Michael McFaul, director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and several other members of the International Working Group on Russian Sanctions will speak about and answer questions about the group's new white paper, "Action Plan on Strengthening Sanctions against the Russian Federation." The event will begin with brief presentations from these speakers, followed by comments from other members:
 

• Sergei Guriev, Professor of Economics at Sciences Po Paris and former Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.z
• Edward Fishman, former Russia and Europe Lead at the U.S. Department of State Office of Economic Sanctions Policy and Implementation and Member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff.
• Daniel Fried, former State Department Sanctions Coordinator and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs.
• Iryna Mudra, Chief Compliance Officer at the State Savings Bank of Ukraine.
• Natalia Shapoval, Vice President for Policy Research at the Kyiv School of Economics.
• Dr. Benjamin Schmitt, Project Development Scientist at Harvard University, Senior Fellow for Democratic Resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis and Rethinking Diplomacy Fellow at Duke University.

Prof. Yang discusses two current research projects:

AI-tocracy 
Can frontier innovation be sustained under autocracy? We argue that innovation and autocracy can be mutually reinforcing when: (i) the new technology bolsters the autocrat’s power; and (ii) the autocrat’s demand for the technology stimulates further innovation in applications beyond those benefiting it directly. We test for such a mutually reinforcing relationship in the context of facial recognition AI in China. To do so, we gather comprehensive data on AI firms and government procurement contracts, as well as on social unrest across China during the last decade. We first show that autocrats benefit from AI: local unrest leads to greater government procurement of facial recognition AI, and increased AI procurement suppresses subsequent unrest. We then show that AI innovation benefits from autocrats’ suppression of unrest: the contracted AI firms innovate more both for the government and commercial markets. Taken together, these results suggest the possibility of sustained AI innovation under the Chinese regime: AI innovation entrenches the regime, and the regime’s investment in AI for political control stimulates further frontier innovation.

Exporting the Surveillance State via Trade in AI 
What are the international ramifications of China’s emergent leadership in facial recog- nition AI? We collect global data on facial recognition AI trade deals and document two facts. First, we show that China has a comparative advantage in this technology. It exports substantially more facial recognition AI than other countries, and particularly so as compared to other frontier technologies. This comparative advantage may stem in part from the Chinese government’s larger demand for the technology for do- mestic surveillance and political control — a form of “home-market” effect — as well as Chinese firms’ access to large government datasets. Second, we find that there is a political bias in China’s facial recognition AI exports. It is more likely to export this technology to autocracies and weak democracies relative to other frontier technologies, in particular to those lacking domestic AI innovation or experiencing political unrest. No such bias is observed for the United States. To the extent that China may be exporting its surveillance state via trade in AI, this can enhance and beget more autocracies abroad. Policymakers should thus frame AI trade regulations around regulations on products with global externalities.

Watch the Recording:

About the Speaker

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David Y. Yang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, a Faculty Research Fellow at NBER and a Global Scholar at CIFAR. David’s research focuses on political economy, behavioral and experimental economics, economic history, and cultural economics. In particular, David studies the forces of stability and forces of changes in authoritarian regimes, drawing lessons from historical and contemporary China. David received a B.A. in Statistics and B.S. in Business Administration from University of California at Berkeley, and PhD in Economics from Stanford.

This event will be held in-person at Stanford University, however, the lecture will be recorded. If you are interested in viewing the recording, please contact Debbie Aube.

Questions? Contact Debbie Aube at debbie.aube@stanford.edu

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Join us on Tuesday, April 26th from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for “Bug Bounties & Bridge-Building: Lessons from Cybersecurity Vulnerability Disclosure for Addressing Socio-Technical Harms” featuring Camille François, Global Director for Trust & Safety at Niantic, Dr. Amit Elazari of Intel, and Alex Rice of HackerOne in conversation with Marietje Schaake of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. 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: 

Join us for a conversation on the nascent adoption of ‘bug bounties,’ a popular bug-for-reward-style audit mechanism in the cybersecurity domain, (and related approaches, such as VDPs and pentesting) to the discovery of various social-technical harms, including those inflicted through algorithmic (or “AI”) systems. 

Following the recent publication by the Algorithmic Justice League (AJL) of a paper on the risks and opportunities presented by this shift, we are joined by one of the paper’s co-authors, Camille François, alongside practitioners with insights into these mechanisms from industry and government perspectives. Together, this group will explore these mechanisms in the context of emerging and historic practices, including as illuminated in AJL’s recent report.

Speakers:

Camille François works on the impacts of technology on society, with an emphasis on cyber conflict and information operations and currently serves as the global director of trust and safety at Niantic and is a lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She was previously the chief innovation officer at Graphika where she oversaw its investigation, analyses and R&D teams and led the company’s work to detect and mitigate disinformation, media manipulation and harassment. François was previously a principal researcher at Google, in the “Jigsaw” team, an innovation unit that builds technology to address global security challenges and protect vulnerable users. François has advised governments and parliamentary committees on both sides of the Atlantic, investigated Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on behalf of the U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee, and served as a special advisor to the chief technology officer of France. François is an affiliate scholar of the Harvard Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, a Fulbright scholar and a Mozilla Fellow. She holds a masters degree in human rights from the French Institute of Political Sciences (Sciences-Po) and a masters degree in international security from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University.

Dr. Amit Elazari is a Director, Global Cybersecurity Policy at Intel Corporation and a Lecturer at University of California (UC), Berkeley School of Information Master in Information and Cybersecurity, as well as a member of the External Advisory Committee for the Center of Long Term Cybersecurity. She holds a Doctoral Degree in the Law (J.S.D.) from UC Berkeley School of Law, the world’s leading law institution for technology law, and graduated summa cum laude three prior degrees in law and business. Her research in cybersecurity, privacy and intellectual property has appeared in leading technology law and computer science journals, presented at conferences such as RSA, Black Hat, USENIX and USENIX Security, and featured at leading news sites such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the New York Times. She practiced law in Israel. 

Alex Rice is a founder and chief technology officer at HackerOne, the world's most popular bug bounty platform. Alex is responsible for developing the HackerOne technology vision, driving engineering efforts, and counseling customers as they build world-class security programs. Alex was previously at Facebook, where he founded the product security team, built one of the industry’s most successful security programs, and introduced new transport layer encryption used by more than a billion users. Alex also serves on the board of the Internet Bug Bounty, a nonprofit organization that enables and encourages friendly hackers to help build a more secure Internet.

SCCEI Spring Seminar Series 

Wednesday, May 25, 2022      11:00 am -12:15 pm Pacific Time

Philippines Room, C330, 3rd Floor, Encina Hall Central, 616 Jane Stanford Way | Zoom Meeting 

Economic Inequality and Social and Demographic Outcomes in China

In this talk, Professor Yu Xie will first document a sharp rise in economic inequality in contemporary China. He then will present results from his research program on the impact of rising economic inequality on a variety of social and demographic outcomes in China: intergenerational mobility, marriage age, marriage partner choice, fertility, and mortality. 

About the Speaker

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Yu Xie is Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 University Professor of Sociology and has a faculty appointment at the Princeton Institute of International and Regional Studies, Princeton University. He is also a Visiting Chair Professor of the Center for Social Research, Peking University. His main areas of interest are social stratification, demography, statistical methods, Chinese studies, and sociology of science.

Xie's recently published works include: Marriage and Cohabitation (University of Chicago Press 2007) with Arland Thornton and William Axinn, Statistical Methods for Categorical Data Analysis with Daniel Powers (Emerald 2008, second edition), and Is American Science in Decline? (Harvard University Press, 2012) with Alexandra Killewald. Xie joined Princeton University in 2015, after 26 years at the University of Michigan, most recently as the Otis Dudley Duncan Distinguished University Professor of Sociology, Statistics and Public Policy and a research professor in the Population Studies Center at Michigan's Institute for Social Research. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Sinica and the National Academy of Sciences.

Seminar Series Moderators

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Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University.  For the past 30 years, he has worked on the economics of poverty reduction. Currently, his work on poverty has its full focus on human capital, including issues of rural health, nutrition and education. For the past 20 year, Rozelle has been the chair of the International Advisory Board of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Most recently, Rozelle's research focuses on the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health and nutrition in China. In recognition of this work, Dr. Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards. Among them, he became a Yangtse Scholar (Changjiang Xuezhe) in Renmin University of China in 2008. In 2008 he also was awarded the Friendship Award by Premiere Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner.  
 

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Hongbin Li is the Co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Hongbin obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2001 and joined the economics department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where he became full professor in 2007. He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the CUHK. He taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing 2007-2016 and was C.V. Starr Chair Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Management. He founded the Chinese College Student Survey (CCSS) in 2009 and the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES) in 2014.

Hongbin’s research has been focused on the transition and development of the Chinese economy, and the evidence-based research results have been both widely covered by media outlets and well read by policy makers around the world. He is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics.

A NOTE ON LOCATION

This seminar is a hybrid event. Please join us in person in the Philippines Room, C330, located within Encina Hall Central on the 3rd floor, or join remotely via Zoom.

Register once to receive the Zoom meeting link that will be used for all lectures in this series.

Questions? Contact Debbie Aube at debbie.aube@stanford.edu

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Please join us on Wednesday, April 20th for a talk with Anna-Maria Osula, visiting scholar from TalTech. At this event co-sponsored by Stanford University Libraries, Anna-Maria will be introducing her research on private sector initiatives to develop and promote cyber norms of behavior.

Research Overview:

Given the multistakeholder nature of running the Internet and governing information and communication technologies, nation-states are not the only entities interested in shaping norms of behavior for cyberspace. Non-state actors are directly impacted by any decision on international norms in cyberspace. They are also expected to behave as responsible actors, being tied by the agreements negotiated by states at the UN platform. This means that non-state actors are involved in building and promoting norms and also playing a role in their interpretation and implementation. Anna-Maria will talk about her research project where she analyzes the private sector involvement in advancing cyber norms in international fora such as the United Nations.

Bio:

Anna-Maria Osula, currently a Global Digital Governance Fellow at Stanford University, is a senior researcher at Tallinn University of Technology and a senior policy officer at Guardtime. Her current research focus is cyber diplomacy and international law applicable to cyber operations. She also serves as a research fellow at Masaryk University under the project “Cyber Security, Cyber Crime and Critical Information Infrastructures Center of Excellence.” Previously, she worked as a legal researcher at the NATO CCDCOE, undertaking projects on national cyber security strategies, international organizations, international criminal cooperation, and norms. In addition to a Ph.D. in law from the University of Tartu, she holds an LLM degree in IT law from Stockholm University.

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Join us on Tuesday, April 19 from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for a book talk on “The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back” featuring Jacob Ward from NBC News, in conversation with Nate Persily of the Cyber Policy Center.  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.

In The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back, Jake argues that AI is about to do to our ability to make decisions for ourselves what Google maps did to our ability to navigate. Drawing on interviews with over 100 scientists and 10-years of front-line reporting from the cutting edge of behavior-shaping technology, Jake’s book is a warning about our growing reliance on AI, and an encouragement to protect the best parts of being human.

Jacob Ward is a correspondent for NBC News, reporting for the TODAY show, Nightly News, MSNBC, and NBC News Now on the unanticipated consequences of science and technology in our lives. From 2018 to 2019, Jacob was a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, along with its partner the Berggruen Institute, which gave him space and companionship on the Stanford campus to write The Loop, his book about the effects of artificial intelligence on human decision making, with Hachette Book Group. Between 2016 and 2020, Jacob hosted a landmark four-hour television series on the science and implications of bias. Prior to that, he was a television correspondent for Al Jazeera, covering science and technology in the US and around the world. He was also editor-in-chief of Popular Science, the world’s largest science and technology publication.

Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication, and FSI.  Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Persily taught at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and as a visiting professor at Harvard, NYU, Princeton, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Melbourne. Professor Persily’s scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law or what is sometimes called the “law of democracy,” which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.  He also served as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. His current work, for which he has been honored as a Guggenheim Fellow, Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, examines the impact of changing technology on political communication, campaigns, and election administration.  He is codirector of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet, and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, which supported local election officials in taking the necessary steps during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide safe voting options for the 2020 election. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a commissioner on the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age.

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About The Seminar: 

Both Taiwan and Hong Kong face increasing threats of online misinformation and cybersecurity risks, but the freedoms of the Internet for their citizens appear to be heading in opposite directions. From censorship and surveillance to influencing public opinions and elections, what are the lessons from the experiences of Hong Kong and Taiwan for the world?

Our speakers will provide an overview of the state of internet freedom in Hong Kong from before to after the enactment of the National Security Law in 2020. Censorship and surveillance are on the rise, and a misinformation law is looming on the horizon, to give the government and the police even more unfettered power. We will also cover the techniques used by cyber intrusion groups aimed at toppling election campaigns. Drawing research work from Taiwan AI Labs, we elaborate on how AI is used to track misinformation on social media particularly on Chinese-language speaking portals.

Jason Hsu is Senior Research Fellow at The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation Harvard Kennedy School. From 2016 to 2020 Hsu served as Legislator At-Large in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan (national parliament) overseeing technology policy, development, entrepreneurship and innovation. Known as Crypto Congressman, Jason is credited for setting up Asia Blockchain Alliance (ABA),Taiwan Parliamentary Coalition for Blockchain (TPCB) and Self- Regulatory Organization(SRO).

Charles Mok is a Visiting Scholar at the Global Digital Policy Incubator. Prior to his time at Stanford, Charles served as an elected member of the Legislative Council in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, representing the Information Technology functional constituency, for two terms from 2012 to 2020. He served alternatively as chair and vice chair of the Information Technology and Broadcasting Panel from 2016 to 2020. As a lawmaker, Charles was a champion for policies and legislations on privacy, open data, freedom of expression and information, cybersecurity, innovation, fintech, electronic health records, as well as human rights and democracy.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford. He leads the Hoover Institution’s programs on China’s Global Sharp Power and on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region.  At FSI, he leads the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, based at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for more than six years.  He also co-leads with (Eileen Donahoe) the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He is the founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as senior consultant at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. His research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around the world and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy.

Using 'big data' computational techniques to scrutinize cases covering 2009–2016 from all 252 basic-level courts in two Chinese provinces, Henan and Zhejiang, Ethan Michelson reveals that women have borne the brunt of a dramatic intensification since the mid-2000s of a decades-long practice of denying divorce requests. This talk discusses key findings from his new book of the same name. Michelson's analysis of almost 150,000 divorce trials reveals routine and egregious violations of China's own laws upholding the freedom of divorce, gender equality, and the protection of women's physical security. Michelson takes the reader upstream to the institutional sources of China's clampdown on divorce and downstream to its devastating and highly gendered human toll, showing how judges in an overburdened court system clear their oppressive dockets at the expense of women's lawful rights and interests.