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.

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Emerging Technologies, Emerging Challenges – The Potential Employment of New Technologies in Future PLA NC3

Elsa B. Kania

SUMMARY

China and the United States confront shared concerns and distinct challenges as each seeks to pursue new directions in its development and modernization of nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3). The U.S. military must reckon with aging systems that are facing new threats, particularly in space and cyberspace. By contrast, China must not only address similar issues of modernization but also remains in the process of developing and operationalizing new elements of its NC3 apparatus, including the introduction and construction of capabilities for strategic early warning. Possessing less of an extensive architecture of legacy systems—and currently undertaking a transition from a monad to a triad in its nuclear posture—China might undertake distinct approaches to its NC3 relative to other nations. Perhaps, as a result, China may prove more open to leveraging certain emerging technologies, including to compensate for current shortcomings in its military capabilities.

In this essay, Elsa Kania assesses how emerging technologies–including artificial intelligence, cloud computing, fifth-generation telecommunications, and quantum communications–may affect China’s NC3. Kania concludes: “Although certain of these technologies could enhance China’s confidence in its NC3 in ways that may prove stabilizing, there are also reasons for concern that the potential introduction of such complex, untested technologies could also create new risks and exacerbate the threat of miscalculation.”

This paper is accompanied by a Fourth Leg podcast: China, Technology, and the Security Dilemma

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