Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) proudly announces the launch of the Taiwan Program, which will serve as an interdisciplinary research and education hub on contemporary Taiwan. The program will investigate Taiwan’s strides as a modernization exemplar and the challenges its economy and society face in seeking to drive dynamism and growth in an era marked by shifting global relations. On May 2, 2024, APARC will host the program’s inaugural conference, Innovate Taiwan: Shaping the Future of a Postindustrial Society. Registration for the conference is now open.

Mirroring the dilemmas of other postindustrial societies, Taiwan today finds itself pressed by multiple imperatives. These include the need to generate novel economic competitiveness models amid rapid technological advancement and declining multilateral cooperation, address changing demographic realities, foster cultural diversity and tolerance, fulfill the action pathway to achieve net-zero emissions, and create the institutional and policy conditions to enable these adaptations. The Taiwan Program will explore how Taiwan can effectively address these challenges and seize the opportunities they afford for it to remain at the forefront of vibrancy and progress in the 21st century. 

Housed within APARC, part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), the Taiwan Program will pursue a mission encompassing research endeavors, education and learning initiatives, and exchange opportunities. By investing in these three core areas, the program will produce interdisciplinary, policy-relevant research to understand and address Taiwan’s challenges of economic, social, technological, environmental, and institutional adaptation in the coming decades; prepare the next generation of students to become experts on Taiwan; and facilitate meaningful interactions between Stanford faculty, researchers, and students with their Taiwanese counterparts and with policy experts, industry leaders, and civil society stakeholders in Taiwan. In all these areas, the program will leverage APARC’s expertise and networks and build upon the center’s strong track record of academic research and policy engagement with East Asia. This includes leveraging the proven model and rich experience of APARC’s esteemed programs on contemporary China, Japan, and Korea.

"The Taiwan Program underscores our commitment to deepening understanding of and engagement with Taiwan,” said Gi-Wook Shin, the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea and director of APARC. “We aim to foster research-practice partnerships between the United States and Taiwan while contributing to Taiwan's long-term development," added Shin, who is also a professor of sociology, a senior fellow at FSI, and director of the Korea Program at APARC.

The program will be led by a distinguished scholar of contemporary Taiwan to be recruited by the university in an international search. APARC will soon announce its inaugural postdoctoral fellow on contemporary Taiwan, who will help organize the program’s activities in the next academic year. The new program is made possible thanks to tremendous support from several Stanford donors who care deeply about Taiwan’s role on the global stage and U.S.-Taiwan relations. 

"We are profoundly grateful to our supporters for their partnership and commitment to advancing understanding of Taiwan and the U.S.-Taiwan relationship in this pivotal Asia-Pacific region," noted Shin. “This new investment will help us establish a world-leading program on Taiwan at Stanford.”

To inaugurate the new program, APARC will host the conference "Innovate Taiwan: Shaping the Future of a Postindustrial Society." Held on May 2 at the Bechtel Conference Center in Encina Hall, this full-day event will convene esteemed academic and industry leaders to engage in panel discussions covering topics such as migration, culture, and societal trends; health policy and biotechnology; economic growth and innovation; and the dynamics of domestic and international Taiwanese industries. Visit the conference webpage to learn more and register to attend in person.

The event opened with remarks from Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL, and was co-moderated by Stanford's Hakeem Jefferson, assistant professor of political science and IDJ’s faculty director, and UC Berkeley's Jake Grumbach. Following the conversation, the panel engaged the standing-room-only crowd through a lively audience Q&A.

In their talk, Levitsky and Ziblatt reiterated their argument that democratic erosion in the United States has been enabled by “democratic semi-loyalist” elites who prioritize their own career incentives or partisan gains over their duty to condemn anti-democratic behavior, such as instigating political violence or refusing to accept electoral defeats.

Grumbach and Jefferson invited the authors to discuss how their background as scholars of comparative politics – Levitsky and Ziblatt have studied Latin American and European politics, respectively – informed their analysis of American democracy. The authors commented on how remarkable they found the parallels between moments when democratic norms have come under question in other countries, like the February 6 insurrection in France or Peronist leader Cafiero’s key decision to join President Alfonsín on the balcony of the presidential palace to accept defeat and deter another coup in Argentina, and what we see in the U.S. today.

The conversation also addressed open debates on how concerned we should be about American democracy, and audience members brought up questions on how to think about generational differences, demographic change, and frustrated lawmaking. Jefferson called the launch event an “exciting, energizing convening of ideas” and shared how keen he is to continue these conversations through upcoming program events.

You can learn more about IDJ on the program’s website and watch a recording of the event below.

I’ve been given a lot of unique opportunities in my life, and I’m delighted that coming to Stanford to study cyber policy is the next step in my journey.

My work with cyber has already taken me through the U.S. Army as an intelligence analyst and into tech companies like StubHub and eBay, where I was a financial crime investigator, and Meta, where I worked on investigative teams looking into issues surrounding the 2020 U.S. election, the military coup in Myanmar, Ethiopia's civil war, and the evacuation of Afghanistan.

It’s surreal in the best way to be working with scholars and advisors like Renée DiResta and Alex Stamos whom I’ve read so much research from over the years. Because Stanford is so connected to Silicon Valley, it’s a prime place to look at policy impacts in the private sector. I’ve already had a chance to see public policy close-up, and I want to look more closely at how we can better engage the private sector to bring about societal changes.

One of the places where I think we need to rethink our approach is digital security. I’ve worked a lot on fraud and online crime cases during my career, and we tend to treat those issues very adversarially: reducing either entire nation-states or groups and movements of thousands and millions of people to amorphous, shadowy, dark, evil bad actors lurking in the ether is not a sustainable way to grow as a community and species. There are definitely really bad people out there, and without question there are people who have been exploited, but thinking about the issue in pure diametrics can be very dehumanizing. For every dark web mob boss targeting the innocent, there are a lot of undereducated, marginalized people targeting each other in a basic effort to get by.

I think we need to start asking harder questions about the incentives and root causes that drive people towards these crimes in the first place. Is it a lack of education? A lack of opportunity? The need for more resources? How do we as a society want to deal with those issues? Instead of just playing the whack-a-mole game that digital security currently is, I think the braver approach has to come from understanding the societal factors that create bad actors in the first place. We have to change those paradigms and take on the work of rehabilitating people rather than simply demonizing and dehumanizing them.
 

While I was an undergrad studying in Australia, I did volunteer and fundraising work with other Indonesian students. Throughout the semester, we’d collect funds, and then there would be a trip where we would go back to Indonesia and visit the children at the foster house we’d been collecting funds for. Sometimes these kids would go on to go to school or get a job, but their situation always seemed so precarious. If the economy changed or the money stopped, they’d be right back where they started. There wasn’t a good safety net to catch people, and donations were never going to be enough to change the situation for the long-term.

Seeing this made me start thinking about the public sector and how to improve public services that can act as a robust safety net for people in difficult times. Earlier in my career, I was very focused on empirical-based recommendations. I felt that as long as the data was convincing, that would be enough to create change. What I’ve realized is that good policy advice isn’t enough — you also need political will to implement the policy, driven by a well-informed public who can hold their elected policymakers accountable to deliver the changes they wish to see .

However, currently people find it difficult to understand the stances politicians take on certain issues and to keep track of whether they're delivering on their promises during their term in office. There’s not a very well-developed culture of people participating in policy making. I want to find ways of closing that gap between the people and their policy makers. 

That’s a massive challenge to tackle, but I know that learning more about governance and political frameworks with my MIP cohort will help me develop skills I can take back to Indonesia. There’s a big emphasis in this program on hands-on learning and experience outside of the classroom. It’s very focused on designing a solution, then testing it in the real world, then going back to redesign and test, redesign and test, until you get something that can actually make a difference. I’m confident that my time here is going to be invaluable for building public participation in Indonesia’s democratic and policymaking process.
 

My journey towards climate adaptation and mitigation is deeply personal, shaped by my lived experiences in the coastal cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Mombasa, Kenya, where I grew up. My mission is to treat climate change as a sustainable development issue and implement policies that holistically alleviate its impacts on vulnerable populations in Sub-Saharan Africa and the world. At Stanford, I hope to explore how science, technology, business, and society can work together to make this possible.

I’ve had the privilege of contributing to the development of renewable energy, water, and land conservation projects at different scales while working for a global non-profit (The Nature Conservancy), a multinational company (Schneider Electric), and an intergovernmental organization (The United Nations). Additionally, I had opportunities to engage in projects that address local problems of environmental and economic insecurity in various towns and villages in Tanzania (Zanzibar and Tanga), Cameroon (Bamenda), and the United States. These opportunities enabled me to collaborate with a wide variety of stakeholders in business, government, and civil society, thereby helping me hone technical and interpersonal skills relevant to the environmental field. 

As I continue my studies at Stanford, focusing on international policy, my goal is to channel my experiences, skills, and commitment to creating meaningful change. One of the exciting things about MIP is being amongst a nexus of people with tremendous talent. Tapping into this rich and vibrant community will help transform me as an aspiring leader in the climate space.
 

Since I was a little kid, I’ve been interested in what’s going on around me, and why things are the way they are. I come from Peru, and in an emerging economy like that it can be more obvious when public services don’t work. Everyone has stories from friends or family or firsthand experience of the difficulties they’ve had in accessing public services. I think that instilled a desire to solve issues of poverty and inequality very early on in my life. I’ve been asking those sorts of questions – What is this system? Why is it this way? How can we make it better? – for a long time.

I’m trained as an economist, but I believe we’ll only be able to find solutions to the major issues facing the world if we take an interdisciplinary approach. Yes, we need economic tools, but we have to combine those with frameworks from political science, international relations, law, education, public health, etc. We have to understand how the institutions who administer these frameworks function, and what we can do to change them when they’re not serving their purpose effectively.

And we also need to be open to learning from each other and making sure many different voices and perspectives are part of these discussions. We especially need young voices and youth participation in public policy. One generation may be in a position to make the policy, but it's the younger generations who will live with them. If we’re not helping them learn now, how can they be effective policy makers later?

I’m looking forward to my time in the MIP program as an opportunity to expand my knowledge and my network and make the kinds of multidisciplinary connections that will make me a more effective leader and mentor. The people here come from so many different backgrounds, and talking with them and learning from them is going to give me even more tools for how to approach these problems. 
 

My work experience is at the intersection of dual-use startups, venture capital, and the federal government. I most recently worked for Booz Allen Ventures, which is the corporate venture capital fund of Booz Allen Hamilton - focused on defense tech startups that can support national security missions. I supported the deal process end-to-end, from sourcing defense tech startups to developing business cases and facilitating value creation for portfolio companies. Prior to that, I supported several Department of Defense (DoD) teams, scouting dual-use startups based on certain use cases and technical requirements. I also conducted research on foreign investment in the U.S. startup ecosystem, assessing foreign influence within specific technology sectors.

My work experience has provided me with a deep understanding of and familiarity with the defense tech sector – both startups with dual-use applications and associated government needs and priorities – and how critical commercial technology is to supporting DoD efforts and ensuring national security.  

With rising geopolitical tensions in the world and China positioning as a great power competitor to the U.S., it feels like a great opportunity to be at Stanford and study international security and policy. At Stanford, my research interests revolve around venture capital and dual-use startups that support national security, opportunities/mechanisms to bridge the "valley of death" in the U.S. government, and adversarial capital/foreign investment in the U.S. I was drawn to the MIP program at Stanford because there are so many opportunities to research these areas and study them in depth from leading experts.

The MIP program also has a mission-oriented structure and mindset that really resonates with me. There are programs like the Gordian Knot Center at CISAC and classes like Hacking for Defense that are working in this same space: identifying private sector solutions for public sector needs. I’ve seen how good venture capital investments can accelerate startups that strengthen the DoD, and how good innovation, technology, and defense policy supports national security. I’m excited to continue working on these areas through my time at Stanford.
 

As an active duty Army officer and Downing Scholar, I intentionally pursued the MIP program at FSI because of the opportunity for personal growth, among the other unique aspects of studying at Stanford. A decade of military service taught me the simple truth that one will experience the most growth in the challenging territories outside of one’s comfort zone. Today, while passionate about International Security or Government & Development (two of the specializations offered by the MIP program), the Cyber Policy and Security track resides the furthest outside of my comfort zone and, therefore, offers me the greatest opportunity for personal growth.

In the military, the geometry of warfighting is divided into domains as a way of organizing and analyzing them. Admittedly, the cyber domain is the one I’m currently least familiar with, but the area that I feel is going to have the biggest effect on my ability to make and influence military decisions in the future. I’ve already witnessed how exponential growth within the cyber domain can expand the array of options for policy makers but, conversely, also create a new front of domestic vulnerability that U.S. national security and democracy is far from immune to. As I continue in my service, I want to be able to provide the best possible recommendations and make the most informed decisions possible. So, I’m here at Stanford to grow, discover and cover my blind spots.

More broadly, I understand this opportunity to reflect on my first decade of service while studying at Stanford is rare and well-timed. Today, I'm at a career-juncture where I’m now expected to understand the policy and strategic purpose behind the operational and tactical tasks at hand. That comes with a lot of responsibility. I’m more frequently in situations where I’m either directly making the decision or being asked, “What do you think about this?” by senior leaders. As a leader at any level, I want to be able to provide the best military advice possible, and I want to have a clear understanding of where my own decisions are coming from. Am I being objective or subjective? Do we have a clear end-state? Are we walking into a familiar and avoidable trap? I know the roots of many of these questions reside in policy. Therefore, I seek to build more of a mental foundation in the development of effective policy through a hands-on educational experience.

Today’s world offers no shortage of international policy problem-sets. One of the reasons the MIP program at FSI was so appealing to me was the environment it creates for hands-on learning opportunities to grapple with some of these problems. Dr. Fukuyama’s Policy Problem-Solving Framework and the MIP’s culminating capstone project offer tangible and solution-based opportunities to hone the skills I’ll take back to the Army. Lastly, Stanford houses a potent mix of people who have been policy practitioners, who have worked in government either here in the U.S. or abroad, and who are leading scholars in their field. Additionally, in this small and talented cohort of 28, another highlight to the MIP is our ability to frequently and directly interact with the faculty leadership and grow together. I’m excited by the opportunity for growth this all creates for me to not only share what I’ve learned in my career so far, but also to have that directly challenged and get feedback from my peers and professors. This experience will undoubtedly be invaluable when the time comes to step back into military service. 

APARC and Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin recently joined the Japan Economic Foundation (JEF) to discuss his research project "Talent Flows, Brain Hubs, and Socioeconomic Development in Asia." The conversation was published in the May/June 2023 issue of the Japan SPOTLIGHT, the online journal of JEF.

📥 Download a PDF version of this interview.

JS: How do you see the different situations vis-à-vis demography among Asia-Pacific nations? Some countries like Japan are suffering from depopulation while some are seeing an increase in population. How do you assess the political and economic implications?

Shin: As you mentioned, Japan and South Korea are going through very serious demographic crises with low birth rates, aging populations, and declines in the working-age population. On the other hand, India and many countries in Southeast Asia have very young populations, and we might expect an increase in talent mobility within the Asia-Pacific region. In the past, a lot of Chinese, Indian, and Korean students came to the United States and Europe. But now more people are going to Japan and South Korea. Their level of education has improved; the quality of universities in advanced Asian countries is quite good. We should think about the policy implications of the increase in regional talent mobility in the Asia-Pacific region.

JS: For example, India and Japan are referred to as complementary because India has lots of young people and Japan does not. Would you say that if Japan expanded opportunities for immigrants, it would make the relationship between Japan and India more complementary? Of course, India-Japan relations can be discussed in the context of skilled immigrants but there is still some disagreement on the issue of immigration of unskilled immigrants.

Shin: In the past, Japan and South Korea accepted largely unskilled labor from China and Southeast Asia. This unskilled migration will continue, but at the same time, Japan and South Korea need to accept more skilled migrants. India can be a good source. It is encouraging to see more foreign students who come to Japan, for example, for college and then stay to work. However, most foreigners leave after a few years of work. If you look at Australia, in contrast, many international students go there for college, stay, and eventually naturalize as Australian citizens. One may point out that Australia is very different from Japan or South Korea, which I partially agree with. However, until the 1970s, Australia was also promoting racial homogeneity. Under their “White Australia” policy, they were accepting only white Europeans, but couldn’t sustain the economy with the low population growth. They had to open up, promoting multiculturalism. This has led to an increase in immigrants from Asia, such as from China and India. Going back to your question, Japan and India can be complementary to each other: one needs talent, the other has a strong supply of IT workers.

JS: As you have just explained, the economic implications of this depopulation could cause us a shrinking economy. We should perhaps encourage the flow of talent to supplement the stagnant economy with immigrants – but what do you think about the political implications of this declining population in terms of security concerns?

Shin: Let me give you an example from South Korea. This is a big issue for South Korea because it maintains a large military. On the one hand, there is no way to maintain the military’s current size or level due to a shrinking population but on the other hand, I don’t think you can bring immigrants into the military. It’s not like bringing immigrants into a company. Another political implication is the change in the voting landscape as the proportion of older people or senior citizens is really increasing. They tend to be more conservative, in favor of conservative parties. This may not be an issue for Japan because the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) gets a lot of support from senior citizens anyway, but in South Korea and other countries where there is a regular change of power, this has potentially huge political implications.

JS: Looking at the possible merits of depopulation, some economists would say that of course depopulation has demerits, but it may still have some merits because individual wealth may increase. What is your perspective on this notion?

Shin: Some jobs can be replaced by robots or AI, and then not only may we not need so many people, but there may be less competition for jobs. Still, I think for any country to maintain the scale of its economy you must maintain a certain level of population. It is not only about production but also consumption. If you have a declining population then consumption will decline in tandem, which will negatively impact the economy. Japan has a fairly large population and the market may be good enough to be self-sufficient for now. But should the population become half of what it is today, then it probably may not be able to sustain the current scale of the economy. While overall you don’t want too many people, South Korea and Japan should be concerned about their declining populations.

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