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For spring quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

SEMINAR RECORDING

Bechtel Conference Center
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

William J. Perry
Scott Sagan
Gov. Jerry Brown
Rose Gottemoeller
Martin Hellman
Seminars
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Register: bit.ly/3xZIp2S

The Philippines is but one of eleven countries in Southeast Asia and Prof.  Ferrer is not the only woman in the region whose ascent has shattered the glass ceiling.  But rather than offer a broad but necessarily shallow overview of the gains and frustrations of female professionals across the region, this webinar features an in-depth conversation with one Southeast Asian woman who has risen to prominence and influence in national security and the resolution of violent conflicts between insurgents and governments—visceral policymaking fields that have long been dominated by men.

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Miriam Coronel Ferrer 051022
Miriam Coronel Ferrer is unique among high-achieving women worldwide.  She is the first female in any country to have led successful negotiations with a rebel group.  In 2014, on behalf of the Philippine government, she co-signed with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front a Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).  The agreement led to a further step toward conflict resolution when a Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao was finally established in 2019.  In 2020 she co-founded the Southeast Asian Network of Peace Negotiators and Mediators.  Professor Ferrer also advises the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders. As a member of the UN Standby Team of Senior Mediators from 2018-2021, she helped fashion mediation initiatives not only in Southeast Asia but in Afghanistan, Georgia, Kosovo, and other countries as well.  Her latest book, Region, Nation and Homeland (2020), examines discourses of resistance in Mindanao and Luzon.  Her degrees are from the University of Kent and UP Diliman.

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Spring 2022 Series - AHPP 051022
This event is part of the 2022 Spring webinar series, Negotiating Women's Rights and Gender Equality in Asia, sponsored by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Donald K. Emmerson

Via Zoom Webinar.

Miriam Coronel Ferrer Professor of Political Science, University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman
Seminars

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headshots of Annet Aris, Sarah V. Stewart, Eva Maydell and Pierre-Arnaud Proux

Join us Tuesday, May 3rd from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for a webinar on Semiconductors, Supply Chains and Industrial Policy featuring Annet Aris of INSEAD, Sarah V. Stewart of Silverado Policy Accelerator Eva Maydell of the European Parliament and Pierre-Arnaud Proux, member of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager’s Cabinet, in conversation with Marietje Schaake of the Cyber Policy Center. This weekly seminar series is jointly organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative.

About The Seminar: 

A conversation exploring the economic and policy challenges resulting from the recent global chip shortage, with a discussion of issues such as protections against technology transfer efforts, the attraction and retention of high-skilled talent, and the strategic significance of the industry in light of accelerating digitization. How should the US and European governments tackle China’s market-distorting subsidies? How can onshore chip factory capacity be strengthened and secured? 

Together, this group will explore the history and future of the semiconductors industry and how policymakers across the Atlantic should respond to both vulnerabilities and opportunities.

About the Speakers

Annet Aris is Senior Affiliate Professor of Strategy at INSEAD. She joined INSEAD in 2003, her focus is on Digital transformation and disruption and its impact on society, industries and companies. She was nominated in 2010 and 2011 for the best teacher award by the MBA students. Annet has also extensive experience as a non-executive board member of a variety publicly listed companies across Europe. Currently she serves at the boards of Rabobank Group, Randstad NV, a global leader in HR services, the microchip machine manufacturer ASML NV, the intralogistics and forklift truck manufacturer Jungheinrich AG and the insurance company A.S.R. Netherlands N.V. Annet ranks in the top 10 most influential corporate directors in The Netherlands.

Sarah V. Stewart is the Executive Director of Silverado Policy Accelerator. Ms. Stewart has nearly two decades of experience as an international trade lawyer, trade policy expert, and trade negotiator. Immediately prior to joining Silverado, Ms. Stewart led the public policy efforts at Amazon on U.S. trade policy and export controls matters. From 2013 to 2018, Ms. Stewart worked for the Office of the United States Trade Representative, with her most recent position being the Deputy Assistant USTR for Environment and Natural Resources. During her time at USTR, Ms. Stewart was the lead environment chapter negotiator for the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations with the European Union. Prior to joining USTR, Ms. Stewart served in different legal and policy roles at The Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International, including spearheading a first ever international legal group.

Eva Maydell is a Bulgarian Member of the European Parliament. In 2017, she was the first woman elected as President of the European Movement International (EMI), the largest pan-European network of civil society organizations. It is present in 34 countries and encompasses 38 International Associations. Maydell was first elected to the European Parliament in 2014 at the age of 28, the youngest member of the European People's Party (EPP) Group at the time. She was re-elected in 2019 and is serving her second term as an MEP.

Pierre-Arnaud Proux is a member of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager’s Cabinet. He leads the Cabinet’s work on industrial policy, the internal market, space policy, and Important Projects of Common European Interest. He previously worked at DG Competition, assessing public support to the financial sector as well as aid to the real economy channelled through financial intermediaries.

Marietje Schaake (Moderator) is international policy director at Stanford University Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. Between 2009 and 2019, Marietje served as a Member of European Parliament for the Dutch liberal democratic party where she focused on trade, foreign affairs, and technology policies. Marietje is an (Advisory) Board Member with a number of nonprofits including MERICS, ECFR, ORF and AccessNow. She writes a monthly column for the Financial Times and a bi-weekly column for the Dutch NRC newspaper.

 

Marietje Schaake
Annet Aris
Sarah V. Stewart
Eva Maydell
Seminars
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Fu Jun May11 CP Banner


With a population of 1.4 billion people in the midst of industrialization and urbanization, the role of China in tackling climate change will be critical to the success of human species in facing up to the world's greatest existential challenge. Based on the newly published book -- Climate Mitigation and Adaptation in China: Policy, Technology and Market, FU Jun will discuss the parameters, policies and prospects of China's role in meeting the global crisis. In particular, in light of the country's regional heterogeneity and aided by simulation modeling, he will discern the philosophical nuances between particular justice and general justice in Chinese strategic thinking toward equitable, inclusive and sustainable growth, and focus on how different sets of technologies -- low carbon, zero carbon, negative carbon, as well as institutional technology -- will likely configure in an adaptive and dynamic fashion in China's pathways toward carbon peak prior to 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, and with implications for green financing and international cooperation.

FU Jun is Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy at Peking University. He has authored, co-authored, and edited five books, including Institutions and Investments (Studies in International Economics, The University of Michigan Press), Pathways to Prosperity: A China Narrative in Metaheuristic Growth Theory (in Chinese, Peking University Press), and Climate Mitigation and Adaptation in China: Policy, Technology, and Market (Springer Nature). Graduated with Ph.D. from Harvard University, he is the first Chinese national to have been elected as Foreign Academician in 2020, together with Anthony Giddens and Jurgen Harbermas, by the Bologna Academy of Sciences in its time-honored history.  Inter alia, he has been an invited reviewer for PNAS, served on the 11-Member Visiting Committee for Area Studies and International Programs across Harvard University, and on the Advisory Board of Economia Politica. Outside academia, he has served as Member of the Listing Committee of Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Executive Board Member of SOS Village (China), Vice Chair with A. Michael Spence as Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Growth Models, Board Member of Peking University Educational Foundation, and Advisor to the Chairman of the Executive Council of UNESCO.

This event is co-sponsored by Stanford Center at Peking University

Jean C. Oi
Fu Jun
Seminars
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Event Banner card for APARC Japan Program webinar on May 9: "The New Landscape of Economic Security and the U.S. - Japan Alliance, featuring headshot photos (from left to right) of Kazuto Suzuki, Mireya Solís, and Kiyoteru Tsutsui

May 9, 5:00 p.m - 6:30 p.m. PT / May 10, 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. JT

Economic security has emerged as a key foreign policy issue in Japan in recent years. Arguably one of the most active players in this field, the Japanese government has developed a comprehensive policy on economic security that seeks to protect its economy from the vagaries of geopolitical disruptions. Recent legislative efforts have centered around supply chain risks, critical infrastructure, and sensitive technologies and patents. Prompted by risks associated with business with China and intensified further by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, concerns about economic security require governments and businesses to adjust their reliance on market mechanisms in international trade and compel them to formulate new policies and frameworks that would address these concerns. Featuring two leading experts on economic security and trade in Japan and the United States, this panel will discuss what those new policies might look like and what roles the US-Japan alliance should play in building resilient economic frameworks that would mitigate the economic damages of geopolitical disruptions.

Panelists
 

 

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Photo portrait of Kazuto Suzuki

Kazuto Suzuki is a Professor of Science and Technology Policy at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and senior fellow of Asia Pacific Initiative (API), an independent policy think tank. He graduated from the Department of International Relations at Ritsumeikan University and received a Ph.D. from Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex, England. He has worked in the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique in Paris, France, as an assistant researcher, Associate Professor at the University of Tsukuba from 2000 to 2008, and served as a Professor of International Politics at Hokkaido University until 2020. He served as an expert in the Panel of Experts for the Iranian Sanction Committee under the United Nations Security Council from 2013 to July 2015. 

Suzuki currently serves as the President of the Japan Association of International Security and Trade. His research focuses on the conjunction of science & technology and international relations; subjects including space policy, non-proliferation, export control, and sanctions.  His recent work includes Space and International Politics (2011, in Japanese, awarded Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities), Policy Logics and Institutions of European Space Collaboration (2003), and many others.

 

 

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Square photo portrait of Mireya Solís

Mireya Solís is director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies, and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Prior to her arrival at Brookings, Solís was a tenured associate professor at American University’s School of International Service.

Solís is an expert on Japanese foreign economic policy, U.S.-Japan relations, international trade policy, and Asia-Pacific economic integration. She is the author of "Banking on Multinationals: Public Credit and the Export of Japanese Sunset Industries" (Stanford University Press, 2004) and co-editor of "Cross-Regional Trade Agreements: Understanding Permeated Regionalism in East Asia" (Springer, 2008) and "Competitive Regionalism: FTA Diffusion in the Pacific Rim" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Her most recent book, “Dilemmas of a Trading Nation: Japan and the United States in the Evolving Asia-Pacific Order” (Brookings Press, 2017), offers a novel analysis of the complex tradeoffs Japan and the United States face in drafting trade policy that reconciles the goals of economic competitiveness, social legitimacy, and political viability. “Dilemmas of a Trading Nation” received the 2018 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Award.


Moderator
 

 

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Square photo portrait of Kiyoteru Tsutsui

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor, Professor of Sociology, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program. He is the author of Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-editor of Corporate Responsibility in a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor of The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (University of Michigan Press, 2021). 

Kiyoteru Tsutsui
Kiyoteru Tsutsui

via Zoom Webinar

Kazuto Suzuki Professor Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Tokyo
Mireya Solís Director and Senior Fellow – Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies Brookings
Authors
Oriana Skylar Mastro
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs

This commentary first appeared in Foreign Policy.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a double disaster for President Vladimir Putin, as he faces a poorly performing military combined with an inability to shield his country from economic punishment. Both of these possibilities historically have also been sources of apprehension for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But China’s leadership turned its anxiety into action about 10 years ago, deliberately working to fix many of the problems and minimize the risks currently plaguing Russia in Ukraine.

One result is that the Chinese military is more likely to perform well even though it has not fought a war since 1979, when it lost thousands of troops in a punitive but brief invasion of Vietnam. Adding to that, China’s economy is both far larger and deliberately more diversified than Russia’s. A sanctions effort like the one presently aimed at Russia would be much harder to sustain against China. These two observations do not mean deterrence won’t hold, only that the unfolding events in Ukraine will likely do little to make Beijing more cautious.

Nearly everyone overestimated Russia’s military capabilities—including probably Putin himself. During its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s air-ground coordination has been ineffective, and Russian forces have shown risk-adverse tendencies in the air. Russia has also struggled with logistics and keeping its military supplied. Notably, it appears that Russia acted on bad intelligence and therefore did not believe initial strikes that maxed out its firepower were necessary. Furthermore, many Russian weapons platforms are outdated (for example, its Cold War-era tanks), and modern Su-57 fighter jets and T-14 Armata tanks only exist in comparatively small numbers.

The Chinese military used to clearly exhibit the same deficiencies. But over the past decade, it has embraced significant reforms, creating a much more capable fighting force that should give even the United States pause.


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Chinese President Xi Jinping identified similar training and competency issues [to the human element of Russia’s failures in Ukraine] in the PLA 10 years ago. But under his command, the PLA has been proactively implementing significant reforms to avoid similar pitfalls.

First, while Russia allowed its conventional capabilities to atrophy, Chinese military spending has exploded over the past three decades, increasing by 740 percent (in comparison to Russia’s 69 percent) from 1992 to 2017. According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, China spent almost four times on its military in 2020 than Russia ($244.9 billion to $66.8 billion). In 1999, less than 2 percent of its fighter jets were fourth-generation, 4 percent of its attack submarines were modern, and none of its surface ships were. Twenty years later, not only did China have much more of everything, but the majority was the most advanced, modern versions available—with China exhibiting advantages over Russia, even in combat aircraft, a traditional area of weakness for China.

Indeed, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) commentators often refer to China’s economic might as one of the reasons their military would outperform Russia’s—Russia has been “stingy” with its military modernization and production of precision-guided munitions primarily because of a lack of resources. By contrast, China has more than 2,200 conventionally armed ballistic and cruise missiles, making the PLA Rocket Force the world’s largest ground-based missile force. Estimates place the number of missiles positioned against Taiwan alone at around 1,000.

Russia’s poor performance does remind us that it takes more than just a lot of fancy systems to win a war (though having more advanced systems and more of them surely would have helped). The human element of Russia’s failures is front and center. Putin probably did not have an open and honest communication channel with the military, which was fearful of providing unfavorable information to the erratic leader. Russian troops were largely considered incompetent, but Putin thought superior technology could overcome human deficiencies.

Chinese President Xi Jinping identified similar training and competency issues in the PLA 10 years ago. But under his command, the PLA has been proactively implementing significant reforms to avoid similar pitfalls. And unlike Putin, who apparently believed technology could overcome deficiencies in personnel, Xi came to the opposite conclusion. When he came to power, he took one look at the military and recognized that with all its fancy equipment, the PLA probably could not fight and win wars and perform the missions it had been assigned. Of particular importance, according to China’s national military strategy, was to fight local wars under informationalized conditions. This meant that the network between platforms and people—the ease of connectivity—was the main feature of modern warfare. China needed the best equipment; an advanced command, control, computers, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) network; and tons of precision-guided munitions. But perhaps most importantly, it needed troops that could leverage these systems to conduct seamless operations across services and top-down through the chain of command.

The Chinese military is learning lessons from Ukraine, whether it is to stockpile more precision-guided munitions, ensure solid command and control, or cut off internet access [...], which will only serve to improve its warfighting capability in the future.

What followed was a series of slogans—the two incompatibles, two inabilities, two big gaps, the five incapables—all designed to point out the organizational and personnel issues of the military and focus leadership attention and resources on fixing the issue. A massive military reorganization followed with moves such as reorganizing effective combat units to be smaller so that they can mobilize more quickly and can remain self-sufficient for long periods of time. This means, in contrast with the Russian military, the PLA will likely have less reliance on generals at the front lines. China also established theater commands to facilitate joint operations and prioritized realism in its military exercises to help it prepare for real combat. Part of all of this was Xi’s demand that the military communicate its failures and weaknesses so that they could be addressed. Moreover, to improve command and control, China has moved toward engaging in multidomain joint operations all while standing up a new joint operations center that will ensure that, unlike with the Russian military, orders will be communicated and understood at the lowest levels. Indeed, the main reason that Xi has not yet made a play for Taiwan is likely his desire to hone this command and control structure and practice joint operations in realistic conditions for a few more years—a cautious and pragmatic approach that the situation in Ukraine only encourages further.

The PLA itself acknowledges that it still has some distance to go with training, particularly with regard to joint operations, but it looks as if the hard work is paying off. The complexity and scale of China’s national military exercises are eye-opening. It takes a great deal of planning, synchronization, and coordination to take service-level operations to the joint level. China appears to have made great strides in this area. The United States has observed, for example, China executing deep-attack air operations in its exercises that have combined intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) with multi-domain strike; lift for rapid mobility and advanced fighter manuevers. Russia has relied heavily on artillery and tanks, now and historically, while the PLA is showing a more balanced approach to combined arms operations.

For all these reasons, we should not expect the Chinese military to perform as poorly in its first real military operation since 1979. The PLA is structurally superior to the Russian military. And the Chinese know it. Granted, it’s hard to know whether some of the outlandish claims in the Chinese media are true—that the PLA Air Force would actually “be able to take out the Ukrainian air force in one hour.” But one thing is for certain—the Chinese military is learning lessons from Ukraine, whether it is to stockpile more precision-guided munitions, ensure solid command and control, or cut off internet access to prevent the leaking of information to the West, which will only serve to improve its warfighting capability in the future.

That does not mean it’s perfect. China is still in the process of building its corps of noncommissioned officers, recruiting more college graduates and technical experts so as to be less reliant on conscripts and shift away from an officer-heavy structure. Also, there is always the possibility that Xi’s anti-corruption campaign, which has impacted even the highest levels of the military, may begin to impinge on these reforms. But to date, it seems that those against necessary reforms have been largely targeted. In other words, Xi has not had to choose yet between his goals of consolidating domestic power and the professionalization of the armed forces.

The economic side is less about what has happened in the past six weeks than what will happen in the next six months or even six years. As tempting as it is in the case of Russia’s invasion, the impact of economic sanctions cannot be properly evaluated over a short time period. The need for a longer time horizon also applies to Russia-China economic comparisons, as it will generally require more extensive and more durable sanctions to deter or compel China than it would Russia.

Russia is thought, at least, to be highly vulnerable to sanctions applied to date. And it is certainly the case that China can be harmed by sanctions. Beijing is more integrated in global trade and finance than Moscow and thus has more to lose. But integration cuts both ways—compared with Russia, more countries would be harmed to a greater extent by equivalent actions taken against China. Further, China has demonstrated greater capacity to weather extended economic blows. This combination of features reduces the willingness of the United States and others to enforce durable sanctions, a fact that Beijing well appreciates.

The CCP survived three decades of worse poverty than experienced by the Soviet Union at the time, a self-inflicted depression in 1989-90 paralleling in some respects the events that ended the Soviet Union, the global financial crisis, and another partly self-inflicted economic wound via China’s determination to maintain its zero-COVID policy in 2021-22.

During more recent events, Beijing has been able to mobilize first greater capital resources than Moscow and then far greater. In 2020, the World Bank put China’s gross fixed capital formation at 20 times Russia’s. Xi attacked some of China’s richest citizens, as well as other elements of the private sector, in part because he believed them too intertwined with foreign capital. These were voluntary steps by China that mirror how the world currently seeks to punish Russia. Whatever their wisdom, Xi knows China can afford them, while Russia’s capability is in doubt.

Some Russian foreign reserves have been effectively frozen and some financials excluded from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), limiting international transactions. In the short term, these steps could have a similar impact on China, but they would be much harder to sustain.

Beijing has conducted currency swaps with dozens of countries that will want their renminbi to be useful. China also holds foreign government bonds in amounts that countries cannot ignore. U.S. Treasurys see the largest holdings, but there are also sizable quantities of Japanese government bonds, for instance. With official Chinese reserves upwards of $3 trillion, perhaps five times Russia’s, a partial freeze would quickly wear on governments and firms looking for bond buyers.

For any SWIFT restrictions that interfere with outbound U.S. portfolio investment, that volume stood at $85 billion in Russia and $1.15 trillion in China in 2020. The stock of U.S. direct investment was 10 times higher in China than Russia—companies willing to exit Russia would face leaving a lot more behind in a China contingency. Most broadly, the yuan can erode the role of the dollar; the ruble certainly cannot. Beijing lacks the will to allow free movement of the yuan and make it a true reserve currency, but heavy, durable sanctions might change that.

On the goods side, existing pressure to spare Russian vital exports would be more intense in China’s case. The loss of Russian oil and gas exports of $230 billion in 2021 threatens energy markets. Chinese exports are at least as important within chemicals, textiles, household appliances, industrial machinery, and consumer electronics. Would they all be exempted?

Certain Russian exports, such as palladium, play supply chain roles beyond their direct financial value. As expected from its manufacturing and export volumes, China’s supply chain participation is far larger than Russia’s, extending from inputs crucial to global pharmaceuticals to processed rare earths crucial to clean-energy applications. Russian ships have been banned from some ports. By tonnage, Russia accounts for a bit over 1 percent of the world’s commercial fleet, while China accounts for more than 11 percent. Banning Chinese ships would cause seaborne trade to noticeably contract, hitting supply chains that would already be strained by the diversion of Chinese goods.

Even an area of clear Russian advantage—lower import dependence—is double-edged. Inhibiting Chinese imports of iron ore or integrated circuits, for example, would hit the country hard. But China is such a huge purchaser that many producers would refuse to join a sustained embargo against it. As elsewhere, the barriers to Russian imports adopted thus far could hurt China only in the unlikely event that they are maintained for many months.

From how to remain in power to how to advance on the international stage, militarily and economically, the CCP has been learning what not to do from the Russian or Soviet experience for decades. Chinese strategists are unquestionably evaluating whether the nature of warfare has changed or if they failed to consider some critical factors necessary for success. Chinese economists are certainly looking to identify missed vulnerabilities based on how the economic dimension of the war in Ukraine plays out—and will work to address them to prevent exploitation by the United States and others.

Not that it will all be easy for Beijing. But China is already better prepared than Russia, economically and militarily. The steps to support Ukraine and punish Russia are immediately less potent in a China contingency. And an unfortunate side effect of the tragedy in Ukraine is that China has a relatively low-cost opportunity to learn—it may become a more formidable challenger than it would’ve been otherwise. The United States and its allies should realize that their effectiveness with regard to Russia is highly unlikely to translate. In a Taiwan contingency, the United States must be able to immediately implement both a stronger package of actions aimed at China and also a second package aimed at minimizing the long-term cost of the first.

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Unpacking the Crisis in Xinjiang: James Millward on China's Assimilationist Policies and U.S.-China Engagement
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The invasion of Ukraine is offering useful lessons for the PLA.

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headshots of alex rice, camille francois and amit elazari

Join us on Tuesday, April 26th from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for “Bug Bounties & Bridge-Building: Lessons from Cybersecurity Vulnerability Disclosure for Addressing Socio-Technical Harms” featuring Camille François, Global Director for Trust & Safety at Niantic, Dr. Amit Elazari of Intel, and Alex Rice of HackerOne in conversation with Marietje Schaake of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. This weekly seminar series is jointly organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative.

About The Seminar: 

Join us for a conversation on the nascent adoption of ‘bug bounties,’ a popular bug-for-reward-style audit mechanism in the cybersecurity domain, (and related approaches, such as VDPs and pentesting) to the discovery of various social-technical harms, including those inflicted through algorithmic (or “AI”) systems. 

Following the recent publication by the Algorithmic Justice League (AJL) of a paper on the risks and opportunities presented by this shift, we are joined by one of the paper’s co-authors, Camille François, alongside practitioners with insights into these mechanisms from industry and government perspectives. Together, this group will explore these mechanisms in the context of emerging and historic practices, including as illuminated in AJL’s recent report.

Speakers:

Camille François works on the impacts of technology on society, with an emphasis on cyber conflict and information operations and currently serves as the global director of trust and safety at Niantic and is a lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She was previously the chief innovation officer at Graphika where she oversaw its investigation, analyses and R&D teams and led the company’s work to detect and mitigate disinformation, media manipulation and harassment. François was previously a principal researcher at Google, in the “Jigsaw” team, an innovation unit that builds technology to address global security challenges and protect vulnerable users. François has advised governments and parliamentary committees on both sides of the Atlantic, investigated Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on behalf of the U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee, and served as a special advisor to the chief technology officer of France. François is an affiliate scholar of the Harvard Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, a Fulbright scholar and a Mozilla Fellow. She holds a masters degree in human rights from the French Institute of Political Sciences (Sciences-Po) and a masters degree in international security from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University.

Dr. Amit Elazari is a Director, Global Cybersecurity Policy at Intel Corporation and a Lecturer at University of California (UC), Berkeley School of Information Master in Information and Cybersecurity, as well as a member of the External Advisory Committee for the Center of Long Term Cybersecurity. She holds a Doctoral Degree in the Law (J.S.D.) from UC Berkeley School of Law, the world’s leading law institution for technology law, and graduated summa cum laude three prior degrees in law and business. Her research in cybersecurity, privacy and intellectual property has appeared in leading technology law and computer science journals, presented at conferences such as RSA, Black Hat, USENIX and USENIX Security, and featured at leading news sites such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the New York Times. She practiced law in Israel. 

Alex Rice is a founder and chief technology officer at HackerOne, the world's most popular bug bounty platform. Alex is responsible for developing the HackerOne technology vision, driving engineering efforts, and counseling customers as they build world-class security programs. Alex was previously at Facebook, where he founded the product security team, built one of the industry’s most successful security programs, and introduced new transport layer encryption used by more than a billion users. Alex also serves on the board of the Internet Bug Bounty, a nonprofit organization that enables and encourages friendly hackers to help build a more secure Internet.

Marietje Schaake
Camille François
Dr. Amit Elazari
Alex Rice
Seminars
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image of Anna-Maria Osula advertising event on april 20, 2022 on a blue background

Please join us on Wednesday, April 20th for a talk with Anna-Maria Osula, visiting scholar from TalTech. At this event co-sponsored by Stanford University Libraries, Anna-Maria will be introducing her research on private sector initiatives to develop and promote cyber norms of behavior.

Research Overview:

Given the multistakeholder nature of running the Internet and governing information and communication technologies, nation-states are not the only entities interested in shaping norms of behavior for cyberspace. Non-state actors are directly impacted by any decision on international norms in cyberspace. They are also expected to behave as responsible actors, being tied by the agreements negotiated by states at the UN platform. This means that non-state actors are involved in building and promoting norms and also playing a role in their interpretation and implementation. Anna-Maria will talk about her research project where she analyzes the private sector involvement in advancing cyber norms in international fora such as the United Nations.

Bio:

Anna-Maria Osula, currently a Global Digital Governance Fellow at Stanford University, is a senior researcher at Tallinn University of Technology and a senior policy officer at Guardtime. Her current research focus is cyber diplomacy and international law applicable to cyber operations. She also serves as a research fellow at Masaryk University under the project “Cyber Security, Cyber Crime and Critical Information Infrastructures Center of Excellence.” Previously, she worked as a legal researcher at the NATO CCDCOE, undertaking projects on national cyber security strategies, international organizations, international criminal cooperation, and norms. In addition to a Ph.D. in law from the University of Tartu, she holds an LLM degree in IT law from Stockholm University.

ENCINA HALL, ROOM E008, 616 Jane Stanford Way Stanford University Stanford, CA

Anna-Maria Osula Global Digital Governance Fellow
Seminars
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jacob ward photo with the loop book cover next to him on a blue background

Join us on Tuesday, April 19 from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for a book talk on “The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back” featuring Jacob Ward from NBC News, in conversation with Nate Persily of the Cyber Policy Center.  This weekly seminar series is jointly organized by the Cyber Policy Center’s Program on Democracy and the Internet and the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative.

In The Loop: How Technology is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back, Jake argues that AI is about to do to our ability to make decisions for ourselves what Google maps did to our ability to navigate. Drawing on interviews with over 100 scientists and 10-years of front-line reporting from the cutting edge of behavior-shaping technology, Jake’s book is a warning about our growing reliance on AI, and an encouragement to protect the best parts of being human.

Jacob Ward is a correspondent for NBC News, reporting for the TODAY show, Nightly News, MSNBC, and NBC News Now on the unanticipated consequences of science and technology in our lives. From 2018 to 2019, Jacob was a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, along with its partner the Berggruen Institute, which gave him space and companionship on the Stanford campus to write The Loop, his book about the effects of artificial intelligence on human decision making, with Hachette Book Group. Between 2016 and 2020, Jacob hosted a landmark four-hour television series on the science and implications of bias. Prior to that, he was a television correspondent for Al Jazeera, covering science and technology in the US and around the world. He was also editor-in-chief of Popular Science, the world’s largest science and technology publication.

Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication, and FSI.  Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Persily taught at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and as a visiting professor at Harvard, NYU, Princeton, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Melbourne. Professor Persily’s scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law or what is sometimes called the “law of democracy,” which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.  He also served as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. His current work, for which he has been honored as a Guggenheim Fellow, Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, examines the impact of changing technology on political communication, campaigns, and election administration.  He is codirector of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet, and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, which supported local election officials in taking the necessary steps during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide safe voting options for the 2020 election. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a commissioner on the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age.

Nathaniel Persily
Jacob Ward
Seminars
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Christopher Carothers book talk

Corruption is rampant in many authoritarian regimes, leading to the widespread perception that autocrats have little incentive or ability to curb government wrongdoing. Yet meaningful anti-corruption efforts by nondemocratic governments are more common and more often successful than is widely assumed.

In this talk, Christopher Carothers draws on extensive documentary research to argue that Xi Jinping’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign in China, despite its limitations, has been effective at curbing bribery, embezzlement, and other illicit practices since 2012. Moreover, although corruption control is often thought to rely on democratic or quasi-democratic institutions constraining power, Xi’s campaign has succeeded through a top-down, authoritarian approach. The outcomes of this signature Xi policy, Carothers explains, hold broader implications for our thinking about China’s future direction.

This talk is based on Carothers’ first book, Corruption Control in Authoritarian Regimes: Lessons From East Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

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Chris Carothers
Christopher Carothers is a political scientist conducting research on authoritarian politics with a regional focus on China and East Asia. His research has been published in Perspectives on Politics, the Journal of Democracy, the Journal of East Asian Studies, the Journal of Contemporary ChinaPolitics and SocietyForeign AffairsForeign Policy, and other leading publications. Dr. Carothers received his PhD in Government from Harvard University in 2019 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Contemporary China.

Didi Kuo

Online, via Zoom

Christopher Carothers Postdoctoral Fellow | University of Pennsylvania
Lectures
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