Virtual Library

Our virtual library is an online repository of all of the reports, papers, and briefings that IST has produced, as well as works that have influenced our thinking.

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Podcasts

TechnologIST Talks: Looking Back and Looking Ahead: Deep Dive on the New Cybersecurity Executive Order

Carole House, Megan Stifel, and Steve Kelly

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Podcasts

TechnologIST Talks: The Offense-Defense Balance

Philip Reiner and Heather Adkins

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Reports

The Generative Identity Initiative: Exploring Generative AI’s Impact on Cognition, Society, and the Future

Gabrielle Tran, Eric Davis

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Podcasts

TechnologIST Talks: A Transatlantic Perspective on Quantum Tech

Megan Stifel and Markus Pflitsch

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Podcasts

TechnologIST Talks: The Future is Quantum

Megan Stifel and Stefan Leichenauer

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Reports

Navigating AI Compliance, Part 1: Tracing Failure Patterns in History

Mariami Tkeshelashvili, Tiffany Saade

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Podcasts

TechnologIST Talks: The Cleantech Boom

Steve Kelly and Dr. Alex Gagnon

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We also welcome additional suggestions from readers, and will consider adding further resources as so much of our work has come through crowd-sourced collaboration already. If, for any chance you are an author whose work is listed here and you do not wish it to be listed in our repository, please, let us know.

SUBMIT CONTENT

Principals with Agency: Assessing Civilian Deference to the Military

Alice Hunt Friend, Sharon K. Weiner

SUMMARY

When and why do civilian policymakers defer to military expertise? Although scholars agree that civilian deference to military expertise is important to assess the health of civil-military relations, there is much less agreement over the causes of deference, especially whether it is the product of structure or agency. Using cases of policy disagreements over special operations forces, cyber operations, and nuclear strategy and force structure, we argue that civilian deference is not merely a product of the structure of the information environment. Although civilians defer when the military has a near monopoly on information, they also defer in cases when military expertise competes against civilian knowledge and analysis. In other words, civilian deference is not a byproduct of civilians’ access to information — it is a choice over which civilians have agency.

Read on Texas National Security Review.