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.

Submit your Content

Reports

Securing the Signal: Mitigation Strategies to Strengthen Crisis Communication Channels

Christian Steins

viewpdf

Reports

Strengthening Nuclear Crisis Communications: Steps to Implement Mesh Networks to Enhance Resilience & Security

Christian Steins

viewpdf

Reports

Enhancing Cyber Resilience through Insurance: Revisiting Anti-Bundling Regulation

Sophia Mauro and Taylor Grossman

viewpdf

Op-ed

ROOST Reminds Us Why Open Source Tools Matter

view

Reports

Navigating AI Compliance, Part 2: Risk Mitigation Strategies for Safeguarding Against Future Failures

Mariami Tkeshelashvili, Tiffany Saade

viewpdf

Reports

Deterring the Abuse of U.S. IaaS Products: Recommendations for a Consortium Approach

Steve Kelly, Tiffany Saade

viewpdf

Podcasts

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

Carole House, Megan Stifel, and Steve Kelly

view

Contribute to our Library!

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

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

download pdf