Stanford Emerging Technology Review

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Emerging technologies are transforming societies, economies, and geopolitics. This moment brings both promise and peril. In every era, technological advances are used in nefarious ways that inventors never imagined and slow-moving governments stymie innovations in ways that policymakers never intended. The stakes today are especially high. Great power competition between the US and China is the defining feature of the 21st century – and emerging technologies will determine who will win and what values will shape the international order.

Seizing the opportunities and mitigating the risks of science and engineering breakthroughs takes work. It requires US leadership to ensure that new technologies advance free societies rather than empowering autocracies. And it demands vigorous collaboration between academia, the private sector, and the US government to ensure that innovations uphold American values and serve American national interests.

The Stanford Emerging Tech Review is an ambitious university-wide effort that emerged from conversations with senior American government officials who asked, “What should we know about emerging tech at Stanford?” There was no single resource, no compendium of frontier technological research efforts on campus, and no systematic discussion bringing together scientists, engineers, and social scientists to assess the policy implications, opportunities, and risks of emerging technologies being invented in our own departments and laboratories that are shaping the world.

The Review aims to help fill this vital gap by producing an annual report that accounts for new developments in key technology areas at Stanford University and highlights key policy implications, needs, opportunities, and barriers for US government decision makers and private sector leaders.

CO-CHAIRS

Condoleezza Rice

Tad and Dianne Taube Director | Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy

Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and a Senior Fellow on Public Policy. She is the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.

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John Taylor

George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics

John B. Taylor is the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution and the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He chairs the Hoover Working Group on Economic Policy, co-chairs the Hoover Technology, Economics and Governance Working Group, and is director of Stanford’s Introductory Economics Center.

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Jennifer Widom

Frederick Emmons Terman Dean Of The School Of Engineering, Fletcher Jones Professor Of Computer Science And Professor Of Electrical Engineering

Jennifer Widom is the Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the School of Engineering and the Fletcher Jones Professor in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. She served as Computer Science Department Chair from 2009-2014 and School of Engineering Senior Associate Dean from 2014-2016. Jennifer received her Bachelor's degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 1982 and her Computer Science Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1987. She was a Research Staff Member at the IBM Almaden Research Center before joining the Stanford faculty in 1993. Her research interests span many aspects of nontraditional data management. She is an ACM Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000, the ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award in 2007, the ACM-W Athena Lecturer Award in 2015, and the EPFL-WISH Foundation Erna Hamburger Prize in 2018.

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Amy Zegart

Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow

Amy Zegart is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. She is also a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Chair of Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence and International Security Steering Committee, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She specializes in U.S. intelligence, emerging technologies and national security, grand strategy, and global political risk management.

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PARTICIPANTS

Faculty Council

Zhenan Bao
Dan Boneh
Yi Cui
Simone D’Amico
Drew Endy
Mark A. Horowitz
Fei-Fei Li
Allison Okamura
Kang Shen

Advisory Board

Steven Chu
Robert Gates
Susan Gordon
John Hennessy
Jerry McNerney
Mary Meeker
Lloyd Minor
Peter Scher
Eric Schmidt
Thomas M. Siebel

Technology, Economics, and Governance Working Group

The Technology, Economics, and Governance Working Group seeks to understand the drivers and dynamics of technological innovation in the 21st century, assess the opportunities and risks that breakthrough technologies are creating, and develop governance approaches that maximize the benefits and mitigate the risks for the nation and the world. Facts and objective analysis are the keys to the approach.

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Tech Track 2

The Tech Track 2 (TT2) initiative is designed to foster deeper cooperation between US government leaders, tech executives, and distinguished academics on urgent national security challenges. Advanced research and emerging technologies have long been a cornerstone of US global leadership, but the cultural divide between Washington, D.C. and Silicon Valley, exacerbated by outdated government policies, undermines America’s ability to leverage its capacity for innovation on behalf of US national interests. TT2 seeks to break down barriers between the government, industry, and academia, and inspire partnerships that reinforce US advantages critical to protecting liberal democratic values, fostering prosperity, and preserving peace worldwide.

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