Stanford University

A Former South African Politician’s Effort to Combat Misinformation in Elections

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image of Julie Owono and Phumzile Van Damme on blue background

Join us on Tuesday, May 31st from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for "A Former South African Politician’s Effort to Combat Misinformation in Elections" featuring Phumzile Van Damme, former Member of Parliament in South Africa, in conversation with Julie Owono of the Content Policy & Society Lab (CPSL). This weekly seminar series is jointly organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative.

About the Seminar: 

Misinformation during elections is a serious concern for democratic systems around the world. This is particularly true in various African countries, cases of electoral violence have been linked to disruptions in the informational realm. Yet, the underinvestment by technology companies in initiatives to limit the existence and impact of disinformation in Africa remains a reality.

Local initiatives have attempted to mitigate this inequality. This week’s webinar will focus on the work of Former South African MP Phumzile Van Damme, who launched a project to tackle the spread of misinformation on social media platforms before and during the local government elections in November 2021. She will share on the methodology used, and results observed. The webinar will also discuss the challenges faced in ensuring that South African users and citizens have access to reliable information.
 

About the Speakers:

Phumzile Van Damme is an independent consultant on disinformation and digital rights. She is a member of the Real Facebook Oversight Board, the International Grand Committee on Disinformation, and an advisory council member of #ShePersisted. Van Damme’s work on misinformation was the subject of a documentary that premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2020, “Influence.” 
 
A former Member of Parliament in South Africa, Van Damme served on the Communications and Digital Technologies committee as Shadow Minister. She played a pivotal role in holding social media platforms accountable for misinformation on their platforms and spearheaded the summoning of Facebook and other tech giants to Parliament. 
 
In September 2021, she helped found and coordinate South Africa’s first electoral disinformation monitoring project, the ‘Local Government Anti-Disinformation Project’. She has spoken on various platforms on the subject of disinformation including at the UNDP and the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Julie Owono is the Executive Director of the Content Policy & Society Lab (CPSL) and a fellow of the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) at Stanford University. She is also the Executive Director of digital rights organization Internet Sans Frontières, one of the inaugural members of the Facebook Oversight Board, and an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. She holds a Master’s degree in International Law from la Sorbonne University in Paris, and practiced as a lawyer at the Paris Bar. 

With a fluency in five languages, a childhood spent in various countries, and an educational background at the Lyçée Français Alexandre Dumas in Moscow, Julie has a unique perspective to understand the challenges and opportunities of a global Internet. This background has shaped her belief that global and multi stakeholder collaborations can be instrumental in the emergence of rights-based content policies and regulations.

Phumzile Van Damme
Seminars

Health Economics Seminar: Luca Maini

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REGISTRATION

Luca Maini
Luca Maini, PhD, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School. He focuses on the intersection between industrial organization and health economics and the regulation of pharmaceutical markets.

Talk Title — Mergers that Matter: The Impact of M&A Activity in Pharmaceutical Markets

 

We study how selection affects the analysis of consolidation through merger retrospectives. Using a novel dataset of pharmaceutical acquisitions from 2007–2019, we characterize M&A activity in the pharmaceutical market and examine its impact on prices and coverage of on-patent branded drugs. Approximately one-third of branded drugs are acquired by a different company during their patent terms. Most acquisitions involve drugs that are not direct competitors: only a minority of “overlap” acquisitions consolidate drug ownership in the same therapeutic area. Following an acquisition, acquired products experience an 8% price increase on average and are 1% more likely to be on a restricted formulary coverage tier. However, the effects are concentrated within two relatively small groups of deals less likely to raise regulatory scrutiny. The first group comprises within-market acquisitions whose value falls below the threshold for mandatory reporting. The second group comprises cross-market deals between small pharmaceutical companies, which are unlikely to be considered problematic even when disclosed. Following these acquisitions, prices increase by 60% on average, and drugs are 8% more likely to be on a restricted formulary coverage tier. Our results suggest that antitrust authorities are usually effective at preventing acquisitions that would hurt consumer welfare and that merger retrospectives that do not adequately account for regulatory oversight will underestimate the impact of M&A activity.

REGISTRATION

Encina Commons, Room 119

Seminars

The Russia-Ukraine War: Would Putin Go Nuclear?

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For spring quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

SEMINAR RECORDING

YouTube

                                                                                           

About the Event: After more than three months of fighting, Russian military forces have failed to prevail in Ukraine, and a drawn-out war of attrition appears increasingly likely.  Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have made implied nuclear threats.  Would the lack of battlefield success lead the Kremlin to consider use of nuclear weapons?  CISAC scholars Rose Gottemoeller, David Holloway and Scott Sagan will discuss the possibility of Russian nuclear use, what the Kremlin might do, and how the West should react.

About the Speakers:

Rose Gottemoeller is the Steven C. Házy Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation. Before joining Stanford Gottemoeller was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019, where she helped to drive forward NATO’s adaptation to new security challenges in Europe and in the fight against terrorism.  Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. While Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance in 2009 and 2010, she was the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation.

David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into seven languages, most recently into Chinese. The Chinese translation is due to be published later in 2018. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.

Scott Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He also serves as Chairman of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Sagan has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J. Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person. 

Rose Gottemoeller
David Holloway
Scott Sagan
Seminars
European Security Initiative

From Bagram Airfield to Baghdad and Back Again: a U.S. Military Doctor’s Experience in Two Wars

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For spring quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

SEMINAR RECORDING

YouTube

                                                                                           

About the Event: Following 9/11 the U.S. lead the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and ended with our withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.  We also removed Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq in 2003 and we fought there until the end of 2011.  Our military healthcare system was engaged from the very beginning and provided support that enabled the success of our combat operations and saved lives of Coalition Forces, host nation nationals, and enemy combatants. Mortality from combat injuries was reduced from 24% during the Vietnam War to 10% in OEF and OIF.  Lessons learned from these conflicts have been translated to the civilian world and are reviewed.  The skilled and compassionate care that the US provided to thousands of host nation nationals and our engagement with civilian healthcare in both Afghanistan and Iraq built good will that will, hopefully, be remembered.

About the Speaker: Dr. Dean Winslow, MD is Professor of Medicine with appointments in the Divisions of Hospital Medicine and Infectious Diseases and is a Senior Fellow (courtesy) at CISAC/Freeman Spogli Institute. He has served on the Stanford faculty since 1998 and served from 2003-2008 as Co-Director of Stanford's Infectious Diseases Fellowship Training Program. He was in private practice in Wilmington, Delaware where he started the state’s first multidisciplinary clinic for HIV patients in 1985. In 1988 he joined the DuPont Company where he worked both as a bench scientist on HIV drug resistance then later designed the clinical trials supporting FDA approval of efavirenz. In 1999 he became Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at Visible Genetics Inc. and led the FDA clearance of the TRUGENE HIV-1 drug resistance test. Dr. Winslow joined the staff at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in 2003, where he served as Chief of the Division of AIDS Medicine and later as Chair of the Department of Medicine. In 2015 he was appointed Academic Physician-In-Chief at Stanford/ValleyCare and Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at Stanford. He was a Resident Fellow in Robinson House 2013-2017 and was visiting faculty at Oxford University in 2017. He was Lead Physician for the US Antarctic Program of the National Science Foundation 2019-2020 based at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. He is a participant on the National Security Task Force of the Hoover Institution. He served as a flight surgeon in the USAF and Air National Guard from 1980-2015 retiring as a colonel. After 9/11 he deployed twice to Afghanistan and 4 times to Iraq supporting combat operations.  In 2008 he served as commander of the USAF EMEDS in Baghdad during the surge. He has logged 1150 military flying hours including 431 combat hours/263 combat sorties.  He has extensive operational experience in fighter, tactical airlift, and combat rescue missions. His 39 military decorations include the Legion of Merit, 3 Air Medals, 4 Aerial Achievement Medals, and the Air Force Combat Action Medal.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person. 

Dean Winslow
Seminars

Special Video Address by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine

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Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) is honored to host the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for a video address to the Stanford community about Ukraine’s fight against Russia in its war for independence, freedom and global democracy, which calls for the continued support of all the people of the free world.

Following his remarks, President Zelenskyy will answer Stanford student questions. Michael McFaul, director of FSI and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, will introduce the event and moderate the Q&A.

In-person attendence is currently limited to members of the Stanford community and press by invitation. Registration is required for in-person attendence.

For press/media inquries, please contact fsi-communications@stanford.edu.
 

Michael A. McFaul
Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Seminars

Exposure to Untrustworthy Websites in the 2020 US Election

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image of jeff hancock on blue background with ryan moore and ross dahlke

Join us on Tuesday, May 17th from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for “Exposure to Untrustworthy Websites in the 2020 US Election” featuring Jeff Hancock, Ross Dahlke & Ryan Moore of the Social Media Lab. This weekly seminar series is jointly organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative.

About The Seminar: 

Prior research has documented exposure to fake news and online misinformation using large-scale data on individuals’ media use, which has provided important information about the scope and nature of people’s exposure to misinformation online. However, most of this work has made use of data collected during the 2016 US election, and far fewer studies have examined how exposure to misinformation online has changed since 2016. In this paper, we examine exposure to untrustworthy websites in the lead up to the 2020 US election using a dataset of over 7.5 million passively tracked website visits from a nationally representative sample of American adults (N = 1,151). We find that a significantly smaller percentage of Americans were exposed to untrustworthy websites in 2020 compared to in 2016 (as calculated by Guess et al. [2020]). While exposure was concentrated among similar groups of people as it was in 2016, levels of exposure appear to be lower across the board. There were also differences in the role online platforms played in directing people to untrustworthy websites in 2020 compared to 2016. Our findings have implications for future research and practice around online misinformation.

About The Speakers:

Jeff Hancock is the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab and is Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University. Professor Hancock and his group work on understanding psychological and interpersonal processes in social media. The team specializes in using computational linguistics and experiments to understand how the words we use can reveal psychological and social dynamics, such as deception and trust, emotional dynamics, intimacy and relationships, and social support. Recently Professor Hancock has begun work on understanding the mental models people have about algorithms in social media, as well as working on the ethical issues associated with computational social science.

Ross Dahlke, from Westfield, Wisconsin, is pursuing a PhD in theory and research in the Stanford Social Media Lab at the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with bachelor’s degrees in journalism and political science. Ross’s research focuses on applying AI and computational techniques to understand how people interact with complex systems. Before graduate school, he was a data scientist at a marketing technology firm where he developed machine learning platforms that helped Fortune 500 companies optimize their digital marketing spend in order to drive sales. He has also consulted on dozens of state-wide and local political campaigns. In high school, Ross started a cheese distribution business which has sold more than $3 million in cheese.

Ryan Moore studies how features of new media platforms and technologies affect the consumption, processing, and sharing of information, especially information about politics and news. In addition, he is interested in the role that age plays in internet and technology use, particularly as it relates to encountering deceptive or misleading content.

Seminars

Geopolitics of Technology in East Asia

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two logos displayed on blue abstract background, Korea Foundation and Stanford's GTG program

Geopolitics of Technology in East Asia

 

WHEN: May 17 & May 18 
WHERE: Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center (IN PERSON) or Live Webcast


AGENDA: 

Day 1 of the workshop will focus on the strategic dimensions of industrial policy relating to digital goods and services. Key topics include national security reviews of inbound and outbound investments, export controls, and supply chain risks, with a view towards identifying areas that are ripe for multilateral alignment as well as points of friction and options for managing those points of friction. Elaborating the respective roles and responsibilities of government and private sector actors will be an important theme.

Day 2 of the workshop will focus on regulatory policy and workforce challenges and opportunities, especially AI and its ecosystem of supporting technologies. 
 

FULL AGENDA

Andrew Grotto

Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center or Live Webcast

Seminars

The Russia-Ukraine War: A View from Kyiv

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For spring quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

SEMINAR RECORDING

YouTube

                                                                                  


About the Event: The war that Russia inflicted on Ukraine is now well into its third month, with little sign the Kremlin has given up on its hope of achieving a victory on the battlefield.  Ukraine has impressed the world with the determination and tenacity of its resistance to the Russian invasion.  Vitaliy Sych, a long-time Kyiv-based journalist, will share his perspective on how the Ukrainian government, military and people are holding up in the face of Russia’s aggression.  

About the Speaker: Vitaliy Sych launched his career as a journalist with the Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s English-language newspaper in 1997, becoming business editor, then nation editor in 2000.  He later moved to the Korrespondent weekly magazine, helping to build it into one of the most respected media outlets in Ukraine.  He and a large part of the editorial team left Korrespondent in 2013 when a new owner imposed a stifling editorial policy, and they founded NV, a new weekly magazine that quickly earned a reputation for reliable and accurate reporting.  In addition to the magazine, NV now manages a news site and talk radio. 

Virtual 

Vitaliy Sych
Seminars
European Security Initiative

Explaining Indian Military Strategy in the Kargil War

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For spring quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

SEMINAR RECORDING

YouTube

                                                                                           

About the Event: What explains the consistent patterns – and exceptions – in Indian wartime strategy? In most of its wars, the Indian military has used a similar military strategy – to gain limited advantage on the battlefield as a way of consolidating the strategic status quo. The key exception was the eastern theater in the 1971 war, in which it sought – and won – battlefield decision to effect a major territorial revision. Much of contemporary international relations scholarship elides questions of strategy altogether, treating combat as an abstract contest of material power or resolve. Scholarship that does deal with strategy often seeks to explain consistency through strategic culture, or evolutions in military doctrine; but cannot explain patterns and exceptions in wartime behavior. This paper offers an explanation of military strategy as a function of the state’s geopolitical risk assessment and its military’s organizational preferences. Dr. Tarapore illustrates the argument with a detailed case study of the 1999 Kargil war, in which India was cautioned by the risk of nuclear retaliation, and the military pursued a tightly limited campaign. This research has implications not only for our understanding of Indian strategic behavior, but also theoretical debates on conventional deterrence and conflict processes.

About the Speaker: Dr. Arzan Tarapore is the South Asia research scholar at Stanford University's Asia-Pacific Research Center, and a senior nonresident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research. His research focuses on military strategy, Indian defense policy, and Indo-Pacific security issues. He previously held research positions at the RAND Corporation, the East-West Center in Washington, and the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. Prior to his scholarly career, he served for 13 years in the Australian Defence Department. Arzan holds a PhD in war studies from King's College London.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J. Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person. 

Arzan Tarapore
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

Health Security Beyond Epidemics

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For spring quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

SEMINAR RECORDING

YouTube

About the Event: Over the past decade, global health threats such as pandemics have been increasingly framed as national security threats due to their perceived potential to exacerbate conflict, increase poverty and terrorism, and ability to inspire fear. Such elements of securitization can now be viewed as permanent features of public health governance. While the articulation of health issues as global threats has led to an increase in global health financing, it has also diverted funds from fundamental public health concerns - such as widely prevalent chronic diseases - towards infectious diseases such as Ebola and Covid-19. This panel approaches health security beyond epidemics from two novel perspectives: bioethics and humanitarianism. Using expert qualitative interviews, we explore the ethical implications of the increasing securitization of health and its effects on medical humanitarian action in the middle East. This seminar will be moderated by Paul H. Wise.

About the Speakers:

Dr. Frances Butcher is a Predoctoral Fellow at CISAC and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oxford’s Ethox Centre and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities.  By background, she is a Specialty Registrar (physician) in public health undertaking dual clinical-research training. Frances has a medical degree from Brighton and Sussex Medical School, an MA in Bioethics and Society from King’s College London, and an MSc in Global Health Science from the University of Oxford. She was also a 2019 Fellow on the Johns Hopkins Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Program.

Dr. Sigrid Lupieri holds a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge. Her research investigates how security concerns and foreign policy agendas shape humanitarian action in the Middle East. Focusing on the Syrian refugee response in Jordan, her book project traces the effects of security and diplomatic interests on humanitarian health spending, and on the allocation of resources. Dr. Lupieri holds an MPhil in History from the University of Cambridge and an M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University. Previously, she worked as a journalist in Armenia, Georgia, and Germany, and as a UN officer in New York and New Delhi.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J. Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person. 

Frances Butcher
Sigrid Lupieri
Seminars
Research Seminar Series
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