On October 20-22, the Stanford Center at Peking University hosted the 6^th meeting in the series of Nuclear Risk Reduction Project workshops organized by Stanford University and China Arms Control and Disarmament Association and the Center for Strategic Studies of the China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP).  The Stanford team included CISAC’s Dr. Siegfried Hecker, Elliot Serbin, Dr. Larry Brandt and Nick Hansen as well as young nuclear scientists from the UC Berkeley and Sandia National Laboratories.

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The workshop was focused on the North Korean nuclear situation and provided an excellent opportunity to compare both technical and political assessments of the current state of North Korea’s nuclear program and potential paths forward. The US participants presented their research with the latest analyses of open-source imagery of the North Korea’s nuclear and missile program. The Chinese specialists provided their own analysis of the current state of the North’s nuclear facilities and their operations.

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Young technical professionals on both sides exchanged their views on the challenges and potential methods for verification, an area critical for moving ahead with denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Both sides agreed that this was an excellent area of future cooperation. It is viewed as one of the most important priorities for future meetings, along with continuing cooperation in the broader field of nuclear security.

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David M. Kennedy, the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History Emeritus at Stanford University, award winning teaching and author of more than a dozen, including Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history, spoke to a packed audience on October 22^nd, 2019.  Kennedy used the outcome of the 2016 American presidential election, which surprised many observers, to reflect on both its historical and current determinants. Professor Kennedy explored some of the deep structural features that have long characterized the American political system, as well as the social, economic, technological, and cultural issues that are shaping American politics today.

Professor Kennedy spoke about the process of “disintermediation,” where different branches of government lose part of their role in the policymaking process.  He used this concept to analyze the long-standing struggle between congress and the president that continues today.   Particularly insightful for current day understanding is how presidents increasingly succeeded in using the public to go around congress in pursuing their policy interests. Franklin D. Roosevelt redefined the president’s relationship with the public with his famous “fireside chats,” making use of the radio, reaching beyond Woodrow Wilson who had to rely on printed newspapers.   John F. Kennedy took this even further via televised news conferences.  The internet and social media have taken disintermediation to the extreme.

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