Center for International Security and Cooperation

The Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University is one of the leading academic research centers focused on international security. Its roots trace to the Vietnam War era, when political scientist John W. Lewis, physicist Wolfgang Panofsky, and law professor John Barton began offering interdisciplinary courses on arms control and disarmament in 1970. Following Ford Foundation grants in 1973 and 1978, Stanford formally established CISAC in 1983 as the Center for International Security and Arms Control. In 1998, CISAC relocated to Encina Hall and was renamed the Center for International Security and Cooperation to reflect its expanded scope beyond Cold War arms control. CISAC operates as part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford. The center is traditionally led by two co-directors, one from the natural sciences and one from the social sciences, reflecting its commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration. Founding co-directors were political scientist John W. Lewis and physicist Sidney D. Drell. As of 2025-2026, Scott D. Sagan (political scientist and FSI Senior Fellow) serves as co-director; Rod Ewing, who had served as science co-director since 2017, died in July 2024. CISAC's research spans several major programs. Its nuclear risk and cooperation work has been central since its founding, and the center has received over $23.7 million from the MacArthur Foundation across 42 grants (1984-2021) primarily for nuclear security research. The Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance (GTG) program examines how AI, quantum computing, and other emerging technologies reshape global power and policy. GTG's initiatives include the Stanford DigiChina Project (tracking China's technology policy since 2017), an annual Geopolitics of Technology in East Asia conference, and the AI for Peace initiative, which explores international cooperation frameworks for AI analogous to Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace proposal. CISAC co-sponsors the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative (SERI), founded in 2019, which focuses on catastrophic risks from AI, nuclear war, pandemics, and climate change. CISAC fellows work across a range of security topics, with recent fellows researching military applications of AI and autonomy, ethics of AI in combat, and political regulation of AI technologies. The center offers pre- and postdoctoral fellowships, undergraduate honors programs, and graduate coursework, and hosts seminars and Track II diplomatic dialogues with major global powers.