Institute for Strategic Risk and Security

01/06/2026

Deterrence has been a cornerstone of security strategy for decades. But what happens when the adversary is anonymous, decentralized, and operating below the threshold of traditional response?

In the newest installment of his Synthetic Asymmetry series for The Cipher Brief, ISRS Chair Dr. Dave Venable argues that deterrence alone is no longer sufficient. Democracies must complement deterrence with something equally important: synthetic resilience.

The emerging threat environment is defined by convergence, where cyber operations, AI-generated influence campaigns, economic disruption, and infrastructure attacks can be combined to produce strategic effects disproportionate to the resources required.

The question is no longer whether disruption will occur.

The question is whether our institutions can absorb it, adapt to it, and continue functioning when it does.

Read the full article: https://www.thecipherbrief.com/deterrence-is-not-enough-in-the-age-of-synthetic-asymmetry

Events have moved faster than doctrine. Part 1 of this series diagnosed the rise of synthetic asymmetry, an era where technological convergence allows small actors to impose disproportionate costs on states and institutions. Unlike the guerrillas of the past, today's asymmetric threats are engineere...

29/05/2026

A Russian drone struck a residential apartment building in Galați, Romania this week, injuring civilians and triggering an emergency national security response inside NATO territory.

The immediate question is whether the strike was intentional.

The more strategically significant question is whether that distinction is becoming irrelevant.
As frequency increases, intent becomes less important than effect. States must respond to the security consequences of repeated incursions regardless of whether any individual event was deliberate.

This is the core dynamic our latest Flashpoint Briefing examines: how drone warfare is normalizing spillover, and how NATO's response frameworks remain designed around discrete acts of aggression rather than continuous, low-level attrition.

The threshold question is no longer hypothetical.

Read the full briefing: https://www.isrs.ngo/fpb/the-normalization-of-spillover

28/05/2026

On June 4th, ISRS is hosting a panel discussion with the George W. Bush Institute on a question that doesn't get enough serious attention: how do authoritarian states, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, use asymmetric tools to erode democratic advantage without firing a shot?

The article that launched this conversation is live at the Bush Center. The panel takes it further.

Four practitioners with direct experience across intelligence, infrastructure security, national security law, and authoritarian statecraft will examine what an effective democratic response actually looks like, and what policymakers should be doing now.

📅 4 June 2026 · 2:00pm ET / 8:00pm CET · Virtual · Seats are limited

Panelists: Igor Khrestin (George W. Bush Institute), Brigham A. McCown (Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure), Tara Caroselli McFeely (National Security Institute at George Mason University), and Dave Venable (ISRS)

Moderated by Wm. David Hamilton (UNT National Security & Economic Strategy Center).

Registration and full details: www.isrs.ngo/crinkpanel

27/05/2026

The strategic environment is changing faster than most institutions are designed to respond.

In a new co-publication, the George W. Bush Institute and ISRS examine how China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are generating strategic coherence without formal coordination, aligned by shared interests, complementary capabilities, and a common objective: weakening the resilience of democratic institutions.

This paper introduces Synthetic Asymmetry as the framework for understanding how that alignment operates. The convergence of AI, cyber, and synthetic media has collapsed the cost of strategic leverage, putting capabilities once reserved for major powers within reach of any actor willing to exploit the gap. The actors doing so are moving faster than democratic institutions are adapting.

This is not only a question of military balance. It is a question of institutional resilience, democratic confidence, technological adaptation, and strategic foresight.

Read the article here:
https://www.bushcenter.org/publications/synthetic-asymmetry-and-the-crink-challenge-a-new-framework-for-an-emergent-threat

Or on the ISRS site: www.isrs.ngo/crink

Join us for a follow-on panel discussion on June 4 at 2:00 PM ET / 8PM CET. Register here: https://isrs-ngo.zoom.us/webinar/register/4117797414143/WN_BThFBOjZQHC3puS7CQ_qQw

26/05/2026

"A competitor does not need to create the noise; they need only identify which signals are already being lost in it."

ISRS published a new Flashpoint Briefing today on what we're calling Attention Asymmetry: the strategic condition that emerges when crisis saturation becomes the baseline, not the exception.

The argument in brief:
* Saturation is no longer episodic. It is structural.
* Attention is strategic infrastructure, not a cognitive limitation.
* The threshold for exploiting attention gaps has dropped below the threshold for creating them.

Democratic institutions face a particular exposure. The same mechanisms that make open societies strong generate high volumes of competing signal. Adversaries operating without those constraints can sustain singular focus while allied institutions manage noise across dozens of simultaneous demands.

Full briefing: https://www.isrs.ngo/fpb/the-attention-gap

20/05/2026

Taiwan’s semiconductor ecosystem is not simply a commercial supply chain. It is one of the most consequential strategic chokepoints in the global economy.

In the latest ISRS Flashpoint Briefing, we assess how global dependence on Taiwan’s advanced logic manufacturing, AI packaging capacity, and legacy node production has created a systemic security exposure.

The risk is not limited to frontier AI chips. It extends to the microcontrollers embedded in vehicles, medical devices, aerospace systems, industrial equipment, and critical infrastructure.

Key judgments:

• Diversification will reduce risk, but not eliminate it
• AI growth is increasing global exposure to Taiwan-linked production
• The most plausible disruption may occur below the threshold of war
• China’s trailing-edge semiconductor buildup is creating a parallel vulnerability
• Taiwan’s semiconductor centrality functions as both deterrent and dependency

The core question is no longer whether Taiwan is a chokepoint. It is whether the world has built enough of its future there that the chokepoint has become the strategy.

Read the briefing: https://www.isrs.ngo/fpb/the-taiwan-chip-chokepoint

08/05/2026

Most security frameworks describe how modern conflict works. Synthetic Asymmetry explains why it works differently now.

Hybrid warfare coordinates instruments. Grey zone conflict stays below retaliation thresholds. Synthetic Asymmetry is a third category: the deliberate convergence of AI, cyber capabilities, synthetic media, precision targeting, and biotechnology into configurations that generate disproportionate effects. The power source is fit between capability and vulnerability, not scale or resources.

That logic does not require structural superiority. It works from parity or inferiority, and it is accessible to a widening range of actors, state and non-state, and increasingly visible outside military contexts entirely.

ISRS has published a full framework: definition, the five dynamics that drive it, Ukraine as a case study, and what adaptive strategy requires in response.

Read it here: https://www.isrs.ngo/research/synthetic-asymmetry

07/05/2026

The frontlines of national security now run through corporate networks.

In a new piece published today in The Cipher Brief, ISRS Chair Dr. Dave Venable examines how the public–private divide in national security has effectively collapsed, and what that means for governments, boards, and the executives caught in between.

The core argument: corporations are no longer adjacent to geopolitical conflict. They are participants in it. And most are structured as if they aren’t.

The piece explores how converging technologies have inverted the cost-to-impact ratio of offensive operations, why incentive structures reward efficiency over resilience, and how a subset of private companies now exercises forms of de facto authority once associated with states.

Read it here: https://www.thecipherbrief.com/corporate-cybersecurity-is-the-new-frontline-of-national-security

07/05/2026

The frontlines of national security now run through corporate networks.

In a new piece published today in The Cipher Brief, ISRS Chair Dr. Dave Venable examines how the public–private divide in national security has effectively collapsed, and what that means for governments, boards, and the executives caught in between.

The core argument: corporations are no longer adjacent to geopolitical conflict. They are participants in it. And most are structured as if they aren't.

The piece explores how converging technologies have inverted the cost-to-impact ratio of offensive operations, why incentive structures reward efficiency over resilience, and how a subset of private companies now exercises forms of de facto authority once associated with states.

Read it here: https://www.thecipherbrief.com/corporate-cybersecurity-is-the-new-frontline-of-national-security

OPINION -- For decades, national security was defined by geography: borders, terrain, and physical infrastructure shaped how nations defended themselves and projected power. The private sector, while important, was largely adjacent to this domain. Companies built products and generated wealth, but t...

06/05/2026

ISRS is proud to highlight this timely executive briefing from our friends and partners at the Cyber Future Foundation, and to note that ISRS Chair (and CFF board director) Dr. Dave Venable is among the contributors.

The core judgment is right: Mythos-class frontier AI capability is a leadership issue, not a technical one. It compresses decision windows, reshapes governance requirements, and raises the stakes for boards, CEOs, and national security officials alike.

But that doesn’t mean the sky is falling.

CFF’s framing that disciplined preparation, not panic, reflects exactly the kind of strategic clarity this moment demands.

Well worth your time if you’re thinking about operational resilience, AI governance, or where frontier cyber risk is heading.

Read the executive snapshot at: signals.cyberfuturefoundation.org