Issue briefs and reports

Weaponized: How rumors about COVID-19’s origins led to a narrative arms race

By Luiza Bandeira, Nika Aleksejeva, Tessa Knight, Jean le Roux, Graham Brookie, Iain Robertson, Andy Carvin, Zarine Kharazian

A joint research project from the Digital Forensic Research Lab and the Associate Press on information environments during the first six months of COVID-19.

Toward a future EU-UK relationship in foreign policy and defense

By Gen. Stéphane Abrial, Sir Peter Westmacott, Olivier-Rémy Bel

The UK and the EU will continue to share the same geography, the same strategic environment, and the same values, a reality recognized on both sides of the Channel. As the UK moves on from the Brexit process, it should find in the EU a partner sharing the same values and aspirations.

Atlantic Council’s DFRLab publishes new report in Just Security: #StopTheSteal: A timeline of social media and extremist activities leading up to 1/6 insurrection

In-depth investigation offers the most comprehensive timeline for #StopTheSteal to date.

Toward trilateral arms control: Options for bringing China into the fold

By Matthew Kroenig, Mark J. Massa

The Cold War-era paradigm of bilateral arms control between the United States and Russia is becoming increasingly untenable. Including a rising China with a growing nuclear arsenal is essential. This issue brief shows the way forward with options for bringing China into the nuclear arms control fold on a trilateral basis with the United States and Russia.

Ensuring Energy Security in a Renewables World

By Ben Hertz-Shargel

Renewable sources of energy are gaining an increasing share of the US energy mix, bolstered by state-level commitments as well as corporate power purchase agreements. However, while renewables have become increasingly cost competitive, they still face challenges, especially related to intermittency and storage. The Global Energy Center’s new issue brief, “Ensuring Energy Security in a […]

Assumption #1: Revisionist states are the cause of great-power competition

By Emma Ashford

Policymakers should intensify efforts to understand the scope of ambition of other states, focus less on forward deployment and engage in reassurance measures.

Pathologies of obfuscation: Nobody understands cyber operations or wargaming

By Nina Kollars and Benjamin Schechter

National security and defense professionals have long utilized wargames to better understand hypothetical conflict scenarios. With conflict in the cyber domain becoming a more prominent piece in wargames in the national security community, this issue brief seeks to identify the common pathologies, or potential pitfalls, of cyber wargaming.

The Longer Telegram: Toward a new American China strategy

By Anonymous

China presents the most important challenge to the United States in the twenty-first century. To address this challenge, the United States urgently needs "an integrated, operational, and bipartisan national strategy."

Biden and Belarus: A strategy for the new administration

By Anders Åslund, Melinda Haring, John E. Herbst, Alexander Vershbow

Joe Biden has an historic opportunity to bring Europe together and reverse the tide of dictatorship by building an international coalition to support democracy in Belarus. This strategy lays out key recommendations for the Biden administration as it prepares its policy toward Belarus.

The United States, Germany, and world order: New priorities for a changing alliance

By Roderick Kefferpütz, Jeremy Stern

Treating each divergence in security policy as an isolated incident may have allowed policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic to ignore the unpleasant fact that the United States and Germany could have increasingly disparate perceptions of threats and strategic cultures.