My research seeks to uncover how imagined futures and technological promises--in this case, the promise of quantum computers--became so tangible in the present. How could such a significant industry be built and maintained around mere potential existence? My project locates the answer to this question in the broader politico-economic category of ‘tech’—by which users typically mean information technology—through the history of quantum computing and information (QC). A category articulated by actors in this history, ‘tech’ emerges in its current form in the mid-1980s and relies on the conflation of economic and national security in the flesh of high-tech products like semiconductors. Since the field has yet to deliver on any of its promises, it cannot activate an after-the-fact teleology of “discovery”. For this reason, combined with its high visibility and institutional maturity, QC provides a particularly rich view into how actors construct institutions, histories, narratives and ideologies in real time, as well as how these narratives shift according to the needs of an audience, field, or other factors. Not only products of changing institutions, these narratives also reciprocally produce institutions—they mediate between material reality and ideology. For example, I look at the role of Moore’s Law in the reconstruction of the semiconductor industry and in the production of institutions for QC. My project uses new archival research and extensive oral interviews with more than 90 researchers and other important figures from academia, government and industry in the US, Japan, Europe, China, Singapore, and Israel to analyze the development of QC and the infrastructure that made it possible over the past 50 years. This project would constitute the first history of QC and would contribute a unique and incisive perspective on the rise of ‘tech’ in statecraft and power.

No description available.

I cover three topics in empirical microeconomics. In the first chapter, titled Investor Attention to Firm versus Market-wide Information Shocks: Evidence from North Korean Missile Tests, I study whether attention towards salient political events leads to underutilization of firm-specific information in the South Korean stock market. I find that companies with earnings surprises in the top quartile experience a 1.6% increase in the abnormal return on the announcement day, but a same-day missile test takes away 70% of the positive response. In the second chapter, titled Does Cultural Proximity Mitigate the Effect of Immigration on Electoral Outcomes? (with Gerard Domènech), we study the effect of immigration on electoral outcomes using individual-level administrative data in Spain. In a multiple instrumentations framework, we find that recent immigrants who arrived within two years are associated with an increase in the vote share of the extremist parties. Such an effect persists for additional two years but dissipates in the long-term. When split by regions of origin, African immigrants have the greatest impact, followed by Latin American immigrants. European immigrants do not affect the extremist vote shares. An analysis of the unemployment rate and the number of children suggests that immigrants tend to assimilate over time. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that cultural proximity mitigates the political reaction to immigrants. In the third chapter, titled The Effect of Daddy Quota on Gender Labor Market Outcomes (with Petra Niedermeyerova), we study the impact of a father-specific parental leave policy on labor market outcomes in Quebec, Canada. Using a province-level difference-in-difference approach, we find that the so-called daddy quota increases the probability of employment for women and decreases the wage of younger men. The results suggest that the daddy quota promoted equal opportunities for women in the labor market. In a theoretical framework, we show that policy-driven changes in gender norms are consistent with our findings.

Facebook is being used by both Russia and Ukraine as a tool of war, for very different purposes. This demonstrates that the platform no longer serves the sole function of connecting communities together. Existing literature has recognized that social media is being used in the current Russo-Ukrainian war but has yet to conduct comparative and contrastive analyses of Russian and Ukrainian social media strategies and effects. Conducting these analyses will illustrate not only what strategies are being used, but how they can be simultaneously advantageous and disadvantageous for belligerents. By focusing on one platform, Facebook, one can not only learn why it is of crucial importance to both countries, but how the platform might be used moving forward. The findings of this paper suggest that Russian and Ukrainian tactics on Facebook are similar in at least six ways, but on the whole, they differ more than they coincide. The six coinciding tactics include funding, documentation on the ground, narrative spreading, heightening morale, name-calling, and utilization of the platform by leaders. Additionally, the effect of any given strategy varies, with some being successful, and others unsuccessful. Ultimately, these findings can serve as a resource for the national security, social media, political, legal, and academic communities.

States have a diverse and unique set of available mechanisms to deploy when seeking to interact in the international community. Economic sanctions have long been one such tool available for states looking to coerce or incentivize a change in the behavior of another state. Likewise, states have historically sought to influence and gain unknown knowledge on another state or actor. Covert intelligence operations have changed forms, mechanisms, and techniques, especially since the expansive advancements in technology in the 21st century. This paper seeks to understand the influence that economic sanctions have on the ability for single-party states to conduct intelligence operations against the United States. A comparative case study, composed of a series of questions and deployed in a casebook method, explores these unique behaviors through the cases of Cuba and China. A better understanding between economic sanctions and intelligence operations can offer American foreign policymakers another avenue to consider when deploying economic sanctions.

No description available.

No description available.

[pt] Essa dissertação tem por objetivo discutir os componentes autoritários de nossa formação histórica, tanto a gênese quanto a manutenção de práticas autoritárias no Estado brasileiro, bem como em diversas instituições. Observando a ampla utilização, durante o primeiro governo Vargas, do recurso retórico à segurança nacional para mobilizar os braços repressivos do Estado contra determinados grupos sociais, o objetivo central passa a ser o de discutir os elementos que compõem certa acepção autoritária do conceito de segurança nacional. / [en] This dissertation aims to discuss the authoritarian components of our historical formation, both the genesis and the maintenance of authoritarian practices in the Brazilian State, as well as in several institutions. Noting the widespread use of the rhetoric of national security during the first Vargas administration to mobilize the repressive arms of the state against certain social groups, the central objective is to discuss the elements that make up a certain authoritarian meaning of the concept of national security.

This dissertation explores the complex interactions between the Cold War military-scientific apparatus, the idea of a culture of the Cold War, and the desert environment of the Tularosa Basin in south-central New Mexico. During and after World War II, the War Department and then the Department of Defense established several military reserves in the region. The massive White Sands Missile Range (at 3,200 square miles the largest military reserve in North America and larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined) and other military attachés would increasingly define the culture and economy of the Tularosa Basin. Historians have cast places such as White Sands Missile Range as cratered wastelands. Yet the missile range and surrounding military reserves became a contested landscape that centered on the viability of the nonhuman natural world. Diverse communities sought to find their place in a Cold War society and in the process redefined the value of a militarized landscape. Undeniably, missile technology had a profound impact on south-central New Mexico and thus acts as a central theme in the region's postwar history. However, in the years after 1945, environmentalists, wildlife officials, tourists, and displaced ranchers, amongst many others, continued to find new fangled meanings and unexpected uses for the militarized desert environment of south-central New Mexico. The Tularosa Basin was not merely a destroyed landscape. The design and sheer size of the missile range compelled local, national, and transnational voices to not just make sense of the economic implications of the missile range and surrounding military sites, but to rethink its cultural and environmental values in a changing Cold War society. It was a former home to ranchers still tied to the land through lease and suspension agreements. New Mexico Department of Game and Fish personnel cast the site as perfect for experimentation with exotic big game. Environmentalists and wildlife biologists saw the site as ideal for the reintroduction of the Mexican wolf. Tourists came to know the landscape through the simple obelisk at the Trinity Site. While missiles cratered the desert floor, the military bureaucracy did not hold absolute power over the complex interactions between cultures, economies, and the nonhuman natural environment on the postwar Tularosa Basin. / History

The theme of this research is smart power in Iran’s foreign policy toward Arab national security in the Middle East [Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen]. This important and influential topic was explained and analyzed on the regional and international political scene. Also, it highlighted how the IRI managed in employing this type of power in its foreign policy with the purpose to penetrate Arab national security and exporting its Islamic revolution to the Arab surrounding, and the gains it had made, in accordance with the directives of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, and in line with what is stipulated in the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran 1979. The study examined the case studies of Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen during the time period (2003- 2015), where 2003 witnessed a significant turning point that contributed to reviving Iran’s dual-strategy to expand in the Arab world and reshaping its map and regimes in preparation for exporting its Islamic revolution to it and extending its control over it, relying on its hard and soft power instruments on the one hand, and taking advantage of some regional and international shifts that turned the balance of power in favor of Iran - such as the US-led occupation of Iraq, the strategic buffer for the Arab region, in addition to the outbreak of the Arab Spring in late 2010, which crowned in the Iranian-backed Houthis group’s seizure of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in late 2014- that made the Middle East a fertile soil and conducive atmosphere to the implementation of Iranian agendas on the other hand. The research depended on Nay’s smart power model and Waltz’s neo-realism theory, as exclusive analytical frameworks. As well an interpretive case study was utilized as the main research method whose findings were derived from primary and secondary databases. The research concluded that the IRI had succeeded in employing smart power in its foreign policy, enabling it to occupy three Arab countries, which are considered fundamental pillars of Arab national security. This, in turn, has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the IRI poses an existential danger and a serious threat to the Arab nation and its national security, as evidenced by the research databases.