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1. Democracy by Design: An Affirmative Response to the Illiberal Use of Technology for 2021

Author:
Kara Frederick
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
Aglobal contest between democracies and autocracies is raging on the digital front. Technology stands to alter the balance between free, open societies and closed, repressive regimes. Nation states in direct competition with the United States seek to project global influence by shaping an existing digital order to their will. Impulses toward illiberal use of technology at home threaten to curtail individual liberties, constrict opportunity, and erode a truly open society. Democracies do not yet have a model for how to confront this. In the United States, a roadmap for a solution must start with the fundamental question: How should U.S. technology companies, with the help of the U.S. government, respond to the illiberal use of technology by authoritarian actors abroad? This report contends with this question by identifying concrete actions and threat-mitigating strategies that contain the input of government, the tech sector, civil society, and academia. It provides starting points to address the systemic risk inherent in dealing with authoritarian regimes and also examines cost imposition on those complicit in tech-enabled human rights abuses. Yet a strategy aimed only at staunching the illiberal use of technology will fail in the long term. Instead, the U.S. government and tech companies alike must recruit democratic allies to purvey an affirmative agenda that promotes digital freedom across the globe. This report proposes an agenda that stresses privacy leadership by the United States and its technology companies. It identifies areas of collaboration for U.S. allies and democratic partners, like digital trade, foreign law enforcement requests for data, and technical standards. This report’s affirmative agenda also contains an imperative for U.S. tech companies to build commercial norms toward digital freedom and incentivize transparency within their own ranks. For digital freedom to prevail over authoritarian uses of technology, democracies must present something better. Together, they must establish an alternative model for the use of technology globally. These recommendations build that democratic case, starting with the United States.
Topic:
Human Rights, Science and Technology, Authoritarianism, and Democracy
Political Geography:
North America, Global Focus, and United States of America

2. Toward a More Proliferated World? The Geopolitical Forces that Will Shape the Spread of Nuclear Weapons

Author:
Eric M. Brewer, Ilan Goldenberg, Joseph Rodgers, Maxwell Simon, and Kaleigh Thomas
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
The United States and the international community have been relatively successful at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, but there are new reasons to question whether this track record will last into the future. Working with partners, the United States has steadily built a framework of disincentives and barriers to prevent proliferation. These include: 1) international treaties and agreements that have erected legal, political, and normative barriers to the bomb; 2) U.S. security commitments to allies that dampen their own perceived need for nuclear weapons; and, 3) a set of tough penalties (e.g., sanctions) for those who get caught trying to build the bomb. In other words, the barriers to entry to the nuclear club are high, and those countries that want the ultimate weapon need to be willing to accept significant risks. This helps explain why, although many countries have explored or pursued nuclear weapons, only nine states have them today. But several trends are eroding the foundation on which this formidable set of barriers rests. These trends are rooted in, and being shaped by, changes to the nature and structure of the international system: namely, the decline of U.S. influence and its gradual withdrawal from the international order that it helped create and lead for more than 70 years, and the concurrent rise of a more competitive security environment, particularly among great powers. These trends (detailed below) will have three broad implications for proliferation and U.S. policy. First, they stand to increase pressures on countries to seek nuclear weapons or related capabilities as a hedge. Second, they will almost certainly challenge the U.S. ability to effectively wield the traditional “carrots and sticks” of nonproliferation and counterproliferation policy and dilute the effectiveness of those tools. Finally, they could increasingly pit U.S. nonproliferation goals against other policy objectives, forcing harder tradeoffs.
Topic:
Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Geopolitics, Nonproliferation, and Post Cold War
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America

3. Rebooting Congressional Cybersecurity Oversight

Author:
Carrie Cordero and David Thaw
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
Cybersecurity oversight is due for a reboot. This paper explores the need for refreshed congressional oversight of cybersecurity. After laying out why cybersecurity oversight presents special challenges, this paper suggests that the disparate nature of the cybersecurity policymaking legal framework is mismatched to the nature of the cybersecurity problem, resulting in difficulty legislating in this space. It then provides two key recommendations to guide a congressional cybersecurity oversight reboot. Cybersecurity is a broad challenge spanning many disciplines and industries. This paper argues that the current “patchwork” legal framework is ill suited to address cybersecurity questions either for legislative oversight or effective policymaking. The paper provides an overview of the nature and scope of the cybersecurity problem, with a focus on how the complexity of the field affects congressional oversight activities. Congress has been conducting a substantial amount of oversight in this area in recent years. Those efforts, however, have not yet resulted in legislative actions that have demonstrably improved national cybersecurity. This paper seeks to aid the effort to craft legal authorities that deal with an increasingly complex set of cyberthreats. This short exposition provides a path to rebooting Congress’ approach to cybersecurity oversight in a way that would allow these issues to be addressed more comprehensively.
Topic:
Security, Science and Technology, and Cybersecurity
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. Implementing the National Defense Strategy Demands Operational Concepts for Defeating Chinese and Russian Aggression

Author:
Chris Dougherty
Publication Date:
04-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) shifted the Department of Defense (DoD) away from a strategy focused on counterterrorism and deterring regional threats like Iran toward competing with, deterring, and, if necessary, defeating Chinese and Russian aggression. DoD is portraying the President’s Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2020, which is the first such request submitted since the release of the NDS, as a down payment on the long-term investments required to develop a future force that can execute this strategy. Given the price tag of $750 billion, Congress and the American people should, in the words of Ronald Reagan, trust DoD, but verify that this is money well spent on advancing the priorities of the NDS
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. New Voices in Grand Strategy

Author:
Richard Fontaine and et al
Publication Date:
04-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
In June 2008, the Center for a New American Security published a compendium of essays to grapple with the central questions of American grand strategy.1 The volume compiled the views of leading senior strategists from across the political spectrum and from both academia and the policy community. Four years later, CNAS embarked on a similar venture, presenting the views of four more expert thinkers
Topic:
International Affairs and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6. Intelligence Oversight Priorities for the 116th Congress

Author:
Carrie Cordero
Publication Date:
04-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
Congressional oversight is essential for providing accountability for the activities of the intelligence services.1 Effective oversight by the congressional intelligence committees – by an independent branch of government – is needed in order to monitor the adequacy of legal authorities, the lawfulness of activities carried out under those authorities, and the responsible application of public funds for intelligence activities. As elected representatives entrusted with providing an outside check on activities that are conducted out of the public eye, members of the committees serve a critical function in facilitating accountability, transparency, and confidence in intelligence activities conducted under law.
Topic:
International Relations and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. The Influence of Commercial Space Capabilities on Deterrence

Author:
John Klein
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
Recent U.S. space policy initiatives underscore the far-reaching benefits of commercial space activities. The White House revived the National Space Council to foster closer coordination, cooperation, and exchange of technology and information among the civil, national security, and commercial space sectors.1 National Space Policy Directive 2 seeks to promote economic growth by streamlining U.S. regulations on the commercial use of space.2 While the defense community generally appreciates the value of services and capabilities derived from the commercial space sector—including space launch, Earth observation, and satellite communications—it often overlooks one area of strategic importance: deterrence.
Topic:
International Cooperation, International Affairs, and Cybersecurity
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. Contested Spaces A Renewed Approach to Southeast Asia

Author:
Patrick M. Cronin
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
As the competition between the United States and China to shape the course of the 21st century intensifies, Southeast Asia has become a contested space. A region where geopolitical orientations remain fluid, Southeast Asia lies at the front line of Beijing’s expanding diplomatic influence, economic leverage, and military capability. At stake is whether countries across the region can retain their economic sovereignty and freedom of decision, and whether governance in the region will broadly trend toward greater freedom and openness, or the opposite.
Topic:
International Political Economy and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

9. Understanding China's AI Strategy

Author:
Gregory Allen
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
n the second half of 2018, I traveled to China on four separate trips to attend major diplomatic, military, and private-sector conferences focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI). During these trips, I participated in a series of meetings with high-ranking Chinese officials in China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, leaders of China’s military AI research organizations, government think tank experts, and corporate executives at Chinese AI companies. From these discussions – as well as my ongoing work analyzing China’s AI industry, policies, reports, and programs – I have arrived at a number of key judgments about Chinese leadership’s views, strategies, and prospects for AI as it applies to China’s economy and national security. Of course, China’s leadership in this area is a large population with diversity in its views, and any effort to generalize is inherently presumptuous and essentially guaranteed to oversimplify. However, the distance is large between prevailing views in American commentary on China’s AI efforts and what I have come to believe are the facts. I hope by stating my takeaways directly, this report will advance the assessment of this issue and be of benefit to the wider U.S. policymaking community.
Topic:
International Political Economy and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

10. Financial Networks of Mass Destruction

Author:
Elizabeth Rosenberg and ​Neil Bhatiya
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
The international community has long prioritized reducing the risk of weapons of mass destruction proliferation, whether from state actors such as North Korea and Iran, or from non-state actors, particularly criminals and transnational terrorist networks. Despite this concern, however, there remains a significant blind spot: the efforts to prevent the financing of WMD proliferation are only in their infancy. The legal framework to prevent the financing of proliferation is weak, and implementation across the world is spotty. These weaknesses derive from one overwhelming fact: The international community has not prioritized financial controls to fight proliferation. Very few countries have demonstrated the political will to put further emphasis on this threat to international peace and security.
Topic:
International Political Economy and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus