Research

Signaling Secrets: Strategic Intelligence, Technology, and the Sources and Methods Dilemma

My dissertation examines how intelligence collection technologies affect how governments signal knowledge about their adversaries’ military capabilities. The theory emphasizes how the features of different collection technologies influence the costs and risks of sharing information about rivals’ capabilities, which I term the sources and methods dilemma. Collection technologies that reduce the impact of the sources and methods dilemma can enable governments to signal knowledge that enhances the credibility of their public claims, combats threat inflation, and shows their ability to verify arms control agreements.

Empirically, the dissertation traces how collection technologies have affected strategic stability from the Cold War to today. It argues that the nuclear age led to a remote sensing revolution, with the development of collection technologies such as reconnaissance satellites, seismic monitoring, and space situational awareness enabling governments not only to learn their adversaries’ secrets, but to act publicly in response. The empirical chapters combine a medium-N analysis of all collection methods employed by major powers after 1945 with in-depth case studies on several Cold War and contemporary strategic intelligence collection methods, comprising aerial overflights, satellite reconnaissance, telemetry interception, and space-based space situational awareness capabilities.

Contested Collection: Technology, Intelligence, and Stability in Great Power Rivalries

Deterrence Up the Ladder? Second-Strike Counterforce Doctrine and Strategic Stability

Artificial Intelligence, Space-based Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, and Strategic Stability

This project investigates how the development of proliferated constellations for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and artificial intelligence capabilities for analyzing ISR data affect strategic stability. I recently published a report, “Precarious Transparency: Artificial Intelligence, Space-based ISR Capabilities, and US-China Strategic Stability,” co-authored with Ted Fujimoto, with the Council on Strategic Risks, based on the project’s initial findings.