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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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Aug. 9, 2024

Chinese Regime Playing Key Role in Ongoing Wars

How do China and Iran matter to the wider context of the Israel-Hamas War and for the future of stability in the Middle East? See INSS’ Tom Lynch address these topics in his feature interview from 29 July 2024.

July 22, 2024

Assessing Russian plans for military regeneration

Senior Research Fellow Dr. Jaclyn Kerr writes the chapter “Russia’s Asymmetric Enablers” in this research paper.

July 9, 2024

The Future of Hybrid Warfare

The NATO Futures Series by CSIS features scholars from the Futures Lab, the International Security Program, and across CSIS. It explores emerging challenges and opportunities that NATO is likely to confront after its 75th anniversary.

July 5, 2024

The Elusive Promise of “Over-the-Horizon” Counterterrorism

Dr. Kim Cragin, INSS Distinguished Fellow for Counterterrorism, has a new journal article on the opportunities and challenges posed by an over-the-horizon approach to counterterrorism.

July 5, 2024

Small, smart, many and cheaper: Competitive adaptation in modern warfare

Q&A with T. X. Hammes, a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense program of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a distinguished research fellow in the Center for Strategic Research.

July 5, 2024

Lethal Targeting and Adaptation Failure in Terrorist Groups

This study argues that terrorist groups’ command relationships and resources bases can hinder their ability to adapt to lethal targeting. It evaluates this argument by examining Arabic language correspondence from Usama bin Ladin’s compound related to the drone campaign in Pakistan.

May 9, 2024

Unpacking China’s PLA Restructuring: A Conversation with Dr. Joel Wuthnow

Dr. Joel Wuthnow (INSS/Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs) was interviewed on the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ (CSIS) ChinaPower podcast.

March 7, 2024

The Russo-Chinese Alliance and Great Power Competition with Dr. Tom Lynch

Dr. Tom Lynch offers us a Great Power Competition understanding of the evolving Russo-Chinese strategic partnership on the Georgetown University “Diplomatic Immunity” podcast. His 30-minute podcast conversation, posted on March 7, 2024, tells us why China and Russia now appear more strategically aligned than they actually are and why they are not destined to be formal allies into the future.

March 6, 2024

America’s New Twilight Struggle With Russia

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced Washington to rethink its fundamental assumptions about Moscow. Every U.S. president from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden had sought some degree of engagement with Russia. As late as 2021, Biden expressed hope that Russia and the United States could arrive at “a stable, predictable relationship.” But Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine has radically altered that assessment. It is now clear that the two countries will remain antagonists for years to come. The Kremlin possesses immense disruptive global power and is willing to take great risks to advance its geopolitical agenda. Coping with Russia will demand a long-term strategy, one that echoes containment, which guided the United States through the Cold War, or what President John F. Kennedy called a “long, twilight struggle” against the Soviet Union.

Feb. 24, 2024

CSR's Dr. Tom Lynch Participates in the Inaugural Quad Think Tank Forum

Dr. Tom Lynch participated in the Inaugural Quad Think Tank Forum in New Delhi, India.


Strategic Insights | Sept. 24, 2025

Beyond Mechanistic Control: Causal Decision Processing in Neuromorphic M...

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

Strategic Insights | Sept. 17, 2025

Autonomous Artificial Intelligence in Armed Conflict: Toward a Model of ...

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.

INSS Around the Web | Sept. 15, 2025

The Greatest Danger in the Taiwan Strait

Dr. Joel Wuthnow writes a piece for Foreign Affairs on how a war between China and Taiwan could result from an accident or miscalculation that spirals out of control.


INSS Around the Web | Sept. 9, 2025

Expendable Drones: Appreciating the Evolving Technology – and Character ...

This publication address the expanding weaponized capabilities — and threats — of unmanned vehicular systems when coupled to iterative forms of artificial intelligence.

Strategic Insights | Sept. 8, 2025

Tiny Particles, Big Stakes: The Strategic Implications of Micro‑ and Nan...

During World War II, plastic production was ramped up to meet demands from the defense industry. In the post-war consumer culture, using technological innovations and advanced synthesis methods to create and manipulate isomers, synthetic polymers

INSS Around the Web | Sept. 4, 2025

Evaluating Anomalous Health Incidents of the Havana Syndrome: The Case f...

Dr. Giordano writes his latest publication for EC Neurology that explicates the need, and calls for the development of a systematic questionnaire to assess the symptoms of patients with anomalous health incidents (AHI) of the Havana Syndrome.

Strategic Insights | Sept. 3, 2025

Disruptive Technologies in Current and Future Warfare: Definition and De...

This week, the Center for Disruptive Technology and Future Warfare (DTFW) of the Institute for National Strategic Studies is presenting its first major conference, addressing DTFW at large, and in-depth. In the spirit of this conference, I believe it