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.
March 1, 2018
Technology and National Security: The United States at a Critical Crossroads
American leadership in science, technology, and innovation (ST&I) has been the foundation of U.S. national security for decades. Advanced technology, along with America’s ability to operationalize it into transformational capabilities, has long given us a military advantage. This advantage has provided superiority on the battlefield and for our broader national security apparatus. Today, however, our technological superiority is increasingly being challenged by near-peer and asymmetric competitors. Globalization of science and technology, emerging and unpredictable threats (both manmade and natural), conventional and emerging weapons of mass destruction, and an inversion of technology flow from the private to public sectors all present challenges to our national security.
Feb. 1, 2018
Low-Cost Access to Space: Military Opportunities and Challenges
Space activity is critical to the American way of war. The commercialization of space has potentially radical implications for U.S. national security through its impact on a range of military and intelligence functions and on the ability of the nation to effectively project power around the globe.
Aug. 14, 2017
The Pentagon’s Pivot: How Lead Users Are Transforming Defense Product Development
Historically, the Department of Defense (DOD) has relied on strategic forecasting to determine specifications for new military products. These specifications are codified in formal product requirements that drive new product development (NPD).
May 15, 2017
Developing an Innovation- Based Ecosystem at the U.S. Department of Defense: Challenges and Opportunities
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is looking at new ways to spur entrepreneurship and innovation among its stakeholders and related constituencies.
April 1, 2015
Global Knowledge Networking: Smart Strategies for Promoting Innovative Learning and Leader Development
Smart security builds on actionable knowledge. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Wales Summit in September 2014 highlighted the need to build on partnerships to prepare and operate together better. Building on the successes of past partnership initiatives and capabilities, this paper proposes new ways to embrace and extend techniques and relationships originally developed under successful Secretary of Defense (SECDEF)-level memoranda of understanding (MOUs) within NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) program. The Global Knowledge Networking (GKN) initiative supports smart decisionmaking by educating and training tomorrow’s agile, resilient, and effective leaders. GKN is a network of people, ideas, and processes to make knowledge actionable and is focused on improving on U.S. and coalition interoperability through improvements in existing training and education capabilities. It has begun to convene strategic dialogues around key challenges and collectively owned opportunities. Its initial framing is globally relevant and focused on the Arabian Gulf region through a proposed test bed for collaboration with the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This will allow new tools for interoperability to be explored and created together as enablers of joint capability. Drawing on the experiences of NATO’s Partnership for Peace, it will promote an innovative systems approach that could help cultivate and sustain more effective security partnerships around the globe.
Responding to Russia after the NATO Summit: Unmanned Aerial Systems Overmatch in the Black Sea
The Ukraine conflict poses unique and asymmetric challenges to the international community. Since the earliest days of the Crimean crisis, Russian support of “separatists” within Ukraine has ranged from plainclothes thugs to more traditional uniformed troops, munitions, and other forms of aid. Some of the individuals involved may have had links to the Russian military or its intelligence community. While much of the aid comes through the porous border between Russia and Ukraine, Russia also leverages the opportunity to use Black Sea smugglers as a way to supply ongoing rebellions or to initiate new revolts. Two Black Sea–bordering regions, Odessa and Transnistria, are home to active pro-Russian movements that could potentially evolve into a pro-Russian state. Worries of Russia supplying separatists via illicit movements on the Black Sea and generally advancing its Novorossyia claims should be matched to a general concern over Black Sea smuggling rings, which traffic humans, weapons, and nuclear materials into Europe via Odessa’s port.
March 1, 2015
Defense Partnerships: Documenting Trends and Emerging Topics for Action
Public-public and public-private and partnerships (P4s) are time-proven effective solutions for delivering public services at reasonable costs when deployed and managed properly. Various U.S. agencies and international organizations all have longstanding successful P4 initiatives and projects. Recently, Department of Defense (DOD) leaders have expressed increased interest in implementing P4s throughout their organizations. As DOD is faced with evolving roles and missions in an “unpredictable and complex world amid fiscal constraints, the expertise and involvement of the private sector and other public organizations will be essential.” P4s could be ideal tools intended to “further policy objectives, enhance U.S. operational capabilities, reduce costs, gain access to nonmilitary expertise or assets, or build greater capacity in partners.”
Oct. 1, 2014
A Time to Tweet, as Well as a Time to Kill: ISIS’s Projection of Power in Iraq and Syria
On June 29, 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or the Islamic State), a Sunni jihadist group with the capability of a paramilitary, established an Islamic caliphate. With 10,000 militants, the group took territory and achieved a goal that rival terrorist group al Qaeda has pursued for decades. Yet how did a group with relatively few fighters accomplish so much?
July 1, 2013
Sharing to Succeed: Lessons from Open Information-sharing Projects in Afghanistan
The sharing of information in complex civil-military operations is important, yet actors rarely do it well. U.S. and allied military forces must be able to communicate, collaborate, and exchange information effectively with the local populations they seek to influence, or they cannot achieve the goals for which they have been committed. Nonetheless, experience from stability operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, numerous humanitarian assistance/disaster relief missions, and efforts to build the capacity of foreign partners suggest that effective information-sharing is much harder than might be expected. This paper sheds light on the difficulties of setting up and sustaining projects to share information in such situations and suggests ways to do better in the future.
Valued Sustainable Services: Building Partnership Capacity Through Collaborating Approaches
The Valued Sustainable Services (ValSServ) concept is an approach to building the capacity of local populations. It emphasizes the interdependency among telecommunications, reliable power, and information-sharing support, and encourages projects to be developed in integrated packages rather than in stove-piped lines of effort. ValSServ focuses on bottom-up projects in complex civil-military operations that can be funded, planned, and executed at local levels, while being consistent with top-down national and theater strategies. It takes a system-of-systems approach, recognizing that successful projects can generate positive ripple effects in local environments and throughout extended networks. This paper focuses on ValSServ within the wide range of U.S. Department of Defense operating environments, such as capacity-building to help shape peacetime conditions in partner nations, post-disaster recovery, and helping to move from the “hold” to the “build” phases in counterinsurgency operations.