Talks from the Hoover Institution

The Boiling Moat | Hoover Institution

The Hoover Project on China’s Global Sharp Power and Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region held The Boiling Moat event on Thursday, May 30, 2024 from 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm PT.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has openly expressed his intention to annex Taiwan to mainland China, even threatening the use of force. An invasion or blockade of Taiwan by Chinese forces would be catastrophic, with severe consequences for democracies worldwide. In The Boiling Moat, a new book from the Hoover Institution Press, Matt Pottinger and a team of scholars and distinguished military and political leaders urgently outline practical steps for deterrence. The authors stress that preventing a war is more affordable than waging one and emphasize the importance of learning from recent failures in deterrence, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Featuring Matt Pottinger, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, and Larry Diamond, William L. Clayton Senior Fellow. Pottinger and Diamond will be joined by contributors to The Boiling Moatproject: Gabriel Collins, Andrew Erickson, Robert Haddick, Isaac Harris, Michael Hunzeker, Ivan Kanapathy, Mark Montgomery, and Grant Newsham.

Hong Kong After The National Security Law | Hoover Institution

The Hoover Project on China’s Global Sharp Power held Hong Kong After the National Security Law on Tuesday, May 14 from 4-5:30pm PT. 

This event presented perspectives on the current political and civic climate in Hong Kong since the passage of the National Security Law on June 30, 2020 and the imposition of Article 23 on March 23, 2024. How have these developments fit into the broader history of the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong? What has changed in Hong Kong’s once vibrant civil society? What is the latest on the trials of pro-democracy activists? How have diasporic advocates constructed a Hong Kong political identity in exile?

Four panelists—Ambassador James Cunningham, the Chairman of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong and former Consul General of the United States to Hong Kong and Macau (2005-2008); Sebastien Lai, a democracy advocate and son of jailed Hong Kong businessman and publisher Jimmy Lai; Sophie Richardson, the former China Director at Human Rights Watch; and Cherie Wong, the former leader of Alliance Canada Hong Kong (ACHK)—will discuss these issues and more in a conversation moderated by Hoover William L. Clayton Senior Fellow Larry Diamond.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Ambassador James B. Cunningham retired from government service at the end of 2014.  He is currently a consultant, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, an adjunct faculty member at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, and Board Chair of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation. He served as Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ambassador to Israel, Consul General in Hong Kong, and Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Ambassador Cunningham was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania and graduated magna cum laude from Syracuse University.  He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Society, the National Committee on US-China Relations, and the American Academy of Diplomacy.

Sebastien Lai leads the international campaign to free his father Jimmy Lai, the pro democracy activist and publisher currently jailed by the Hong Kong government. Having had international calls for his release from multiple states including the US and the UK, Jimmy Lai’s ongoing persecution mirrors the rapid decline of human rights, press freedom and rule of law in the Chinese territory. 

Sophie Richardson is a longtime activist and scholar of Chinese politics, human rights, and foreign policy.  From 2006 to 2023, she served as the China Director at Human Rights Watch, where she oversaw the organization’s research and advocacy. She has published extensively on human rights, and testified to the Canadian Parliament, European Parliament, and the United States Senate and House of Representatives. Dr. Richardson is the author of China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (Columbia University Press, Dec. 2009), an in-depth examination of China's foreign policy since 1954's Geneva Conference, including rare interviews with Chinese policy makers. She speaks Mandarin, and received her doctorate from the University of Virginia and her BA from Oberlin College. Her current research focuses on the global implications of democracies’ weak responses to increasingly repressive Chinese governments, and she is advising several China-focused human rights organizations. 

Cherie Wong (she/her) is a non-partisan policy analyst and advocate. Her influential leadership at Alliance Canada Hong Kong (ACHK), a grassroots community organization, had garnered international attention for its comprehensive research publications and unwavering advocacy in Canada-China relations. ACHK disbanded in November 2023. Recognized for her nuanced and progressive approach, Cherie is a sought-after authority among decision-makers, academics, journalists, researchers, and policymakers. Cherie frequently appeared in parliamentary committees and Canadian media as an expert commentator, speaking on diverse public policy issues such as international human rights, foreign interference, and transnational repression. 

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton 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 co-chairs the Hoover Institution’s programs on China’s Global Sharp Power and on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region.

What China Remembers About The Cultural Revolution, And What It Wants To Forget | Hoover Institution

The Hoover Project on China’s Global Sharp Power, Stanford’s Center for East Asian Studies, and Stanford's Department of History held What China Remembers About the Cultural Revolution, and What it Wants to Forget on Friday, May 10, 2024 from 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm PT in the George P. Shultz Building, Shultz Auditorium.

The devastating movement unleashed by Mao in 1966, which claimed around two million lives and saw tens of millions hounded, shapes China to this day. Yet in a country where leaders have long seen history as a political tool, the Cultural Revolution is a particularly sensitive subject. How does the Chinese Communist Party control discussion of the topic? And how has an era which turned the nation upside down been used to maintain the political status quo?

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Tania Branigan writes foreign policy editorials for the Guardian and spent seven years as its China correspondent. Her book Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution won the Cundill History Prize 2023 and was shortlisted for the Kirkus non-fiction prize, the Baillie Gifford prize and the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. It was named as one of the Wall Street Journal’s ten best books of 2023 and TIME’s 100 must-read books of 2023.

Glenn Tiffert is a distinguished research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of modern China. He co-chairs Hoover’s project on China’s Global Sharp Power and directs its research portfolio. He also works closely with government and civil society partners around the world to document and build resilience against authoritarian interference with democratic institutions. Most recently, he co-authored Eyes Wide Open: Ethical Risks in Research Collaboration with China (2021).

Strengthening Trust With India: Implications Of The 2008 US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement | Hoover Institution

The Hoover Institution held Strengthening Trust With India: Implications of the 2008 US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement on  May 6, 2024 from 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm in Hauck Auditorium, David & Joan Traitel Building.

The conversation was between key figures who shaped modern US-India relations through the 2008 US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement, an emblem of strategic US-India partnership and a major innovation in sustainable energy to power India’s future. The engaging dialogue celebrates this important achievement and explores the future of US-India cooperation.

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FEATURING

Condoleezza Rice – Tad and Dianne Taube Director and Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy  
66th US Secretary of State (2005-2009)  

 

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M.K. Narayanan – National Security Advisor of India (2005-2010)  

 

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Shivshankar Menon – Visiting Professor 
Ashoka University

 

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David C. Mulford – Distinguished Visiting Fellow 
US Ambassador to India (2004-2009)

 

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Nick Burns – US Ambassador to China 
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (2005-2009)  

 

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Eric Garcetti – US Ambassador to India

 

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MODERATOR

Anja Manuel – Executive Director, Aspen Strategy Group
Special Assistant to the Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns (2005-2007)

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Cliodynamics Of End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites And The Path Of Political Disintegration | Hoover Institution

Tuesday, April 16, 2024  
Hoover Institution | Stanford University

The Hoover History Working Group held a seminar on Cliodynamics of End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration with Peter Turchin on Tuesday, April 16, 2024 from 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm PT.

The book is available for purchase here.

ABOUT THE TALK

Social and political turbulence in the United States and Western European countries has been rising over the past decade. Our research, which combines analysis of historical data with the tools of complexity science, has identified the deep structural forces that work to undermine societal stability and resilience to internal and external shocks. Here I look beneath the surface of day-to-day contentious politics and social unrest, and focus on the negative social and economic trends that explain our current “Age of Discord.” One of the most important, but little appreciated, such hidden forces is a perverse “wealth pump” that, under certain conditions, begins to transfer wealth from the “99 percent” to “1 percent.” If allowed to run unchecked, the wealth pump results in both relative impoverishment of most people and increasingly desperate competition among elites. Since the number of positions of real social power remains more or less fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. In America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations. In historical terms, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Peter Turchin is Project Leader at the Complexity Science Hub–Vienna, Research Associate at University of Oxford, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Connecticut. His research interests lie at the intersection of social and cultural evolution, historical macrosociology, economic history, mathematical modeling of long-term social processes, and the construction and analysis of historical databases. A founder of the field of Cliodynamics, his books include End Times (2023) and Ultrasociety (2016).

How Veterans’ Service Abroad Creates Responsibility at Home | Hoover Institution

A Post-9/11 Veteran Town Hall Discussion with veterans Jason Galui, Colin Frances Jackson, and Felicia Pinckney and Veteran Fellowship Program Fellow John Moses led by Hoover Fellow Jacquelyn Schneider.

Veterans’ experience abroad imparts a deep empathy for the world around them, with significant implications for the local communities to which they return. How does the post 9/11 veteran experience of combat or service abroad, and the profound relationships built between servicemembers and foreign allies and partners, impact how veterans view their responsibility to others when they return home? More specifically, for this generation of veterans, how do relationships built in Iraq and Afghanistan influence veterans’ advocacy with local and federal policies? How does the experience of the post 9/11 all-volunteer force manifest in democratic ideals at home?

March 7, 2024 – Chelmsford Unitarian Church, Chelmsford, MA.

Featuring

Jason Galui | Director for Veterans and Military Families, George W. Bush Institute: USA Veteran

Colin Frances Jackson | Chairman, Strategic and Operational Research Department, US Naval War College; USAR

John Moses | Hoover Veteran Fellow; Co-Founder, Massachusetts Afghan Alliance; Retired SFC, USA

Felicia Pinckney | Program Manager, Network Development for Home Base program, Massachusetts General Hospital; USA veteran

Moderated by
Dr. Jacquelyn Schneider | Hoover Fellow, post-9/11 Veteran, USAFR

How Can Post 9/11 Veterans Build Social Bonds In Their Communities | Hoover Institution

A Post-9/11 Veteran Town Hall Discussion with veterans Gil Barndollar and Robin Johnson, Veteran Fellowship Program Fellows Matthew Brown and Claudia Flores led by Hoover Fellow Jacquelyn Schneider.

One of the greatest challenges for the All Volunteer Force is how to reintegrate a professional, volunteer military back into civilian society.  For many previous generations, this re-integration was supported by veterans organizations, like the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which created a space for veterans to share experiences as they re-started their civilian life.  However, the post 9/11 veteran generation has new challenges both in re-connecting with civilian life and in creating bonds between post 9/11 veterans that create positive societal impacts.  The rise of social media as well as the diversity and the volunteer nature of this generation means that Vietnam-era structures and institutions designed for veterans may not work for building social bonds between 9/11 veterans and their communities.  How does the post 9/11 veteran build social capital among each other?  How do they connect with their communities?  How can the post 9/11 veteran experience build social cohesion not only between veterans and civilians but also in the broader civil society?  

Tuesday, February 20, 2024 – Denver, CO

Featuring
Gil Barndollar | Senior Research Fellow, Center for the Study of Statesmanship; USMC veteran

Matthew Brown | Hoover Veteran Fellow; President and CEO, Chimney Trail; USN Veteran

Claudia Flores | Hoover Veteran Fellow; Policy and Planning Director, Virginia Department of Veteran Services; USN Veteran

Robin Johnson | CEO, Best Medicine Brigade; President, HEAL*ARIOUS; USA veteran

Moderated by
Dr. Jacquelyn Schneider | Hoover Fellow, post-9/11 Veteran, USAFR

How Veterans Continue Public Service In The Civilian Sector | Hoover Institution

A Post-9/11 Veteran Town Hall Discussion with local veterans Cathy Cohn, Mikhail Venikov, Justin Adney and Veteran Fellowship Program Fellow Michael Wendler led by Hoover Fellow Jacquelyn Schneider, and featuring a special welcome by the Hon. Jackie Speier and Susan Manheimer, the former San Mateo Chief of Police.

The post 9/11 veteran is not defined by one campaign or conflict. That can be something that often divides this generation. However, the remarkable diversity of conflicts and crises in which this generation served created a veteran generation with experience not only in fighting wars, but also building schools, curing diseases, fighting fires, and providing humanitarian assistance in the face of natural and manmade disasters. This means the post 9/11 veteran generation is returning home with extraordinary skills to lead and serve within their local communities. How does the post 9-11 veteran experience translate to public service? What is the role of the guard and the reserve in creating a bridge between military and public service, especially for the post 9-11 veteran generation?

Thursday, December 14, 2023 – Elks Lodge, San Mateo, CA

Featuring
Justin Adney | Firefighter/Engineer, Santa Clara County Fire Department, Marine Reserve
Cathy Cohn | Navy Veteran, Science Educator
Mikhail Venikov | Army Veteran, Officer, San Mateo Police Department; Founder & CEO, RangerRoad
Michael Wendler | Hoover Veteran Fellow, Judge, County of San Mateo

Moderated by
Dr. Jacquelyn Schneider | Hoover Fellow, post-9/11 Veteran, USAFR

With special welcome by
Susan Manheimer  | Chief of Police (Retired), San Mateo Police Department
Jackie Speier | Former US Representative for San Mateo and  South San Francisco

Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions | Hoover Institution

One of the keys to China’s global rise has been its strategy of deploying sovereign wealth on behalf of state power. Since President Xi Jinping took office in 2013, China has doubled down on financial statecraft, making shrewd investments with the sovereign funds it has built up by leveraging its foreign exchange reserves. Sovereign Funds tells the story of how the Communist Party of China (CPC) became a global financier of surpassing ambition.

Dr. Liu offers a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the evolution of China’s sovereign funds, including the China Investment Corporation, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, and Central Huijin Investment. Dr. Liu shows how these institutions have become mechanisms not only for transforming low-reward foreign exchange reserves into investment capital but also for power projection. Sovereign funds are essential drivers of the national interest, shaping global markets, advancing the historic Belt and Road Initiative, and funneling state assets into strategic industries such as semiconductors, fintech, and artificial intelligence. In the era of President Xi, state-owned financial institutions have become gatekeepers of the Chinese economy. Political and personal relationships with prestigious sovereign funds have enabled Blackstone to flourish in China and have fueled the ascendance of private tech giants such as Alibaba, Ant Finance, and Didi.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Zongyuan Zoe Liu is Maurice R. Greenberg fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Her work focuses on international political economy, global financial markets, sovereign wealth funds, supply chains of critical minerals, development finance, emerging markets, energy and climate change policy, and East Asia-Middle East relations. Dr. Liu is the author of Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System? (Cambridge University Press) and Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances its Global Ambitions (Harvard University Press).

Dr. Liu completed her Ph.D at the Edwin Reischauer fellow at School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining CFR, Dr. Liu was an instructional assistant professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, DC, where she taught courses on global economy, economic statecraft, and Chinese foreign policy.

What Is The Role Of Future International Collaboration: Risks And Opportunities | Hoover Institution

The Hoover Institution held a conversation on What is the Role of Future International Collaboration: Risks and Opportunities on January 22, 2024 from 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM PT.

Dr. Thomas Mason addressed aspects of research openness and the daily need to protect the information that is critically important to universities, National Labs, the federal government, and the private sector. The conversation was followed by a 30 minute Q&A. 

As a national security science laboratory Los Alamos National Lab has worked to strike the right balance between openness of research and protection of information for over eighty years. The talk addressed the historic importance of open international collaboration in fostering rapid innovation with economic and national security benefits while still recognizing the need to manage the risks that come with international engagement.

SPEAKER

Thomas Mason is the President and CEO of Triad National Security, LLC (Triad) and serves as the Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Most recently he was the Senior Vice President for Global Laboratory Operations at Battelle where he had responsibility for governance and strategy across the six National Laboratories that Battelle manages or co-manages. Prior to joining Battelle, Thom worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) for 19 years, including 10 years as the Laboratory Director. Under his leadership, ORNL saw significant growth in programs, new facilities, and hiring while achieving record low safety incident rates. Before becoming Laboratory Director, he was Associate Laboratory Director (ALD) for Neutron Sciences, ALD for the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), and Director of the Experimental Facilities Division. During his time in Oak Ridge, Thom was active in the community serving as Chair of the Oak Ridge Public Schools Education Foundation as well as Innovation Valley, the Knoxville-Oak Ridge area regional economic development organization. He moved to ORNL from the University of Toronto where he was a faculty member in the Department of Physics and previously worked as a Senior Scientist at Risø National Laboratory and a Postdoc at AT&T Bell Laboratories. For the past 30 years, he has been involved in the design and construction of scientific instrumentation and facilities and the application of nuclear, computing, and materials sciences to solve important challenges in energy and national security. Thom has a Ph.D. in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics from McMaster University and a BSc in Physics from Dalhousie University.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY

Norbert Holtkamp is a Science Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Holtkamp is also a professor of particle physics and astrophysics and of photon science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University

BACKGROUND

International collaborations and research openness have been enormously beneficial to the United States supporting rapid advances of world leading Science & Technology in our country. They brought a large group of incredibly talented people from around the world to come work with US science and technology industry. In the end, many of them stayed which provided a pipeline for innovation and business growth helping to maintain a standard of “world leading.” The simple fact that others successfully try to copy the process should encourage the US to continue. In a changing world though where the standards of research openness are not shared anymore, managing the risks better than in the past becomes essential.

Research openness and specifically international collaboration with friends and opponents always carries the risk of unwanted release of information. Industrial espionage in the private sector does have negative economic impact, can threaten national security, or lose competitive advantages. Over the past few years, there has been a significant rise in the systematic collection of intellectual property on a broad scale within the domains of private, public, and national security sectors. This development has had a profound impact on the global research community. Research openness is commonly understood and shared by much of the World’s science community and led by the US, for long was captured in a quite simple National Security Decision Directive (NSDD-189). Essentially: “It’s open until it’s classified”. While NSDD-189 wasn’t abandoned officially yet, effectively it has been in many instances. New definitions “CUI = Confidential but Unclassified Information,” central control of international collaboration agreements, top down managed travel restrictions of “going to” or “inviting in”, strictly enforced Conflict of Interest agreements are all existing elements in a new world that grapples with the balance between openness and benefit from it versus risk of losing.

The US needs a pipeline of trained engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs. Without inviting a substantial foreign national contingent into our schools and universities from which many will typically stay, it is not clear that US demographics would even allow the US alone to fill this pipeline. Whether it is the academic or private sector: it is essential to understand in more detail how international collaboration provided and can provide in the future economic benefit, intelligence insight, faster scientific discoveries, and sometimes even aiding diplomatic efforts and continue to bring the best and brightest innovators to the US.

As part of the project, each of these elements (faster scientific advance – economic benefit – intelligence & insight – demographics & talent recruiting) will be addressed.