Strategic Insights is a forum for concise analyses of critical policy issues that affect U.S. national security interests. It is maintained by the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) at the National Defense University (NDU). Strategic Insights is intended for the exchange of research-informed analysis. It is not a venue for the dissemination of unofficial information and comments, or as a means to survey visitor opinions. The views, findings, conclusions, and recommendations made by Strategic Insights are solely those of the author. They do not constitute the official position of INSS, NDU or the U.S. Department of War (DoW).

Strategic Insights

Strategic Insights |

Artificial Intelligence and a Reconfiguration of Military Power

Elise Annett and Dr. James Giordano

Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael has emphasized that the DoW has historically under-deployed artificial intelligence (AI) and that the current moment demands rapid, enterprise-wide integration of AI capabilities across the DoW workforce to better support both efficiency and warfighting functions.

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Strategic Insights |

Fortifying Technologic Innovation in National Defense: Strategic Security Imperatives for Research and Acquisition

Dr. James Giordano and Dr. Diane DiEuliis

The recently announced Fundamental Research Security Initiatives and Implementation Memorandum, intended to strengthen protections for Department of War (DoW)-funded research, represents a crucial evolution in how the United States (U.S.) secures innovation enterprise within the defense industrial base (DIB). This initiative affirms that security and innovation are equal, co-foundational components of national defense and activities of the DIB.

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Strategic Insights |

Cognitive Warfare 2026: NATO’s Chief Scientist Report as Sentinel Call for Operational Readiness

Dr. James Girodano

The recently released NATO Chief Scientist’s 2025 Report on Cognitive Warfare provides a timely acknowledgment of a strategic reality that contemporary conflict is increasingly behavior-centric, and the decisive terrain is often not geographic but how individuals and groups perceive, interpret, decide, and act.

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Strategic Insights |

Cognitive Warfare 2026: NATO’s Chief Scientist Report as Sentinel Call for Operational Readiness

Dr. James Girodano

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Photo by: NIH/National Human Genome Research Institute.
A stylized digital illustration of a glowing DNA double helix suspended in a futuristic blue interface. Surrounding the helix are schematic icons representing molecular structures, chemical formulas, data grids, network nodes, and atomic symbols. The image visually conveys the convergence of biotechnology, data, artificial intelligence, and advanced scientific systems in a highly networked, modern research environment.

Strategic Insights |

Biotechnologies and the Treaty Gap: Why Biological Weapons Governance Is Falling Behind; and Some Thoughts on How to Fix It

Dr. James Giordano

The Scottish ballad Auld Lang Syne, written in 1788 by poet Robert Burns is a tune traditionally played to ring out the passing year and herald in the new. The lyrics offer an invitation to celebrate that which was good, and toast to what may come.

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Strategic Insights |

Biotechnology in the FY 2026 NDAA: Strategic Implications — and Recommendations — for Joint Force Readiness

Dr. James Giordano

The newly released FY 26 NDAA places explicit emphasis upon the increasing involvement of biotechnology in US military missions. As 2025 comes to a close, and we look ahead to the new year, Dr. James Giordano, Director of the CDTFW, offers a view to why biotechnology is — and will be ever more — intrinsic and important to national defense and offers a set of recommendations for fortifying Joint Force engagement in the biotechnological domain.

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Strategic Insights |

Artificial Intelligence: A Double-Edged Sword in Support and Subversion of the Biological Weapons Convention; Part Two: Implications and Recommendations

Dr. Diane DiEuliis, Elise Annett, Dr. James Giordano

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.

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Strategic Insights |

Artificial Intelligence: A Double-Edged Sword in Support and Subversion of the Biological Weapons Convention Part One: Framing the Issues

Elise Annett, Diane DiEuliis, Ph.D., James Giordano, Ph.D.

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.

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A soldier wears virtual reality glasses; a graphic depiction of a chess set sits in the foreground. Illustration created by NIWC Pacific.

Strategic Insights |

Critical Technology Areas Part 2: Implications and Recommendations for the Warfighter and Warfighting

Dr. James Giordano

As noted in last week’s special edition Strategic Insights, the Department of War will focus upon furthering research, testing and use of six key domains of disruptive technology (viz., applied artificial intelligence [AI], biomanufacturing, contested logistics technologies, quantum and battlefield information dominance, scaled directed energy, and scaled hypersonics).

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Strategic Insights |

Convergent Critical Technologies Part 1: The Integrative Transformation of Warfighting

Dr. James Giordano

The Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering’s designation of six Critical Technology Areas (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.

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Soldier using virtual tablet hologram army technology

Strategic Insights |

The Agentic Database and Military Command: A Perspective on Autonomous C2 Systems

Elise Annett and Dr. James Giordano

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.

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A digital 3D illustration of interconnected cubes, representing a blockchain or network system, with blue connecting lines forming a web-like structure.

Strategic Insights |

Beyond Mechanistic Control: Causal Decision Processing in Neuromorphic Military Artificial Intelligence

Dr. James Giordano

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.

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Soldier interacting with futuristic interface

Strategic Insights |

Autonomous Artificial Intelligence in Armed Conflict: Toward a Model of Strategic Integration, Ethical Authority, and Operational Constraint

Elise Annett and Dr. James Giordano

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.

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Strategic Insights |

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

Dr. James Giordano and Dr. Ashok Vaseashta

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 became an integral part of our daily existence. Since then, global plastic production has increased exponentially, and current production is over 502.5 million tons (MT) worldwide. At this trajectory and barring any binding treaty to limit plastic production, the number is on track to more than double by 2050.

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Strategic Insights |

Moving at WARP Speed Toward Developing the Cyborg Soldier

Dr. James Giordano and Dr. Diane DiEuliis

There is an adage that the fruits of scientific achievement applicable to real-world settings tend to blossom with the fertilization of time and trends.

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Two figures. Figure 1 (left): All Military Leader Engagements with Africa. Figure 2 (right): CMC Vice Chair travel to Africa.

Strategic Insights |

China’s Military Diplomacy in Africa

Matt Kuhlman, Raina Nelson, and Phillip C. Saunders

This article shows another application for regional researchers, analysts, and policymakers. Specifically, it uses the database to explore some specific aspects of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) evolving engagement in Africa.

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Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan meets with Vietnamese Minister of Defense Ngo Xuan Lich in Beijing, January 13, 2017
(Liu Fang/Xinhua/Alamy Live News)

Strategic Insights |

Visualizing China’s Military Diplomacy

Raina Nelson, Matt Kuhlman, and Phillip Saunders

The National Defense University (NDU) recently released a major update to its comprehensive, publicly available database tracking the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) international military-diplomatic engagements from 2002 to 2024.

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Strategic Insights |

Bold New Bioweapons: Part 2 — Bold Bolstering of Deterrence and Defense

Dr. James Giordano

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.

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Strategic Insights |

Bold New Bioweapons: Part 1 — The Burdens of Detection and Attribution

Dr. James Giordano

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.

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A circuit board contains multiple examples of important microelectronics innovation. The Defense Department's microelectronics commons aims to close gaps in America's ability to bring new microelectronics technology to market.

Strategic Insights |

Major Concerns About Microelectronics

Elise Annett, Steven Hanson, Dr. James Giordano

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.

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Strategic Insights |

Strategic Innovation in the DoD FY 2026 RDTE Budget: Leveraging Disruptive Technologies for Deterrence, Defense, and Command and Control

Dr. James Giordano

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.

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Strategic Insights |

The Orb’s Eye: Seeing the National Security Implications of Iris Based ‘Proof of Humanity’

Elise Annett, James Keagle, James Giordano

As recently reported in the cover story of Time magazine, the launch of The Orb — a beach‑ball‑sized biometric device developed by Tools for Humanity (co‑founded by Sam Altman) — marks a paradigmatic shift in digital identity and biosecurity technology and its implications.

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Strategic Insights |

Brain Scanning: Assessing Emigration of U.S. Scientific Talent to Surveille Strategic Implications for China’s Dual-Use Technological Capabilities

Dr. Diane DiEuliis and Dr. James Giordano

Intensifying global competition in science and technology (S/T), particularly in fields with considerable disruptive potential - such as artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, synthetic biology, and neurotechnology—has become a defining feature of 21st-century geopolitical dynamics.

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Illustration of a human head and brain, set against a futuristic blue digital background representing neural activity and data flow.

Strategic Insights |

The “Ins” and “Outs” of Cognitive Warfare: What’s the Next Move?

Elise Annett and Dr. James Giordano

INSS has relaunched Strategic Insights. Read the latest post by Elise Annett and Dr. James Giordano.

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May 20, 2014

Political Chasm Deepens Over Nuke Program

Iran’s political elite has become increasingly divided over the course of nuclear negotiations with

May 1, 2014

Strategy and Force Planning in a Time of Austerity

On February 13, 1989, General Colin Powell, who was in a transition between National Security Advisor and Commander of U.S. Army Forces Command, addressed the reality of strategy: “All of the sophisticated talk about grand strategy is helpful, but show me your budgets and I will tell you what your strategy is.” What General Powell meant is that the definition of the U.S. role in the world and its strategic goals flow from budgets, not the other way around. This paper fleshes out General Powell’s observation by focusing on the means part of the ends, ways, and means of strategy in order to explain how austerity affects force planning and strategy. By first examining budget reductions as a general matter, the paper describes today’s austere U.S. budgetary environment. It concludes with the current strategic options that will likely characterize the contemporary discussion of strategy and force planning.

By Dennis M. Gormley, Andrew S. Erickson, and Jingdong Yuan

April 1, 2014

A Low-Visibility Force Multiplier: Assessing China’s Cruise Missile Ambitions

China’s military modernization is focused on building modern ground, naval, air, and missile forces capable of fighting and winning local wars under informationized conditions. The principal planning scenario has been a military campaign against Taiwan, which would require the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to deter or defeat U.S. intervention. The PLA has sought to acquire asymmetric “assassin’s mace” technologies and systems to overcome a superior adversary and couple them to the command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems necessary for swift and precise execution of short-duration, high-intensity wars.

March 1, 2014

The Nightmare Years to Come?

We have entered a particularly dangerous era in the Near East and South Asia— that is, the Greater Middle East. The context of today’s situation is more alarming than respective current crises—as bad as they may be. Rather, there is an increasingly radicalized and violent sectarian environment made up of crosscutting crises occurring in the midst of proliferation; precision weapons; cyber war; increased ungoverned territory vulnerable to global, regional, and local jihadist exploitation; majoritarian authoritarianism; uncompromising sectarianism; ethnic, tribal, and sectarian-driven civil wars; massive popular anger and frustration over the lack of essential services and a diminishing quality of life, particularly in areas such as water, electricity, health, education, employment, and economic collapse; water wars and environmental endangerment; and the vulnerability of sensitive infrastructure targeted by state and nonstate actors, or an empowered lone wolf in the service of a state or nonstate actors.

by Christopher J. Lamb, with Sarah Arkin and Sally Scudder

March 1, 2014

The Bosnian Train and Equip Program: A Lesson in Interagency Integration of Hard and Soft Power

DOWNLOAD PDFExecutive Summary Military assistance to Bosnian forces was part of a complex plan to

March 1, 2014

Targeted Killing of Terrorists

The struggle against terrorism—more specifically, the effort to prevent terrorist attacks—has raised difficult legal and policy issues including so-called targeted killing, or the killing of specific individuals because of their involvement in terrorist organizations and operations. As we shall see, this form of targeted killing involves domestic and international legal authorities and policy and prudential issues. A substantial number of countries confronting what they consider to be terrorist attacks and threats engage in targeted killings. Each has to resolve questions about authorities and prudence because, while terrorists are always criminals, they also may be lawful military targets. The dual character of terrorists leads to the conclusion that, as a matter of policy, a state should weigh the totality of the circumstances and conclude that no other action is reasonable to prevent a terrorist attack before engaging in the targeted killing. Careful analysis in advance may preempt problems later.

Feb. 1, 2014

Leadership Divided? The Domestic Politics of Iran's Nuclear Debate

The implementation of the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) between Iran and the P5+1 has raised hopes that

Jan. 1, 2014

The Flawed Strategic Debate on Syria

Dating from Bashar al-Asad’s first suppression of mass demonstrations in April 2011, the war in Syria is now 3 years old, has killed more than 130,000 Syrians, and displaced nine million Syrians, two million as refugees into neighboring countries. Foreign intervention has increasingly shaped the course of the fighting and will continue to have substantial regional consequences. The complexity of this bitter, nominally internal struggle has dampened American enthusiasm for joining the fray or even paying much attention to Syria, notwithstanding the chemical weapon attacks on Gouta, east of Damascus, last August, which captured the attention of the American people, media, and policy community. With an international taboo broken and a Presidential redline crossed, public debate spiked in August–September 2013 over U.S. interests in Syria and the limits on what we will do to secure them. Debate did not result in a consensus for action.

Jan. 1, 2014

The Defense Acquisition Trilemma: The Case of Brazil

Brazil is a puzzling new player in the global system. Emerging as a complex international actor, it has come to be seen as a significant economic competitor and dynamic force in world politics. But transformational changes in the economic and political realms have not been accompanied by advances in military power. While Brazil has entered the world stage as an agile soft power exercising influence in setting global agendas and earning a seat at the economic table of policymakers, its military capacity lags. The national security strategy announced under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2008 intended to redress this power gap. President Dilma Rousseff ’s 2011 White Paper—so detailed that it is called a “White Book”—provides the conceptual roadmap to achieve a new military balance. But military modernization is still a work in progress.

Dec. 1, 2013

Next Steps in Syria

Nearly 3 years since the start of the Syrian civil war, no clear winner is in sight. Assassinations and defections of civilian and military loyalists close to President Bashar al-Asad, rebel success in parts of Aleppo and other key towns, and the spread of violence to Damascus itself suggest that the regime is losing ground to its opposition. The tenacity of government forces in retaking territory lost to rebel factions, such as the key town of Qusayr, and attacks on Turkish and Lebanese military targets indicate, however, that the regime can win because of superior military equipment, especially airpower and missiles, and help from Iran and Hizballah.

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Strategic Insights

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