Stanford University

Science and Technology

How do States Pursue the Bomb? Determinants of Nuclear Acquisition Strategies

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Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer

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Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo. She first joined CISAC as a visiting associate professor and Stanton nuclear security junior faculty fellow in September 2012, and was a Stanford MacArthur Visiting Scholar between 2013-15. Between 2008 and 2010 she was a predoctoral and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Braut-Hegghammer received her PhD, entitled “Nuclear Entrepreneurs: Drivers of Nuclear Proliferation” from the London School of Economics in 2010. She received the British International Studies Association’s Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize that same year for her work.

 

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Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Speaker CISAC

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 Senior Research Scholar Commentator CISAC
Seminars

The Cuban Missile Crisis: 50 Years Later

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Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Barton Bernstein Professor of History, Emeritus Speaker Stanford University

Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
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The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg PhD

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).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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US Power, the Emerging Economies, and International Order

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Dr. Bruce Jones is Director and Senior Fellow of the NYU Center on International Cooperation, and Senior Fellow and Director of the Managing Global Order Program at the Brookings Institution.

Dr. Jones’ research focuses on US policy on global order and transnational threats; on the emerging powers’ strategic policy; on multilateral institutions in peace and security issues; on the role of the United Nations in crisis management and international security; and on fragile states.

Dr. Jones has served as Senior External Advisor for the World Bank’s World Development Report 2011 on Conflict, Security and Development; as a member of the Secretary-General’s Senior Advisory Group to guide the Review of International Civilian Capacities (2010-2011); as the Lead Scholar on the International Task Force on Global Public Goods (2007); and as deputy research director for the UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (2004-2005).

Prior to assuming the Directorship of the Center, Dr. Jones served in several capacities at the United Nations. He was Senior Advisor in the Office of the Secretary-General during the UN reform effort leading up to the World Summit 2005, and in the same period was Acting Secretary of the Secretary-General’s Policy Committee. From 2000-2002 he was Special Assistant to the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process; and held assignments in the UN Interim Mission in Kosovo, and in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. 

Dr. Jones holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics; and was Hamburg Fellow in Conflict Prevention at Stanford University. He is co-author with Carlos Pascual and Stephen Stedman of Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Brookings Press, 2009); co-editor with Shepard Forman of Cooperating for Peace and Security (Cambridge University Press, 2009); author of Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failures; Series Editor of the Annual Review of Global Peace Operations (Lynne Reinner) and author of several book chapters and journal articles on US strategy, global order, the Middle East, peacekeeping, post-conflict peacebuilding, and strategic coordination.

He is Consulting Professor at Stanford University, Adjunct Faculty at the NYU Wagner School of Public Service, and Professor by Courtesy at the NYU Department of Politics.

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Bruce Jones Director and Senior Fellow Speaker Center on International Cooperation, New York University

Stephen J. Stedman

CDDRL
Encina Hall, C152
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-2705 (650) 724-2996
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
Stedman_Steve.jpg PhD

Stephen Stedman is a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), an affiliated faculty member at CISAC, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He is director of CDDRL's Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and will be faculty director of the Program on International Relations in the School of Humanities and Sciences effective Fall 2025.

In 2011-12 Professor Stedman served as the Director for the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy, and Security, a body of eminent persons tasked with developing recommendations on promoting and protecting the integrity of elections and international electoral assistance. The Commission is a joint project of the Kofi Annan Foundation and International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that works on international democracy and electoral assistance.

In 2003-04 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change and was a principal drafter of the Panel’s report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility.

In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary- General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations for strengthening collective security and for implementing changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee to act as a cabinet to the Secretary-General.

His most recent book, with Bruce Jones and Carlos Pascual, is Power and Responsibility: Creating International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2009).

Director, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development and Rule of Law
Director, Program in International Relations
Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Stephen Stedman Senior Fellow Commentator Center on Democracy Development and the Rule of Law
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Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Nuclear Norms, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons

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Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute. He also serves as the co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Science's Global Nuclear Future Initiative. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as a special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. He has served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

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: A Debate Renewed (W.W. Norton, 2002). He is the co-editor of Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James L. Wirtz, Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000), the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009), and co-editor with Steven E. Miller of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus, On the Global Nuclear Future (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010). His most recent publications include "Shared Responsibility for Nuclear Disarmament" in the fall 2009 issue of Daedalus and "The Case for No-First Use" in the June 2009 issue of Survival. In addition, he co-edited with Jane Vaynman a special issue of The Nonproliferation Review (March 2011) on the international impact of the 2010 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, also co-authoring the introduction and conclusion articles.  

Sagan has also won four teaching awards: the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009, the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award, Stanford University’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, and Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
0
The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg PhD

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).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Scott D. Sagan Senior Fellow Speaker CISAC
Michael Tomz Associate Professor of Political Science Commentator Stanford University
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CISAC names Stanford biosecurity expert as next co-director

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Dr. David Relman investigates the secrets of the life sciences to help build a safer world.

The Stanford microbiologist and professor of infectious diseases has been named the next co-director of the university’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). An adviser to the federal government on emerging biological threats, Relman believes his new role at CISAC will strengthen its core mission of making the world a safer place.

“There is a strong link between microbiology, infectious diseases and international security,” Relman said. “It is increasingly clear that the destabilizing effects of human population growth and displacement, environmental degradation and climate change are all mediated in part through the emergence and spread of infectious diseases. In addition, rapidly evolving capabilities of individuals in the life sciences around the globe make it increasingly likely that this science will be used to cause harm.”

Relman, the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor at Stanford and chief of infectious diseases at the VA Palo Alto Healthcare System, has advised the U.S. government about pathogen diversity, biosecurity and the future of the life sciences landscape. He is a member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), chairs the Forum on Microbial Threats at the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C. and has participated in a number of studies for the National Academies of Science.

"David Relman is one of the nation’s top scientists exploring the mysteries of infectious disease, a thoughtful adviser to policymakers, and an extraordinary colleague,” said Tino Cuéllar, a Stanford Law School professor and the center’s co-director. “He will make tremendous contributions to CISAC's leadership as we expand our activities on public health and biosecurity while continuing our work on arms control and nuclear security."

Founded nearly three decades ago, CISAC’s mission is to produce cutting-edge research and spread knowledge to build a safer world. Now a part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), the center has a tradition of appointing co-directors – one from the social sciences and the other from the natural sciences – to advance the center’s interdisciplinary mission.

Relman will take up the post in January, when Siegfried Hecker’s term concludes after having served as co-director since 2007. Hecker, a nuclear scientist and director emeritus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is one of the world’s foremost experts on plutonium, nuclear weapons and nonproliferation. He will remain at CISAC and continue to teach in the department of Management Science and Engineering.

“It has been a personal pleasure to work with Sig,” said Cuéllar. “He has been an enormous asset to CISAC.  He will continue to be a visionary leader on nuclear security and arms control issues throughout the world.”

Relman joined Paul Keim, acting chair of the NSABB, to address a CISAC seminar in March about their work in advising the government on the potential dangers of laboratory-engineered H5N1 avian influenza.

The advisory board had been asked to review two manuscripts that described the deliberate modification of the H5N1 avian influenza virus so as to be transmissible for the first time from mammal to mammal via a respiratory route. This provoked a debate in the scientific community about the risks of such work and whether the details of these experiments should be published – details that would enable anyone skilled in the art of virology and molecular biology to recreate these highly virulent and transmissible viruses. Some argued that the research could end up in the wrong hands. The board eventually recommended in a split decision that this research should be published.

“Life scientists need to be involved in discussions about the oversight of risky science and the responsible conduct of science, so that the potential benefits can be realized while the risks are minimized,” Relman said.

Relman will continue to run his research lab at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, where his focus is on the beneficial communities of microbes in the human body. He is president-elect of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and a member of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies of Science. He received his S.B. in biology from MIT in 1977 and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1982. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“The appointment of a life scientist who focuses on infectious diseases and biosecurity is an innovative step for our work in international security and cooperation,” said Gerhard Casper, president emeritus of Stanford University and director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Relman tells a story that illustrates his passion for scientific discovery. On a routine visit to his dentist about 15 years ago, he brought along his own test tube. He asked the dentist to give him some plaque that he had scraped off Relman’s teeth. He wanted to study his own bacteria.

“As a clinician, I can tell you my colleagues were not looking for new microbes to worry about,” Relman said. “Some of them believed there might well be some really weird new microbes in soil or in the ocean, but that the human microbial ecosystem was something that we understood quite well. Of course – that was wrong.”

Using DNA sequencing technology, he has since discovered hundreds of new bacteria in the human body.

“Our ability to predict the next important technical or conceptual advance in the life sciences is miserable, as is our ability to anticipate how these advances will be used,” Relman said. “But we can at least hope to engage the scientific community and the general public in discussions about our goals and our understanding of risks – and how best to mitigate them.”

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Stanford Scholar Roland Benedikter wins Klaus Reichert Award in Karlsruhe, Germany

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Europe Center scholar Dr. Roland Benedikter (47), has been honored with the 2012 Klaus Reichert Award for Medical Philosophy. This award, given by the Center for Medical Philosophy in Karlsruhe, Germany, was bestowed on Benedikter in recognition of his outstanding merits for medical ethics, for advancing the debate on avant-garde issues at the interplay between contemporary politics, sociology, ethics and medicine, and for his efforts to re-humanize the contemporary thought and international debate about the future of the human being in times of "transhumanism" and "hyper-technologization". The award is the most highly regarded academic award of this genre in Germany.

The award ceremony will be held on October 6, 2012 in Karlsruhe. In his award speech "What future for the human being: Humanism or Transhumanism? Aspects at the interplay between technology, politics and ethics", Benedikter will give an overview of the current "global systemic shift", its trend towards a "neuromorphosis" of global culture (two notions co-coined by him) and the future of the human being in the age of "transhumanism" and invasive new technologies. Benedikter will in particular elucidate the contemporary relation between macro-philosophical trends that will dominate the years ahead in the advanced international thought on the interplay between medicine and society.

Benedikter shares the award with his long time collaborator Prof. James Giordano, director of the Center on Neurotechnology at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, Washington DC.

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Cyber Security of Industrial Control Systems – What Does It Mean to National Security?

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Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) are used throughout the industrial infrastructure and military applications. These systems are designed to be highly reliable and safe, but were not designed to be cyber secure. Moreover, many of these systems do not even have cyber logging or forensics. Consequently, these systems, which constitute the “soft underbelly” of the American economy and defense, can enable a “cyber Pearl Harbor” to occur without having the capability of even knowing the impacts were cyber-induced. Stuxnet and Aurora have demonstrated that cyber can be used as a weapon to damage or destroy engineering equipment and systems.

To date, there have been more than 225 actual control system cyber incidents worldwide affecting electric power, water, chemicals, pipelines, manufacturing, mass transit, and even aircraft. Most of the incidents have been unintentional. Selected unintentional incidents will be addressed at the ICS Cyber Security Conference (http://www.icscybersecurityconference.com/). However, there have been a number of targeted cyber attacks. The Stanford presentation will focus on Stuxnet and Aurora. It will address the lack of air-gaps, insecureable legacy ICSs, lack of cyber forensics, and cultural issues between IT and Operations that can enable these attacks to occur and evade detection.

Joseph Weiss is an industry expert on control systems and electronic security of control systems, with more than 35 years of experience in the energy industry. Mr. Weiss spent more than 14 years at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) where he led a variety of programs including the Nuclear Plant Instrumentation and Diagnostics Program, the Fossil Plant Instrumentation & Controls Program, the Y2K Embedded Systems Program and, the cyber security for digital control systems. As Technical Manager, Enterprise Infrastructure Security (EIS) Program, he provided technical and outreach leadership for the energy industry's critical infrastructure protection (CIP) program. He was responsible for developing many utility industry security primers and implementation guidelines. He was also the EPRI Exploratory Research lead on instrumentation, controls, and communications.

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Joseph Weiss Consultant Speaker Applied Control Solutions
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Anternet: Ant Colony Networking Solutions to Ecological Problems

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Like many distributed systems, both natural and engineered, ant colonies operate without any central control. No ant can assess what needs to be done. Each ant responds to its interactions with other ants nearby and in the aggregate, these dynamical networks of interaction regulate colony behavior. Ecological studies show how collective organization evolves to respond to local, changing conditions. Harvester ant colonies living in the desert in Arizona use a simple positive feedback system, without any spatial information, to adjust foraging activity to the food supply. The rate at which foragers return to the nest with food determines the rate at which outgoing foragers leave the nest to search for more food.Turtle ant colonies living in the tropical forest in Mexico use interactions at temporary nest sites to regulate the shape and stability of the circuit of ants travelling through the trees. The talk will discuss models based on analogies between these systems and other dynamical networks, including the internet and brains. Exploring these analogies helps to elucidate how collective behavior evolves, shaping distributed algorithms in relation to changing environments.

Deborah M Gordon is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford. She studies the evolution of collective organization by investigating the ecology and behavior of ant colonies. Her work includes the long-term demography and behavior of harvester ant colonies in Arizona; the factors that determine the spread of the invasive Argentine ant in northern California; and the ecology of ant-plant mutualisms in tropical forests in Central America. She is the author of two books, Ants at Work (2000) and Ant Encounters:Interaction Networks and Colony Behavior (2010). She has been awarded fellowships from Guggenheim and the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences. She is interested in analogies between ant colonies and other distributed networks such as brains, the immune system, the internet, and distributed robotic systems.

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Deborah M. Gordon Professor of Biology Speaker Stanford University
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Global Health Impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident

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This study quantifies worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident on 11 March 2011. Effects are quantified with a 3-D global atmospheric model driven by emission estimates and evaluated against daily worldwide Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) measurements and observed deposition rates. Inhalation exposure, ground-level external exposure, and atmospheric external exposure pathways of radioactive iodine-131, cesium-137, and cesium-134 released from Fukushima are accounted for using a linear no-threshold (LNT) model of human exposure. Exposure due to ingestion of contaminated food and water is estimated by extrapolation. We estimate an additional 130 (15–1100) cancer-related mortalities and 180 (24–1800) cancer-related morbidities incorporating uncertainties associated with the exposure–dose and dose–response models used in the study. Sensitivities to emission rates, gas to particulate I-131 partitioning, and the mandatory evacuation radius around the plant may increase upper bound mortalities and morbidities to 1300 and 2500, respectively. Radiation exposure to workers at the plant is projected to result in 2 to 12 morbidities. An additional 600 mortalities have been reported due to mandatory evacuations. A hypothetical accident at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California, USA with identical emissions to Fukushima may cause 25% more mortalities than Fukushima despite California having one fourth the local population density, due to differing meteorological conditions.

Mark Z. Jacobson is Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment and Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy. He received a B.S. in Civil Engineering with distinction, an A.B. in Economics with distinction, and an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Stanford University, in 1988. He received an M.S. in Atmospheric Sciences in 1991 and a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences in 1994 from UCLA. He has been on the faculty at Stanford since 1994. His work relates to the development and application of numerical models to understand better the effects of energy systems and vehicles on climate and air pollution and the analysis of renewable energy resources. He has published two textbooks of two editions each and ~130 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles. He received the 2005 American Meteorological Society Henry G. Houghton Award for “significant contributions to modeling aerosol chemistry and to understanding the role of soot and other carbon particles on climate.” He has served on the Energy Efficiency and Renewables Advisory Committee to the U.S. Secretary of Energy.

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Mark Jacobson Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Speaker Stanford University
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Cash Rules Everything Around Me: The Commercialization of Online Spying

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Abstract
The so-called "Arab Spring" saw politically and economically disenfranchised citizens take advantage of new tools such as social media and smartphones to break the state’s monopoly on information, and mobilize mass protest. While governments were quick to employ familiar, time-tested mechanisms of repression against demonstrators in the streets and main squares, they fumbled at first in controlling this new digital dissent.  

Against an increasingly security-aware online community, the traditional tools
of blocking, filtering, and wiretapping had become less effective. Nervous regimes turned to the largely unregulated $5 billion a year industry in Internet surveillance tools. Once the realm of the black market and intelligence agencies, the latest computer spyware is now sold at trade shows for dictator pocket change.

Activists and journalists soon found themselves the target of e-mails promising exclusive or scandalous information.  We analyzed messages forwarded to us by suspicious users, and found spyware products apparently from Gamma International and Hacking Team, recognized players in the surveillance industry.  For the first time, we analyzed their products, chasing internet addresses and shell corporations across the globe.  As we published our findings, servers disappeared, and spyware was rewritten.

In this talk, we detail the cat and mouse game between authoritarian regimes and dissidents, as well as our ongoing efforts to map out the relationship between surveillance software companies and governments.


Morgan Marquis-Boire works as a Security Engineer at Google specializing in Incident Response, Forensics and Malware Analysis. He is a security researcher and Technical Advisor at the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. Recently, he has been working with the Electronic Frontier Foundation on issues surrounding dissident suppression in Syria.

 


Bill Marczak is a Computer Science PhD student at UC Berkeley working on developing new languages, abstractions, and tools for distributed
programming.  Bill is also a founding member of Bahrain Watch, a
monitoring and advocacy group that seeks to promote effective,
accountable, and transparent governance in Bahrain through research and evidence-based activism.

  

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Bill Marczak Computer Science, PhD Student Speaker UC Berkeley
Morgan Marquis-Boire Security Engineer Speaker Google
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