.S. Senate still has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the U.S. and Russia have not moved forward on a follow-up to the New START Treaty. 

Perry recognizes that the issue is slipping from the public conscience, particularly among young people. So he’s putting his name and experience behind a Stanford Online course slated to go live next year. It will correspond with the release of his memoir, “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink” and will take a more documentary approach, weaving together key moments in Perry’s career with lectures, archival footage and interviews and conversations between Perry and his colleagues and counterparts. 

"Bill Perry has had a remarkable career and this project draws on his unparalleled experience over a pivotal period in history," said John Mitchell, vice provost for online learning. "We hope his brilliant reflections will be useful to everyone with an interest in the topic, and to teachers and students everywhere." 

At the heart of his winter course, online class and memoir are what Perry calls the five great lessons he learned in the nuclear age. The first four are grim remnants of what he witnessed over the years: the destructive nature of the atomic bombs on Japan; his mathematical calculations about the number of deaths from nuclear warfare; his work for the CIA during the Cuban Missile Crisis; and one pre-dawn call in 1978 from the North American Aerospace Defense Command saying there were 200 missiles headed toward the United States from the Soviet Union. That turned out to be a false, but terrifying alarm. 

His fifth final lesson is hopeful, if not cautionary. It goes like this: 

As secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997, Perry oversaw the dismantling of 8,000 nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union and the United States and helped the former Soviet states of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus to go entirely non-nuclear. In that mission, he often visited Pervomaysk in the Ukraine, which was once the Soviet Union’s largest ICBM site, with 700 nuclear warheads all aimed at targets in the United States. 

On his final trip to Pervomaysk in 1996, he joined the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministers to plant sunflowers where those missiles had once stood. 

“So reducing the danger of nuclear weapons is not a fantasy; it has been done,” Perry said. “I will not accept that it cannot be done. I shall do everything I can to ensure nuclear weapons will never again be used – because I believe time is not on our side.”