Center for Disruptive Technology and Future Warfare

Director: Dr. James Giordano

The Center for Disruptive Technology and Future Warfare (CDTFW) focuses effort upon assessing how the United States can leverage current and emerging disruptive technology to enhance joint force capabilities, inform defense strategy and future warfare, and defend against exploitation and use by adversaries and competitors.

The CDTFW addresses emerging operational issues in the development, deployment, and deterrence of the following critical technology areas.

Focus Areas

    

Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing. These technologies enable enhanced warfighter performance solutions, and on-demand production of critical supplies in austere environments, and countermeasures to adversaries’ biological and chemical weapons, thereby directly improving warfighter survivability and operational readiness. Biomanufacturing capabilities also reduce supply chain vulnerabilities by allowing forward-deployed forces to produce therapeutics, and biomaterials at the points of need to optimize warfighting and national security capabilities. 

Directed Energy Technology. Directed energy weapons provide precise, very rapid engagement capabilities with broad range applicability and relatively low-cost use profiles that enable joint forces to counter drone swarms, missiles, hypersonic ordnance and other threats that could impede traditional defenses in contested environments.

Artificial Intelligence. AI accelerates information analyses and decision-making across all warfighting domains by integrating and processing extensive types and amount of data and providing actionable intelligence at machine speed; enabling iteratively autonomous systems to force multiply other intelligence and weapon systems to optimize warfighter capabilities in complex, fast-paced battlespaces.

 Autonomous Technology Autonomous systems extend operational reach, reduce risk to personnel, and enable missions in highly contested or denied environments across air, ground, maritime, and space domains. These technologies allow joint forces to achieve operational mass and persistence while keeping warfighters out of harm’s way during reconnaissance, logistics, and strike missions.

Quantum Technology. Quantum sensing, communications, and computing are affording unprecedented pace, volume and precision capabilities in ISR operations in ways that are resistant to detection, interception, and deterrence. Taken together , these technologies can provide decisive advantages in contested electromagnetic environments where traditional systems are easily degraded or denied.

 

Research and Commentary

A stylized, futuristic human face rendered in blue and red digital circuits. The left side of the face glows blue with circuit lines, while the right side has warm orange and red colors with sparks of light. Surrounding the figure is a network of data pathways, symbolizing the intersection of human cognition and artificial intelligence.
Human Agency Under Predictive Insight: Neuroethical Guidance of Behavioral AI
By Elise Annett and Dr. James Giordano | Dec. 2, 2025
The examination of the Centaur AI system highlights a turning point at the intersection of behavioral science and artificial intelligence, and reveals a compelling truth: human choice displays structured regularity that advanced analytic systems can model.

A soldier wears virtual reality glasses; a graphic depiction of a chess set sits in the foreground. Illustration created by NIWC Pacific.
Critical Technology Areas Part 2: Implications and Recommendations for the Warfighter and Warfighting
By Dr. James Giordano | Nov. 24, 2025
As noted in last week’s special edition Strategic Insights, the Department of War will focus upon furthering research, testing and use of six key domains of disruptive technology (viz., applied artificial intelligence [AI], biomanufacturing, contested logistics technologies, quantum and battlefield information dominance, scaled directed energy, and scaled hypersonics).

The image shows a silhouette of a human head in profile, with the brain area illustrated using circuit-like patterns.
Darwin Monkey: Next Generation Neuromorphic Computing and Competition for Cognitive Capability and Control
By Elise Annett and Dr. James Giordano | Nov. 18, 2025
The Darwin Monkey System represents a substantive pivot from conventional AI toward synthetic cognition through neuromorphic architectures that emulate the structural and functional dynamics of the brain.

Meet the Experts

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