15 Jun 2015
by Brandon Valeriano
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With Ryan Maness
We have recently released Cyber War versus Cyber Realities and our cyber conflict dataset has been out in the public for some time. It has been encouraging to see scholars start to use the data, even more so to see it being used by governments in their evaluation of the cyber security threat. That being said, the data should come with a few notes of caution, especially during this time of concern and mistrust of data. 
10 Jun 2015
by Brandon Valeriano
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I have never been successful at writing op-eds, basically I have given up in order to write shorter academic pieces for visible places. The preference for an academic generally should be places like Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Slate that will take 1000-2000 word pieces arguing a point, but with evidence, quasi citations (links), and references to your own works. The reality is that think tanks still matter, policy makers read them, Obama is briefed on them.
5 Jun 2015
by Brandon Valeriano
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It has become common to wake up to news of yet another intrusion in America, or even Chinese systems by cyber hackers. The deeper ignored question is just what does this mean? What can someone really do with four million records of identity for United States government employees?
30 May 2015
by Laura Sjoberg
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In a new article in the Millennium Special Issue on Quo Vadis IR: Method, Methodology, and Innovation, Sammy Barkin and I make the argument that IR’s “methods matching game” is fundamentally flawed – the scholarly equivalent of a dysfunctional relationship. On the one hand, the dating metaphor (made in the article and played up here) is trite. On the other hand, the suggestion that IR scholars’ choices of methods are often “matched” to people, projects, and paradigms in a haphazard and problematic way is meant seriously, and at the heart of our argument.
Our article, “Calculating Critique: Thinking Outside the Methods Matching Game,” makes the argument that IR scholars of all stripes often assume that certain methods belong with certain paradigmatic or substantive approaches to the field, so choosing their research approach of research subject chooses the methods that scholars are trained in and go on to use. There tends to be a linear path, ontology –> epistemology –> methodology – -> method. We argue that this pattern is simple, and often easily accepted across the field, even without reflection or when reflection might produce a different result. We also argue that it is completely wrong.
The substance of the article, and of the edited volume that it is meant to introduce (Interpretive Quantification, which is under contract and about to be sent for review) is the use of quantitative, computational, and formal methods to explore questions in constructivist and critical IR research – that is, traditionally positivist methods being used for traditionally non-positivist work.
But this is not an attempt to bridge the positivist/post-positivist divide (whatever that is) or the qualitative/quantitative divide. It is, instead, the promotion of two arguments: 1) the methodology by which IR scholars choose methods is fundamentally flawed; and 2) quantitative methods are interpreted too narrowly, and often incorrectly, in IR.
21 May 2015
by Brandon Valeriano
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Old Cairo, Modern Cairo, and Revolutionary Cairo all clash in devastating and fascinating ways. This blog will serve a bit as a travelogue and observations about political events, but I have nothing really profound to say. I am not an Egyptologist and have not spent much time studying revolutions. 
Egypt is not in chaos, but it certainly is not stable. The recent decision to condemn the post-Revolution leader Morsi seems problematic, to put things mildly. What is even more confusing is that basic information, like what time it is in Egypt, is open to interpretation. Sisi decided to forgo Daylight Savings Time, an interesting choice in that every clock, cell phone signal, and internet resource gives conflicting advice on what time it is. Egypt is basically an island in time, different from its neighbors.
11 May 2015
by Brandon Valeriano
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I have been busy lately promoting my recently released book (with Ryan Maness), Cyber War versus Cyber Realities. In it, we dissect and empirically evaluation the emergent cyber era finding more bluff and bluster than realistic analysis of cyber conflict. In fact, there is very little evidence of cyber conflict and what conflict we do observe is very low level operations or espionage. 
14 Apr 2015
by R. William Ayres
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When I was in graduate school, one thing we learned to do was critique. In fact, we spent so much time learning the art of criticism, particularly against whatever the “reigning paradigm” was, that we sometimes referred to it as “piranha school”.
At the time, the dominant paradigm in the study of international politics was Realism. Yes, there were nuances and debates among Realists (more, I think, than we really appreciated at the time). But on the whole, Hans Morgenthau was the Godfather and Ken Waltz the reigning king, with up-and-coming princes like Steve Walt, John Mearsheimer, and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita carrying the banners of the empire. Since we all grew up in the era of Star Wars (both Lucas’ and Reagan’s), we knew an Evil Empire when we saw one. Continue Reading →
8 Apr 2015
by Brandon Valeriano
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The CNN report supporting the conclusion that Russia has been hacking the State Department and the White House for months plays into the cyber security narrative for both sides of the debate, those who see little new from the cyber domain and those who see this as a revolution in military and diplomatic affairs. Given my perspective as a cyber moderate, I find much of the same with the incident. It does demonstrate that cyber actions are a reality and occurring with more frequency, but it also supports the point we make throughout our book that cyber actions are typically low level espionage attacks and often the fault of the target.
8 Apr 2015
by Laura Sjoberg
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Soldiers in Fort Gordon, Georgia were given “inappropriate” information, information that might compromise their ability to defend the national security of the United States. The slideshow that contained this information was unauthorized. About 400 soldiers saw a presentation that fell outside of the standards of the US military. It was a deviation. Unit instructors will be subject to further training to make sure that there are not “further instances” of providing inappropriate information. Sharing it “sent the wrong signal.”
What is this deviant information, the dissemination of which needs to be stopped and the sharing of which needs to be prevented in the future? The existence of white privilege. The soldiers were told that some people had the “luxury of obliviousness” to race relations, because “race privilege gives whites little reason to pay attention to African Americans or how white privilege affects them.” It was explained to them that “to be white in American means not having to think about it.”
In other words, for a military that cannot even count how many wars it is fighting, the fact that the soldiers in it might give the impression that white people have privilege – there’s the real danger.
Several problems, in no particular order: 1) there is white privilege, in the US and in the military; 2) white privilege is much more dangerous than (gasp!) soldiers knowing about it; 3) hiding race problems don’t make them not exist; 4) since when is it ok for the military to direct social information?; 5) if talking about white privilege is not approved diversity training, what does the justified training look like?; 6) given race relations issues and suggestions of race bias in military tactics, one wonders if “we are all on the same team” is even a serious attempt to address them; 7) if the “Army reflects the diversity of American society,” does that mean that “American society,” does that mean that women are 14.6% of the American population (actually 50.8%)?; 8) if I keep going, I’ll never get any of the writing done that I need to …
tldr: The big bad US military is afraid of its trainees knowing white privilege is a thing.
7 Apr 2015
by R. William Ayres
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Now that the “P5+1” (but mostly, in our media, the United States) and Iran have signed a framework agreement for limiting Iran’s nuclear development, the debate has intensified over whether this represents a “good deal” or not. Some, notably Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and some members of the US Senate, had already thrown down their marker even before the framework deal was reached: they clearly regard any agreement as a bad one. That debate isn’t going to go away, although I suspect that the Obama Administration will use the power of Executive Agreements to limit the immediate say which Congress has on the matter.
We’ve been down this road before. It’s worth remembering that once upon a time, the United States had a great deal of experience and expertise in arms control negotiations. Shelves of books were written on the subject, and arms control was one of the great issues of the day. In this latest debate over Iran, at least in public, we seem to have forgotten everything we once knew. Continue Reading →