Abstract: Why do states provide nuclear weapons support to other states? This paper analyzes this question by examining China’s nuclear cooperation with Pakistan. Based on an original framework for explaining nuclear weapons support, I argue that two main factors drove China’s decision. First, China did not have to worry about cascade effects because India had already crossed the nuclear threshold. Second, Pakistan had major strategic value to China, and enjoyed a reputation for being a reliable partner. By arming Pakistan, China could maintain a favorable power balance in the region and prevent India from dominating South Asia. 

The paper also criticizes existing supply-side theories of nuclear proliferation. These theories also describe the strategic incentives for helping other states to develop nuclear weapon, but they have largely overlooked the disincentives. I also challenge some of the case-specific literature. This literature claims that China halted its support of Pakistan from the mid-1990s because it finally recognized the dangers of nuclear proliferation. In contrast, I argue that China has continued, albeit more subtly, to support Islamabad’s weapons program.

About the Speaker: Henrik Hiim is a Stanton Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow at MIT. His main research interests are Chinese foreign policy, East Asian security, and nonproliferation and arms control. His dissertation examines the evolution of China’s approach to nuclear nonproliferation, with a special emphasis on policies towards North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan. Henrik holds an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Oslo. He has also studied at Renmin University and Huazhong Normal University in China. During spring 2013, he was a visiting scholar at the School of International Studies at Beijing University. Henrik has worked as a journalist for several Norwegian newspapers.

Abstract: The first Snowden disclosure was that Verizon was providing daily updates of telephony metadata to the NSA. This caused great consternation, and resulted in two government studies, one by the President's NSA Review Committee and one by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.  Both concluded the collection should be ended. The President asked Office of the Director of National Intelligence to produce a report "assessing the feasibility of creating software that would allow the intelligence community more easily to conduct targeted information acquisition rather than bulk collection."  This talk reports on that work, which considered the issue from the angle of technical alternatives, and concluded that there is no technical replacement for bulk data collection, but that software can enhance targeted collection and automate control of data usage. This talk will discuss that report, conducted by the National Research Council, explaining what the report says — and what it doesn't say.

About the Speaker: Susan Landau is Professor of Cybersecurity Policy in the Department of Social Science and Policy Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Landau has been a senior staff Privacy Analyst at Google, a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and at Wesleyan University. She has held visiting positions at Harvard, Cornell, and Yale, and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. Landau is the author of Surveillance or Security?  The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies (MIT Press, 2011), and co-author, with Whitfield Diffie, of Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption (MIT Press, 1998, rev. ed. 2007). She has written numerous scientific and policy research papers, and has also published in other venues, including Science, Scientific American, and the Washington Post. Landau has testified in Congress on cybersecurity and on electronic surveillance. Landau currently serves on the Computer Science Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council.  A 2012 Guggenheim fellow, Landau was a 2010-2011 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the recipient of the 2008 Women of Vision Social Impact Award, and also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for Computing Machinery.  She received her BA from Princeton, her MS from Cornell, and her PhD from MIT.

About the Speaker:

Harvey Koh is a Managing Director at FSG where he co-leads the Inclusive Markets approach area.

Based in Mumbai, Harvey works with both enterprises and philanthropic donors to develop and scale inclusive business models that benefit the poor, with a particular focus on India. His experience spans a number of sectors including housing, water and healthcare, and has ranged from deepening understanding of low-income consumers to helping entrepreneurs refine their business models.

Harvey also directs the research program of the Inclusive Markets area, which aims to advance global thinking and practice in inclusive business and market-based solutions in development. He has lead-authored influential reports on inclusive business and impact investing, and speaks regularly around the world on these topics. These reports include From Blueprint to Scale (Monitor Group with Acumen Fund, 2012), which introduced the notion of the ‘pioneer gap’ in the development of new market-based solutions for the global poor, and Beyond the Pioneer (Monitor Deloitte), which described the scaling barriers facing market-based solutions and makes the case for the practice of ‘industry facilitation’.

Until 2014, Harvey was co-leader of Monitor Inclusive Markets (MIM), a social action unit of Monitor Deloitte. Prior to that, he was the founding head of programs at Private Equity Foundation (now Impetus-PEF), a London-based venture philanthropy organization established by leading US and European private equity firms. He has also worked with The One Foundation and New Philanthropy Capital. Harvey started his career as a consultant with Monitor Group in London where he focused on competitive and growth strategy for multinational corporate clients.

Harvey was born and raised in Malaysia, and holds an MA Cantab from the University of Cambridge, where he read law, economics and resource management.

Abstract: Jason Payne, Palantir's Philanthropy Engineering Lead and Stanford Computer Science BS 2005, will discuss how the fusion and analysis of data sets, including open and public data, can shed light on transnational criminal enterprises. Examples will include human trafficking, weapons trafficking, environmental crime to include ivory poaching, and human tissue trafficking. The talk will also include a discussion on how governmental, commercial, and social sector entities can collaborate, while respecting privacy and civil liberties, to address pressing problem sets around the world.

Abstract: How do states pursue nuclear weapons? This paper develops a typology of strategies of nuclear proliferation, a theory for why states select one strategy over others, and conducts a preliminary test of the theory against the record of nuclear proliferators. Knowing how states pursue nuclear weapons provides important areas of leverage for nonproliferation policies. 

About the Speaker: Vipin Narang is an Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT and member of MIT’s Security Studies Program. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Government, Harvard University in May 2010, where he was awarded the Edward M. Chase Prize for the best dissertation in international relations. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in chemical engineering with distinction from Stanford University and an M. Phil with Distinction in international relations from Balliol College, Oxford University, where he studied on a Marshall Scholarship. He has been a fellow at Harvard University’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, a predoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and a junior faculty fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. His research interests include nuclear proliferation and strategy, South Asian security, and general security studies. His work has been published in several journals including International Security, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and International Organization. His book "Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era" was published by Princeton University Press in 2014.

Much of the world today is preoccupied with threats to non-traditional security (NTS): border-spanning challenges such as terrorism, pandemic disease, and environmental damage that defy traditional approaches to security focused on military conflicts between states. Despite their arguable gravity, NTS threats elicit a baffling array of policy responses, ranging from full-scale securitization and institutionalized management to no response at all. Despite their scope, NTS problems are rarely managed holistically through regional organizations. Instead they are addressed mainly by efforts to alter and enlarge—“rescale”—the authority of the apparatus of the national state to cover specific NTS issues in a variety of locations. The resulting process of state expansion if not transformation is promoted and resisted by domestically competing coalitions of socioeconomic and political forces. Regionalist theory and rhetoric notwithstanding, it is the intra-national struggles among such groups that dictate how these nascent modes of NTS-focused governance operate in practice.  Prof. Jones will illustrate his argument with particular reference to Southeast Asia.

Lee Jones is a senior lecturer in international politics at Queen Mary, University of London, and a research associate at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. His work features the interaction between social conflict, state transformation, and international relations, with a focus on Southeast Asia. His many publications include Governing Borderless Threats: Non-Traditional Security and the Politics of State Transformation (co-authored) and Societies Under Siege: Exploring How International Economic Sanctions (Do Not) Work (both forthcoming in 2015). Earlier work includes ASEAN, Sovereignty and Intervention in Southeast Asia (2012). He has advised governmental and non-governmental agencies in Europe and Asia and regularly appears in British and international media. His DPhil and MPhil are from Oxford. His website is www.leejones.tk and he tweets @DrLeeJones.