EMERGING TECHNOLOGY, MILITARY INNOVATION, AND THE FUTURE OF WARFARE
The magnitude of change tells us little about its quality and desirability. Nonetheless, military innovators are depicted as heroes and visionaries even when wholesale adoption of their ideas would be grossly irresponsible. The tacit belief that innovation and improved effectiveness are synonymous has significant repercussions. I explore these in several published and in-progress papers:
2026. “When Tanks Tank and Bombs Bomb: Understanding Failure in Military Innovation,” with Evan Braden Montgomery, Journal of Strategic Studies.
2026. “Military Innovation and Adaptation.” In The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Military History. Ed. Alexander Watson. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
2025. “On Military Restoration: How Militaries Recover from Battlefield Surprise.” Journal of Strategic Studies 49(2): 220–42.
2025. “Naval Kinetic Warfare and Cyber Roles,” with Jon Lindsay in Cyber Warfare and Navies, edited by Chris Demchak and Sam Tangredi. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press.
2024. “How to Think About Risks in US Military Innovation.” Survival 66(1): 85–98.
2024. “Preparing the U.S. Cyber Force for Extended Conflict,” with Jay Vogt and Dan Grobarcik, Proceedings 150(6): 24–29. Second Prize Winner of the Naval Institute's 2023 Information Warfare Essay Contest.
2022. “Dangerous Changes: When Military Innovation Harms Combat Effectiveness.” International Security. 47(2): 48–87.
2021. “Military Innovation and Technological Determinism: British and U.S. Ways of Carrier Warfare, 1919–1945,” Journal of Global Security Studies 6(3): 1–19. Co-Winner of Barbara W. Tuchman Prize for Best Paper in Historical International Relations in 2020.
NATIONALISM AND NATION-BUILDING
How do politically salient identities—ethnicity, ideology, religion, and nationality—shape conflict dynamics such as domestic repression, civil war fractionalization, interstate war, and coercive diplomacy? I explore this question in:
2022. “The Geopolitics of ‘Fifth Column’ Framing in Xinjiang,” with Harris Mylonas, in Enemies Within: The Global Politics of Fifth Columns, edited by Harris Mylonas and Scott Radnitz. New York: Oxford University Press.
2022. “Nation-Building and the Role of Identity in Civil Wars,” with Harris Mylonas, Ethnopolitics 21(1): 1–21.
2018. “Nationalism and Foreign Policy,” with Harris Mylonas, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Foreign Policy Analysis, edited by Cameron G. Thies, 223–242. New York: Oxford University Press.
2012. “Revisiting the Salafi-Jihadist Threat in Xinjiang,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 32(4): 528–544.
