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Hub for global digital policy launches at Stanford

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The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University announced today that it has launched the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPi). GDPi’s mission is to help develop governance norms for the global digital ecosystem that reinforce democratic values, universal human rights and the rule of law. It will serve as a multi-stakeholder collaboration hub at Stanford for technologists, governments, civil society and the private sector actors. GDPi will identify and incubate global policy and governance innovations that enhance freedom, security and trust in the digital realm. 

 

GDPi will be led by Eileen Donahoe who is widely recognized as a leading advocate for human rights in the digital realm, and as an experienced international lawyer and diplomat working to develop global norms for Internet governance and digital policy.  

Donahoe was appointed by President Obama to serve as the first United States Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. After leaving government, Donahoe served as director of global affairs at Human Rights Watch, where she represented the organization worldwide on human rights foreign policy, with special emphasis on digital rights, cybersecurity and Internet governance. 

“Silicon Valley is a natural locus for cross-sector international collaboration on global digital norms,” said Donahoe. “Our mission will be to facilitate development of operational policies and processes to address societal challenges that arise from technological innovation. I am so excited to have the opportunity to build this global innovation hub for digital policy at CDDRL, the perfect home for this dynamic and interdisciplinary project.”  

GDPi will explore the complex roles of government and private sector technology firms in the digital environment. While rapid adoption of digital technology has brought many benefits and challenges to society, most legal and governance institutions have not kept pace or adjusted to meet the corresponding changes.  

GDPi will address governance challenges in four interrelated areas: digital rights; digital security; artificial Intelligence-based governance and trans-national Internet governance. The initiative seeks to engage stakeholders in new articulations of existing international human rights and humanitarian law.  [[{"fid":"226716","view_mode":"crop_870xauto","fields":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"Eileen with President Obama during her tenure as the first US Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. ","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto","alt":"","title":""},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"3":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"Eileen with President Obama during her tenure as the first US Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. ","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto","alt":"","title":""}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"style":"margin: 3px 10px; float: right; height: 393px; width: 300px;","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto","data-delta":"3"}}]]

Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and an affiliated faculty member at CDDRL, will serve as the principal investigator on the GDPi project.  

“We are really delighted that Eileen Donahoe has agreed to join CDDRL as adjunct professor and executive director of the new GDPi,” said Diamond. “Every month, it seems, social media and other digital tools are becoming more and more powerful and pervasive in their effects on our politics, government and daily lives. As digital technology races forward, it not only generates new platforms and possibilities for human empowerment, but it also poses growing challenges for human rights and individual, national and international security.”   

Diamond launched the Program on Liberation Technology (LibTech) at CDDRL in 2009 to examine how technology has empowered democratic progress. GDPi is a successor to the LibTech program, enabling the Stanford team to take a more comprehensive and policy-oriented approach to digital policy challenges - involving not only research but also innovation to incubate new ideas and approaches.  

Quarterly workshops and an annual global conference will be the foundation for GDPi’s work in the coming year.  

The GDPi initiative joins five other core research programs at CDDRL, which probe some of the most urgent issues facing the field of democracy and development. Working in partnership with other institutes on campus, the program will benefit from the guidance and active engagement of cross-disciplinary faculty from Stanford Law School, the Center for Internet and Society, the Stanford Cyber Initiative and the Center for Social Innovation at the Graduate School of Business. 

Michael McFaul, director of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies expressed confidence that GDPi will help solidify Stanford’s role as a global thought-leader on governance challenges that flow from digital technology. 

“The Global Digital Policy Incubator will become an important hub at Stanford, as we seek to help government and private sector policymakers address governance challenges of the 21st century digital world.”  

More information about the Global Digital Policy Incubator can be found at http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/global-digital-policy-incubator

 

 

CAPTIONS:

The picture in the left upper corner: Eileen Donahoe addressing the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, where she served as the first US Ambassador 2010-2013.

The picture on the right: Eileen Donahoe with President Obama during her tenure at the UNHRC. 

 

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A Conversation with General Michael Hayden

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About the Event: In conversation with Philip Taubman, General Hayden will discuss intelligence and cybersecurity challenges the United States faces in combatting terrorism, dealing with North Korea, Iran and Russia, and will assess President Trump’s relations with the U.S. intelligence community. 

About the Speaker: General Michael Hayden is a retired four-star general who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency when the course of world events was changing at a rapid rate. As head of the country’s premier intelligence agencies, he was on the frontline of global change, the war on terrorism and the growing cyber challenge. He understands the dangers, risks, and potential rewards of the political, economic, and security situations facing us. General Hayden dissects political situations in hot spots around the world, analyzing the tumultuous global environment and what it all means for Americans and America’s interests. He speaks on the delicate balance between liberty and security in intelligence work, as well the potential benefits and dangers associated with the cyber domain. As the former head of two multi-billion dollar enterprises, he can also address the challenges of managing complex organizations in times of stress and risk, and the need to develop effective internal and external communications.

In addition to leading CIA and NSA, General Hayden was the country’s first principal deputy director of national intelligence and the highest-ranking military intelligence officer in the country.  In all of these jobs, he worked to put a human face on American intelligence, explaining to the American people the role of espionage in protecting both American security and American liberty.  Hayden also served as commander of the Air Intelligence Agency and Director of the Joint Command and Control Warfare Center and served in senior staff positions at the Pentagon, at U.S. European Command, at the National Security Council, and the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria. He was also the deputy chief of staff for the United Nations Command and U.S. Forces in South Korea.

Hayden has been a frequent expert and commentator on major news outlets and in top publications, valued for his expertise on intelligence matters like cyber security, government surveillance, geopolitics, and more. He was featured in the HBO documentary Manhunt, which looked at espionage through the eyes of the insiders who led the secret war against Osama bin Laden, and in Showtime’s The Spymasters, a detailed look at the directors of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Hayden is currently a principal at the Chertoff Group and a distinguished visiting professor at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government. He is on the board of directors of Motorola Solutions and serves on a variety of other boards and consultancies. In 2013, the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) awarded Hayden the 29th annual William Oliver Baker Award.  General Hayden is also the first recipient of the Helms Award presented by the CIA Officers’ Memorial Foundation.  In 2014 he was the inaugural Humanitas visiting professor in intelligence studies at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.  His recent memoir, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, has been a New York Times best-seller and was recently selected as one of the 100 most notable books of 2016.

Philip Taubman is Adjunct Professor at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is also the former Moscow and Washington Bureau Chief, and Deputy Editorial Page Editor, of The New York Times. Philip Taubman served as a reporter and editor at The New York Times for thirty years, specializing in national security coverage. He is author of Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America’s Space Espionage, and The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb. He is working on a biography of George P. Shultz, the former secretary of state.

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Michael Hayden Former director, CIA, NSA
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Shorenstein APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin comments on North Korea to Yonhap News

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Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) Director Gi-Wook Shin spoke with Yonhap News about the situation on the Korean Peninsula, following a visit to U.S. Pacific Command with a delegation of scholars from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

While there, U.S. officials conveyed that the United States has the capability to strike North Korea should the president make that call.

U.S. officials said that North Korea had already moved into the “red zone,” and that the Trump administration has the view that it cannot miss a window of opportunity to stop the nuclear and missile program before it advances further.

Shin also said he believed that the Trump administration holds a view that the policy of “strategic patience” failed under the Obama administration, and that growing tensions on the Peninsula have compelled the Trump administration to consider – with greater plausibility – the option of a preemptive military strike.

Regional tensions have risen in the midst of impending political shifts in South Korea, where a new president will assume office following a snap election this May, and in China, where the Party Congress will meet to appoint new senior leadership of the Chinese Communist Party this fall.

Whoever becomes president in South Korea should place relations with North Korea at the top of the agenda and consider sending an envoy early on to meet its leader Kim Jong-un in-person, Shin said.

The Yonhap interview can be viewed in Korean, and a shorter version, in English. A related analysis piece is also available on MK News (in Korean).

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The continuation of policy by other means: asymmetric warfare via the ballot box

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About the event: In his talk Toomas Hendrik Ilves will discuss how various digital tools have been used in democracies in Europe and the US in an attempt to disrupt and affect elections outcomes. These are new approaches, meant if not to alter electoral outcomes then at least to sow discord and seem in some instances to have been successful. Methods used include hacking into political parties' servers and “doxxing” embarrassing hacked materials; disseminating via “bots” false stories that have occasionally gone viral; as well highly granular big data analyses to target voters with ads specifically tailored to their profiles as culled from social media.

These methods and tactics have been employed in the U.S, French, and Dutch elections; cyber-break-ins into the Bundestag and German political think tanks suggest they will play a role in the upcoming German parliamentary elections. Perpetrated by an authoritarian government, they are asymmetric: without a free media environment they are immune to such tacts even if democracies were to even try to respond in kind. What democracies have experienced in the past several years will force them to adapt to a new environment with the realization that there are many ways for an adversary to change a nations policies.

About the Speaker: Toomas Hendrik Ilves was born on December 26, 1953, to an Estonian family living in Stockholm, Sweden. He was educated in the United States, receiving a degree from Columbia University in 1976 and a master's degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978.

In 1984 he moved to Munich, Germany, to work at the office of Radio Free Europe, first as a researcher and foreign policy analyst and later as the head of the Estonian Desk.

From 1993 to 1996 Ilves served in Washington as the ambassador of the Republic of Estonia to the United States and Canada. During this time, he launched the Tiger Leap Initiative to computerize and connect all Estonian schools online with Education Minister Jaak Aaviksoo. He then served as minister of foreign affairs from 1996 to 1998. After a brief period as chairman of the North Atlantic Institute in 1998, he was again appointed minister of foreign affairs, serving until 2002.

From 2002 to 2004, Ilves was a member of the Estonian Parliament and in 2004 he was elected a member of the European Parliament, where he was vice-president of the Foreign Affairs Committee. As a MEP, he initiated the Baltic Sea Strategy that was later implemented as official regional policy of the European Union.

Ilves was elected president of the Republic of Estonia in 2006. He was re-elected for a second term in office in 2011.

During his presidency, Ilves has been appointed to serve in several high positions in the field of ICT in the European Union. He served as chairman of the EU Task Force on eHealth from 2011 to 2012 and was chairman of the European Cloud Partnership Steering Board at the invitation of the European Commission from 2012 to 2014. In 2013 he chaired the High-Level Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms convened by ICANN. From 2014 to 2015 Ilves was the co-chair of the advisory panel of the World Bank's World Development Report 2016 "Digital Dividends" and was also the chair of World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Cyber Security beginning in June 2014.

Starting from 2016, Ilves co-chairs The World Economic Forum working group The Global Futures Council on Blockchain Technology. In 2017 he joined Stanford University as a Bernard and Susan Liautaud Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

President Ilves has published many essays and articles in Estonian and English on numerous topics ranging from Estonian language, history, and literature to global foreign and security policy and cyber security. His books include essay collections in Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, Hungarian, and Russian.

His international awards and honorary degrees include Knight of Freedom Award by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation (2016), the Aspen Prague Award by the Aspen Institute (2015), the Freedom Award by the Atlantic Council (2014) and the NDI Democracy Award by the National Democratic Institute (2013). His Honorary Degrees include an Honorary Degree from St. Olaf College, US (2014), an Honorary Degree from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland (2010), and an Honorary Degree from Tbilisi University, Georgia (2007).

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A Worst Practices Guide to Preventing Insider Threats

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Abstract: High-security organizations around the world face devastating threats from insiders—trusted employees with access to sensitive information, facilities, and materials. From Edward Snowden to the Fort Hood shooter to the theft of nuclear materials, the threat from insiders is on the front page and at the top of the policy agenda. Insider Threats offers detailed case studies of insider disasters across a range of different types of institutions, from biological research laboratories, to nuclear power plants, to the U.S. Army. Matthew Bunn and Scott D. Sagan outline cognitive and organizational biases that lead organizations to downplay the insider threat, and they synthesize "worst practices" from these past mistakes, offering lessons that will be valuable for any organization with high security and a lot to lose.

About the Speakers: Matthew Bunn is a Professor of Practice at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. His research interests include nuclear theft and terrorism; nuclear proliferation and measures to control it; the future of nuclear energy and its fuel cycle; and policies to promote innovation in energy technologies. Before joining the Kennedy School in January 1997, he served for three years as an adviser to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he played a major role in U.S. policies related to the control and disposition of weapons-usable nuclear materials in the United States and the former Soviet Union, and directed a secret study for President Clinton on security for nuclear materials in Russia.

Scott S. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He also serves as Project Chair for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Initiative on New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology, and War. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University. From 1984 to 1985, he served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Sagan has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

Amy Zegart is is co-director of CISAC and Professor of Political Science, by courtesy. She is also the Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. 

Before coming to Stanford in 2011, Zegart served as professor of public policy at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs and as a fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations. Her research examines the organization of American national security agencies and their effectiveness. She is the author of two award-winning books. Flawed by Design, which chronicles the development of the Central Intelligence Agency, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and National Security Council, won the highest national dissertation award in political science. Spying Blind, which examines why American intelligence agencies failed to adapt to the terrorist threat before 9/11, won the National Academy of Public Administration’s Brownlow Book Award. She has also published in International Security, Political Science Quarterly, and other leading academic journals. She serves on the editorial boards of Terrorism and Political Violence and Intelligence and National Security. Her most recent book is Eyes on Spies: Congress and the United States Intelligence Community.
 
Zegart was featured by the National Journal as one of the ten most influential experts in intelligence reform. 

- The book, Insider Threats, will be available for purchase at the event -

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Scott D. Sagan

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The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

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Matthew Bunn Professor of Practice; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School

Amy Zegart

CISAC
Stanford University
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
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Amy Zegart is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Professor of Political Science by courtesy at Stanford University. She is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic. The author of five books, Zegart is an internationally recognized expert in U.S. intelligence, emerging technologies, and global political risk management.

Her award-winning research includes the leading academic study of intelligence failures before 9/11 — Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11 (Princeton, 2007). Her most recent book is the bestseller Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence (Princeton, 2022), which was nominated by Princeton University Press for the Pulitzer Prize. She also co-authored Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity, with Condoleezza Rice (Twelve, 2018) and co-edited Bytes, Bombs, and Spies: The Strategic Dimensions of Offensive Cyber Operations with Herbert Lin (Brookings, 2019). Her op-eds and essays have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Politico, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. 

Zegart has advised senior officials about intelligence and foreign policy for more than two decades. She served on the National Security Council staff, as a presidential campaign foreign policy advisor, and has testified before the House and Senate Intelligence committees. 

In addition to her research and teaching, she led Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, founded the Stanford Cyber Policy Program, and served as chief academic officer of the Hoover Institution. Before coming to Stanford, she was Professor of Public Policy at UCLA and a McKinsey & Company consultant.

She is the recipient of a Fullbright Fellowship, the American Political Science Association's Leonard D. White Dissertation Prize, and research grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Hewlett Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Zegart received an AB in East Asian studies, magna cum laude, from Harvard and a PhD in political science from Stanford. She serves on the board of directors of the council on Foreign Relations, Kratos Defense & Secretary Solutions (KTOS), and the American Funds/Capital Group.

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An Approach for Identifying and Analyzing Implicit Interactions in Distributed Systems

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Safety-critical system domains such as critical infrastructures, aerospace, automotive, and industrial manufacturing and control are becoming increasingly dependent on the use of distributed systems to achieve their functionality. These distributed systems can contain many complex interactions among their constituent components. Despite extensive testing and verification of individual components, security vulnerabilities resulting from unintended and unforeseen component interactions (so-called implicit interactions) often remain undetected and can have an impact on the safety, security, and reliability of a system. This paper presents an approach for identifying and analyzing the existence and severity of implicit interactions in distributed systems. The approach is based on the modeling framework known as Communicating Concurrent Kleene Algebra (C²KA). Experimental results confirm that this approach can successfully identify and analyze dependencies in system designs that would otherwise be very hard to find. More broadly, the methods presented in this paper can help address the growing need for rigorous and practical methods and techniques for assuring the safe, secure, and reliable operation of distributed systems in critical domains.

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John Villasenor
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Private Foreign Policy

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Abstract: Microsoft President Brad Smith recently analogized Microsoft to a “Digital Switzerland.” This moniker captures the role that U.S. technology companies have increasingly taken on with respect to cybersecurity and privacy: they are acting like states and running their own foreign policies, and they are setting themselves as neutrals with respect to existing national authorities, including the United States. U.S. tech companies are not the first super-empowered private companies, but they have numerous features that set them apart from prior private powers like the Dutch East India Company or more recent examples like ExxonMobil. This article first provides an account of how the relationship between U.S. tech companies and governments has evolved over time. By breaking down the “Digital Switzerland” idea, the article then explores the extent to which and how the companies differ from the powerful private interests of earlier eras, and it concludes by analyzing the implications of the companies’ role for governance and for individuals going forward.

About the Speaker: Kristen Eichensehr is an Assistant Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. She writes and teaches about foreign relations, separation of powers, cybersecurity, and national security law. Before joining the UCLA faculty, Eichensehr clerked for Chief Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court of the United States. Eichensehr also served as Special Assistant to the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State and practiced at Covington & Burling LLP. Eichensehr received her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she served as executive editor of the Yale Law Journal. Eichensehr is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and an affiliate scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. She is a frequent contributor to and member of the editorial board of the national security blog, Just Security.

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Kristen Eichensehr Assistant Professor UCLA School of Law
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Reputation in the Anti-Abuse Regime

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Abstract: Recently, Twitter, Netflix, Spotify, Airbnb, Reddit, Etsy, SoundCloud, and The New York Times were knocked out by a botnet driven by the Mirai malware. Mirai is a contemporary case of a more general phenomenon: the illegitimate appropriation of online resources for prestige, economic, and/or political gain. Historically participants in the anti-abuse regime have used reputation indicators to characterize subsets of this illegitimate activity as abuse: any traffic---spam, malware communications, DDOS traffic---that is not explicitly consensual, is abusive. Participants in this regime use decentralized, transnational monitoring to aggregate and vet credible reputation indicators, then redistribute these indicators to participants enforcing anti-abuse norms. This work explains how these reputation indicators have functioned over the course of their evolution within this regime, from products of supposedly “vigilante blacklists” into credible mechanisms based on graduated sanction as a remediative signaling mechanism rather than a punitive sanction. Returning to Mirai, this work concludes by evaluating the potential for this regime to tackle contemporary IoT security challenges. In particular, can the anti-abuse regime discipline a market projected to grow from $900M in 2015 to $3.7B in 2020, or will it need help from conventional authorities?

About the Speaker: Jesse is the 2016-2017 Cybersecurity Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and holds a PhD in Technology, Management, and Policy from MIT.  Jesse focuses on understanding the institutions and political economy of Internet operations vis a vis conventional modes of domestic and inter-state governance mechanisms. This work includes studies on infrastructure resource management and policy, infrastructure security, credible knowledge assessment, and operational epistemic communities’ role informing public policy. Jesse’s dissertation evaluates the common resource management institutions that sustain the integrity and security of the Internet’s numbers and routing system. The dissertation documents how the roles of these institutions, comprising diverse transnational operator communities, managing the complex of physical and information resources supporting the integrity of global Internet connectivity. Concluding analyses narrow the focus from operational authority to the character of political authority in these communities, rooted in the family of consensus processes used to adapt resource policy and institutions apace with Internet growth and development.  Jesse is currently working on a number of papers from his dissertation: reputation and security in the numbers and routing system, contrasting consensus as a decision-making process with conventional mechanisms for credible knowledge assessment, and the challenges in comity between substantive-purposive authority in operational institutions with governments’ conventional, formal-legalistic modes of authority. Ongoing work is developing a theory of epistemic constructivism and case work on developing joint capabilities between operational security regimes and law enforcement/national security actors.

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Cybersecurity Postdoctoral Fellow CISAC
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