Talks from the Hoover Institution

Book Talk: Hitler’s American Gamble

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Hoover Institution, Stanford University

 

The Hoover Institution hosts Book Talk: Hitler’s American Gamble on Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 11 am PDT.

The Hoover Institution Library & Archives and History Working Group invite you to a book talk with co-authors, Brendan Simms, director of the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge and Charlie Laderman, Hoover research fellow and senior lecturer at King’s College, London. Simms and Laderman will discuss their book, Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany's March to Global War (Hachette Book Group, 2021). This event will be moderated by Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard.

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PARTICIPANT BIOS

Dr. Charlie Laderman is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and senior lecturer in international history at the War Studies Department, King’s College, London (KCL). His first monograph, Sharing the Burden (Oxford University Press, 2019), explored the American and British response to the Armenian Genocide. It was awarded the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era’s H. Wayne Morgan Prize in political history.

Brendan Simms is the director of the Centre for Geopolitics and professor of the History of European International Relations at the University of Cambridge. He is an expert on European geopolitics, past and present, and his principal interests are the German Question, Britain and Europe, Humanitarian Intervention and state construction. He teaches at both undergraduate and graduate level in the Department of Politics and International Studies and the Faculty of History. 

Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, where he served for twelve years as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History. He is the author of sixteen books, including The Pity of War, The House of Rothschild, Empire, Civilization, and Kissinger, 1923–1968: The Idealist, which won the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Prize.

Hoover Book Club: Shiran Victoria Shen On The Political Regulation Wave

Thursday, April 28, 2022

Hoover Institution, Stanford University

 

Join the Hoover Book Club for engaging discussions with leading authors on the hottest policy issues of the day. Hoover scholars explore the latest books that delve into some of the most vexing policy issues facing the United States and the world. Find out what makes these authors tick and how they think we should approach our most difficult challenges.

In our latest installment, watch a discussion with Hoover National Fellow Shiran Victoria Shen, author of The Political Regulation Wave: A Case of How Local Incentives Systematically Shape Air Quality in China, moderated by Bill Whalen on Thursday, April 28 at 10AM PT/1:00PM ET.

Modern Data Infrastructure: Public & Private Implications

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Hoover Institution, Stanford University

 

Ro Khanna, Buno Pati, and John Villasenor  in conversation on Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Congressman Ro Khanna represents California’s 17th Congressional District, located in the heart of Silicon Valley. Rep. Khanna sits on the House Agriculture, Armed Services, and Oversight and Reform committees, where he chairs the Environmental Subcommittee and is the Deputy Whip of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, serves as an Assistant Whip for the Democratic Caucus, and is the Democratic Vice Chair of the House Caucus on India and Indian Americans. 

Buno Pati is CEO of Infoworks.io. The company’s software solutions are enabling enterprise organizations to fully leverage their data assets and realize faster time-to-value in the cloud. Prior to assuming the role of CEO in 2019, Pati held Executive Chairman and Chairman roles at the company from its inception in 2014. Pati brings over 20 years of experience as a CEO, entrepreneur, board member, and investor in technology companies. Pati is also a partner at Centerview Capital.

John Villasenor is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and is also on the faculty at UCLA, where he is a professor of electrical engineering, public policy, law, and management. Villasenor’s work considers the technology, policy, and legal issues arising from key technology trends, including the growth of artificial intelligence and the increasing complexity and interdependence of today’s networks and systems.

 

Hoover Book Club: Bruce Caldwell On Mont Pèlerin 1947

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Hoover Institution, Stanford University

 

Join the Hoover Book Club for engaging discussions with leading authors on the hottest policy issues of the day. Hoover scholars explore the latest books that delve into some of the most vexing policy issues facing the United States and the world. Find out what makes these authors tick and how they think we should approach our most difficult challenges.

In our latest installment, watch a discussion with Bruce Caldwell, editor of Mont Pèlerin 1947: Transcripts of the Founding Meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, published by the Hoover Institution Press and John B. Taylor the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution.  The discussion is moderated by Bill Whalen, the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism, and a Hoover Institution research fellow.

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ABOUT THE EDITOR
Bruce Caldwell was a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. A historian of economic thought, he is a research professor of Economics and the founder and director of the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University. His latest works is as the editor of Mont Pèlerin 1947: Transcripts of the Founding Meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, published by the Hoover Institution Press.

ABOUT THR BOOK
Marking the 75th anniversary of the first meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, in 1947, this volume presents for the first time the original transcripts from this landmark event. The society was created by Friedrich Hayek as a forum for leading economists and intellectuals to discuss and debate classical liberal values in the face of a rapidly changing world and political trends toward socialism. Bruce Caldwell, a major scholar of Hayek, provides an informative introduction and explanatory notes to the source documents, drawn from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, where they have been available to scholars. Now accessible to all, the transcripts reveal what was said on a wide range of topics, including free markets, monetary reform, wage policy, taxation, agricultural policy, the future of Germany, Christianity, and liberalism, and more. They provide insights into the thinking of men such as Hayek, Milton Friedman, Aaron Director, Frank Knight, Walter Eucken, Karl Popper, and other leading figures in the classical liberalism movement, illuminating not only their ideas but also their distinctive personalities. A photo section shows rarely seen images from the meeting.

How Dangerous Are Cyberattacks? Office Hours with Jackie Schneider

Hoover Fellow Jackie Schneider follows up on your questions about the danger of cyberattacks from her PolicyEd video.

1. In your video you point out that cyberattacks haven’t yet led to physical harm, but is that always going to be the case? We’re moving to a world with the “internet of things.” What sort of vulnerabilities might occur in the future that could lead to actual harm?

2. Can you paint a picture for us on what active cyber warfare would look like from both civilian and military perspectives? If we were to enter a conflict with state actors like Russia, China or Iran, what would their cyberattacks look like?

3. How can the public recognize foreign interference in cyberspace, especially misinformation campaigns? And do you have advice for how people can better protect themselves?

4. Should we be worried about the government collaborating with private companies on the issue of cybersecurity? Are there privacy concerns that outweigh potential benefits?

5. In your video, you mention “pre-emptively degrading” the capabilities of our adversaries in cyberspace. Why isn’t that treated as an act of war or at least a source of conflict in international relations? And what does that look like?

Click to watch the original video, “How Dangerous Are Cyberattacks?”

US-Japan Global Dialogue

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Hoover Institution, Stanford University

 

The Hoover Institution and Japan Society of Northern California host US Japan Global Dialogue on Tuesday, March 22, 2022 from 12:30pm - 7:30pm PT.

In a rapidly changing Indo-Pacific region, Japan remains America’s core ally, Asia’s most stable democracy, and the world’s third-largest economy. The US-Japan alliance is poised to enter a new era and expand its focus to cooperate on next-generation technology, development issues, civil society development, and maintenance of security. The Hoover Institution’s US-Japan Global Dialogue explores the future of this critical relationship. The dialogue launched on March 22, 2022 (United States) / March 23, 2022 (Japan) with a private, one-day hybrid conference hosted by the Hoover Institution. Attendees included both US and Japanese senior government officials, eminent scholars, and leading private-sector actors.

The conference began with a lunch hosted by the Hoover Institution and the Japan Society of Northern California followed by a panel discussion with Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Japanese ambassador to the United States Koji Tomita, and former US ambassador to Japan John Roos in discussion with LTG (ret.) H. R. McMaster, moderated by Dr. Michael Auslin. It also included a Hoover Institution Library & Archives exhibit Histories Connect: Special Exhibitions of Japanese and Japanese American Collections with Dr. Kaoru (Kay) Ueda, Curator of the Japanese Diaspora Collection.

Later in the day, a closed hybrid conference covered the following topics: 1) improving security cooperation between the United States and Japan and with other partners; 2) deepening economic and financial cooperation; 3) deepening cooperation in the development and application of new technologies; and 4) protecting liberal values and democratic sovereignty in Asia and beyond. At the conference, one American and one Japanese expert each presented short papers on each topic.

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PARTICIPANT BIOS
H.E. Tomita, Koji
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to the United States of America
Ambassador Tomita’s diplomatic career in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spans 40 years. Most recently, he served as Japan’s Ambassador to Korea, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Personal Representative for the G20 Summit in Osaka, and Ambassador to Israel. His relationship with the United States began when he studied in North Carolina for a year in college. Since he entered MOFA, he has also held leadership positions in U.S.-Japan relations, including Director-General of MOFA’s North American Affairs Bureau and Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C. Ambassador Tomita graduated from the University of Tokyo, Faculty of Law and joined Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1981.

United States Senator Bill Hagerty
Senator Hagerty was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2020 and is currently serving his first term representing the state of Tennessee. His committee assignments include: U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs; U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations; and the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules & Administration. Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, Hagerty served as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, the world’s third largest economy and America’s closest ally in the region. Hagerty is a life-long businessman. He started his business career with the Boston Consulting Group, where his work took him to five continents, including three years based in Tokyo, Japan.

Ambassador John V. Roos 
John V. Roos is the Founding Partner at Geodesic Capital, a venture capital firm that bridges Japan and Silicon Valley by investing in growth-stage technology companies and helping them with market entry, strategy, and overall operational support in Japan. Previously, Ambassador Roos served as Chief Executive Officer and Senior Partner at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich, & Rosati, the leading law firm in the United States in the representation of technology, life sciences, and emerging growth companies. From 2014-2020 Ambassador Roos served on the Board of Sony Corporation  From 2009-2013 Ambassador Roos served as the United States Ambassador to Japan. Ambassador Roos received his A.B. with honors in Political Science from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

LTG (ret.) H.R. McMaster
H. R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.  He is also the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.  He serves as the Japan Chair at the Hudson Institute and Chairman of the Center for Political and Military Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy.  He was the 26th assistant to the president for National Security Affairs. McMaster served as a commissioned officer in the United States Army for thirty-four years after graduation from West Point.  He holds a PhD in military history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He is author of Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World and Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam.  He is host of the podcast Battlegrounds: International Perspectives on Crucial Challenges to Security and Prosperity.

Michael Auslin
Michael Auslin is the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. A historian by training, he specializes in US policy in Asia and geopolitical issues in the Indo-Pacific region. Auslin is the author of six books, including Asia’s New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific and is a longtime contributor to the Wall Street Journal and National Review. Auslin also cohosts the podcast The Pacific Century. Previously, Auslin was an associate professor of history at Yale University, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the senior advisor for Asia at the Halifax International Security Forum, a senior fellow at London’s Policy Exchange, and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Among his honors are being named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, a Fulbright Scholar, and a German Marshall Fund Marshall Memorial Fellow. He serves on the board of the Wilton Park USA Foundation. 

Ways and Means: Lincoln and his Cabinet, and the Financing of the Civil War

Friday, March 18, 2022

Hoover Institution, Stanford University

 

In his latest book, Roger Lowenstein investigates not only how Lincoln and his secretary of Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, funded the Civil War. He also explores how Lincoln’s financial strategy catalyzed a long-lasting political and economic transformation of the United States.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Roger Lowenstein is a financial historian, the author of NYT bestsellers such as Buffett, When Genius Failed, and The End of Wall Street, and the critically acclaimed Origins of the Crash, While America Aged, and America’s Bank. He previously reported for The Wall Street Journal for more than a decade, and his work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, the Washington Post, Fortune, Atlantic, the New York Review of Books, and other publications.

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM
This talk is part of the History Working Group Seminar Series. A central piece of the History Working Group is the seminar series, which is hosted in partnership with the Hoover Library & Archives. The seminar series was launched in the fall of 2019, and thus far has included six talks from Hoover research fellows, visiting scholars, and Stanford faculty. The seminars provide outside experts with an opportunity to present their research and receive feedback on their work. While the lunch seminars have grown in reputation, they have been purposefully kept small in order to ensure that the discussion retains a good seminar atmosphere.

Cadre Country: How China Became The Chinese Communist Party

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Hoover Institution, Stanford University

 

The Hoover Project on China’s Global Sharp Power invites you to "Cadre Country: How China became the Chinese Communist Party" on Wednesday, March 16, 2022, at 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm PT.

China’s communist party regards itself as engaged in a global information war. In his new book, Cadre Country, historian John Fitzgerald probes some of the key stories the party tells to advance its cause. In this talk, he focuses on one story that resonates in China and internationally, China’s ‘Century of Humiliation.’ Where does this term come from, when it is deployed, and why?

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SPEAKER
John Fitzgerald is an Emeritus Professor at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. He served for five years as China Representative of The Ford Foundation in Beijing (2008-2013) before heading the Asia-Pacific philanthropy studies program at Swinburne University. His books include Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia, awarded the Ernest Scott Prize of the Australian Historical Association, and Awakening China: Politics, Culture and Class in the Nationalist Revolution, awarded the Joseph Levenson Prize of the US Association for Asian Studies. His latest book is Cadre Country: How China became the Chinese Communist Party (2022).

MODERATOR
Glenn Tiffert is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of modern China. He co-chairs the Hoover project on China’s Global Sharp Power and works closely with government and civil society partners to document and build resilience against authoritarian interference with democratic institutions. Most recently, he co-authored and edited Global Engagement: Rethinking Risk in the Research Enterprise (2020).

Wargames and National Security

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

 

The Hoover Institution hosts Wargaming: Its History, Application, and Future Use on February 16, February 23, and March 16, 2022.

The March 16 session discusses how wargames impact national security and defense decision making and whether social science methods can inform these kinds of games.

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SPEAKERS

Mr. Bob Work was the thirty-second Deputy Secretary of Defense, serving alongside three Secretaries of Defense from May 2014 to July 2017.

Dr. Micah Zenko is the Director of Research and Learning, McChrystal Group.

Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn a Senior Fellow and Director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

The Strategic Value Of India

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

Hoover Institution, Stanford University

 

The Hoover Institution Program on Strengthening US-India Relations invites you to a virtual panel discussion on The Strategic Value of India on Tuesday, March 15, 2022 from 9:00AM – 10:00AM PT.

How should the US approach India? For much of the twentieth century, the relationship between the US and India could best be described as uneasy. Over the past two decades the countries have worked together to strengthen this relationship, mostly along cultural and economic lines. In this event, three leading experts make the case that the US must also recognize the strategic importance of India. Deeper relations between the two countries—and possibly even preferential treatment from the US side—could advance prosperity and peace. 

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SPEAKERS
David C. Mulford is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served as the twenty-first U.S. ambassador to the Republic of India from 2004–2009. After completing his post in India, Mulford served as the vice chairman international at Credit Suisse where he worked with a range of clients across the integrated bank with a particular focus on governments, as well as corporate clients, across the globe. Mulford was undersecretary and assistant secretary of the US Treasury for International Affairs from 1984 to 1992. He served as the senior international economic policy official at the Treasury under Secretaries Regan, Baker, and Brady where he was the US deputy for coordination of economic policies with other G-7 industrial nations and took part in the administration’s international debt strategy, and the development and implementation of the Baker / Brady Plans, and President Bush’s Enterprise Initiative for the Americas. 

Kenneth I. Juster is a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has over forty years of experience as a senior government official, senior business executive, and senior law partner. He recently completed service as the twenty-fifth U.S. ambassador to the Republic of India from 2017–2021. Juster previously served in the U.S. government as deputy assistant to the president for international economic affairs, on both the National Security Council and the National Economic Council, undersecretary of commerce, counselor (acting) of the State Department, and deputy and senior advisor to Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger.  

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MODERATED BY
Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor, by courtesy, of political science and sociology at Stanford. He leads the Hoover Institution’s programs on China’s Global Sharp Power and on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region.  At FSI, he leads the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, based at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, which he directed for more than six years.  He also coleads (with Eileen Donahoe) the Global Digital Policy Incubator based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center.