Stanford University

Security

FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.

Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions. 

A New Look at 9/11 Intelligence Failures: American Institutions and Embodied Knowledge

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Lynn Eden (speaker) is associate director for research/senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan and taught in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. Eden's first book, Crisis in Watertown was a finalist for a National Book Award. Her second, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars, was a retrospective look at the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964; it was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection. In the area of international security, Eden focuses on U.S. foreign and military policy, organizational issues, and the social construction of science and technology in the nuclear realm. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments. Eden was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History, a social and cultural approach war and peace in U.S. history; the volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club. Eden's Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton award for best book in science, knowledge and technology. Currently, Eden is particularly interested in organizational learning and error, misunderstandings of the environment, and organizational explanation and rhetoric.

Brent Durbin (discussant) is completing his PhD in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a predoctoral fellow at CISAC and a dissertation fellow at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. His dissertation, "Changing the Guard: How U.S. Intelligence Adapts to New Threats and Opportunities," explains the policy processes governing how U.S. intelligence agencies respond to major changes in the international threat environment. More broadly, Durbin's research focuses on the micro- and macro-level organizational dynamics of national security bureaucracies. Durbin has previously held research fellowships at The George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, and at the University of Cambridge (U.K.). Prior to attending Berkeley, he served as press secretary for U.S. Senator Patty Murray, and worked as an advisor and senior staff member on several campaigns for U.S. Congress. He graduated magna cum laude from Oberlin College with a BA in politics and English literature. He also holds an MPP from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and an MA in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Brent Durbin Speaker

Lynn Eden

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Lynn Eden is a Senior Research Scholar Emeritus. She was a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation until January 2016, as well as was Associate Director for Research. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.

In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.

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Lynn Eden Speaker
Seminars

Nuclear Forensics: Tracing Nuclear Material Before and After an Explosion

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Nuclear forensics is the analysis of nuclear materials recovered from either the capture of unused nuclear materials, or from the radioactive debris following a nuclear explosion. The APS/AAAS Working Group report, which will be reviewed in this seminar, provides an appraisal of the state of the art of nuclear forensics; an assessment of its potential for preventing and identifying unattributed nuclear attacks; and identifies the policies, resources and human talent to fulfill that potential. The intended audience is the Congress, U.S. government agencies and other institutions involved in nuclear forensics as well as interested scientists.

Michael May is Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000. May is a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988, with some brief periods away from the Laboratory. While there, he held a variety of research and development positions, serving as director of the Laboratory from 1965 to 1971. May was a technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards. His current research interests are in the area of nuclear and terrorism, energy, security and environment, and the relation of nuclear weapons and foreign policy.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Michael May Speaker
Seminars

A Trip Report from North Korea

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Hecker discusses his visit with scientists at Yongbyon and government officials in Pyongyang from Feb. 12 to 16. Joel Wit, a former U.S. State Department official, and Keith Luse, a staffer for Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, accompanied him during a private visit that also involved discussions on formalizing health and educational exchanges between the North Korea and the U.S.


» Photo gallery of Siegfried Hecker's tour through the 5Mw Yongbyon Nuclear facility

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CISAC Conference Room

Siegfried S. Hecker

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C220
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-6468 (650) 723-0089
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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Research Professor, Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus
hecker2.jpg PhD

Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.

Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy, and plutonium science. At the end of the Cold War, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. In June 2016, the Los Alamos Historical Society published two volumes edited by Dr. Hecker. The works, titled Doomed to Cooperate, document the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.

Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on cooperation with young and senior nuclear professionals in Russia and China to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide, to avoid a return to a nuclear arms race, and to promote the safe and secure global expansion of nuclear power. He also continues to assess the technical and political challenges of nuclear North Korea and the nuclear aspirations of Iran.

Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.

Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the 2020 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute, the 2018 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, the 2017 American Nuclear Society Eisenhower Medal, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.

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Siegfried S. Hecker Speaker
Seminars

Integrating 21st Century Development and Security Assistance

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In early 2007, CSIS launched an expert task force to examine the growing involvement of the Department of Defense as a direct provider of “non-traditional” security assistance, concentrated in counterterrorism, capacity building, stabilization and reconstruction, and humanitarian relief. The task force set out to shed light on what drives this trend, including the new global threat environment; assess what was happening at the same time in the diplomatic and developmental realms; evaluate DOD performance in conducting its expanded missions; and consider the impact of the Pentagon’s enlarged role on broader U.S. national security, foreign policy and development interests. From the outset, the task force sought to generate concrete, practical recommendations to Congress and the White House on reforms and legislation that will create a better and more sustainable balance between military and civilian tools.

J. Stephen Morrison joined CSIS in early 2000. He directs the CSIS Africa Program, the CSIS Task Force on HIV/AIDS (begun in 2001) and most recently co-directed a CSIS Task Force on non-traditional U.S. security assistance. In his role as director of the Africa Program, he has conducted studies on the United States’ rising energy stakes in Africa, counter-terrorism, the stand-up of the U.S. Africa Command, and implications for U.S. foreign policy. In 2005–2006, he was co-director of the Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on Africa, ‘Beyond Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa.’ Immediately prior to that, he was executive secretary of the Africa Policy Advisory Panel, commissioned by the U.S. Congress and overseen by then–Secretary of State Colin Powell. From 2005 up to the present, he has directed multi-phase work on China’s expansive engagement in Africa. His work on HIV/AIDS and related global health issues has involved multiple missions to China, Russia, India, Vietnam and Africa, and most recently, a series of focused studies on the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. He publishes widely, testifies often before Congress, and is a frequent commentator in major media on U.S. foreign policy, Africa, foreign assistance, and global public health. From 1996 through early 2000, Morrison served on the secretary of state’s policy planning staff, where he was responsible for African affairs and global foreign assistance issues. From 1993 to 1995, he conceptualized and launched USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, which operates in countries emerging from protracted internal conflict and misrule. From 1992 until mid-1993, he was the U.S. democracy and governance adviser in Ethiopia and Eritrea. In the period 1987 to 1991, he was senior staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa. Morrison holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin, has been an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies since 1994, and is a graduate magna cum laude of Yale College. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

CISAC Conference Room

J. Stephen Morrison Executive Director Speaker HIV/AIDS Task Force and Director, Africa Program, Center for Strategic & International Studies
Seminars

Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Joshua Lederberg dies at 82

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Joshua Lederberg, PhD, winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize for his discovery of how bacteria transfer genes, died Feb. 2 of pneumonia. He was 82.

Months after winning the Nobel Prize, Lederberg arrived at the Stanford University School of Medicine to become the chair of genetics in 1959, after leaving his post at the University of Wisconsin. He led Stanford’s genetics department at a time when the medical school earned a reputation for research, until he left in 1978 to become president of The Rockefeller University in New York until 1990.

Lederberg shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum and George Beadle. His portion of the prize came from his discovery that bacteria transfer genetic information, overturning the prevailing thought that bacteria weren’t able to swap DNA. Lederberg found that bacteria exchange loops of DNA called plasmids that allow bacteria to pick up new genes, and thereby adapt to new environments. The process Lederberg discovered has become a standard way for researchers to transfer genetic information between bacteria in the lab, and changed how researchers thought about infectious disease. It also laid the foundation for modern molecular biology, genetic engineering and biotechnology.

“Dr. Josh Lederberg was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century with staggering achievements from virology and microbiology to genetics and planetary exploration,” said Philip Pizzo, MD, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine. “He was not only a world-renowned scientist but also an advocate on science and public policy. His impact on Stanford can be felt to this day and will surely continue long into the future.”

Lederberg was only 33 when he came to Stanford, but he already had a long research career that began in high school.

His father was a rabbi, and when Lederberg was a teen he promised to aid humanity through science rather than faith. He began doing independent research at the science-focused Stuyvesant High School, then continued that research as an undergraduate student at Columbia College. After starting medical school at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons he left after two years to pursue a PhD at Yale, working with Tatum and Beadle on studies that led to their shared Nobel.

The year Lederberg arrived to head Stanford’s genetics department was a pivotal one in the medical school’s history. The school was in the process of moving from San Francisco to join the Stanford campus in Palo Alto. During that same time period Arthur Kornberg, PhD, who went on to win the 1959 Nobel Prize in Biochemistry, arrived to found Stanford’s biochemistry department. The departments led by Kornberg and Lederberg helped establish the medical school as a leader in biomedical research.

One of Lederberg’s first recruits to the new department was Leonard Herzenberg, PhD, emeritus professor of genetics, who went on to develop the fluorescence-activated cell sorting machine that opened up new areas of biological research. Herzenberg said Lederberg was supportive of his work without being dominating. “Josh was important for my life and for my career and made possible the development of the FACS,” he said.

Richard Myers, PhD, professor and the current chair of Stanford’s genetics department, called Lederberg a visionary. He said Lederberg recognized the importance of human genetics in a time when few people worked in that field. “That’s how Stanford became well-known in human and population genetics early on before it was really popular,” Myers said.

In addition to his scientific skills, Myers said he respected Lederberg for his diverse interests and generous personality. “He was extremely warm and interesting,” he said.

Throughout his career Lederberg had interests that strayed far from the laboratory bench. The launch of Sputnik in 1957 led Lederberg toward an interest in astronomy that lasted 20 years. His concern about the risk of spacecraft returning to Earth with contaminants from space resulted in a quarantine for space travel that remains in effect today. He went on to design experiments intended to detect the presence of life on Mars, resulting in the Mars Viking lander.

Early on, Lederberg recognized genetics as an information science and became increasingly aware of the value of computers. He formed collaborations with researchers at Stanford to create DENDRAL, a prototype artificial intelligence program for analyzing mass-spectrometric data of molecular structures, which led to further programs for disease diagnosis and management.

These wide-ranging interests were a hallmark of Lederberg’s intellect, according to Paul Berg, PhD, emeritus professor of biochemistry and Nobel Prize winner. “What was extraordinary is that he was at home in so many areas,” Berg said. “He made one of the really major discoveries that paved the way for modern genetics, but then he ventured into areas that were entirely different.”

Lederberg stayed true to his teenage promise to aid mankind. Concerned about the public’s awareness of science, he wrote a weekly science column in the Washington Post from 1966-71. Among the topics he addressed were infectious disease outbreaks and biological weapons, both of which were interests that he also pursued through his academic work. He served on national committees for biological weapons and became a national arms control advisor. These interests also led to collaborations with Stanford political scientists and physicists, which eventually resulted in the creation of an undergraduate curriculum in national security and arms control.

Lederberg left Stanford in 1978 to become president of The Rockefeller University. While there, he continued his research and, despite retirement in 1990, continued to work internationally to prevent the use of biological weapons, also serving on the executive committee and as a consulting professor at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

Over the course of his life, Lederberg was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science, was named an honorary life member of the New York Academy of Sciences, was awarded Foreign Membership of the Royal Society of London and holds the title of Commandeur, L’ordre des arts et des lettres in France.

Lederberg is survived by his wife Marguerite Stein Lederberg, PhD, his son David Kirsch and his daughter Anne Lederberg, and two grandchildren. Funeral services were held Feb. 5.

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Japan's Nationalism: Myth and Reality

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Some observers of Japan have pointed to a dangerous rise in Japanese nationalism. Advocates of that idea claim that this is evident in a number of events, such as, the visits of former Prime Minister Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine; former Prime Minister Abe's plan for constitutional reforms and his statements regarding the comfort women; the adoption of "revisionist" history textbooks; the territorial disputes with countries such as China and South Korea; and Japan's efforts to strengthen the Japan-U.S. security arrangements.

However, such observations invite the following questions:

  • If there are such signs in Japan, do they reflect Japanese society as a whole? Japan has been strongly pacifistic since the war, avoiding any entanglement in military conflict. This seems to be deeply rooted in the minds of the Japanese people. Just what is the relationship between the purported rise in nationalism and these pacifistic tendencies?
  • Most commentators who warn of rising nationalism in Japan fear a return of the extreme nationalism of prewar Japan. However, are not today's political regime, economic institutions and social conditions, all vastly different from those of prewar Japan?
  • Even though a trend toward nationalism can be witnessed in some quarters of Japan, it doesn't necessarily mean that Japan has become a country that would take dangerous actions. Nationalistic emotions and movements are not directly linked to the actions of a country. Rather, are there not some intervening factors between them?
Minister Kitano will address three points in answering these questions. First he will examine the current situation of Japan by discerning the ‘goals' of Japanese nationalism. Second, he will evaluate the strength of the nationalist movement in Japan by comparing the contemporary movement with the movement in prewar Japan. Last, he will analyze the function of nationalism in different stages of nation states. Through this process, Minister Kitano will reveal the 'myth and reality' of Japan's nationalism.

Mitsuru Kitano currently serves as minister for public affairs at the Embassy of Japan to the United States in Washington, D.C. where he is in charge of outreach to press/media, intellectual exchanges, art and cultural exchanges as well as support for Japanese language education. Kitano has written a number of op-ed articles, including ones analyzing U.S. opinions about Japan in such papers as the Washington Post, the Washington Times, and the International Herald Tribune.

Minister Kitano is a career diplomat and has been posted in Tokyo, France, Geneva, China and Vietnam since joining Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1980. He has been professionally engaged in Japan's bilateral relationship with the U.S., China and Southeast Asian countries, and Japan's policies regarding the United Nations and other international organizations. He was active also in such areas as economic cooperation and nuclear energy issues.

His academic achievements include being a lecturer at Sophia University (Tokyo) and a senior visiting fellow at RIETI (Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry) in Japan. In 2007, he co-authored a book, Paburikku Dipuromashi: Seron no Jidai no Gaiko Senryaku (Public Diplomacy: Diplomatic Strategy in the Age of Public Opinion) (Tokyo: PHP Kenkyujo).

Minister Kitano received a B.A. from the University of Tokyo in 1980 and a M.A. in international relations from the University of Geneva in 1996.

Philippines Conference Room

Mitsuru Kitano Minister for Public Affairs Speaker Embassy of Japan in the United States
Seminars

2008 Year Ahead Part II: Politics and Diplomacy in Japan

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What issues await Japanese politicians and diplomats in 2008? At home, Japan's new Liberal Democratic Party Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda must rebuild confidence in his party while working with an upper house controlled by the opposing Democratic Party of Japan. Abroad, Japanese politicians and diplomats grapple with Japan's role in the U.S.-led "War on Terror," a nuclear North Korea, and sovereignty disputes with South Korea and China. Our two panelists will share their views on Japanese political, diplomatic and security challenges in the year ahead.

Andrew Oros is an assistant professor of political science and international studies at Washington College. Selected as one of five "emerging leaders" in US-Japan relations by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2007, Oros specializes in international and comparative politics of East Asia. His work has appeared in Japan Forum, Intelligence and National Security, and the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, among others. His forthcoming book, Normalizing Japan: Politics, Identity, and the Evolution of Security Practice, will be released in May 2008.

Yuki Tatsumi is research fellow of the East Asia Program at the Henry L. Stimson Center. Prior to her current position, she worked as a research associate at the CSIS, as well as, at the Henry L. Stimson Center. Her analyses on Japanese security policy, Japanese defense policy, US-Japan alliance, and Japanese domestic politics frequently appear in the PacNet Newsletter. In September 2006, Tatsumi testified before the House Committee on International Relations regarding Japan's relationship with its Asian neighbors.

Robert Weiner is an assistant professor of political science at the Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey, CA). His research and teaching focus on Japanese and East Asian politics, political parties and elections, democratic institutions, and research methods. He earned his Ph.D. in political science at the University of California at Berkeley. Weiner spent the 2006-2007 academic year at Stanford's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as a Shorenstein Fellow. He was an assistant professor in the Government Department of Cornell University for three years before joining NPS in 2007.

Please visit www.usajapan.org or call 415-986-4383 for reservation.
2008 Year Ahead is made possible by the generous support of Union Bank of California
 

Union Bank of California
400 California Street, 11th Floor Assembly Hall
San Francisco, CA 94104

Andrew Oros Professor of Political Science and International Studies Speaker Washington College
Yuki Tatsumi Research Fellow of the East Asia Program Speaker Henry L. Stimson Center, Washington, D.C.
Robert Weiner Assistant Professor of Political Science Speaker Naval Postgraduate School
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