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In her August 2017 report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Kate Blakeley, CSBA research fellow, paints a picture of today’s rapidly innovating international defense ecosystem and argues that “the U.S. military’s slow-paced acquisition tempo” is a risk to its “technological” competitiveness, citing congressional testimony by US Defense Secretary James Mattis to drive the point home.  “Research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) funding is the pathway by which the U.S. military explores new technologies and capabilities and develops them into weapons systems and platforms,” Blakeley writes. “Maintaining the U.S. military’s current technological advantages and adapting to future challenges requires RDT&E efforts that are robust, targeted at the correct operational problems, and nimble enough to be responsive to shifts in the technological and security landscapes.”

In a July 2017 report from the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, Aaron Stein, PhD, a resident senior fellow at the center, presents a case study of “two efforts to achieve US objectives” in Syria — a failed one that utilized the Train and Equip program, and another that worked “through the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the dominant local force in northeastern Syria” which Stein classifies as “a tactical success.”  “The different outcomes make these two programs worth studying in depth,” he writes. “This report is based on a series of interviews with US officials and provides lessons learned for US policy makers.”

In a July 2017 issue brief published by the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, author Col. Herbert Kemp, USAF Ret., president and CEO of OneALPHA Corporation, proposes “a broad, non-NATO approach to the growing challenge of ballistic missiles for the United States and its allies and considers new technologies and methods to meet the threat,” especially in the face of a missile-equipped Russia. “While the approach is global, many of the considerations and recommendations in this issue brief are of relevance to the Alliance and its members as NATO pursues options on how to provide credible collective defense and deterrence in a newly insecure Europe,” Kemp writes.

In an August 2017 report published by the New America Foundation’s Cybersecurity Initiative entitled “The Malware Markets: A Graphic Exploration” by Brian de Luna, a data scientist at AirBnB, Luke Heine, director at the Harvard Institute of Quantitative Science’s Lab for Entrepreneurship and Development, and Trey Herr, PhD, a fellow with the Cyber Security Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, analyze the markets behind malware — from their  origins and power players to their impact and future prospects. “The malware markets are home to both defensive groups, like software vendors, and offensive groups, like criminal networks and other attackers,” they write. “Companies are involved with building and selling malicious code, from single exploits all the way up to integrated surveillance packages. Underneath all of this is a global network of companies, criminal groups, individuals, and even governments that build, buy, and sell code.”