**WE ARE AT FULL CAPACITY - PLEASE ARRIVE EARLY FOR A SEAT**

Japan has long been known as a technology giant, and remains highly entrepreneurial, despite slowed competiveness in the years following the financial crisis of the 1990s. How can Japan continue to reinvigorate its economy? What steps can Japanese and Silicon Valley-based actors take to facilitate long-term, beneficial partnerships?

Ambassador John Roos, who served as U.S. ambassador to Japan from 2009-13, will explore trends of entrepreneurship in Japan, and compare it to those in Silicon Valley. Roos will address the networks, knowledge sharing patterns, and key challenges, such as political and societal barriers to growth, that both Japan and the United States face. During his tenure as ambassador, Roos focused on innovation and trade issues, including Japan’s announcement to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). He built many relationships and established constructed dialogue surrounding those issues.

This event will feature Roos in conservation with Ambassador Michael H. Armacost, a Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow, who also served as a U.S. ambassador to Japan (1989-1993).

Image

Ambassador John Victor Roos was the U.S. Ambassador to Japan from August 2009-13, a pivotal period in U.S.-Japan relations. Shortly after presenting his credentials to Japan's emperor, power shifted from the Liberal Democratic Party to the Democratic Party of Japan for essentially the first time in 50 years, and Roos played a key role in managing the U.S.-Japan relationship through the transition. Three and a half years later, power shifted back to the LDP, and once again, Roos was called upon to help manage the relationship through a major shift in government.

During his almost four years in Japan, Roos built relationships and established a rich and active dialogue with government leaders, businesspeople, media, and students over the course of his travels through all 47 of Japan's prefectures. In addition to addressing the security, economic, and global challenges that Japan and the United States faced, Roos put specific focus on innovation and entrepreneurship as well as trade issues, including Japan's announced intent to join the TPP. Roos' work with the business sector resulted in his being recognized, along with his wife Susie, as the 2012 American Chamber of Commerce Japan's Persons of the Year.

Prior to his ambassadorial appointment, Roos served as Chief Executive Officer and Senior Partner at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich, & Rosati, a leading law firm in the United States in the representation of technology, life sciences, and emerging growth companies. There he helped lead his firm through multiple waves of innovation in Silicon Valley, from the growth of software and communications, to the Internet Age, to the emergence of biotechnology, clean technology and renewable energy, and to the social media revolution.

Roos is a graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Law School.

Abstract: The hundreds of young Westerners who have gone to fight with the group Islamic State in Syria/ Iraq have caused alarm among security practitioners and policy makers.

Data on Western fighters in past conflicts indicate that a little more than ten percent later turned to terrorism. The rest did not. The unprecedented and growing number of Western fighters in Syria/Iraq threatens to overwhelm the resources of the security agencies of smaller European countries. They can hardly afford to risk pushing returnees, who would otherwise have disengaged, back into the arms of extremist groups. But how to shape countermeasures so they do not work at cross-purposes with the natural disengagement processes, that appear to be at work?

This talk is based on a comprehensive review of case studies, which document voluntary disengagement from violent extremism in a Western context. It identifies broad patterns in terms of how and why individuals disengage, discusses the applicability of these insights to the returnees and discusses policy implications in terms of how to handle the homebound fighters. 

About the Speaker: Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen served as an executive director at the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) from 2008 to 2014. Her areas of responsibility comprised intelligence fusion and strategic terrorism threat analysis, preventive efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism, exit-interventions, and protective security efforts.

Previously, she worked as a research manager and Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). In this capacity she was embedded with Danish armed forces in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan in 2006.

Dalgaard-Nielsen is a non-resident fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She serves on the board of advisor of the Global Center on Cooperative Security, Washington DC and on the Board of Advisors of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the National Defence College in Sweden.

She holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University SAIS, an MA in political science from the University of Aarhus, and an executive MA of public management and governance from Copenhagen Business School and the University of Copenhagen. She has published widely on topics such as terrorism, radicalization, homeland security, peace-keeping operations, and transatlantic relations.