Recently, economic sanctions have not been effective in changing the behavior of a sanctioned country. Dr. Yong Lee examines how an autocratic regime domestically counters the impact of economic sanctions, specifically, how the easing and tightening of sanctions impact the urban areas relative to the hinterlands in North Korea. Using the satellite luminosity data, he argues sanctions that fail to change the autocrat's behavior increase inequality at a cost to the already marginalized hinterlands.

Dr. Lee's research intersects the fields of economic development, urban economics and international economics, with a regional focus on Korea and East Asia. His recent work examines the impact of economic sanctions on North Korea's urban elites, and the impact of education policy on migration and intergenerational mobility in South Korea.

Dr. Lee joined the Korea Program as the SK Center Fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) in the fall 2014. Prior to joining Stanford, Lee was an assistant professor of economics at Williams College in Massachusetts. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in architecture from Seoul National University, a master of public policy from Duke University, and a master's degree and doctorate in economics from Brown University. He also worked as a real estate development consultant and architecture designer as he transitioned from architecture to economics.

About the Topic: U.S. government leaders are making extraordinary efforts to prevent and protect against cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure.  Plans for responding to and recovering from such attacks receive far less attention and are deeply flawed -- especially for catastrophic events when effective plans will be most vital.  Given the rapid growth of cyber threats to the power grid and other critical infrastructure, we should not only continue to strengthen prevention and protection measures, but also assume that a catastrophic cyber-attack will occur and ramp up U.S. response plans and capabilities accordingly. I will argue that the Interim National Cyber Incident Response Plan (which governs the U.S. cyber response system) should be replaced by a plan that is better aligned with industry needs and with “traditional” U.S. disaster response plans, especially the National Response Framework. I will also propose how to structure cyber response planning to maximize “deterrence by denial” and reduce the potential attractiveness of attacking U.S. critical infrastructure for state and non-state adversaries. 

About the Speaker: Paul N. Stockton is Managing Director of Sonecon, LLC. Before joining Sonecon, Dr. Stockton served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs from June, 2009 until January, 2013.  In that position, helped lead the Department’s response to Superstorm Sandy and other disasters, guided the Defense Critical Infrastructure Protection program, and oversaw policies and programs to secure DOD’s domestic installations and personnel against terrorism. In September, 2013, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel appointed Dr. Stockton to co-chair the Independent Review of the Washington Navy Yard Shootings, which recommended major changes to the Department’s security clearance system that are now being implemented.  Dr. Stockton’s recent publications include articles on cyber security in the Yale Law and Policy Review and other journals. Dr. Stockton holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and a BA Summa Cum Laude from Dartmouth College.

Abstract: Zero-day exploits (ZDEs) are programs that make use of newly-discovered software vulnerabilities to allow attackers to break into and manipulate information systems. A market for software vulnerabilities and exploits has developed, with military and intelligence agencies sometimes paying over $100,000 for exploits and software vendors offering bounties for their disclosure. Labeled a ‘digital arms race’ by some, it is generating a transnational debate about control and regulation of cyber capabilities, the role of secrecy and disclosure in cybersecurity, the ethics of exploit production and use, and the implications of trading software vulnerabilities for a secure and reliable Internet.

This research uses concepts and methods of science and technology studies (STS) and institutionalism to the debate over the production, sale and regulation of ZDEs. The goal of this research is to advance understanding of the way discourses are related to the emergence of governance institutions. The work also sheds light on the socio-technical and economic consequences of efforts to control software vulnerabilities and exploits, and make more transparent applications of ZDEs and cyber capabilities.

This talk will report on the ongoing dissertation work and explore how the discourse on software vulnerabilities and exploits is co-produced along with new institutions and practices in cybersecurity.

About the Speaker: Andreas Kuehn is a Ph.D. Candidate in Information Science and Technology and a Fulbright Scholar at Syracuse University. He joined CISAC as a Zukerman Cybersecurity Predoctoral Fellow in October 2014. Before joining Stanford, he was a visiting graduate student at Cornell University’s Department of Science & Technology Studies.

In his dissertation research, Andreas examines the discourse and the emerging institutions in cybersecurity with a particular focus on software vulnerability and exploit markets. The trade with exploitable security flaws in software and their use in cyber attacks has sparked a controversy about the control and regulation of information technology, and the role of secrecy and disclosure in achieving cybersecurity. While at CISAC, Andreas is conducting qualitative, empirical research on cybersecurity institutions.

His broader research agenda is informed by Science and Technology Studies and Internet Governance to study emerging technology and its relation to privacy, security, and surveillance. Previous research included an NSF-funded project on deep packet inspection technology (DPI) and its implications on Internet governance (www.deeppacket.info), and the use of information technology in the public administration (e.g., enterprise architecture, standardization, interoperability).

Andreas worked in various research positions for the Austrian Ministry of Finance, the Swiss E-Government Institute, the Swiss Federal Office of Communications, and the Malaysian National Advanced IPv6 Centre of Excellence. The Austrian Computer Society awarded him an eGovernment Innovation Award for his research on multidisciplinary actor coordination and collaboration in large scale public ICT efforts. Andreas holds a M.Sc. in Information Systems from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and an M.Phil. in Information Science and Technology from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. He is originally from Zurich, Switzerland.

Abstract: Organizations face a range of cyber threats including spammers, lone hackers, and advanced nation states. Significant uncertainty surrounds how to best secure organizations, and the relative value of different safeguards such as intrusion detection, two-factor authentication, and full disk encryption is unknown. In this talk, I will summarize results from a data analysis performed on a data set from a Research and Development Center and present stochastic models to assess risk in organizations. 

About the Speaker: Marshall is a predoctoral science fellow at CISAC. He is a PhD candidate in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, concentrating in Risk Analysis. Marshall studies quantitative models for cyber security in organizations. He is interested in developing probabilistic modeling techniques to improve decision making regarding defense against cyber threats. 

Abstract: It is often said that economists in general, and CIA analysts in particular, failed to understand until very late in the game just how serious the USSR's economic problems were.  That failure, it was widely claimed, was the root cause of a more general failure on the part of the U.S. policy community to understand what was going on in the Soviet Union during the later Cold War period.  It turns out, however, that the Soviet economic problem was understood from the mid-1960s on;  in intellectual terms, the analysis was quite impressive.  The Soviets themselves, moreover, understood the problem in much the same way as Western economists did.   All this provides us with a key--perhaps the key--to understanding great power politics during the latter part of the Cold War.

About the Speaker: Marc Trachtenberg is Professor of Political Science at the University of California - Los Angeles. He studies national security strategy, diplomatic history, and international relations. He has been Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, and the SSRC/MacArthur Foundation. His award-winning book, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963 (Princeton University Press, 1999), explores the profound impact of nuclear weapons on the conduct of international relations during the Cold War, making extensive use of newly opened documentary archives in Europe and the United States. History and Strategy (Princeton University Press, 1991) studies seminal events like the onset of World War I and the Cuban Missile Crisis to shed light on the role of force in international affairs. Professor Trachtenberg teaches courses on the history of international relations, international security, and historical research methods.