The technologies reshaping the global balance of power are moving faster than our means to manage them. Inspired by the work of former Secretaries William Perry and George Shultz, the Center strives to shape technology’s trajectory into a force for stability and forge a common cause among states and nonstate actors against its most consequential risks.
Strategic stability used to mean deterrence through nuclear parity and mutually assured destruction, and to many, has since broadened beyond the nuclear realm. But in the Intelligence Age, the equation includes a whole new variable.
The Center addresses technology challenges that reach strategic significance: where innovation could trigger great power conflict, enable new forms of warfare, create catastrophic risks, or require new international frameworks to prevent instability. Our work spans the diplomatic, economic, and military dimensions of technology competition, recognizing that strategic stability in the 21st century requires managing risks across all domains.
Examining how emerging technologies are reshaping nuclear deterrence, command and control, crisis stability, and proliferation, and developing the tools and frameworks needed to manage these risks.
Analyzing how competition and cooperation in technology, capital, and industrial capacity are shifting the balance among great powers, and promoting security and stability through coalition-building and engaging competitors alike.
Building the trust, shared understanding, and diplomatic frameworks needed to manage the most severe technology-driven risks (including AI loss-of-control scenarios) across adversarial lines.
Exploring how specific emerging and disruptive technologies — such as cyber, autonomous and embodied AI systems, quantum, and next-generation energy — may reshape strategic stability, and charts a path for managing the risks they introduce.
The Center takes its name from former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry and the late U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, who between them spent decades working across diplomatic, economic, and military lines to reduce the risk of catastrophic conflict. Both understood that the same technologies that could threaten stability could also be marshaled to strengthen it. The Center carries forward that legacy of integrated, cross-domain statesmanship, applied to the technologies reshaping strategic stability today.
As the 19th Secretary of Defense (1994–1997) and, before that, a defense innovator who helped pioneer stealth and precision-guided weapons, Perry saw earlier than most that technology could be a source of security or a source of catastrophe — and that the difference lay in how wisely it was managed. He has spent his later career devoted to nuclear risk reduction, warning with clear-eyed urgency that preventing catastrophe requires constant vigilance.
As the 60th Secretary of State (1982–1989) and, before that, an economist who came to see economic strength, diplomacy, and technological competition as inseparable, Shultz helped bring the Cold War to a peaceful close by building trust across some of the deepest rivalries of his era. He carried that same bridge-building instinct into his later years, working across ideological lines on nuclear abolition and energy security in pursuit of a safer world.
is what IST’s The Missing Middle report estimates is achievable through targeted government demand-side commitments — one of four concrete mechanisms designed to close America’s deep-tech financing gap to keep pace with China in critical technologies.
participating in IST’s Andrew Carnegie AI-Nuclear Policy Accelerator fellowship traveled to San Francisco in July 2026 to engage organizations involved in frontier AI models, defense applications, and safety research.
have engaged IST on the importance of multilateral crisis communications and the CATALINK system. IST’s on-point research, writings, and multimedia content have been viewed 2,500+ times.
“The obstacle is rarely knowledge. It is trust, shared frameworks, and the willingness to engage seriously across lines of competition and adversity.”
Steve brings nearly 25 years of experience at the intersection of technology, national security, and foreign policy—as an FBI special agent, senior National Security Council official, and most recently IST’s Chief Trust Officer leading its AI risk reduction work. While in government, he helped direct the U.S. response to major state-linked cyber incidents, authored and shaped national policy, and worked with foreign partners on cyber and technology issues. Of late, Steve has been engaging counterparts in China and the Indo-Pacific region on challenging technology and stability issues.
The CATALINK project builds an open source, additive, multilateral crisis communication technology for use by the leaders of nuclear weapons states. If implemented, CATALINK would build on the “hotline” model of previous generations, and rely on internationally-driven open-source technologies to maximize user integrity and trust.
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Aligning incentives in our digital ecosystem so that technology is trustworthy, resilient, and secure
IST’s long-standing efforts on artificial intelligence span multi-agent risks, recursive self improvement, loss of control, AI security, and more
