Through its publications, INSS aims to provide expert insights, cutting-edge research, and innovative solutions that contribute to shaping the national security discourse and preparing the next generation of leaders in the field.
July 8, 2025
Strategic Innovation in the DoD FY 2026 RDTE Budget: Leveraging Disruptive Technologies for Deterrence, Defense, and Command and Control
The Department of Defense FY 2026 Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDTE) budget request marks a strategic inflection that reflects a doctrinal shift toward convergent disruptive technologies, and with it, a re-posturing of how deterrence, defense and decisive command will be engaged on the near-future battlefield.
July 7, 2025
Super Soldiers or Social Burden? Ethical Exploration of the Benefits and Costs of Military Bioenhancement
Biotechnological enhancements for military personnel arouse scrutiny, beyond the ethics of experimental research and due care during operational service, to the eventual return to a civilian life.
Iran’s Strategic Crossroads: Options Beyond the Axis?
Events of 2023-2024, culminating with the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, have brought Iran’s regional strategy—a triad of ballistic missile capabilities, nuclear latency, and a decentralized network of regional armed partners—to a moment of reckoning.
July 6, 2025
A Better Way to Talk About Risk
Defense planners are prepared to accept risk to deter China, but what does that mean for counterterrorism?
July 5, 2025
China’s Military Diplomacy in the New Era
Military diplomacy — including senior-level visits, port calls, and joint exercises — has become a vital tool of Chinese statecraft.
July 1, 2025
The Orb’s Eye: Seeing the National Security Implications of Iris Based ‘Proof of Humanity’
As recently reported in the cover story of Time[JG1] magazine, the launch of The Orb—a beach‑ball‑sized biometric device developed by Tools for Humanity (co‑founded by Sam Altman)—marks a paradigmatic shift in digital identity and biosecurity technology and its implications.
June 30, 2025
The German Defense-Industrial Zeitenwende: Implications for Transatlantic Security
The Zeitenwende, or “watershed moment”—announced by Chancellor Olaf Scholz in February 2022, days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—outlined a set of policy shifts, including the development of Germany’s first-ever National Security Strategy, that appeared to signal a greater role for Germany in the defense and security of Europe.
INSS Presents to Visiting Delegation from National Defence College of India
On 11 June, Dr. Tom Lynch (INSS) gave the feature presentation on "Evolving Great Power Strategic Competition and Implications for India and South Asia Security" to the visiting delegation from the Indian National Defence College (NDC), New Delhi.
June 24, 2025
Brain Scanning: Assessing Emigration of U.S. Scientific Talent to Surveille Strategic Implications for China’s Dual-Use Technological Capabilities
Intensifying global competition in science and technology (S/T), particularly in fields with considerable disruptive potential - such as artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, synthetic biology, and neurotechnology—has become a defining feature of 21st-century geopolitical dynamics.
June 23, 2025
China's Military Diplomacy
Chinese military diplomacy serves both strategic and operational goals. The main strategic goals are supporting Chinese foreign policy and shaping the strategic environment; operational goals include supporting People’s Liberation Army (PLA) modernization and collecting intelligence on foreign militaries. Military diplomacy is a tool for building foreign relations and an indicator of the quality of China’s bilateral relationships. When relations are strained, military-diplomatic engagements decrease or stop; when relations are good, engagements tend to increase.