Meet our Next Speaker

Susan Landau

April 17, 2023

Topic: The Reality of Cyberwar – in Ukraine and Elsewhere

Susan Landau is Bridge Professor in Cyber Security and Policy at the Fletcher School and the School of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science at Tufts University and the founding director of the Tufts Master of Science program in Cybersecurity and Public Policy.

Landau served as a Senior Staff Privacy Analyst at Google, a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, and a faculty member at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the University of Massachusetts, and Wesleyan University. She was a Guggenheim Fellow and visiting scholar at the Computer Science Department of Harvard University and a Fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has been a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1999 and was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 2011. Landau has testified before Congress on encryption, surveillance, and cybersecurity issues, including providing testimony in the FBI–Apple encryption dispute between 2015 and 2016.

Landau is an inductee in both the Cybersecurity Hall of Fame and the Information System Security Association Hall of Fame and was awarded the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award for Social Impact in 2008. In 1989, she introduced the first algorithm for deciding which nested radicals can be denested, which is known as “Landau’s algorithm.” In 1972, her project on odd perfect numbers won a finalist position in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search.

Landau’s 2021 book, People Count: Contact-Tracing Apps and Public Health (MIT Press), focuses on efficacy, equity, and privacy. Landau is also the author of Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age (Yale University Press, 2017), Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies, (MIT Press, 2011) which won her the Surveillance Studies Network Book Prize, and Privacy on the Line: the Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption, co-authored with Whitfield Diffie (MIT Press, 1998). She is also the co-author of the report Keys Under Doormats: Mandating Insecurity by Requiring Government Access to All Data and Communications, which received the 2015 J. D. Falk Award from the Messaging Malware Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group. The Obama administration gave substantial credit to this report’s analysis when it announced that it would not pursue exceptional access to phone data.

Outside of her technical work, Landau is interested in the issues of women in science, maintaining the ResearcHers email list, a “community dedicated to supporting women new to research in computing,” and an online bibliography of women’s writing in computer science.

Landau has a B.A. from Princeton University, an M.A. from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Meetings open to members and members’ guests only.  Unless otherwise noted, all meetings take place at Elk Hall, 210 Rankin Street in Rockland.  Please plan on arriving by 11:30 AM for noon meetings.  The speaker begins promptly at noon and lunch is served from 1 PM.

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Upcoming Speakers

  • April 17, 2023
    Susan Landau
    Topic: The Reality of Cyberwar – in Ukraine and Elsewhere
  • May 8, 2023
    Christopher Costa
    Topic: Reflections on Counterterrorism and the Future Terrorism Threat
  • June 10, 2023
    Amna Nawaz
    Topic: To Be Announced
  • July 10, 2023
    Thomas Ricks
    Topic: First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

View all speakers past and present »

Articles

Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons at our behest. Here’s what we owe them.

Posted on Saturday March 4

By Jon B. Wolfsthal, The Washington Post, February 10, 2023 The world is on the cusp of a dangerous new nuclear era, and the war in Ukraine might be a glimpse of what is to come. Reflecting this, the hands of the iconic Doomsday Clock, an indicator reflecting the opinion of the Bulletin of the Atomic […]

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Derek Mitchell: Three articles on democracy and international security

Posted on Friday February 3

Ambassador Derek Mitchell thought the following three articles would provide a helpful background for his February 2023 presentation on Democracy and International Security. “The Ground Game: Supporting Democracy Must Be Part of America’s Global Strategy,” by Derek Mitchell, The Hill, September 15, 2022 Today’s International Day of Democracy offers an opportunity to review the state of global […]

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The revenge of history in Ukraine: year of war has shaken up world order

Posted on Friday December 30

By Patrick Wintour, The Guardian, December 26, 2022 The Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko recalls a quote attributed to Otto von Bismarck: “Wars are not won by generals, but by schoolteachers and parish priests.” It’s a country’s taught collective memory, its shared sense of its own history, that are the decisive instruments for mobilisation, and are […]

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Made with Bravery: the Story of Ukrainian Startup Resilience

Posted on Friday December 30

Produced and Directed by Dan Herman, Go To Jupiter Productions Inc., November 2, 2022 From coffee shops to bomb shelters, work-life balance to work-war balance, “Made with Bravery: the Story of Ukrainian Startup Resilience” profiles how Ukraine’s startup ecosystem has reacted and adapted to life amidst over 200 days of full-scale Russian invasion, and how […]

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Dan Golden: Op-ed, NYT book review, and book excerpt

Posted on Monday December 5

Below you will find an op-ed written by Dan Golden as well as a New York Times book review of and except from his recent book on cybercrime. Dan thought these readings would provide a helpful background for his December 2022 presentation. “Why the F.B.I. Is So Far Behind on Cybercrime,” by Dan Golden, The New […]

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Would Putin Roll the Nuclear Dice?

Posted on Tuesday November 1

By Steven Pifer, Time, October 18, 2022 Since Russia launched its most recent invasion of Ukraine in February, Moscow has threatened—sometimes subtly, other times explicitly—nuclear escalation should the war not go its way. Ukraine and the West have to take such threats seriously. But the Kremlin also needs to take their probable responses seriously and […]

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We can’t afford US Congress wavering in its support for Ukraine

Posted on Tuesday November 1

By Steven Pifer, The Guardian, October 27, 2022 On 24 October, 30 members of the House Democratic Progressive Caucus released a letter to Joe Biden calling for a “proactive diplomatic push” on Kyiv to work toward a ceasefire and “direct [US] engagement” with Moscow to end the Russia-Ukraine war. One week earlier, Republican House leader Kevin […]

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Taliban facing backlash after U.S. drone strike against al-Qaeda leader

Posted on Monday October 3

By Pamela Constable, The Washington Post, August 2, 2022 KABUL — The U.S. drone strike that killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri here early Sunday also struck a humiliating blow against the Taliban regime, which had secretly hosted the aging extremist in the heart of the Afghan capital for months but failed to keep him safe. […]

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Beneath Kabul’s surprising veneer of normalcy, a precarious balancing act

Posted on Monday October 3

By Pamela Constable, The Washington Post, August 11, 2022 KABUL — An uneasy calm has settled over the Afghan capital this summer, a wary detente between the country’s stern religious rulers and a deflated, worried populace that is struggling to survive but also relieved that the punishing 20-year war involving foreign troops is over. Both […]

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Restore Reagan’s Military ‘Margin of Safety’

Posted on Wednesday September 7

By Roger Zakheim, The Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2022  The U.S. faces the most daunting security landscape in 45 years. That’s no coincidence. Earlier this year Russia launched the bloodiest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, and this summer China publicly displayed plans to strangle or swallow the free people of Taiwan. Leaders […]

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Collapse of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces: An Assessment of the Factors That Led to Its Demise

Posted on Monday June 27

By the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), May 2022 Since 2002, the United States has allocated nearly $90 billion in security sector assistance to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), with the goal of developing an independent, self-sustaining force capable of combating both internal and external threats. Yet, in August 2021, […]

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The big emerging question: How to finance the net-zero transition in emerging markets

Posted on Monday June 13

By Paul Bodnar, Jean Boivin, and Isabelle Mateos y Lago, Black Rock Investment Institute, October 2021 Climate change is a global crisis that requires a global response. Without a successful green transition everywhere, climate risk is unmanageable anywhere. Reaching the globally agreed climate goals requires speed – notably a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030, […]

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USAID Development Assistance Counter Terrorism: A Guide to Programming

Posted on Friday May 6

Below you will find the USAID document that Stacia George thought would provide a helpful background in advance of her May 2022 presentation on counter terrorism. USAID Development Assistance Counter Terrorism: A Guide to Programming. October 2009. This guide discusses the implications for practitioners pursuing development objectives in the context of counter-extremism (CE). Because programming […]

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Understanding Central Asia’s Cautious Approach to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Posted on Friday April 1

By Bruce Pannier, Foreign Policy Research Institute, March 25, 2022 The governments in Central Asia are treading cautiously in their remarks about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Central Asia, too, was part of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, and, when some in Central Asia see the news from Ukraine, they might wonder if they are […]

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Ambassador Laura Kennedy: Article, Podcast, and Video

Posted on Friday April 1

Below you will find an article, podcast, and video that Ambassador Laura Kennedy thought would provide a helpful background on the “Stans” in advance of her April 2022 presentation. Dealing with Kazakhstan’s Nuclear Inheritance, Foreign Service Journal, March 30,2022. Ambassador Kennedy’s book review of Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan gave up the bomb by Togzhan Kassenova. To […]

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