FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.
Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions.
Cryptocurrency and Societal Harm Symposium
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The Stanford Internet Observatory will host a symposium, Cryptocurrency and Societal Harm, at Stanford University on Friday, May 13, 2022. We invite academic researchers and practitioners to apply to attend and/or present. Relevant topics for the symposium include cryptocurrency-related crime, tracing illegally-obtained cryptocurrency, ransomware attacks, mixing services and privacy coins, and national and international regulations for cryptocurrency businesses. To apply, please fill out the following form by March 28, 2022. We plan to hold this event in person, although we may be able to accommodate a few presenters virtually. Please direct questions about this call to Karen Nershi (nershi@stanford.edu), Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Internet Observatory.
Call for Papers: Symposium and Special Issue of the Journal of Online Trust and Safety
Symposiums
The Policy Implications of Web3
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Join us on Tuesday, February 22 from 12 PM - 1 PM PT for a panel discussion on “The Policy Implications of Web3”, featuring Tomicah Tillemann of KRH Partners, Cory Doctorow of Craphound.com, and Michèle Finck of the University of Tübinge 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.
The year 2021 marked an important moment for web3. Proponents believe the potential of web3 to democratize, decentralize and improve the internet is huge. Others argue that evangelists have yet to deliver results, and that web3 will inevitably tend towards centralization. Few however have explored the policy and political implications of the concept: how should regulators approach a potential web3 explosion? How should lawmakers think about the wider internet infrastructure? Is web3 an opportunity to reimagine the internet, or will it present even more challenges to policymakers? This webinar will explore these angles and foster a reflection on public policy by leading technologists and academics. The session is open to the public, but registration is required.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
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Seminars
Mi Jin RYU
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mjryu23@stanford.edu
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Mi Jin is a Master’s in International Policy candidate at Stanford, where she specializes in International Security. Prior to Stanford, she has been working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea for six years. In 2016, she dealt with the North Korea’s 5th nuclear test. Working at the South Korean Embassy to Hungary in 2019, she was responsible for handling the ferry accident in which thirty-three South Koreans involved. From 2020 to 2021, she was in charge of inter-Korean exchange and cooperation program as well as the implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions on the DPRK. She holds a B.A. in Chinese Culture and in Economics from Sogang University, Seoul, Korea. She speaks English, Korean, and Mandarin. At Stanford, she hopes to reinforce her ability and expertise to approach the complicated and ever-changing landscape of international politics. Her academic interests include North Korean issues, arms control and disarmament, cyber security, and emerging technologies. In her free time, she loves playing golf and hiking.
Master's in International Policy Class of 2023
Arelena Shala
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Arelena Shala, from Prizren, Kosovo, is pursuing a Master's in International degree with a focus on international security as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar. She comes to Stanford after graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point, the first in her country. Her background is in geospatial science and Arabic language studies. During her undergraduate research, Arelena explored commercial-based methods of three-dimensional reconstruction of environments to improve military intelligence capabilities. Her current research interest is the intersection of geospatial science and international security, mainly the use of open-source imagery intelligence as a method of verification of nuclear-nonproliferation and promotion of transparency in global security. Her research resulted in the identification of a new nuclear-related facility in Iran and was published in Janes Intelligence Review. Arelena is currently a research assistant for LTG(R) H. R. McMaster at the Hoover Institution, and after graduation, she will serve as a military intelligence officer in the Kosovo Army. In her free time, Arelena enjoys learning about different cultures and languages through travel. Besides her native Albanian, Arelena is conversant in Spanish, Turkish, and Arabic.
Master's in International Policy Class of 2022
Sarah Baran
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Sarah is dedicated to working on humanitarian policy reform after spending the last six years leading teams in humanitarian responses in the Horn of Africa and South Asia. Most recently, she worked with the United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to support efforts to improve accountability to crisis-affected populations with the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Secretariat, the longest-standing and highest-level humanitarian coordination forum, comprised of executive heads of 18 UN and Non-UN organizations. Sarah spent the year prior to joining MIP leading a team of over 200 people to provide emergency services in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh with Solidarites International. She also directed a $50 million Consortium of nine non-governmental organizations with Norwegian Refugee Council to respond to the threat of famine in Somalia. Prior to humanitarian work, Sarah began her career with Georgetown University, her alma mater, implementing randomized control trials in Kenya and working alongside East African governments to translate the results into development policy. She also helped open Georgetown University’s Initiative on Innovation, Development, and Evaluation (gui2de) East African office, expanding operations to Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda. Sarah is pursuing the MIP through the generous support of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program. Now that she's in the bay area, she's excited to spend as much time as possible in the mountains.
Master's in International Policy Class of 2022
Miku Yamada
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mikuymd@stanford.edu
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Miku is a Master’s in International Policy candidate at Stanford, where she specializes in International Security. She has worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan for over two years where she worked on wide-ranging issues concerning Japan’s security cooperation with the U.S. At Stanford, she hopes to further deepen her understanding of security policies and alliance management, and the impact of technology on national security policies and foreign policy. She is also hoping to develop a better understanding of cyber policy and the intersection with national security. Miku holds a bachelor’s degree in Law and Politics from the University of Tokyo and studied Political Science at Princeton University as an exchange student.
Master's in International Policy Class of 2023
Bradley Jackson Jr.
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bjacks03@stanford.edu
MIP Brad Jackson
Bradley Jackson Jr. is a Master’s in International Policy candidate concentrating in the international security and cyber policy and security specializations. His areas of interest include U.S.-Russia and U.S.-China relations, foreign policy, great power competition, and American grand strategy. While at Stanford, Bradley is particularly interested in the potential implications and increasingly pertinent role of emerging and advanced technologies in all facets of national security and foreign policy, particularly with artificial intelligence. He currently works as a research assistant to Dr. Condoleezza Rice and Lieutenant General (Ret.) H.R. McMaster at the Hoover Institution, and with Ms. Marietje Schaake in the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. Bradley speaks Russian, Italian, Spanish, and recently started learning Chinese (Mandarin). He joined MIP and Stanford directly after graduating from Towson University in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and a minor in Italian. Outside of academia, Bradley enjoys snowboarding, traveling, golfing, baseball, basketball, and learning languages.
Master's in International Policy Class of 2022
Ukraine Is a Distraction from Taiwan
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This commentary was originally published by The Wall Street Journal.
A Russian invasion of Ukraine would be the most consequential use of military force in Europe since World War II and could put Moscow in a position to threaten U.S. allies in Europe. Many in the American foreign-policy establishment argue that the appropriate U.S. response to any such invasion is a major American troop deployment to the Continent. This would be a grave mistake.
The U.S. can no longer afford to spread its military across the world. The reason is simple: an increasingly aggressive China, the most powerful state to rise in the international system since the U.S. itself. By some measures, China’s economy is now the world’s largest. And it has built a military to match its economic heft. Twenty-five years ago, the Chinese military was backward and obsolete. But extraordinary increases in Beijing’s defense budget over more than two decades, and top political leaders’ razor-sharp focus, have transformed the People’s Liberation Army into one of the strongest militaries the world has ever seen.
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China’s new military is capable not only of territorial defense but of projecting power. Besides boasting the largest navy in the world by ship count, China enjoys some capabilities, like certain types of hypersonic weapons, that even the U.S. hasn’t developed.
Most urgently, China poses an increasingly imminent threat to Taiwan. Xi Jinping has made clear that his platform of “national rejuvenation” can’t be successful until Taiwan unifies with the mainland—whether it wants to or not. The PLA is growing more confident in its ability to conquer Taiwan even if the U.S. intervenes. Given China’s military and economic strength, China’s leaders reasonably doubt that the U.S. or anyone else would mount a meaningful response to an invasion of Taiwan. To give a sense of his resolve, Mr. Xi warned that any “foreign forces” standing in China’s way would have “their heads . . . bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.”
If Taiwan falls into Chinese hands, the U.S. will find it harder to defend critical allies like Japan and the Philippines, while China will be able to project its naval, air and other forces close to the U.S. and its territories
The U.S. must defend Taiwan to retain its credibility as the leader of a coalition for a free and open Indo-Pacific. From a military perspective, Taiwan is a vital link in the first island chain of the Western Pacific. If Taiwan falls into Chinese hands, the U.S. will find it harder to defend critical allies like Japan and the Philippines, while China will be able to project its naval, air and other forces close to the U.S. and its territories. Taiwan is also an economic dynamo, the ninth-largest U.S. trading partner of goods with a near-monopoly on the most advanced semiconductor technology—to which the U.S. would most certainly lose access after a war.
The Biden administration this month ordered more than 6,000 additional U.S. troops deployed to Eastern Europe, with many more potentially on the way. These deployments would involve major additional uncounted commitments of air, space, naval and logistics forces needed to enable and protect them. These are precisely the kinds of forces needed to defend Taiwan. The critical assets—munitions, top-end aviation, submarines, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities—that are needed to fight Russia or China are in short supply. For example, stealthy heavy bombers are the crown jewel of U.S. military power, but there are only 20 in the entire Air Force.
The U.S. has no hope of competing with China and ensuring Taiwan’s defense if it is distracted elsewhere. It is a delusion that the U.S. can, as Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said recently, “walk and chew gum at the same time” with respect to Russia and China. Sending more resources to Europe is the definition of getting distracted. Rather than increasing forces in Europe, the U.S. should be moving toward reductions.
To be blunt: Taiwan is more important than Ukraine. America’s European allies are in a better position to take on Russia than America’s Asian allies are to deal with China.
There is a viable alternative for Europe’s defense: The Europeans themselves can step up and do more for themselves, especially with regard to conventional arms. This is well within Europe’s capacity, as the combined economic power of the NATO states dwarfs that of Russia. NATO allies spend far more on their militaries than Russia. To aid its European allies, the U.S. can provide various forms of support, including lethal weapons, while continuing to remain committed to NATO’s defense, albeit in a more constrained fashion, by providing high-end and fungible military capabilities. The U.S. can also continue to extend its nuclear deterrent to NATO.
The U.S. should remain committed to NATO’s defense but husband its critical resources for the primary fight in Asia, and Taiwan in particular. Denying China the ability to dominate Asia is more important than anything that happens in Europe. To be blunt: Taiwan is more important than Ukraine. America’s European allies are in a better position to take on Russia than America’s Asian allies are to deal with China. The Chinese can’t be allowed to think that America’s distraction in Ukraine provides them with a window of opportunity to invade Taiwan. The U.S. needs to act accordingly, crisis or not.
Ms. Mastro is a center fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, part of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Colby is a principal at the Marathon Initiative and author of “The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict.”
Oriana Skylar Mastro
Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Getting bogged down in Europe will impede the U.S.’s ability to compete with China in the Pacific.