We simply wrapped up the third 12 months of our Know-how, Innovation, and Nice Energy Competitors class –a part of Stanford’s Gordian Knot Heart for Nationwide Safety Innovation.
Joe Felter, Mike Brown and I train the category to:
- Give our college students an appreciation of the challenges and alternatives for the USA in its enduring strategic competitors with the Folks’s Republic of China, Russia and different rivals.
- Provide insights on how industrial expertise (AI, autonomy, cyber, quantum, semiconductors, entry to area, biotech, hypersonics, and others) are radically altering how we are going to compete throughout all the weather of nationwide energy e.g. diplomatic, informational, army, financial, monetary, intelligence and regulation enforcement (our affect and footprint on the world stage).
- Expose college students to experiential studying on coverage questions. College students shaped groups, obtained out of the classroom and talked to the stakeholders and developed coverage suggestions.
Why This Class?
The popularity that the USA is engaged in long-term strategic competitors with the Peoples Republic of China and Russia turned a centerpiece of the 2017 Nationwide Safety Technique and 2018 Nationwide Protection Technique. The 2021 interim Nationwide Safety Steerage and the administration’s not too long ago launched 2022 Nationwide Safety Technique clarify that China has quickly turn into extra assertive and is the one competitor probably able to combining its financial, diplomatic, army, and technological energy to mount a sustained problem to a steady and open worldwide system. And as we’ve seen in Ukraine, Russia stays decided to wage a brutal battle to play a disruptive function on the world stage.
Prevailing on this competitors would require greater than merely buying the fruits of this technological revolution; it would require a paradigm shift within the pondering of how this expertise might be quickly built-in into new capabilities and platforms to drive new operational and organizational ideas and methods that change and optimize the best way we compete.
Class Group
The readings, lectures, and visitor audio system explored how rising industrial applied sciences pose challenges and create alternatives for the USA in its strategic competitors with nice energy rivals with an emphasis on the Folks’s Republic of China. We centered on the challenges created when U.S. authorities businesses, our federal analysis labs, and authorities contractors not have unique entry to those superior applied sciences.
This course included all that you’d anticipate from a Stanford graduate-level class within the Masters in Worldwide Coverage – complete readings, visitor lectures from present and former senior officers/specialists, and written papers. What makes the category distinctive nevertheless, is that that is an experiential coverage class. College students shaped small groups and launched into a quarter-long mission that obtained them out of the classroom to:
- establish a precedence nationwide safety problem, after which …
- validate the issue and suggest an in depth answer examined towards precise stakeholders within the expertise and nationwide safety ecosystem.
The category was break up into three elements.
Half 1, weeks 1 via 4 coated the worldwide relations theories that try to elucidate the dynamics of interstate competitors between highly effective states, U.S. nationwide safety and nationwide protection methods and insurance policies guiding our method to Nice Energy Competitors particularly centered on the Folks’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese language Communist Occasion (CCP).
In between elements 1 and a couple of of the category, the scholars had a midterm particular person mission. It required them to put in writing a 2,000-word coverage memo describing how a U.S. competitor is utilizing a particular expertise to counter U.S. pursuits and a proposal for the way the U.S. ought to reply.
Half 2, weeks 5 via 8, dove into the industrial applied sciences: semiconductors, area, cyber, AI and Machine Studying, Excessive Efficiency Computing, and Biotech. Every week the scholars needed to learn 5-10 articles (see class readings right here.) And every week we had visitor audio system on nice energy competitors, and expertise and its impression on nationwide energy and lectures/class dialogue.
Visitor Audio system
Along with the educating workforce, the course drew on the expertise and experience of visitor lecturers from business and from throughout U.S. Authorities businesses to supply context and perspective on industrial applied sciences and nationwide safety.
The scholars have been privileged to listen to from extraordinary visitor audio system with vital expertise and credibility on a variety of subjects associated to the course aims. Highlights of this 12 months’s audio system embrace:
On Nationwide Safety and American exceptionalism: Common Jim Mattis, US Marine Corps (Ret.), former Secretary of Protection.
On China’s actions and efforts to compete with the U.S.: Matt Pottinger – former Deputy Nationwide Safety Advisor, Elizabeth Financial system – main China scholar and former Dept of Commerce Senior Advisor for China, Tai Ming Cheung, – Creator of Innovate to Dominate: The Rise of the Chinese language Techno-Safety State.
On U.S. – China Coverage: Congressman Mike Gallagher, Chair Home Choose Committe on China.
On Innovation and Nationwide Safety: Chris Brose – Creator of The Kill Chain, Doug Beck – Director of the Protection Innovation Unit, Anja Manuel – Govt Director of the Aspen Technique and Safety Discussion board.
For Biotech: Ben Kirukup – senior biologist US Navy, Ed You – FBI Particular Agent Organic Countermeasures Unit, Deborah Rosenblum – Asst Sec of Protection for Nuclear, Chemical, and Organic Protection Applications, Joe DeSimone – Professor Chemical Engineering.
For AI: Jared Dunnmon – Technical Director for AI on the Protection Innovation Unit, Lt. Gen. (Ret) Jack Shanahan – Director, Joint Synthetic Intelligence Heart, Anshu Roy- CEO Rhombus AI
For Cyber: Anne Neuberger – deputy nationwide safety advisor for cyber
For Semiconductors: Larry Diamond – Senior Fellow on the Hoover Establishment
Considerably, the scholars have been capable of hear the Chinese language perspective on U.S. – China competitors from Dr. Jia Qingguo – Member of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of China.
The category closed with a stirring speak and name to motion by former Nationwide Safety Advisor LTG ret H.R. McMaster.
Within the weeks in-between we had educating workforce lectures adopted by audio system that led discussions on the important industrial applied sciences.
Workforce-based Experiential Venture
The third a part of the category was distinctive – a quarter-long, team-based mission. College students shaped groups of 4-6 and chosen a nationwide safety problem going through a company or company throughout the U.S. Authorities. They developed hypotheses of how industrial applied sciences can be utilized in new and artistic methods to assist the U.S. wield its devices of nationwide energy. And according to all our Gordian Knot Heart lessons, they obtained out of the classroom. and interviewed 20+ beneficiaries, coverage makers, and different key stakeholders testing their hypotheses and proposed options.
Hacking For Coverage – Remaining Shows:
On the finish of the quarter, every pupil groups’ coverage suggestions have been summarized in a 10-minute presentation. The presentation was the story of the workforce’s studying journey, describing the place they began, the place they ended, and the important thing inflection factors of their understanding of the issue. (A written 3000 phrase report adopted specializing in their suggestions for addressing their chosen safety problem and describing how their options might be applied with velocity and urgency.)
By the tip of the category all of the groups realized that the coverage drawback that they had chosen had morphed into one thing larger, deeper, and rather more fascinating.
Their coverage shows are beneath.
The category is as exhausting to show because it to take. We now have an superior set of educating assistants.
Workforce 1: Precision Match (AI for DoD Operations)
Click on right here to see the presentation.
What makes educating worthwhile is the suggestions we get from our college students:
TIGPC has been the very best class I’ve taken at Stanford and has induced me to do some reflection in what I wish to do after my time at Stanford. I’m solely a sophomore however doing such a deep dive into power and (as Steve says) getting out of the constructing, I’m beginning to severely take into account a profession in clear power safety put up commencement.
Workforce 2: Outbound Funding to China
Click on right here to see the presentation.
Workforce 3: Open-Supply AI
Click on right here to see a abstract of the presentation.
Workforce 4: AlphaChem
Click on right here to see the presentation.
Considered one of my takeaways from the category is you can be the neatest particular person within the room, however you’ll by no means have as a lot data as everybody else mixed so go speak to individuals, it would make you far smarter
Workforce 5: South China Sea
Click on right here to see the presentation.
Superior class! … unimaginable in bringing prestigious visitor audio system into the category and having partaking discussions. My background was not in nationwide safety and this class actually supplied an essential perspective on the alternatives for expertise innovation to impression and assist with nationwide safety.
Workforce 6: Chinese language Actual Property Funding within the U.S.
Click on right here to see the presentation.
Workforce 7: Public Personal Partnerships
Click on right here to see the presentation.
Simply needed to let that, as a Senior, this is without doubt one of the greatest lessons I’ve taken throughout my 4 years at Stanford.
Workforce 8: Ukraine Support
Click on right here to see the presentation.
Classes Discovered
- We mixed lecture and experiential studying so our college students can act on issues not simply admire them
- The exterior enter the scholars acquired was a power multiplier
- It made the lecture materials actual, tangible and actionable
- Lean drawback fixing strategies might be successfully employed to handle urgent nationwide safety and coverage challenges
- This course was akin to a “Hacking for Coverage class” and might be tweaked and replicated going ahead.
- The category created alternatives for our greatest and brightest to have interaction and tackle challenges on the nexus of expertise, innovation and nationwide safety
- When college students are offered such alternatives they aggressively seize them with spectacular outcomes
- The ultimate shows and papers from the category are proof that can occur
- Pushing college students previous what they assume is cheap leads to extraordinary output. Most rise method above the event
Filed below: Company/Gov’t Innovation, Gordian Knot Heart for Nationwide Safety Innovation, Nationwide Safety, Know-how Innovation and Nice Energy Competitors |
