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.
Dec. 16, 2025
The Imperial Trap: Russia’s War in Ukraine and the Lessons of Failed Conquests
Since the release of the U.S. 28-point draft peace plan in late November, many officials and observers have suggested that a ceasefire in Ukraine may be on the horizon.
Dr. Tom Lynch Contributes U.S. Chapter to The Palgrave Geopolitical Atlas
"Chapter 2: United States" in The Palgrave Geopolitical Atlas: State and Quasi-State Actors in Great Power Competition is part of a comprehensive 54-chapter edited book that examines global state and quasi-state interactions in the new era of Great Power Competition.
Dec. 15, 2025
Artificial Intelligence: A Double-Edged Sword in Support and Subversion of the Biological Weapons Convention; Part Two: Implications and Recommendations
As we noted, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into biosurveillance and biodefense architectures to strengthen verification and enforcement mechanisms associated with the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) can also enable state and non-state actors to obscure, circumvent, or strategically exploit the very compliance frameworks that AI is intended to enhance.
Dec. 11, 2025
The Challenge of a Rising, Nuclear-Armed China
This National Institute for Public Policy article examines several specific developments in China’s nuclear arsenal, which, coupled with Beijing’s aggressive foreign policy, hold sobering implications for U.S. national security interests.
Dec. 8, 2025
Artificial Intelligence: A Double-Edged Sword in Support and Subversion of the Biological Weapons Convention Part One: Framing the Issues
The recent announcement that artificial intelligence (AI) will be employed to surveille and support compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) reflects both the capabilities for data collection, integration and analysis that such systems enable, and the iterative integration of AI within biodefense ecologies and operations.
Dec. 3, 2025
Strategic Ambiguity: Erdoğan’s Turkey in a Multipolar World
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Finland and Sweden made the historic decision to seek membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Dec. 2, 2025
Can Seoul Take the Lead & The Alliance Expand Its Aperture?
South Korea taking a lead role in conventional deterrence of North Korea, appears linked with enabling the U.S. conventional posture and the alliance's combined posture on the peninsula to better handle multiple threats to the alliance on, around, and beyond it.
The Variables of OPCON: What "Conditions"?
Language around wartime operational control (OPCON) transition has evolved over the last decade, revealing important patterns and subtle (or not so subtle) shifts in position and policy.
Human Agency Under Predictive Insight: Neuroethical Guidance of Behavioral AI
The examination of the Centaur AI system highlights a turning point at the intersection of behavioral science and artificial intelligence, and reveals a compelling truth: human choice displays structured regularity that advanced analytic systems can model.
Dec. 1, 2025
Intra-conflict Deterrence in the Indo-Pacific: Escalation Management and Nuclear Deterrence in a Potential Future U.S.-China Conflict Over Taiwan
This study, commissioned by U.S. Strategic Command and conducted by the National Defense University INSS Center for the Study of WMD, considered Department of Defense courses of action for managing escalation and deterring adversary nuclear employment within a potential future Indo-Pacific regional conflict scenario. The study considered several key variables within a potential major power crisis or conflict within this region, to include complex escalation dynamics, conventional-nuclear integration issues, the role of strategic and theater-range nuclear forces, and the challenge (and imperative) of strategic communications. The study’s April 2025 final report is USG-only; available by request from USG colleagues.