The Institute for National Strategic Studies serves as a focal point for analysis of critical national security policy and defense strategy issues.
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July 28, 2025
Bold New Bioweapons: Part 2 — Bold Bolstering of Deterrence and Defense
Last week’s Strategic Insights addressed how biotechnology has emerged as a foundational and formidable element in the evolving character of warfare. The integrative convergence of big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and advanced bioengineering and manufacturing has created rapidly expanding dual-use capabilities that can be leveraged in both non-kinetic and kinetic engagements.
July 24, 2025
Russia Is Losing Its Near Abroad
Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine is one piece of a broader campaign to restore a sphere of influence in post-Soviet Eurasia.
July 21, 2025
Bold New Bioweapons: Part 1 — The Burdens of Detection and Attribution
It has been more than fifty years since the ratification of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in 1972, which sought to provide a formalized venue for international control and prohibition of development, production, and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons.
July 16, 2025
INSS joins Power Vertical Podcast to talk rising tensions between Russia, Azerbaijan
In this episode of The Power Vertical Podcast, host Brian Whitmore speaks with Jeffrey Mankoff about rising tensions between Russia and Azerbaijan following a brutal crackdown and arrests on both sides.
Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Geopolitics in the South Caucasus
Jeffrey Mankoff, a Distinguished Research Fellow in the INSS Center for Strategy and Military Power (CSMP), joined The Russian Roulette podcast.
July 14, 2025
Major Concerns About Microelectronics
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is decisively shaping the future of warfare. It accelerates decision cycles, extends operational reach, and enables exercised control of the informational, and cognitive dimensions of engagement.
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?