Emerging Technology and International Security

Readings

I. Foundations

Session 1: Introduction: What Is an Emerging Technology and Does It Matter?

• Rotolo, Daniele, Diana Hicks, and Ben Martin. 2015. “What Is an Emerging Technology?” Research Policy 44 (10): 1827–1843.
• Horowitz, Michael C. 2020. “Do Emerging Military Technologies Matter for International Politics?” (PDF). Annual Review of Political Science 23 (1): 385–400.

Session 2: Thinking About the Future

Read

• Wack, Pierre. 1985. “Scenarios: Shooting the Rapids—How Medium-Term Analysis Illuminated the Power of Scenarios for Shell Management.” Harvard Business Review (November–December 1985): 139–150.
• Royal Dutch Shell. 2012. “40 Years of Shell Scenarios.” (PDF). Skim 1–39.
• National Intelligence Council. 2021. Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World. (PDF). Read pages 54–65 and 108–119.

Watch

• “Navigating an Uncertain Future.” Shell Scenarios. YouTube.
• “Windows on the Future: Modelling Scenarios.” Shell Scenarios. YouTube.

Session 3: Key Tenets of International Relations Theory

• Levy, Jack, and William R. Thompson. 2010. Causes of War. Wiley-Blackwell. Pages 28–43 and 63–70. [Preview with Google Books]
• Gvosdev, Nikolas K., Jessica D. Blankshain, and David A. Cooper. 2019. Decision-Making in American Foreign Policy: Translating Theory into Practice. Cambridge University Press. Pages 162–180 and 88–114. [Preview with Google Books]

Session 4: Conceptualizing Innovation

• Bower, Joseph L., and Clayton Christensen. 1995, “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave.” Harvard Business Review 73 (1): 43–53.
• Christensen, Clayton. 2011. The Innovator’s Dilemma. HarperCollins. Chapter 11.
• Rosen, Stephen P. 1988. “New Ways of War: Understanding Military Innovation.” International Security 13 (1): 134–168.
• Kuo, Kendrick. 2024. “How to think about Risks in U.S. Military Innovation.” Survival 66 (1): 85–98.

Session 5: Diffusion of Innovations

• Rogers, Everett. 2003. Diffusion of Innovations. Free Press. Chapters 1 and 6. [Preview with Google Books]
• Horowitz, Michael. 2010. The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics. Princeton University Press. Chapter 2. [Preview with Google Books]
• Adamsky, Dima. 2010. The Culture of Military Innovation. Stanford University Press. Introduction and Chapter 1. [Preview with Google Books]
• Cronin, Audrey Kurth. 2019. Power to the People. Oxford University Press. Pages 19–35. [Preview with Google Books]

Sessions 6 and 7: Technology’s Effects on International Relations

• Fritsch, Stefan. 2011. “Technology and Global Affairs.” International Studies Perspectives 12 (1): 27–45.
• Levy, Jack S. 1984. “The Offensive/Defensive Balance of Military Technology: A Theoretical and Historical Analysis.” International Studies Quarterly 28 (2): 219–238.
• van Creveld, Martin. 1991. Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present. Free Press. Pages 311–321.
• Krepinevich, Andrew. 1994. “Cavalry to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions.” The National Interest 37: 30–42.
• Cohen, Eliot. 2004. “Change and Transformation in Military Affairs.” Journal of Strategic Studies 27 (3): 395–407.
• Gray, Colin. 1993. Weapons Don’t Make War. University of Kansas Press. Chapter 1.
• Ellis, John. 1981. The Social History of the Machine Gun. Arno Press. Chapters 1 and 7. [Preview with Google Books]

II. Historical Innovations

Session 8: Dynamite

• Schneider, Jacquelyn, and Julia Macdonald. 2023. “Looking Back to Look Forward: Autonomous Systems, Military Revolutions, and the Importance of Cost.” Journal of Strategic Studies 47(2): 162–184.
• Cronin, Audrey Kurth. 2019. Power to the People. Oxford University Press. Pages 61–125.

Session 9: Stealth and Secret Innovations

• “Harold Brown’s “Invisible” Aircraft.” 2006. Air & Space Forces Magazine. August 1.
• Westwick, Peter. 2020. Stealth: The Secret Contest to Invent Invisible Aircraft. Oxford University Press. Pages 1–30; 181–198. [Preview with Google Books]
• Green, Brendan R., and Austin Long. 2020. “Conceal or Reveal? Managing Clandestine Military Capabilities in Peacetime Competition.” International Security 44(3): 48–83.

III. Emerging Technologies and Their Security Implications (Thinking About Innovation as an Independent Variable)

Information, Intelligence, and Decision-Making

Session 10: Information Asymmetries, Big Data, and the Democratization of Information

• Fearon, James. 1995. “Rationalist Explanations for War.” International Organization 49 (3). Pages 379–386 and 390–401.
• Berman, Eli, Jacob Shapiro, and Joseph Felter. 2019. Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict. Princeton University Press. Pages 82–108.
• Ball, James. 2018. “How a Guy with a Camera Outsmarted the United States.” The Atlantic. December 28.
• Hsu, Jeremy. 2018. “The Strava Heat Map and the End of Secrets.” Wired. January 29.

Session 11: Delegating the “Disclosure Decision”–Commercial Satellites

• Carnegie, Allison, and Austin Carson. 2019. “The Trump Administration is Revealing U.S. Intelligence Operations. Is it Revealing too Much?” The Washington Post. June 20
• Albright, David, Sarah Burkhard, and Allison Lach. 2018. “Commercial Satellite Imagery Analysis for Countering Nuclear Proliferation.” Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 46 (1): 99–121.
• Lin-Greenberg, Erik, and Theo Milonopoulos. 2022. “Private Eyes in the Sky: Emerging Technology and the Political Consequences of Eroding Government Secrecy.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 65 (6).
• Spend some time exploring Tearline.mil. 

Sessions 12 and 13: Artificial Intelligence

• Lindsay, Jon R. 2023. “War Is from Mars, AI Is from Venus: Rediscovering the Institutional Context of Military Automation.” Texas National Security Review 7(1): 29–47.
• Kania, Elsa. 2019. “Chinese Military Innovation in the AI Revolution.” The RUSI Journal 164 (5–6): 26–34.
• Brose, Christian. 2020. The Kill Chain. Hachette. Chapter 7.
• Bleicher, Ariel. 2017. “Demystifying the Black Box That Is AI.” Scientific American. August 9.
• Brown, Tristan G., Alexander Statman, and Celine Sui. 2021. “Public Debate on Facial Recognition Technologies in China.” MIT Schwarzman SERC Case Studies.

Optional

• “Final Report.” (PDF) National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. 2021.

Session 14: In-Class Midterm

• No readings assigned

Emerging Technologies, Stability, and the Use of Force

Sessions 15 and 16: Internet, Social Media, and Domestic Stability

• Kuran, Timur. 1991. “Now out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989.” World Politics 44 (1): 7–48. (Read 7–13 and 16–25, skim other pages.)
• Nugent, Elizabeth R., and Chantal Berman. 2018. “Ctrl-Alt-Revolt? Online and Off-Line Networks During the 2011 Egyptian Uprising.” Middle East Law and Governance 10 (1): 59–90.
• Tufekci, Zeynep. 2018. Twitter and Tear Gas. Yale University Press. Chapter 3. [Preview with Google Books]
• King, Gary, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret Roberts. 2014. “Reverse-Engineering Censorship in China: Randomized Experimentation and Participant Observation.” Science 345 (6199): 1–10.
• Gohdes, Anita. 2020. “Repression Technology: Internet Accessibility and State Violence.” American Journal of Political Science 64 (3): 488–503.

Recommended

• Hass, Benjamin. 2019. “The New Battle in Hong Kong Isn’t on the Streets; It’s in the Apps.” MIT Technology Review. September 10.

Session 17: Social Media and the International Stage

• Kreps, Sarah. 2020. Social Media and International Relations. Cambridge University Press. Chapters 1–4. [Preview with Google Books]
• Williams, Heather, and Alexi Drew. 2020. Escalation by Tweet. (PDF). Kings College. 
• Harris, Benjamin, and Erik Lin-Greenberg. 2024. “Cheap Tweets: Crisis Signaling in the Age of Twitter.” International Studies Quarterly 68 (2).
• Green-Riley, Naima, Dominika Kruszewksa-Eduardo, and Ze Fu. 2022. “Teargas and Selfie Cams: Foreign Protests and Media in the Digital Age.” Journal of Experimental Political Science 9 (2): 203–215.

Recommended

• Lewis, Jeffrey. 2018. The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel. Mariner Books. Chapter 3.

Sessions 18 and 19: Cyber Warfare

• Branch, Jordan. 2021. “What’s in a Name? Metaphors and Cybersecurity.” International Organization 75 (1): 39–70.
• Healey, Jason, and Robert Jervis. 2020. “The Escalation Inversion and Other Oddities of Situational Cyber Stability.” Texas National Security Review 3 (4): 30–53.
• Healey, Jason. 2024. “Cyber Effects in Warfare: Categorizing the Where, What, and Why.” Texas National Security Review 7 (4): 37–50.
• Kreps, Sarah, and Debak Das. 2017. “Warring from the Virtual to the Real: Assessing the Public’s Threshold for War over Cyber Security.” Research & Politics 4 (2): 1–8.
• Kostyuk, Nadiya, and Yuri Zhukov. 2019. “Invisible Digital Front: Can Cyber Attacks Shape Battlefield Events?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 63 (2): 317–347.

Session 20: Drones and Autonomous Weapon Systems

• Byman, Daniel. 2013. “Why Drones Work.” Foreign Affairs 92 (4): 32–43.
• Cronin, Audrey Kruth. 2013. “Why Drones Fail.” Foreign Affairs 92 (4): 44–54.
• Chavez, Kerry, and Ori Swed. 2023. “Emulating Underdogs: Tactical Drones in the Russia Ukraine War.” Contemporary Security Policy 44 (4): 592–605.
• Dinstein, Yoram. 2004. The Conduct of Hostilities under the Law of International Armed Conflict. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 3. 
• Lin-Greenberg, Erik. 2019. “Game of Drones: What Experimental Wargames Reveal About Drones and Escalation.” War on the Rocks. January 10.
• “Department of Defense Directive 3000.09: Autonomy in Weapon Systems.” (PDF). Department of Defense. January 25, 2023.
• Scharre, Paul. 2018. Army of None. W.W. Norton. Pages 11–58.

From the Lab to the Front Lines

Session 21: Biotech

• Koblentz, Gregory. 2003. “Pathogens as Weapons: The International Security Implications of Biological Warfare.” International Security 28 (3): 84–122.
• Vogel, Kathleen, and Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley. 2018. “Anticipating Emerging Biotechnology Threats: A Case Study of CRISPR.” Politics and the Life Sciences 37 (2): 203–219.
• Brent, Roger, Greg McKelvey, and Jason Matheny. 2024. “The New Bioweapons: How Synthetic Biology Could Destabilize the World.” Foreign Affairs 103(5): 148–159.
• Palmer, Megan, Francis Fukuyama, and David Relman. 2015. “A More Systematic Approach to Biological Risk.” Science 350 (6267): 1471–1473.

Recommended

• Smith, Frank L. 2011. “A Casualty of Kinetic Warfare: Military Research, Development, and Acquisition for Biodefense.” Security Studies 20 (4): 663–696.
• George, Asha. 2019. “The National Security Implications of Cyberbiosecurity.” Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology 7(51): 1–4.

Session 22: Additive Manufacturing

• Gershenfeld, Neil. 2012. “How to Make Almost Anything: The Digital Fabrication Revolution.” Foreign Affairs 91 (6): 43–57.
• Price, Jaren K., Miranda C. La Bash, and Bart Land. 2019. “3D Printing for Joint Agile Operations.” (PDF) Joint Force Quarterly 95 (4): 92–99.
• Kroenig, Matthew, and Tristan Volpe. 2015. “3-D Printing the Bomb? The Nuclear Nonproliferation Challenge.” Washington Quarterly 38 (3): 7–19.
• Thong, Calvin Seah Ser, and Choo Wei Wen. 2016. “3D Printing—Revolutionising Military Operations.” Pointer 42 (2): 35–46.

Session 23: Everyday Technologies and International Relations

• Adler-Nissen, Rebecca, and Alena Drieschova. 2019. “Track-Change Diplomacy: Technology, Affordances, and the Practice of International Negotiations.” International Studies Quarterly 63 (3): 531–45.
• Chen, John, Emily Walz, Brian Lafferty, Joe Mc Reynolds, Kieran Green, Jonathan Ray, and James Mulvenon. 2018. “China’s Internet of Things.” (PDF). U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission. Pages 103–121.
• Weber, Valentin. 2023. “China’s Smart Cities and the Future of Geopolitics.” German Council on Foreign Relations.
• “Cybersecurity Best Practices for Smart Cities.” (PDF). 2023. US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.  

IV. Application

Sessions 24 and 25: Student Presentations

• No readings assigned

Session 26: Looking Ahead

• Brose, Christian. 2020. The Kill Chain. Hachette. Chapter 12 and Conclusion.