Arthur Laudrain secures grant from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation to join Stanford CISAC as French-American Fellow

DPIR’ s Arthur Laudrain has won a grant from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation to join Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) as the French-American Fellow next month.

 The French-American Fellowship celebrates the 250th Anniversary of the signature of the Declaration of Independence and the close relation between both countries.

Arthur will use his time at Stanford CISAC to work on the publication of his DPhil thesis on cyber-enabled election interference (US, France, UK, Taiwan).

This is a continuation of his work at the University of Oxford, then supported by the  Rotary Foundation  and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council as part of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Cybersecurity.

In his thesis, Arthur investigated cyber-enabled interference into elections by foreign powers, and how democracies respond to them. He uncovered a decision-making dilemma, which he coined “the lesser evil dilemma”, explaining why governments tend to respond too little too late. 

He makes policy recommendations to reinforce the resilience of democratic societies against such interference, and to improve decision-making.

Commenting on the grant, Arthur said: 

“I am thrilled to get the opportunity to pursue my own research agenda, and to build upon my doctoral work towards publication. CISAC is also a unique space for international security thinking and policy, and I’m looking forward to join their cohort of Fellows."

Arthur is currently a Research Associate in Cyber Diplomacy at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, working on an EPSRC-DSTL-funded project on 'Cyber Statecraft in an Age of Systemic Competition', with a focus on the middle-ground, particularly Brazil, India, and South Africa.