BRSL Videos

This talk, cosponsored by the UC Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, looks at how a multibillion-dollar spyware industry—fueled by zero-day exploits and shielded by corporate obfuscation—has outmaneuvered every law, sanction, and enforcement measure thrown at it. Asaf Lubin, Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, spoke with BRSL’s Elaine Korzak, challenging the seductive simplicity of global moratoriums on the industry, and showing how they offer little more than the illusion of safety. The talk lays out a bold blueprint for a multilateral regime that can reclaim control over current and future surveillance technologies before they irreversibly erode human rights and democratic governance.

The Graduate Certificate in Technology Policy (GCTP) is a new certificate program at UC Berkeley hosted by the Goldman School of Public Policy and administered by the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab. The certificate introduces students to interdisciplinary perspectives on emerging technology and public policy issues, exposes students to the policymaking process, and provides training for how to become effective leaders in technology policy fields working with government, intergovernmental organizations, and the public sector. Students from any graduate program at UC Berkeley are eligible to pursue the certificate. This information session will give an overview of the certificate requirements and eligibility criteria, and give students the opportunity to ask questions about pursuing the certificate during their graduate career.

A webinar conversation, part of the BRSL spyware webinar series, between BRSL’s Dr. Elaine Korzak and Ingrid Dickinson, Security Policy Manager on the Threat Disruptions team at Meta. The webinar covered Meta’s approach to combatting surveillance-for-hire vendors and the private sector perspective on the spyware industry. The webinar also touched on the limitations that private sector companies face in mitigating spyware attacks and why a whole-of-society approach is needed to build appropriate governance for this market.

A round-table style discussion of Dr. Elaine Korzak’s new paper Managing Commercial Spyware Through Export Controls co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. Dr. Korzak and BRSL Director Leah Walker moderated a discussion between guests James Shires, Co-Director of Virtual Routes and Managing Editor of Binding Hook; Andrew J. Grotto, research scholar and co-director, Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University; and Dr. Giacomo Persi Paoli, the Head of Programme Security and Technology at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).

Panelists: Jon Metzler, Continuing Lecturer with Haas School of Business, Prof. Andrew Reddie, Faculty Director at the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab, moderated by Leah Walker, Executive Director, Berkeley Risk and Security Lab.

This webinar continues the conversation started in Jon Metzler and Andrew Reddie’s “The Double Power Law: How American Innovation Really Works.” Their War on the Rocks article frames U.S. innovation as emerging from systems: publicly funded basic research and venture‐backed commercialization. Jon, Andrew, and Leah discussed how leading research universities continue to serve as critical engines for early‐stage technology discovery, forming the foundation of a decentralized venture portfolio that gives rise to frontier technologies. The speakers, in reaction to the current university funding environment, also discussed the importance of institutional autonomy, funding breadth, and university–laboratory–industry linkages for preserving American competitiveness.

This BRSL webinar was held on May 9, 2023 as a retrospective, coinciding with the 5-year anniversary of Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA. The discussion addresses the consequences of U.S. withdrawal, the current state of Iranian capabilities and international efforts to contain and monitor them, and the challenges and opportunities for risk reduction going forward. What lessons should we learn from the JCPOA? And what would effective engagement look like after diplomatic disappointment?

Speakers: Jane Darby Menton (BRSL – moderator) Hanna Notte (Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation) Sahil Shah (Council on Strategic Risks) Nick Miller (Dartmouth University)

We are grateful to the University of California, Berkeley Institute of International Studies (IIS), Nuclear Science and Security Consortium (NSSC), and Nuclear Policy Working Group (NPWG) for cosponsoring this event.