Through its publications INSS provides cutting-edge research, analyses, and innovative solutions on critical national security issues in support of the joint warfighter and Department of War stakeholders.
Nov. 21, 2025
Implications of a PRC Shift to a Launch-on-Warning Nuclear Posture
This Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) study assesses the prospects and implications of China’s adoption of a launch-on-warning (LOW) posture for U.S. national security objectives. It evaluates China’s ability to adopt a LOW posture, identifies the key design decisions, examines what a Chinese LOW posture might look like, and assesses the implications and identifies potential mitigation measures.
Nov. 18, 2025
Convergent Critical Technologies Part 1: The Integrative Transformation of Warfighting
The Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering’s designation of six Critical Technology Areas [JG1] (CTAs; viz.- Applied Artificial Intelligence, Biomanufacturing, Contested Logistics Technologies, Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance, Scaled Directed Energy, and Scaled Hypersonics) constitutes a fundamental conceptualization of how power will be projected, contested, and sustained across the conflict spectrum.
Darwin Monkey: Next Generation Neuromorphic Computing and Competition for Cognitive Capability and Control
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.
Nov. 17, 2025
The Agentic Database and Military Command: A Perspective on Autonomous C2 Systems
As recently noted by Yasmeen Ahmad in a piece appearing in InfoWorld, the shift from passive databases to “active reasoning engines” in commercial agentic AI signals a fundamental transformation in how decisions are made, authority is exercised, and accountability is maintained. To be sure, there’s a time- and cost-effective attractiveness of “off the shelf” AI systems that might be viable for military use.
The Logos and Limits of Artificial Cognition: The Exemplar of Military Use
The paper contends that as AI increasingly emulates tasks of human judgment, abstraction, and decision-making, it challenges foundational conceptions of mind, agency, and moral responsibility.
China’s "near space" legal warfare
Mr. Todd Pennington and Ms. Emmy Kanarowski published an op-ed in SpaceNews.
Keeping Turkey in the fold
Turkey has become one of the most active middle powers navigating the erosion of the post-Cold War order.
Sept. 24, 2025
Beyond Mechanistic Control: Causal Decision Processing in Neuromorphic Military Artificial Intelligence
Recently, a paper by Kevin Mitchell and Henry Potter in the European Journal of Neuroscience provided a valuable overview of current understanding of causation in neurocognitive processing, which has interesting implications for military applications of neuromorphically-based artificial intelligence (AI) systems. As we transition from traditional mechanistic AI architectures to those that are designed and developed to more closely mirror the complex causal dynamics of neural systems, military stake and shareholders (and oversight organizations) must confront new paradigms of autonomous decision-making that can challenge conventional understandings of predictability, command control, and accountability in AI.
Sept. 17, 2025
Autonomous Artificial Intelligence in Armed Conflict: Toward a Model of Strategic Integration, Ethical Authority, and Operational Constraint
Artificially intelligent systems are being developed to have iteratively autonomous function, and these systems are increasingly being considered for use in military settings, weapon platforms, and operations.
Sept. 15, 2025
Taming the Hegemon: Chinese Thinking on Countering U.S. Military Intervention in Asia
This report assesses recent Chinese thinking on countering U.S. intervention in Asia, specifically in a Taiwan contingency.