March 25, 2016
Colloquium Topic: The National Security Consequences of Increasing Technological Speed of Change, Complexity, and Coupling
The complexity of modern systems and their tight coupling are widely noted but hard to grasp. The difficulties of this situation are compounded by the often breakneck, but uneven, speed of technology change. This talk will recommend changes that these three phenomena should prompt in national security strategies and processes. Technologies touched on will include digital information systems, additive manufacturing, synthetic biology and the operation of the US electricity grid.
Colloquium Speaker: Richard Danzig
Richard Danzig is a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, a consultant to the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), Chair of the Advisory Panel for Idaho National Laboratories’ Innovation Center, and a member of the Toyota Research Institute Advisory Board. He is also a member of the Defense Policy Board, The President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, and the Homeland Security Secretary’s Advisory Council, a Trustee of Reed College and of the RAND Corporation, a Director of the Center for a New American Security and a Director of Saffron Hill Ventures (a European investment firm).
In recent time he has been a director of National Semiconductor Corporation (NY Stock Exchange) and Human Genome Sciences Corporation (NASDAQ). He has also served as The Chairman of the Board of The Center for a New American Security, Vice Chair of RAND, and Chairman of the Board of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Dr. Danzig served as the 71st Secretary of the Navy from November 1998 to January 2001. He was the Under Secretary of the Navy between 1993 and 1997. From the spring of 2007 through the Presidential election of 2008, Dr. Danzig was a senior advisor to Senator Obama on national security issues.
Dr. Danzig is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and a senior advisor at the Center for New American Security, the Center for Naval Analyses, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. He has served in recent years as a consultant to the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security on national security issues.
Dr. Danzig was born in New York City in 1944. He received a B.A. degree from Reed College, a J.D. degree from Yale Law School, and Bachelor of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Upon his graduation from Yale, Dr. Danzig served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White.