Join the Cyber Policy Center on February 11 from 1PM–2PM Pacific for a seminar with Nicole Perlroth, moderated by Jeff Hancock. Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 12:40 PM for lunch, prior to the seminar.
Stanford Law School Building, Manning Faculty Lounge (Room 270)
559 Nathan Abbott Way Stanford, CA 94305
Join the Cyber Policy Center on February 4 from 1PM–2PM Pacific for AI and Social Media Manipulation: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, a seminar with Filippo Menczer, moderated by Jeff Hancock Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 12:40 PM for lunch, prior to the seminar.
Disinformation can be very harmful. AI provides us with tools to mitigate these harms, such as methods to detect inauthentic accounts and coordinated information operations. Large language models (LLMs) can also help rate the reliability of information sources and aid in fact-checking tasks. However, attempts to scale up these AI-supported interventions must account for unintended consequences when people interact with AI. In some cases, fact checking information generated by an LLM can actually decrease news discernment. In the hands of bad actors, AI can become a dangerous weapon. Aside from much-discussed deepfakes, generative AI can be used to easily and cheaply create fake but credible profiles and content at scale. These capabilities enable the infiltration and manipulation of vulnerable online communities. Given the near-impossibility of detecting AI-generated content, research is needed to develop new ways of challenging the provenance of content before wide exposure through distribution channels like social media and search engines.
About the Speaker
Filippo Menczer is the Luddy distinguished professor of informatics and computer science and the director of the Observatory on Social Media at Indiana University. He holds a Laurea in Physics from the Sapienza University of Rome and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego. His research interests span Web and data science, computational social science, science of science, and modeling of complex information networks. Dr. Menczer was named a Fellow of the ACM for his research on the vulnerability of social media networks to disinformation and manipulation.
Stanford Law School Building, Manning Faculty Lounge (Room 270)
559 Nathan Abbott Way Stanford, CA 94305
Join the Cyber Policy Center on January 28 from 1PM–2PM Pacific for AI for Health Equity: A Literacy Lens with Lee Sanders, moderated by Jeff Hancock. Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 12:40 PM for lunch, prior to the seminar.
New technologies, particularly in health AI, offer promises and perils for transforming primary care and behavioral health. One peril is the unintended exacerbation of underlying health inequities. Based on 30 years of clinical research – complemented by teaching human-centered design and consulting for Silicon Valley startups – Dr. Sanders will share examples of opportunities to leverage new technologies in ways that advance health equity, including implications for public policy.
About the Speaker
Lee M. Sanders, MD, MPH is Professor of Pediatrics and Health Policy, and Division Chief for General Pediatrics at Stanford University. He holds joint appointments in the Department of Health Policy, Department of Epidemiology and Population Health and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He teaches in the Human Biology Program and at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (Stanford d.School). With funding from the NIH, CDC, FDA and other national agencies -- Dr. Sanders directs the Stanford MUSE Lab, which aims to leverage AI, human-centered design, and rigorous analytics to address maternal and child disparities. He leads multi-disciplinary studies that aim to prevent obesity during early childhood, to improve the health of children in immigrant families, to understand the long-term educational consequences of preterm birth, and to advance novel AI tools that improve care for children with complex chronic conditions.
As a multi-lingual primary-care physician – Dr. Sanders directs Stanford Children’s Complex Primary Care Clinic, where he cares for children with serious chronic illness, and he also provides care at a federally qualified health center that is the main teaching site for Stanford residents and medical students.
Stanford Law School Building, Manning Faculty Lounge (Room 270)
559 Nathan Abbott Way Stanford, CA 94305
Join the Cyber Policy Center on January 21 from 1PM–2PM Pacific for a seminar for Quantifying the Impact of Misinformation and Vaccine-Skeptical Content on Facebook with Jennifer Allen, moderated by Jeff Hancock. Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 12:40 PM for lunch, prior to the seminar.
Low uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine in the US has been widely attributed to social media misinformation. To evaluate this claim, we introduce a framework combining lab experiments (total N = 18,725), crowdsourcing, and machine learning to estimate the causal effect of 13,206 vaccine-related URLs on the vaccination intentions of US Facebook users (N ≈ 233 million). We estimate that the impact of unflagged content that nonetheless encouraged vaccine skepticism was 46-fold greater than that of misinformation flagged by fact-checkers. Although misinformation reduced predicted vaccination intentions significantly more than unflagged vaccine content when viewed, Facebook users’ exposure to flagged content was limited. In contrast, mainstream media stories highlighting rare deaths after vaccination were not flagged by fact-checkers, but were among Facebook’s most-viewed stories. Our work emphasizes the need to scrutinize factually accurate but potentially misleading content in addition to outright falsehoods. Additionally, we show that fact-checking has only limited efficacy in preventing misinformed decision-making and introduce a novel methodology incorporating crowdsourcing and machine learning to better identify misinforming content at scale.
About the Speaker
Jenny is a postdoctoral researcher in the Computational Social Science Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. In Fall 2025, she will join NYU Stern as an Assistant Professor of Technology, Operations, and Statistics and a core faculty member of the Center for Social Media and Politics. She received her PhD in Management Science from MIT in 2025 and previously worked at Meta and Microsoft Research. Her research interests include misinformation, political persuasion, and the wisdom of crowds.
Stanford Law School Building, Manning Faculty Lounge (Room 270)
559 Nathan Abbott Way Stanford, CA 94305
Join the Cyber Policy Center on January 14 from 1PM–2PM Pacific for What VR is Good For (And What it is Not) with Jeremy Bailenson, moderated by Jeff Hancock. Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 12:40 PM for lunch, prior to the seminar.
Bailenson is the founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab and has researched the psychology of virtual reality technologies for 25 years. During his talk, you will better understand when using virtual reality technology truly enhances an experience and when it should be avoided. Bailenson will discuss the DICE framework when evaluating potential uses of virtual reality. DICE is a way to determine if VR makes sense because a real-world experience would be Dangerous, Impossible, Counterproductive, or Expensive (DICE). He will also discuss the historical successes and failures of VR, and provide guidelines on deploying a VR project effectively.
Jeremy Bailenson earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1994 and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Northwestern University in 1999. Bailenson studies the psychology of Virtual and Augmented Reality, in particular how virtual experiences lead to changes in perceptions of self and others. His lab builds and studies systems that allow people to meet in virtual space, and explores the changes in the nature of social interaction. His most recent research focuses on how virtual experiences can transform education, environmental conservation, empathy, and health. He is the recipient of the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford. In 2020, IEEE recognized his work with “The Virtual/Augmented Reality Technical Achievement Award.”
Stanford Law School Building, Manning Faculty Lounge (Room 270)
559 Nathan Abbott Way Stanford, CA 94305
Join the Cyber Policy Center on January 7th from 1PM–2PM Pacific for Measurably Improving Online Experiences by Design, a seminar with Ravi Iyer, moderated by Jeff Hancock. Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 12:40 PM for lunch, prior to the seminar. This seminar is part of the Winter Seminar Series, running January through March. Sign up for individual seminars or the whole series.
About the Seminar
Ravi will talk about the current harms resulting from online platforms and present a taxonomy of observed harms - including unwanted/harmful contact, unwanted/harmful experiences, and excessive usage. He will discuss evidence from both technology companies and external research to show that these harms are relatively common and exacerbated by the specific design choices of platforms - as captured by the Neely Center's Design Code for Social Media. In contrast to a common focus on moderation, a design focus results in more effectiveness and fewer concerns about bias or censorship. Several specific design principles will be discussed with the idea of communicating that is indeed possible to effectively and measurably improve online experiences.
In the 2nd part of this talk, Ravi will discuss how platforms have often measured progress and the limits of measurements based on policy violating content. User experience measurement is an increasingly common method of evaluating platform impact, both within companies and for regulators. He will discuss the creation of the Neely Indices, which are longitudinal platform specific measures of user experience that can help bring needed data to debates about individual platforms' effects on society. These measures can illuminate both current and future risks from technology.
In the final part of the talk, Ravi will discuss how these tools - both our Design Code and Indices - are informing regulation and platform changes across companies and in various jurisdictions.
About the Speaker
Ravi Iyer is the Managing Director of the University of Southern California Marshall School’s Neely Center. He advises the authors of The Anxious Generation, the Minnesota Attorney General’s office, and the UK's OfCom on improving the societal impact of technology. Previously, he spent 4+ years leading data science, research and product teams across Meta toward improving the societal impact of social media. He has a Ph.D. in social psychology from USC, co-founded Ranker and continues to work at the intersection of academia, civil society, and the technology industry.
Stanford Law School Building, Manning Faculty Lounge (Room 270)
559 Nathan Abbott Way Stanford, CA 94305
Limited number of lunches available for registered guests until 12:30pm on day of event.
About the event: What explains the current US arsenal of unmanned systems? Why, for example, is the contemporary arsenal dominated by aerial unmanned systems versus the munitions that dominated earlier developments? This book challenges traditional explanations for the proliferation of unmanned systems that focus on capacity or structure. Instead, this book argues that beliefs and identities shape the structures and capacities chosen when the United States invests in weapon systems. In particular, it traces beliefs about technological determinism and military revolutions, force protection and casualty aversion, and service identities to explain why the United States has invested so heavily in remote-controlled unmanned aerial platforms over the last three decades. In doing so, the book illustrates how ideas become influential to ultimately manifest in budget lines, detailing the policy entrepreneurs, critical junctures, and path dependencies that shape the lifecycle of beliefs about unmanned weapon systems. The book begins by providing a historical overview of US unmanned systems investments, taking an expansive view of unmanned technologies from land mines to missiles and drones from the Revolutionary War to contemporary investments. It then leans on theories of norms, ideas, and influence to detail the role of the Office of Net Assessment, Vietnam, 9/11, and armed service identity in building the United States’ current unmanned arsenal. Finally, it concludes with what this case of unmanned technologies reveals about US support to Ukraine as well as contemporary weapons debates about cyber, information technology, space, and hypersonic missiles.
About the speaker: Jacquelyn Schneider is the Hargrove Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, and an affiliate with Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology, national security, and political psychology with a special interest in cybersecurity, autonomous technologies, wargames, and Northeast Asia. She was previously an Assistant Professor at the Naval War College as well as a senior policy advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.
Dr. Schneider is an active member of the defense policy community with previous positions at the Center for a New American Security and the RAND Corporation. Before beginning her academic career, she spent six years as an Air Force officer in South Korea and Japan and is currently a reservist assigned to US Space Systems Command. She has a BA from Columbia University, MA from Arizona State University, and PhD from George Washington University.
All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.
William J. Perry Conference Room
Jacquelyn Schneider is a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology, national security, and political psychology with a special interest in cybersecurity, unmanned technologies, and Northeast Asia.
Her work has appeared in Security Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Strategic Studies Quarterly, and Journal of Strategic Studies and is featured in Cross Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity (Oxford University Press, 2019). Her current manuscript project is The Rise of Unmanned Technologies with Julia Macdonald (upcoming, Oxford University Press). In addition to her scholarly publications, she is a frequent contributor to policy outlets, including Foreign Affairs, CFR, Cipher Brief, Lawfare, War on the Rocks, Washington Post, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, National Interest, H-Diplo, and the Center for a New American Security.
In 2018, Schneider was included in CyberScoop’s Leet List of influential cyber experts. She is also the recipient of a Minerva grant on autonomy (with co-PIs Michael Horowitz, Julia Macdonald, and Allen Dafoe) and a University of Denver grant to study public responses to the use of drones (with Macdonald). She was awarded best graduate paper for the International Security and Arms Control section of the International Studies Association, the Foreign Policy Analysis section of the International Studies Association, and the Southwest Social Science Association.
She is an active member of the defense policy community with previous positions at the Center for a New American Security and the RAND Corporation. Before beginning her academic career, she spent six years as an Air Force officer in South Korea and Japan and is currently a reservist assigned to US Cyber Command. She has a BA from Columbia University, MA from Arizona State University, and PhD from George Washington University.
About the Event: Our speaker, Ambassador Juan Carlos Pinzón, will explore the intricate intersections of geopolitics, national security, and organized crime in the context of a rapidly evolving global landscape. He will examine the shift toward global power competition, the growing influence of the Global South, and the implications for national security in areas such as geoeconomics, trade, and technological rivalry. His discussion will delve into the socio-economic roots of organized crime, its entanglement with transnational networks, and its role in fueling proxy wars and political instability.
Key themes that Ambassador Pinzón will develop in this talk include the transformation of criminal organizations into national security threats, their influence over communities, and their capacity to undermine democratic institutions. He will also analyze when organized crime expands into or allies with terrorist networks and armed non-state actors. Ambassador Pinzón will conclude by considering policy options for confronting transnational organized crime through international cooperation.
About the Speaker: Juan Carlos Pinzón is currently a John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. visiting professor at Princeton University. He was previously Colombia's Minister of Defense and ambassador to the United States on two occasions. He served as ambassador to the United States between 2021 and 2022, celebrating 200 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries and between 2015 and 2017 strengthening the bilateral relationship. Previously, during 2018 and 2021 he was president of ProBogotá, a private non-profit entity for the promotion of public policies and long-term strategic projects for Colombia's capital region. During the period from 2011 to 2015 he served as Colombia's youngest Minister of Defense at a critical moment in the country's history.
In addition to these positions, he has also held other positions such as Chief of Staff to the President of Colombia from 2010 to 2011, Vice Minister of Defense from 2006 to 2009, Senior Advisor to the Executive Director of the World Bank from 2004 to 2006, Vice President of the Colombian Banking Association from 2003 to 2004, Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Finance from 2000 to 2002. In the 2018 national elections he served as presidential and vice-presidential candidate.
Juan Carlos Pinzón is an Economist from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, with a master's degree in economics from the same institution, and a master degree in Public Policy from Princeton University and Honoris Causa in National Security and Defense from the Colombian War College. Pinzón has also taken advanced courses in strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, science and technology policy at Harvard University, and smart cities at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Finally, he has several awards and over 60 decorations such as the Grand Cross of the Order of Boyacá and the Distinguished Public Service Medal from the U.S. Department of Defense.
All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.
William J. Perry Conference Room
Limited number of lunches available for registered guests until 12:30pm on day of event.
About the event: How AI might be used in nuclear command and control is the subject of much discussion in national security circles. But this debate—important though it has been—obscures many other ways that AI could be used or should not be used across the entire nuclear weapons enterprise. (In this talk, the nuclear weapons enterprise also encompasses nuclear weapons, their delivery systems, the associated command and control and the links of these entities to AI in systems not usually associated with nuclear weapons.) Key attributes of AI and the nuclear weapons enterprise will be reviewed, principles for thinking about AI in the nuclear weapons enterprise discussed, and specific guidelines for assessing the wisdom of AI in any given nuclear application proposed.
About the speaker: Herbert Lin is senior research scholar and Hank J. Holland Fellow at Stanford University whose research interests are at the intersection of national security and emerging technologies. He is Chief Scientist Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academies and serves on the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Lin was a member of President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity (2016) and the Aspen Commission on Information Disorder (2020). He was also a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee, where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.
All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.
William J. Perry Conference Room
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C236
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
Dr. Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University. His research interests relate broadly to policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, and he is particularly interested in the use of offensive operations in cyberspace as instruments of national policy and in the security dimensions of information warfare and influence operations on national security. In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Senior Fellow in Cybersecurity (not in residence) at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University; and a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. In 2016, he served on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity. Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.
Avocationally, he is a longtime folk and swing dancer and a lousy magician. Apart from his work on cyberspace and cybersecurity, he is published in cognitive science, science education, biophysics, and arms control and defense policy. He also consults on K-12 math and science education.