Stanford University

The Secret to Advancing the Science of Cyber Risk: A Q&A with Gregory Falco

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The science of cyber risk looks at a broad spectrum of risks across a variety of digital platforms. Often though, the work done within the field is limited by a failure to explore the knowledge of other fields, such as behavioral science, economics, law, management science, and political science. In a new Science Magazine article, “Cyber Risk Research Impeded by Disciplinary Barriers,” cyber risk experts and researchers at Stanford University make a compelling case for the importance of a cross-disciplinary approach. Gregory Falco, security researcher at the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance, and lead author of the paper, talked recently with the Cyber Policy Center about the need for a holistic approach, both within the study of cyber risk, and at a company level when an attack occurs.

CPC: Your recent perspective paper in Science Magazine highlights the issue of terminology when it comes to how organizations and institutions define a cyber attack. Why is it so important to have consistent naming when we are talking about cyber risk?

Falco: With any scientific discipline or field, there is a language for engaging with other experts. If there’s no consistent language or at least dialect for communication around cyber risk, it’s difficult to engage with scholars from different disciplines. For example: The phrase “cyber event” is contested and the threshold for what an organization considers to be a cyber event varies substantially. Some organizations consider someone pinging their network as a cyber event, others only consider something a cyber event once an intrusion has been publicly disclosed. So there’s a disparity when comparing metrics of cyber events from organization to organization because of the different thresholds of what’s considered an event.

CPC: We’ve all been sent one of those emails letting us know our data may have been compromised and your paper points out it’s nearly impossible to put foolproof protections into place; attacks are inevitable. Given that, how should companies weigh the various ways they can protect themselves?

Falco: The first exercise each organization should go through when they decide to be serious about cyber risk is to prioritize their assets. What is business critical? What is safety critical? Then, like all other risks, a cost-benefit analysis must be done for each asset based on its priority. If the asset is safety-critical, then resources should be allocated to help protect that asset or at least ensure its resilience. Trade-offs are inevitable, no company has unlimited resources. But starting with an understanding of where the priorities are, is critical.

CPC: In companies, cyber security often falls entirely to the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Your paper argues that’s shortsighted. What is gained when a company takes a more holistic approach?

Falco: Distributing responsibility across the organization catalyzes a security culture. A security culture is one where there is a constant vigilance or at least broad awareness of cybersecurity concerns throughout the organization. Fostering a security culture is often suggested as a mechanism to help reduce cyber risk in organizations. The problem with not distributing responsibility is that when something happens, it’s too easy to resort to finger-pointing at the CISO, and that’s counterproductive. Efforts after an attack should be on responding and being resilient, not finding the scapegoat.

CPC: Cyber risk largely focuses on prevention, but your paper argues that it’s what happens after an attack in that needs greater attention. Why is that?

Falco: Every organization will be attacked. However organizations can differentiate themselves from a cyber risk standpoint by appropriately managing the situation after an attack. Some of the most significant damages to organizations can be reputational if communication after an attack is unclear or botched. Poor communication after an attack can result in major regulatory fines or valuation adjustments as seen in cases like Yahoo and that can have major business implications. Communications aren’t the only important element of post-attack response. A thorough post-mortem of the organization’s response to the attack can be an important learning experience and a way to plan for future attacks.

CPC: Protecting against cyber attacks and the losses that go with them can obviously be costly for companies. You make a case for collaboration among different fields, say among data scientists and economists. How can that be encouraged?

Falco: We argue that cross-disciplinary collaboration rarely happens organically. Therefore, we call on funding agencies like the NSF or DARPA to specify a preference for cross disciplinary research when funding cyber risk projects. Typically, this isn’t currently a feature of calls for proposals, but for cyber risk programs it should be. We encourage researchers to explore cyber risk questions at the margins of their discipline. Those questions may lend themselves to potential overlap with other disciplines and foster a starting point for cross-disciplinary collaboration.

For more on these topics, see a full list of recent publications from the Cyber Policy Center and the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance.

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A Season of Caesars

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"Ideologically, today’s autocrats are a more motley and pragmatic crew. They generally claim to be market friendly, but mainly they are crony capitalists, who, like Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary, and Erdogan in Turkey, are first concerned with enriching themselves, their families, and their parties and support networks. Increasingly, they raise a common flag of cultural conservatism, denouncing the moral license and weakness of the “the liberal West” while advancing a virulent antiliberal agenda based on nationalism and religion," writes Larry Diamond. Read here. 

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SHP-led study shows U.S. Feed the Future program reduces stunting of children in Africa

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Beth Duff-Brown
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The U.S. government's global hunger and food security initiative, Feed the Future, has prevented 2.2 million children from experiencing malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa, according to new research led by Stanford Health Policy's PhD candidate Tess Ryckman.

The researchers compared children’s health in 33 low- and middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In 12 of those countries, Feed the Future provided services such as agricultural assistance and financial services for farmers, as well as direct nutrition support, such as nutrient supplementation. 

The study, published online Dec. 11 in The BMJ, found a 3.9 percentage point decrease in chronic malnutrition among children served by Feed the Future, leading to 2.2 million fewer children whose development has been harmed by malnourishment.

“What we see with stunting rates is striking,” Ryckman said. “I would argue that 2 million fewer children stunted over seven years is major progress and puts a substantial dent in total stunting levels. And that’s 2 million children who will now have the levels of physical and cognitive development to allow them to reach their full potential.”

Stunting, or having a low height for a particular age, is a key indicator of child malnutrition. Children who aren’t properly nourished in their first 1,000 days are more likely to get sick more often, to perform poorly in school, grow up to be economically disadvantaged and suffer from chronic diseases, according to the World Health Organization.

A Controlled Study

Feed the Future is thought to be the world’s largest agricultural and nutrition program, with around $6 billion in funding from USAID (plus more from other federal agencies) between 2010 and 2015. Despite its size, much remains unknown about the effectiveness of the program.

The researchers analyzed survey data on almost 900,000 children younger than 5 in sub-Saharan Africa from 2000 to 2017. They compared children from the Feed the Future countries with those in countries that are not participants in the program, both before and after the program’s implementation in 2011.

The researchers found the results were even more pronounced — a 4.6 percentage point decline in stunting — when they restricted their sample to populations most likely to have been reached by program. These included children who were younger when the program began, rural areas where Feed the Future operated more intensively, and in countries where the program had greater geographic coverage.

“Our findings are certainly encouraging because it has been difficult for other programs and interventions to demonstrate impact on stunting, and this program has received a lot of funding, so it’s good to see that it’s having an impact,” Ryckman said.

Multifaceted Approach to Nutrition

Experts are divided about the best way to help the world’s 149 million malnourished children: Is assistance that directly targets nutrition, such as breastfeeding promotion or nutrient supplementation, more effective? Or is it also beneficial to tackle the problem at its root by supporting agriculture and confronting household poverty?

The authors, including Stanford Health Policy’s Eran Bendavid, MD, associate professor of medicine, and Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, professor of medicine, a senior fellow (by courtesy) at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies and a senior fellow senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, said their analysis supports the value of a multifaceted approach to combating malnutrition among children, namely leveraging agriculture and food security interventions.

“Independent evaluations of large health policy programs such as Feed the Future help build the evidence base needed to tackle persistent patterns of undernutrition,” said Bendavid, an epidemiologist. “The widespread prevalence of stunting and chronic undernutrition is among the most common and yet most stubborn cause of underdevelopment in the world, and learning what works in this space is sorely needed.”

The researchers, including Stanford medical students Margot Robinson and Courtney Pederson, speculated that possible drivers of the program’s effectiveness include three features of Feed the Future’s design: its country-tailored approach; its focus on underlying drivers of nutrition, such as empowering female farmers; and its large scale and adequate funding.

The authors hope their independent evaluation of the program might lead to more funding and support for it. At the very least, they said, it should demonstrate to people working on Feed the Future and the broader global nutrition program community that programs focused mostly on agriculture and food security — indirect contributors to malnutrition — can lead to success.

Value Unknown

Feed the Future has been scaled back in recent years — it once served 19 countries and now reaches only 12. The program’s budget also remains somewhat murky.

“While there isn’t much data on the program’s funding under the Trump administration, the program appears to have been scaled back, at least in terms of the countries where it operates,” Ryckman said. “It’s possible that some of these gains could be lost, absent longer-term intervention from Feed the Future.”

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The researchers also did not look at whether the program provided high value for the money spent.

“While we find that it has been effective, it hasn’t led to drastic declines in stunting and it is unclear whether it is good value for money,” she said.

Ryckman also noted that USAID’s own evaluation of its program is tenuous because it looked only at before-and-after stunting levels in Feed the Future countries without comparing the results to a control group or adjusting for other sources of bias, which is problematic because stunting is slowly declining in most countries.

“These types of evaluations are misleading,” Ryckman said. “The U.S. government really needs to prioritize having their programs independently evaluated using more robust methods. That was part of our motivation for doing this study.”

Support for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health (grant P20-AG17253), the National Science Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

 

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Andrew Shaver

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Andrew Shaver is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Merced. Prior to that, he completed postdoctoral research fellowships at Stanford University's Political Science Department and, separately, at Dartmouth College, where he was also a lecturer. Professor Shaver earned his PhD in Public Affairs (security studies) from Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs and completed his final year of the doctoral program as a predoctoral fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is also the founding director of the Political Violence Lab. His research focuses broadly on contemporary sub-state conflict and appears in the American Political Science Review, American Economic Review, Annual Review of Sociology, and Journal of Politics, amongst other outlets. Professor Shaver previously served in different foreign affairs/national security positions within the U.S. Government, including spending nearly one and a half years in Iraq during the U.S.-led war with the Pentagon.

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CPC Lunch Seminar Series | From Polarization to Consensus: Towards a Modern Theory of Social Choice

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Ashish Goel
Abstract:

While the Internet has revolutionized many aspects of our lives, there are still no online alternatives for making democratic decisions at large scale as a society. In this talk, we will describe algorithmic and market-inspired approaches towards large scale decision making that our research group is exploring. We will start with a model of opinion dynamics that can potentially lead to polarization, and relate that to commonly used recommendation algorithms. We will then describe the algorithms behind Stanford's participatory budgeting platform, and the lessons that we learnt from deploying this platform in over 70 civic elections. We will use this to motivate the need for a modern theory of social choice that goes beyond voting on candidates. We will then describe ongoing practical work on an automated moderator bot for civic deliberation (in collaboration with Jim Fishkin's group), and ongoing theoretical work on deliberative approaches to decision making. We will conclude with a summary of open directions, focusing in particular on fair advertising. 

Ashish Goel Bio

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  • 616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305
 

Ashish Goel

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Ashish Goel is a Professor of Management Science and Engineering and (by courtesy) Computer Science at Stanford University, and a member of Stanford's Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford in 1999, and was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California from 1999 to 2002. His research interests lie in the design, analysis, and applications of algorithms; current application areas of interest include social networks, participatory democracy, Internet commerce, and large scale data processing. Professor Goel is a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan faculty fellowship (2004-06), a Terman faculty fellowship from Stanford, an NSF Career Award (2002-07), and a Rajeev Motwani mentorship award (2010). He was a co-author on the paper that won the best paper award at WWW 2009, and an Edelman Laureate in 2014. Professor Goel was a research fellow and technical advisor at Twitter, Inc. from July 2009 to Aug 2014.
Ashish Goel Professor of Management Science and Engineering
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Defector Militias as Tools of Social Fragmentation: Evidence from Ba‘thist Iraq and Sudan

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Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/XFFT74SvaCM

 

Abstract: Pro-government militias have become a regular dimension of counterinsurgency operations, serving governments in fighting rebels locally. The level of violence employed by these irregulars, which often seems to exceed that of the regular army, but also the fascination with civilian fighters, have motivated students of counterinsurgency to pay more considerable attention to such actors in recent years. Much of this body of work has focused on the battlefield and tactical utilities of pro-government militias. However, these militias have other functions, which most of the studies tend to overlook, and that are socio-political in nature. Most notably, militias serve governments in their endeavors to divide societies, mainly by playing up parochial identities, such as tribalism and sectarianism, and playing up old rivalries. This function of militias has been particularly visible in cases of “defector militias,” namely militias composed of defectors from the rebel constituency to the government ranks. At least in some cases, these socio-political functions of militias have played no less significant role in governments’ decision to employ these forces than short-term battlefield needs. My study of pro-government defector militias uses two case studies: That of Iraq under the Ba‘th regime and its counterinsurgency efforts against Kurdish separatists in the north; and that of the Sudanese governments and their war against Southern rebels during the First Sudanese Civil War. Based on extensive archival, my work seeks to substantiate the argument about the strategic socio-political function of defector militias.

 

Speaker's Biography:

yaniv voller
Yaniv Voller is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Politics of the Middle East at the School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent. His research focuses on counterinsurgency, rebel governance and regional diplomacy in the Middle East. His book, The Kurdish Liberation Movement in Iraq: From Insurgency to Statehood, was published in 2014. His articles have appeared in International Affairs, Democratization, the Middle East Journal and the International Journal of Middle East studies, among others. He is currently working on projects relating to militia recruitment in counterinsurgency, ethnic defection, the impact of anti-colonial ideas in shaping post-colonial separatist strategies, and the role of diaspora communities as a transnational civil society. In 2018-2019 he was a Conflict Research Fellow at the LSE-based Conflict Research Programme, funded by the Department of International Development. Before moving to the University of Kent, he taught and held fellowships at the University of Edinburgh and the London School of Economics, where he obtained his PhD in International Relations.

Yaniv Voller University of Kent
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Evidence of Russia-Linked Influence Operations in Africa

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Russia’s global strategy for reasserting itself as a geopolitical superpower has led to an increased presence in Africa, where it has broadened efforts to shape the continent’s politics and pursue new economic opportunities to allay the effects of sanctions. While the presence of Russian military instructors and paramilitary groups in Libya and the Central African Republic is well documented, there is emerging evidence that Russian-linked companies are now active in the information space as well. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the oligarch perhaps best known for running the Internet Research Agency, is central to this expansion.

In this post we identify a Facebook operation attributed to entities tied to Prigozhin — including, it appears, the Wagner Group (Частная военная компания Вагнера), a Russian organization that has served as a private military contractor in several African countries. The first allusion to a social media influence operation tied to Prigozhin stemmed from Daily Beast reporting and a document shared with us by the Dossier Center that suggested the existence of a cluster of Facebook Pages tied to the Wagner Group. We identified an initial cluster of Pages which targeted Libya, and shared the find with the Facebook Threat Intel team.

Facebook subsequently provided us with data on two related networks that they had been investigating previously. These networks have been targeting the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Sudan, and included “news” Pages and websites, and Pages purporting to belong to political parties as well as individual politicians. The part of the operation we analyzed included 7 Instagram accounts and 73 Facebook Pages. In total 1.72 million accounts liked the Facebook Pages, though we note that some of these likes are possibly from the same account across multiple Pages. The Page managers were quite active; in October 2019 alone there were 8,900 posts. 

 

 

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Evidence of Russia-Linked Influence Operations in Africa

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Stanford Internet Observatory
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Russia’s global strategy for reasserting itself as a geopolitical superpower has led to an increased presence in Africa, where it has broadened efforts to shape the continent’s politics and pursue new economic opportunities to allay the effects of sanctions. While the presence of Russian military instructors and paramilitary groups in Libya and the Central African Republic is well documented, there is emerging evidence that Russian-linked companies are now active in the information space as well. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the oligarch perhaps best known for running the Internet Research Agency, is central to this expansion.

In this post we identify a Facebook operation attributed to entities tied to Prigozhin — including, it appears, the Wagner Group (Частная военная компания Вагнера), a Russian organization that has served as a private military contractor in several African countries. The first allusion to a social media influence operation tied to Prigozhin stemmed from Daily Beast reporting and a document shared with us by the Dossier Center that suggested the existence of a cluster of Facebook Pages tied to the Wagner Group. We identified an initial cluster of Pages which targeted Libya, and shared the find with the Facebook Threat Intel team. Facebook subsequently provided us with data on two related networks that they had been investigating previously. These networks have been targeting the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Sudan, and included “news” Pages and websites, and Pages purporting to belong to political parties as well as individual politicians. The part of the operation we analyzed included seven Instagram accounts and 73 Facebook Pages. In total 1.72 million accounts liked the Facebook Pages, though we note that some of these likes are possibly from the same account across multiple Pages. The Page managers were quite active; in October 2019 alone there were 8,900 posts. 

 

Wagner Group document shared by the Dossier Center.
Wagner Group document shared by the Dossier Center. The document included an example post from a Page called ليبيا القذافي (Libya Gaddafi). The post was a photo of former president Muammar Gaddafi, overlaid on an outline of Libya. The document described the post as a “Patriotic post about the best time for the Motherland.” (High Resolution)

From our analysis of the social media activity, there are several key takeaways:

  • The operation, conducted by Russia-linked organizations likely operating at least in part at the behest of a state actor, appears to have further relied on subcontractors who are native speakers and/or local to the region. This variety of nested obfuscation increases hurdles to attribution of disinformation campaigns. 

  • In addition to well-known social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, the actors leveraged public WhatsApp and Telegram groups. Whether more private chat channels were also used is an area for further research. 

  • The operation used social media engagement tactics designed to develop a close relationship with the audience, including Facebook Live videos, Google Forms for feedback, and a contest.

  • The operation shared tactical similarities to Internet Research Agency activities; the operatives created several associated news sites (in one case staffed by reporters who appear to have spent time in Russia) as well as Facebook Pages that produced social-first content (memes, live videos). The attribution of such activity to non-IRA entities that nonetheless share an affiliation with Prigozhin leads to a significant unresolved question of what relationship, if any, exists between the IRA, Wagner, and Prigozhin’s other companies, and to what extent Russia is distributing its active-measures capabilities across a myriad of organizations to hinder detection and attribution.

The activity and strategies varied by country:

  • Libya: Russian actors are supporting two potential future presidential candidates: the rebel General Khalifa Haftar and Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. The Facebook operation began in December 2018, and the Pages were run by administrators in Egypt. Prior reporting has indicated that the Wagner Group has at least 100 mercenaries fighting with Haftar’s militias.

  • Sudan: Facebook activity began in mid-2018, and has persisted since the April coup against Omar al-Bashir, transition to the Transitional Military Council, and transition to the Sovereign Council of Sudan. Content has been slightly supportive of whatever government is in power, and occasionally critical of protesters. Several of the Pages relate to two news websites, khartoumstar.com and sudandaily.org, the latter of which often re-posted Sputnik articles. There were additionally Facebook Pages purporting to be the official Pages of several political parties, along with “news” Pages for the Transitional Military Council and the Sovereign Council of Sudan. The former had the url facebook.com/transitionalmilitarycouncil, and at first glance appeared to be its official Page. Prigozhin-linked companies are known to have mining agreements in Sudan and have trained local military forces.

A Sudan Daily article, reposted from Sputnik, saying that Russian mercenaries in Sudan have no connection to the Russian government.
A Sudan Daily article, reposted from Sputnik, saying that Russian mercenaries in Sudan have no connection to the Russian government. (Link to full image) 

  • Central African Republic: A network of Facebook Pages was created to publicize and praise the wide range of activities undertaken by the Russian government in the CAR, from military support to cultural events. These Pages, most of which had administrators in Madagascar, seem to have been intended to appear organic and give CAR audiences the impression of widespread domestic support for the administration of President Touadéra and its Russian partners.

  • Madagascar: Russian actors created several Pages in 2018, but only began posting in February 2019, just after the new president was inaugurated. The Pages bolstered the government. One Page was created for a specific parliamentary candidate. 

  • Mozambique: The Facebook operation began in September 2019, a few weeks before the country’s presidential and parliamentary elections. The Pages posted content to support the incumbent president, and damage the reputation of the opposition – in at least one instance, with a fake news story. 

post from Onda da Frelimo (Wave of Frelimo) describing the results of a poll purportedly conducted by the International Anticrisis Center, a Russian organization
A post from Onda da Frelimo (Wave of Frelimo) describing the results of a poll purportedly conducted by the International Anticrisis Center, a Russian organization. The publication of such polls is illegal in Mozambique. Frelimo is the ruling party in Mozambique. (High resolution)

  • Democratic Republic of the Congo: Three Facebook Pages, created in 2019 after a contentious election, published content and memes mocking and criticizing key Congolese political figures, including the president. These Pages were not clearly aligned with the Russian government’s public strategy. 

The potential connection between the Libya operation and the Wagner Group is based on the leaked document obtained from the Dossier Center, which we cannot independently verify. We attribute these collective operations to actors tied to Yevgeny Prigozhin. Facebook’s attribution supports our conclusion. This investigation demonstrates a fundamental challenge of attributing information operations: disentangling activity by domestic interested parties, foreign actors working on behalf of domestic parties and foreign actors working in support of their own geopolitical or commercial interests. Our initial analysis of this content suggests a complex mix of motivations and our understanding of the African political disinformation ecosystem continues to evolve. Our full analysis of the materials, including images and figures, is in the linked whitepaper.

 

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Meet the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy Class of 2021

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Representing 14 different countries, the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy (MIP) first-year class is a diverse group. Of the 8 men and 21 women, some have worked in government, some have served in the military, and others just completed their undergraduate degrees. Their academic interests range from migration; to clean energy; to women’s, children’s and LGBTQIA rights; and they spend their free time woodworking, practicing Kung Fu, and listening to true-crime podcasts.

The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies spoke to five of the incoming first-year students about their backgrounds, passions, and dreams for the future. These are their stories.

Serage Amatory, 22. (Chouf, Lebanon) 

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“I’ve been living in Egypt for the last four years and attending American University in Cairo, where I double-majored in political science and multimedia journalism. My background is in human rights, and I plan to keep working in human rights after school. I worked as a journalist at one of the few nonpartisan TV stations in Lebanon, and I also worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Lebanon.

I’ve also made two documentary films — one is about the transgender community in Cairo, and the second film tells the stories of five male victims of rape and sexual assault in Cairo. I enjoy talking about issues that other people don’t want to talk about. I get a lot of disapproval from people all the time, but that's what motivates me — I want to be speaking about people who don’t have someone speaking about them. Someone has to bring attention to things that aren't in the mainstream, and that's what I like to do.

The Master’s in International Policy program here is amazing, and I love that you have the option to specialize in a topic — I’d like to study something concrete and know exactly what I'm going to be doing with it after I graduate. I studied really general topics in undergrad, and now I feel like it's time to augment my general education with something that's more specific. I came in with the expectation that I'm going to be specializing in governance and development, and while I still want to do that, I also really think I might want to take some cyber classes now. So we’ll see — I’m just really happy to be here.”

Maha Al Fahim, 21. (Vancouver, Canada and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates) 

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“My interest in public policy started when I was 14. I wrote a nonfiction book about child abuse and gender discrimination, and it was based on my mother's story — she grew up in an abusive family. And in publishing that book, I really saw the power of writing to expose policy issues. When I went to Princeton for my undergraduate education, I wanted to hone my communication skills, because I saw communication as a really powerful tool. I wrote for the Daily Princetonian newspaper and Business Today magazine, and I was also chair of Princeton Writes, a program to promote writing among the community and celebrate the power of words.

Now I'm working on a novel. It's called "Shaolina", and it's set in China. The novel explores gender dynamics and financial and physical power. I traveled to China last summer to do research for the book, and I got to train with a Shaolin monk for 8 hours a day — we would wake up at 5 a.m. and run through the mountains, it was crazy. It was so cool to immerse myself in the experience like that. For me, Kung Fu is not just a sport, it’s a way of life. I've learned so many life lessons from Kung Fu: patience, perseverance, and balance, to name a few.

I love how Stanford is focusing on the future of policy, because as issues get more complex, you need not just qualitative skills, but also quantitative skills. And you need to be able to think creatively and innovatively. Our cohort is small — around 30 students — and I really like it. There are people here from very diverse backgrounds, and it has been really cool to hear so many different international perspectives.” 

Angela Ortega Pastor, 25. (Madrid, Spain) 

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“I studied economics at NYU Abu Dhabi, and then I worked for three years in Paris for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as an energy data manager in oil and gas topics. I worked a lot with the different countries within the OECD as well as with other organizations to help collect data, and we put all of that data into comprehensive reports so that other people and companies can use it for analysis. I really liked working there. I liked the international dynamic - everybody came from very different backgrounds and different places, so it was very congenial to learn from other people.

I'm an economist by training, and that impacts the way I like to look at the problems within the energy field. Such as, 'How can we get consumers and companies to want to transition to clean energy? Does it mean that we need to put policies in place, or regulate the market? Or are pure economic incentives going to do the trick?' There are a lot of professors at Stanford who have done research in that sphere, so that was also a big push for me to come here.

I really like Stanford so far. I've found that people here are very welcoming and happy to help. I was a bit worried about that - when you move somewhere new, you sometimes worry about cliques and how focused people will be on their own lives. But everyone that I've encountered has been really nice and helpful. It's made feel like, 'OK - I can figure out how this place works and eventually feel at home.'”

Craig Nelson, 37. (Minneapolis, Minnesota) 

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“I'm an infantry officer in the U.S. Army. I graduated from West Point in 2006, and I'm in my 14th year of service. I've done eight deployments across both Iraq and Afghanistan, and I've also spent a good amount of time stationed in Europe. My wife, Michelle, and I just moved to Palo Alto from Vicenza, Italy, with our 2-year-old son, Max. Michelle and I love to travel, we love being stationed abroad, and we think that the best way to complete a 20-year career in the Army is to be abroad as much as possible and see parts of the world that we would not otherwise be exposed to.

Overall what I hope to learn here is a better way for the American Army to help to implement the policy that I was a part of as the U.S. Army's forward-deployed unit in Europe. I was able to see where policy derived by our elected officials is actually implemented at a tactical level. I’d like to go back to the Army and implement that policy with a refined understanding of where it comes from and how it's generated.

Before social media became as ubiquitous as it is now, I think people were in groups based largely on where they're from - a certain area code, or a neighborhood, or a school. Now it's possible to identify with a group completely without respect to geographic location, and I think that's because of social media. I'm interested in how that drives security policy - how does that change cyber security policy, and how does that change the way that my country interfaces with its allies and its partners?

When I go back to the Army, I hope to be in a position of greater responsibility and leadership. And I think that this experience will broaden me in a way that I would not have achieved if I had stayed in the operational Army and done a more traditional job following what I just did in Italy.”

Sievlan Len, 23. (Toul Roveang Village, Cambodia) 

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“I earned my bachelor’s degree in global affairs from the American University of Phnom Penh in Cambodia. I did two internships before coming to Stanford: one was with a consulting firm, where I was working mainly on migration research and youth participation initiatives at the sub-national level. I also worked for a foundation that works on strengthening political parties in Cambodia. It was a really interesting experience, and it gave me the idea of doing my bachelor's thesis on migration.

My interests right now are in migration, development, and education. And I’m interested to learn about how the three interact, and how we can make the most out of migration. I'm so excited to explore the interdisciplinary aspects of the Master’s in International Policy program, because I've always felt that you can't separate these issues one from another — migration itself is very interdisciplinary, there is both a political and an economic side to it.

I come from a village in Cambodia, and I'm one of the luckiest in that I had the opportunity to pursue higher education. One of my dreams and goals is that everyone in Cambodia — including girls — have equal access to education, and at least to finish high school, and have the opportunity to pursue their dreams in universities if they’d like to. Where I grew up, I saw a lot of potential not being fulfilled because of people’s circumstances — poverty, or elders not valuing education. I really want to see that change. I want everyone to be able to reach their full potential.”

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A Conversation with David Beasley: Challenges of 21st Century Humanitarian Response

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David Beasley
Please join us for a conversation with United Nations World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley, who will discuss "Challenges of 21st Century Humanitarian Response." The conversation will be moderated by his predecessor at the agency, Ertharin Cousin, a visiting fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment.

R.S.V.P.

As Executive Director of the World Foods Programme (WFP), Mr. Beasley serves at the level of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and is a member of the organization's Senior Management Group under the leadership of Secretary-General António Guterres. At WFP, he is putting to use four decades of leadership and communications skills to mobilize more financial support and public awareness for the global fight against hunger. Under his leadership, WFP kept four countries from slipping into famine in 2017 and is moving beyond emergency food assistance, to advance longer term development that brings peace and stability to troubled regions. Before coming to WFP in April 2017, Beasley spent a decade working with high-profile leaders and on-the-ground programme managers in more than 100 countries, directing projects designed to foster peace, reconciliation and economic progress.

David Beasley was elected at the age of 21 to the South Carolina House of Representatives (1979-1992) and as Governor of South Carolina (1995-1999), one of the youngest in the state’s history.  He received a Profile in Courage Award in 2003 from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and is a 1999 Fellow of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Born in 1957, he attended Clemson University and holds a B.A. from the University of South Carolina, as well as a J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law.

The Conversation with David Beasley is co-sponsored by Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; the Center on Food Security and the Environment and the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands.

 The lecture will be held at the David and Joan Traitel Building, 435 Lasuen Mall, Stanford University. For more information about the event, contact Sonal Singh at sonals@stanford.edu.

About the Wesson Lecture

The Wesson Lectureship was established at Stanford by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies in 1988. It provides support for a public address at the university by a prominent scholar or practicing professional in the field of international relations. The series is made possible by a gift from the late Robert G. Wesson, a scholar of international affairs, prolific author, and senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

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