About the event: When the U.S.-Russia New START treaty expires on February 5, 2026, there will no longer be any guardrails preventing a global nuclear arms race. Yet the erosion of arms control is just one part of a broader trend of rising nuclear dangers. All nuclear-armed states are either poised to begin or are in the process of modernizing and expanding their arsenals. Risks of nuclear conflict are increasing in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. Not surprisingly, interest in nuclear weapons is growing in many countries, primarily U.S. allies worried about threats from China, Russia, and North Korea and fearing the United States will abandon them. Between these geopolitical trends and advances in relevant technologies, proliferation risks are rising, with broad implications for U.S. and global security. How should the United States navigate the dangers of a more nuclearized world? Can it resurrect arms control with Russia and potentially involve China or other countries? How should it manage the potential for proliferation by some of its allies? And, as many countries stand poised to adopt or expand nuclear power, how should it balance proliferation risks and global commercial nuclear energy competition?   

About the speakers:
Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar is the tenth president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an institution created by Andrew Carnegie in 1910 to conduct independent research, support diplomacy, and advise policymakers on international cooperation, conflict, and governance.  A former justice of the Supreme Court of California, Cuéllar has served three U.S. presidents at the White House and in federal agencies and was the Stanley Morrison Professor at Stanford University, where he held appointments in law, political science, and international affairs and led the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He serves on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board, and chairs the board of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation.

As director of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, he oversaw the university’s major research centers and educational programs focused on governance and development, international security, health policy, climate change and food security, and contemporary Asia and Europe.  Previously, he co-directed Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and led its Honors Program in International Security Studies. During nearly seven years on California’s highest court while continuing to teach at Stanford, he wrote opinions addressing separation of powers, policing and criminal justice, democracy, technology and privacy, international agreements, and climate and environmental policy among other issues, and led the court system’s operations to better meet the needs of millions of limited English speakers.

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Rose Gottemoeller is the William J. Perry Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute.

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.

Prior to her government service, she was a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with joint appointments to the Nonproliferation and Russia programs. She served as the Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center from 2006 to 2008, and is currently a nonresident fellow in Carnegie's Nuclear Policy Program.

Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair 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 is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

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About the moderator: Toby Dalton is senior fellow and co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Before joining Carnegie, he served in policy advisory positions at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, as energy attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, and as a professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His work focuses on nuclear energy, nuclear security, and international nuclear governance, with a focus on East Asia and South Asia. He is co-author with George Perkovich of Not War, Not Peace? (Oxford University Press) and has published articles and opinion pieces in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Survival, The Washington Quarterly, Dong-A Ilbo, and Dawn, among others. He was a Luce Scholar at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, South Korea. He received a PhD from The George Washington University, MA from the University of Washington, and BA from Occidental College.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speakers.

REDS: RETHINKING EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY

The REDS Seminar Series aims to deepen the research agenda on the new challenges facing Europe, especially on its eastern flank, and to build intellectual and institutional bridges across Stanford University, fostering interdisciplinary approaches to current global challenges.

REDS is organized by The Europe Center and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and co-sponsored by the Hoover Institution and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Learn more about REDS and view past seminars here.

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About the event: International relations scholars have long studied how technological shifts impact the course of wars, especially as armies are forced to innovate on the battlefield. From the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, SpaceX’s Starlink service (a private company) has played a vital infrastructure role for Ukraine’s military, something it was never envisioned or designed to do. In addition, in contrast with past conflicts, Starlink’s major policy choices are primarily controlled by a single individual – Elon Musk –  who has his own political preferences and agenda, distinct from the U.S. or other countries. We leverage a natural experiment to ascertain the effect of Starlink access for Ukrainian forces on battlefield outcomes. We leverage a geographic discontinuity to determine the overall effect of access to Starlink on Ukraine’s territorial control as well as overall volume of munitions and combat activities. The design relies on an idiosyncratic mismatch between SpaceX’s internal system (which uses fixed hexagon shapes) for allocating access and the actual boundaries of the frontline and Ukraine’s provinces. Second, we use a difference-in-differences approach to examine how Starlink access mattered before and after a late 2022 policy change at SpaceX decided personally by Elon Musk to limit Starlink access to Ukrainian forces in certain areas and for certain activities. Initial findings are that Starlink access significantly improves Ukraine’s ability to hold territory, though it appears not to greatly affect the volume of drones, artillery or other munitions. The results suggest Starlink mostly affects quality of strikes rather than quantity. 

Co-authored with Tatsuya Koyama and Yuri Zhukov.

About the speaker: Renard Sexton is a Visiting Scholar at CISAC and an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Emory University.

Sexton studies conflict and development with a focus on local level violence and interventions intended to curb violence. His research covers insurgency, terrorism, social conflict around natural resources, and police crackdowns; he has regional expertise in Afghanistan, Southeast Asia and Andean Latin America. His research has been published in top scholarly journals, including the American Political Science Review and American Journal of Political Science. His policy pieces and commentary have been published by The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, International Crisis Group, Foreign Policy and other outlets. Before joining Emory, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and Economics of Conflict fellow at the International Crisis Group.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

Governments, markets, and analysts in the United States and around the world frequently find themselves surprised by China’s capabilities in industries central to economic and national security—from artificial intelligence and robotics to pharmaceuticals, advanced manufacturing, and strategic supply chains. Episodes widely described as “DeepSeek moments” reflect more than isolated breakthroughs; they reveal a systematic failure to understand how China builds technological capacity and scales it with speed. Yet these cutting-edge advances are emerging against the backdrop of a sustained economic slowdown, raising new questions about whether China’s push for technological supremacy is occurring at the expense of broader economic health. 

The Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institution's (SCCEI) annual China Conference convenes leading experts to examine why prevailing frameworks consistently underestimate China’s industrial performance and assess how its technology ecosystem, industrial policies, and trade strategies function and interact to push many critical sectors to the frontier.

We are finalizing an outstanding lineup of speakers from academia, industry, and policy communities. Updates will be posted here as confirmed. 

*Schedule is subject to change  

Questions? Contact scceichinaconference@stanford.edu 

About the event: The future of European security is at a crossroad. Which road it takes depends on the direction of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The war presents one of the greatest risks for the Europe’s future but at the same time one of the greatest opportunities.

Drawing on their extensive experience in transatlantic defense and diplomacy, the panelists will assess the strategic shifts reshaping Europe’s security landscape, from military deterrence and alliance cohesion to the prospects for long-term stability in the region. The conversation will explore how the conflict continues to redefine NATO’s role, the European Union's approach to security, and Western policy toward Russia and Ukraine.

About the speakers: 

Rose Gottemoeller is the William J. Perry Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute.

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.

Prior to her government service, she was a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with joint appointments to the Nonproliferation and Russia programs. She served as the Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center from 2006 to 2008, and is currently a nonresident fellow in Carnegie's Nuclear Policy Program.  

At Stanford, Gottemoeller teaches and mentors students in the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy program and the CISAC Honors program; contributes to policy research and outreach activities; and convenes workshops, seminars and other events relating to her areas of expertise, including nuclear security, Russian relations, the NATO alliance, EU cooperation and non-proliferation. 

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Colin Kahl is the Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He is also the faculty director of CISAC’s Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance.

From April 2021-July 2023, Dr. Kahl served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the U.S. Department of Defense. In that role, he was the principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense for all matters related to national security and defense policy and represented the Department as a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee. He oversaw the writing of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, which focused the Pentagon’s efforts on the “pacing challenge” posed by the PRC, and he led the Department’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and numerous other international crises. During the Obama Administration, Dr. Kahl served as Deputy Assistant to President Obama and National Security Advisor to then Vice President Biden from October 2014 to January 2017.

He received his B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.

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Gabrielius Landsbergis, formerly the minister of foreign affairs of the Republic of Lithuania, is the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at FSI, effective September 15, 2025.

As a Liataud Fellow, Landsbergis will be deeply enmeshed in the daily intellectual life of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, (FSI), with simultaneous affiliations with The Europe Center (TEC), and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).

Prior to his appointment at Stanford, Landsbergis served as the minister of foreign affairs of the Republic of Lithuania. Previously, he was the chairman of the Homeland Union Party while concurrently a member of the Lithuanian Parliament. Before assuming these roles, Landsbergis was also a member of the European Parliament and began his career as a diplomat for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania.

Landsbergis’ tenure serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs was defined by a value-based approach to foreign policy. During his time in office, he cemented deepening transatlantic relations, sustained support for Ukraine, and the elevation of global partnerships as strategic pillars of Lithuania’s foreign policy.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.