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.
The Effects of U.S. School Shootings on Children’s Antidepressant Use
More than 220,000 American students have experienced a school shooting since the 1998 Columbine High massacre. School shootings are vastly more common in the U.S. than in any other developed country, and are becoming more frequent and deadly in recent years. While these events receive widespread media coverage and incite public debates, there is little empirical research quantifying their population-level mental health impacts. We combined data on 44 school shootings between January 2008 and April 2013 with data on antidepressant prescriptions filled at retail pharmacies between January 2006 and March 2015. We compared the number of antidepressants prescribed to children under age 20 by providers located in close proximity of a school that experienced a shooting (shooting-exposed area) to those prescribed to children by providers located slightly further away (reference group), both in the two years before and the two years after a shooting. The average number of monthly antidepressant prescriptions written to children was significantly higher in the shooting-exposed areas relative to the reference groups in the two years after a fatal shooting versus the two years before. The effect persisted when extending the post-shooting observation window to three years and was similar when using an alternative reference group of providers located in close proximity to observationally similar schools without a shooting. We found no significant effects on children’s antidepressant prescriptions following non-fatal shootings or on adult antidepressant use. Our results suggest that local exposure to fatal school shootings increases antidepressant use among children under 20 years old, a previously unmeasured cost of these events.
Maya Rossin-Slater Assistant Professor of Health Research and Policy, Stanford University Faculty Fellow, SIEPER Faculty Research Fellow, NBER Research Affiliate, IZA
Maya Rossin-Slater is an Assistant Professor of Health Research and Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is also a Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Research Affiliate at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA). She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University in 2013, and was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 2013 to 2017. Rossin-Slater’s research includes work in health, public, and labor economics. She focuses on issues in maternal and child well-being, family structure and behavior, and policies targeting disadvantaged populations in the United States and other developed countries.
From genome editing to “hacking” the microbiome, advances in the life sciences and its associated technological revolution have already altered the biosecurity landscape, and will continue to do so. What does this new landscape look like, and how can policymakers and other stakeholders navigate this space? A new report by Stanford scholars David Relman and Megan Palmer along with George Mason University’s Jesse Kirkpatrick and Greg Koblentz assesses this emerging biosecurity landscape to help answer these questions and illustrates gaps in governance and regulation through the use of scenarios.
The report—the product of two years of workshops, issue briefs, and white papers authored by different participants—involved people from different organizations and backgrounds ranging from life sciences and medicine to social science and ethics. “The project process was just as important as the product,” said Palmer. “It was a truly interdisciplinary effort.”
Genome editing, including CRISPR, is disruptive to the biosecurity landscape, and it serves as an illustration of more general trends in the evolving landscape, the authors write. CRISPR technology does not exist in a vacuum—rather, it is enabled by, represents, and gives rise to a suite of technologies with potential benefits and that require new approaches to adaptive policy making and governance.
Scenarios illustrating governance gaps in in the report include:
A reckless CRISPR user who develops and markets a probiotic created with genome editing that has serious unanticipated effects for consumers;
An agricultural biotechnology firm conducting dual use genome editing research that lies outside current oversight, but nonetheless could have negative consequences for human health
An intentional release of a gene drive organism from a lab, that while having limited physical harm, feeds a state-based misinformation campaign with large economic impacts
An accidental release of a gene drive organism due to lack of awareness and uncertainty about the risk classifications and protocols for handling new technologies
A terrorist group using commercial firms that lack strong customer and order screening to use genome editing to weaponize a nonpathogenic bacteria
A state-sponsored program to develop biological weapons for new strategic uses, including covert assassination, using largely publicly available research
In each of these examples, the researchers play out a hypothetical situation exposing a number of security and governance gaps for policymakers and other stakeholders to address.
In the report, the authors conclude that genome editing has tremendous potential benefits and economic impacts. The authors note that the market for genome editing is expected to exceed $3.5 billion by 2019, but a security incident, safety lapse, reckless misadventure, or significant regulatory uncertainty could hurt growth. Increased reliance on the “bio-economy,” they write, means biosecurity is increasingly critical to economic security as well as human health.
Other key takeaways:
Genome editing has the potential to improve the human condition. Genome editing is poised to make major beneficial contributions to basic research, medicine, public health, agriculture, and manufacturing that could reduce suffering, strengthen food security, and protect the environment.
Genome editing is disruptive to the biosecurity landscape. The threat landscape has, and continues to expand to include new means of disrupting or manipulating biological systems and processes in humans, plants, and animals. Genome editing could be used to create new types of biological weapons. Further, technical advances will make misuse easier and more widespread.
CRISPR illuminates broader trends and the challenges of an evolving security landscape. An approach to biosecurity that accounts for these trends, and encompasses risks posed by deliberate, accidental, and reckless misuse, can help address the complex and evolving security landscape.
Technology must be taken seriously. A thorough, informed, and accessible analysis of any emerging technology is crucial to considering the impact that it may have on the security landscape.
Key stakeholders must be engaged. Stakeholders in the genome editing field encompass a more diverse array of actors than those that have been involved so far in biosecurity discussions. These stakeholders range from international organizations to government agencies to universities, companies, lay communities writ large, and scientists.
Applied research is needed to create and implement innovative and effective policies. Applied research is necessary to continue the process of modifying existing governance measures, and testing and adapting new ones, as new genome editing technologies and applications are developed, new stakeholders emerge, and new pathways for misuse are identified.
Bio: Dr. Arvind Gupta recently retired as India's Deputy National Security Advisor. In his capacity as Deputy NSA, he also headed India's National Security Council Secretariat from 2014 until 2017. Previously, he was the Director General of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA), a thinktank funded by India's Ministry of Defence. Dr. Gupta joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1979 and served at India's diplomatic missions in Moscow, London and Ankara. At the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi, he dealt with Afghanistan, the Soviet Union, Russia, Kashmir, and the Central Asian affairs. He is an honorary professor in the Department of Defence and National Security Studies, Panjab University. He has an MSc in Physics from the University of Delhi and a Ph.D. in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is currently the Director of Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), a Delhi-based independent, non-partisan think tank focussing on foreign policy, defense and security-related issues from an Indian perspective. His most recent book How India Manages its National Security was published by Penguin Random House in 2018.
Book Overview: In this authoritative and comprehensive survey of the challenges a changing global security environment poses to India, former deputy national security advisor Arvind Gupta outlines the important aspects of the country's security apparatus and how they interface to confront internal and external conflicts. We have today a turbulent Middle East to the west; a rising and assertive China to the north; Pakistan in the grip of the military and the militants across our border and an increasingly militarizing Indian Ocean region surrounding us. Additionally, climate change, cyber security and the vulnerability of our space assets are major areas of concern. Anything that weakens a nation weakens its security, which makes the issues of food, water, health, economics and governance critically significant. Arvind Gupta draws on his long experience in these areas to argue that instead of tactical remedies, a strategic, coherent, institutional approach is needed to deal with these challenges. Strengthening the National Security Council, for instance, could be one way forward.
How India Manages Its National Security explains with great clarity and thoroughness the concept and operation of India's national security apparatus. This book will be of great interest to practitioners, analysts and laymen alike and offer an important voice in the discussion on how national security challenges should be resolved in the decades to come.
Arvind Gupta
Director
Vivekananda International Foundation
On 11/29/18 a group of leading experts on China and American foreign policy released “Chinese Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance,” a report documenting Chinese efforts to influence American society. The report examines China's efforts to influence American institutions, including state and local governments, universities, think tanks, media, corporations, and the Chinese-American community, and differentiates between legitimate efforts--like public diplomacy--and improper interference, which demands greater awareness and a calibrated response.
In this special roundtable, two of the report’s co-editors, Orville Schell and Larry Diamond, and a Taiwanese scholar, Ji-Jen Hwang, will discuss the findings of the report and compare the forms and effects of Chinese “sharp power” in the United States with its practice in and toward Taiwan.
This event is co-sponsored by the US-Asia Security Initiative in the Asia-Pacific Research Center, and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.
Orville Schell
Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. He is a former professor and Dean at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Schell was born in New York City, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in Far Eastern History, was an exchange student at National Taiwan University in the 1960s, and earned a Ph.D. (Abd) at University of California, Berkeley in Chinese History. He worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and has traveled widely in China since the mid-70s.
Schell is the author of fifteen books, ten of them about China, and a contributor to numerous edited volumes. His most recent books are: Wealth and Power, China’s long March to the 21st Century; Virtual Tibet; The China Reader: The Reform Years; and Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China’s Leaders. He has written widely for many magazine and newspapers, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Time,The New Republic, Harpers, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Wired, Foreign Affairs, the China Quarterly, and the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
He is a Fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communications at USC and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Schell is also the recipient of many prizes and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Overseas Press Club Award, and the Harvard-Stanford Shorenstein Prize in Asian Journalism.
Larry Diamond
Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. For more than six years, he directed FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, where he now leads its Program on Arab Reform and Democracy and its Global Digital Policy Incubator. He is the founding co-editor 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 in the world, and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy. His 2016 book, In Search of Democracy, explores the challenges confronting democracy and democracy promotion, gathering together three decades of his writing and research, particularly on Africa and Asia. He has just completed a new book on the global crisis of democracy, which will be published in 2019, and is now writing a textbook on democratic development.
Karl Eikenberry
is Director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative and faculty member at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, faculty member of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Professor of Practice at Stanford University. He is also an affiliate with the FSI Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law, and The Europe Center.
Prior to his arrival at Stanford, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 until 2011. Before appointment as Chief of Mission on Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a thirty-five year career in the United States Army, retiring in April 2009 with the rank of Lieutenant General. His military operational posts included commander and staff officer with mechanized, light, airborne, and ranger infantry units in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and Afghanistan as the Commander of the American-led Coalition forces. He held various policy and political-military positions, including Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium; Director for Strategic Planning and Policy for U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii; U.S. Security Coordinator and Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Kabul, Afghanistan; Assistant Army and later Defense Attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing, China; Senior Country Director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and Deputy Director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy on the Army Staff.
Ji-Jen Hwang
Dr. Ji-Jen Hwang is a Research Scholar in the Institute for East Asian Studies (IEAS) at UC Berkeley. Before that, he was a Professor & Program Director of the International Master Program in Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in the Republic of China (Taiwan). In 2014-15, Dr. Hwang was a visiting fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) located in Washington D.C. He also completed an internship at the United States Library of Congress while doing his Master’s coursework. A native of Taiwan, he holds a Ph.D. in politics from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the U.K., as well as a Masters in Library Science & Information Studies from the University of North Carolina. He has been working for a non-profit Think Tank based in Washington D.C. area as a Deputy Managing Director since April 2018. His current research is focused on relations between the United States, China, and Taiwan, in which he particularly aims to study how social media and the features in cyberspace have political impacts on these relations. He is well-known known as an expert in this area and been invited as a special lecturer to think tanks such as CSIS in Washington D.C., ASPI in Canberra, NATO, GlobalSec in Europe, and INSS in Seoul.
On November 25, Russian border patrol ships rammed a Ukrainian naval tug and then fired upon and seized it along with two Ukrainian gunboats that were legally attempting to pass through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov. Russia then temporarily closed the strait to all Ukrainian shipping. What is the significance of these Russian actions for Ukraine and, more broadly, for the West, and how should the West respond?
Stanford's Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program at the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, the Europe Center together with FSI faculty members has organized a special panel discussion to address these issues on Wednesday, November 28 at 4:30 pm in the Rueben Hills conference room on the 2nd floor of Encina Hall in the East Wing.
Please join Ambassador Steven Pifer, Ambassador Michael McFaul, and our CDDRL Ukrainian Emerging Leaders (Nataliya Mykolska, Ivan Prymachenko and Oleksandra Ustinova) for this special event to diagnose the situation in Ukraine and what it means from a US and Ukrainian perspective.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Rueben Hills Conference Room, 2nd floor Encina Hall
“I learned long ago to never predict anything about North Korea.”
So began the keynote address by Anna Fifield, veteran journalist and winner of the 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award. Speaking at the Award’s seventeenth annual panel discussion “How North Korea Is, and Isn’t, Changing under Kim Jong Un,” Fifield, the Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post , shared some of the many observations she has made since she first began covering North Korea in 2004.
Two other North Korea experts joined Fifield at the panel: Barbara Demick, New York correspondent of the Los Angeles Times, formerly head of the bureaus in Beijing and Seoul, and the 2012 Shorenstein award winner; and Andray Abrahamian, the 2018-2019 Koret Fellow, whose previous role as executive director of Choson Exchange and other projects took him to the DPRK nearly 30 times. Yong Suk Lee, deputy director of the Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC, chaired the panel.
The presence of another person—the Dear Respected Comrade himself—was also very much felt in the room, if only in spirit.
Barbara Demick (center) speaks at 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award.
Survival at any cost
At various points throughout its 70-year history, experts have predicted the demise of the "Hermit Kingdom." Fifield herself admitted to occasionally thinking along such terms.
And yet the country continues to prove them wrong.
“[D]uring my first stint covering North Korea, [I] just couldn’t envisage any way that this regime could survive the death of the second-generation leader and the transition to a third generation,” she said. “Kim Il Sung had created a myth of revolutionary heroism around himself, and a myth of divine selection around his son, Kim Jong Il. How could the North Korean people, who no longer live in a Hermit Kingdom, tolerate a third leader called Kim, let alone one who had no highly exaggerated or plain fictional back story?”
“Yet," Fifield continued, "here we are. Next month, Kim Jong Un will celebrate seven years in charge of North Korea.”
One prominent reason for the nation's recent survival, and an idea put forward by Fifield and supported by her co-panelists, was the development of markets in the communist state.
For decades, North Korea operated under the centrally-planned communist model. Even as China pursued reform and as the Soviet Union collapsed, the North Korean state maintained its central position in the economy.
However, following the famines of the 1990s, the state had no choice but to allow market activity to develop. Under the third Kim markets have continued to grow.
“There are now more than 400 established, state-sanctioned markets in North Korea,” said Fifield. “That’s more than double the number that existed when Kim Jong Un took over at the end of 2011.”
A side effect of this nascent market economy has been the emergence of new elites in the purported “classless” society. Fifield described the development of a capital within the capital—“Pyonghattan”—where newfound elites purchase clothes from western retailers and undergo plastic surgery for their eyelids.
Abrahamian concurred, noting that Kim Jong Un made sure to coddle this upper middle and upper class in Pyongyang. "The old way of doing that under Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung, was very much through a loyalty and gift economy," Abrahamian said. "Money was not necessary in the old North Korea. Now it is. You do need it to get your daily necessities, and if you’re lucky enough, the products [from the “outside world”] help you to have a more pleasurable life through the market.”
At the other end of the spectrum, North Koreans turn to the markets not out of entrepreneurial zeal, but out of a need to survive. As an example, Fifield described meeting a mother and daughter living near the border with China. The mother took her daughter out of school in order to raise pigs and make tofu. Before dawn, they trekked into the mountains to tend crops of corn. It was a back-breaking existence. "If they were lucky, they made enough money each day to buy food for themselves," Fifield said. "Many days, they did all this to break even."
Andray Abrahamian responds to a question from the audience.
A smart tyrant not to be underestimated
The panel continued to focus on the man currently at the helm in North Korea.
“When I returned for my second go at covering the Koreas, I wanted to figure out how he’d done it," said Fifield. "How had this podgy young upstart with no qualifications other than being born into this family managed to take control of this regime…? How had he managed to keep intact this anachronistic system that should have died years, even decades, before?”
Fifield emphasized that her comments did not equate to admiration for Kim Jong Un. “He’s a tyrant,” she reminded the room. “But he’s a smart tyrant who’s been operating in a calculating way. To treat him as a joke or a madman is to underestimate the threat of him.”
“Kim Jong Un has not allowed these markets to flourish because he cares about the people and their wellbeing,” Fifield continued. “He has demonstrated time and time again that he doesn’t care at all about the people.”
“There’s only one thing he cares about and that is staying in power.”
Demick cautioned further against over-estimating the positive impact of market development on life in North Korea. “The people Anna interviewed for her groundbreaking series in 2017 in The Washington Post were disgusted with the system,” said Demick. “With the income inequality, with the corruption, with the controls.”
“For them, what’s the worst thing about North Korea? Simply being born there.”
The panelists participated in a lively audience Q & A.
A celebration of journalism
The Shorenstein Journalism Award, which carries a cash prize of $10,000, recognizes accomplished journalists committed to critical reporting on and exploring the complexities of Asia through their writing. It alternates between honoring recipients from the West, who mainly address American audiences, and recipients from Asia, who pave the way for freedom of the press in their countries. Established in 2002, the award honors the legacy of APARC benefactor Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein. A visionary businessman, philanthropist, and champion of Asian-American relations, Shorenstein was dedicated to promoting excellence in journalism and a deeper understanding of Asia.
While the reporting of each year's recipient focuses on different regions and areas of interest, the award consistently recognizes quality journalism. In his welcome remarks, panel chair Yong Suk Lee stated, “In the face of current attacks on journalists and on the truth in the United States and the world, [Shorenstein APARC is] even more committed to excellence in journalism, and to defending independent and free media."
Fifield’s co-panelists spoke at length about how deserving she was of the award. Before their first meeting in Seoul, Abrahamian confessed to harboring skepticism about Fifield. “I had read some of her work before and knew she had analytical chops, but thought to myself that journalists are always fighting for the next scoop.” However, after talking to Fifield for only a few minutes, Abrahamian readily dropped his guard. “I told myself, 'This is a special journalist; she's got something.’"
A previous recipient of the Shorenstein Journalism Award herself, Demick was equally enthusiastic in her praise of Fifield. “For the last four years, [Anna] had owned the North Korea story like no other journalist I’ve met, including myself.”
Fifield was presented with the Shorenstein award and prize at a private evening ceremony.
Watch Fifield’s keynote speech below. An audio version is availalbe on our SoundCloud channel.
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Panel chair Yong Suk Lee (left) listens as 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award winner Anna Fifield speaks to audience.
616 Serra StreetEncina Hall E301Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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kvzhang@stanford.edu
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Ph.D.
Ketian Vivian Zhang joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as the 2018-2019 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia. Ketian studies coercion, economic sanctions, and maritime territorial disputes in international relations and social movements in comparative politics, with a regional focus on China and East Asia. She bridges the study of international relations and comparative politics and has a broader theoretical interest in linking international security and international political economy. Her book project examines when, why, and how China uses coercion when faced with issues of national security, such as territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas, foreign arms sales to Taiwan, and foreign leaders’ reception of the Dalai Lama. Ketian's research has been supported by organizations such as the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at George Washington University, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.
At Shorenstein APARC, Ketian worked on turning parts of her book project into academic journal papers while conducting fieldwork for her next major project: examining how target states of Chinese coercion respond to China's assertiveness, including the business community and ordinary citizens.
Ketian received her Ph.D. in Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018, where she is also an affiliate of the Security Studies Program. Before coming to Stanford, Ketian was a Predoctoral Research Fellow in the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. Ketian holds a B.A. in Political Science and Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was previously a research intern at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., where she was a contributor to its website Foreign Policy in Focus.
2018-2019 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia
The CISAC Research Seminar Series features speakers that present on topics related to international security and their policy implications. The purpose is to encourage interchange between the scientific and non-scientific communities at CISAC and within Stanford, to further CISAC’s goals of educating students and the public, conducting good scholarly research and influencing policy.
On November 14, APARC honored the 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award recipient, Washington Post Beijing bureau chief Anna Fifield. At a Stanford event, Fifield joined a panel discussing economic changes in North Korea, as well as the country’s position in global diplomacy under the leadership of Kim Jong Un.
Stanford-led group of young American and Russian scholars meet in Moscow on nuclear policy
Persistent nuclear threats and the recent erosion of relations between the United States and Russia paint a gloomy picture for the future of cooperation between nuclear powers. Despite these enormous challenges, Stanford is leading an effort to bring young nuclear scholars from the United States and Russia together to tackle urgent problems together and share ideas.
At the end of October, a group of six scholars from Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation—Senior Fellow Siegfried Hecker, Visiting Scholar Chaim Braun, Postdoctoral Fellows Chantell Murphy and Kristen Ven Bruusgaard, Research Assistant Elliot Serbin and Senior Research Associate Alla Kassianova—and other American graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from Washington State University, University of Tennessee, Harvard, University of Michigan and Los Alamos National Laboratory traveled to Moscow for the Fourth Young Professionals Nuclear Forum. The Americans joined a group of undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students at the Moscow Engineering Physics University (MEPhI), Russia’s principal school training nuclear professionals.
The Forum, first launched between CISAC and MEPhI in 2016, provides a venue for young generation of American and Russian nuclear professionals to learn about current issues of nuclear safety, nuclear proliferation, and the role of nuclear power in the world’s evolving energy balance from a perspective of more than one country and more than one discipline.
In the weeks leading up to this Forum, participants on both sides of the ocean attended a series of online presentations by U.S. and Russian experts covering the complexity of the Iran nuclear program and the challenges facing further development of nuclear power.
When they met in person, the young scholars heard lectures from and participated in discussions with experts from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Russian Center for Energy and Security, and others.
The participants then broke into small groups to work on tabletop problem solving activities. The first exercise, a crisis simulation concerning Iran’s nuclear program, brought together separate Russian and American teams to represent their government’s positions on Iran’s nuclear program and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Presented with a hypothetical problem—a scenario in which Iran decides to enhance its nuclear capabilities in violation of the JCPOA and President Trump threatens retaliation via Twitter—the participants gathered in small groups to see what type of cooperative Russian-American policies could be brokered in response.
The second exercise brought the group together to imagine the future of nuclear power and how to manage it. Working in small teams of 2-4 people, the participants formulated responses to eight pressing questions regarding the global future of nuclear power, including whether nuclear power is necessary to mitigate the consequences of climate change and whether nuclear proliferation challenges will limit the expansion of nuclear power. The teams presented their answers in Moscow and will continue to develop their assessments, to be published in a report next month.
Both Americans and Russians commonly remarked that the most valuable lesson they took from the exercises was the fact that both sides held remarkably different, but valuable, perspectives on issues of common concern. On the topic of nuclear energy, for example, Russians appreciated American perspectives on the value of startups in the nuclear power industry and new modes of thinking that encapsulated non-monetary aspects of nuclear power in broader economic analyses. Americans came to understand the deep Russian fascination with nuclear energy and optimistic views about the future role of nuclear energy in society, and how deeply that passion is engraved in the university system in a way wholly different from the United States.
Forum participants also had an opportunity to meet with the leadership of two committees of the Russian State Duma, the lower Chamber of the Russian legislature, the Committee on International Affairs and the Committee on Education and Science. The meeting was hosted by Ms. Inga Yumasheva, an MP from the United Russia party. The Forum also included a visit to research labs and MEPhI facilities, which was hosted by their scientists.
About CISAC The Center for International Security and Cooperation tackles the most critical security issues in the world today. Founded in 1983, CISAC has built on its research strengths to better understand an increasingly complex international environment. It is part of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Though scholarly research, fellowships, and teaching, CISAC is educating the next generation of leaders in international security and creating policy impact on a wide variety of issues to help build a safer world.
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CISAC young nuclear professionals visit Red Square, Moscow.
