Emerging Risks — Long-Term Horizon

Long-range intelligence signals and emerging risks with strategic consequences over the next decade and beyond.

  • Growing Cyber Threats to Commercial Aviation: Why Cyber Risk Management and Resilient Systems Are No Longer Optional

    From Connected Aircraft to AI-Driven Cyber Warfare Commercial aviation is entering a new era in which cybersecurity has become inseparable from flight safety, operational continuity, and national security. The global aviation ecosystem—comprising aircraft, airports, air traffic management systems, satellite communications, cloud infrastructure, maintenance networks, and passenger-facing digital services—is now one of the world’s most interconnected…

  • The Changing Face of Terrorism in the United States: Trends, Challenges, and Required Technologies

    From ISIS-Inspired Lone Actors to AI-Enabled Extremism The terrorism landscape confronting the United States in 2026 is profoundly different from the post-9/11 era. The centralized, hierarchical terrorist organizations that once dominated U.S. counterterrorism strategy have increasingly given way to decentralized networks, self-radicalized individuals, encrypted digital ecosystems, and AI-enhanced extremist operations. Modern terrorism is no longer…

  • The Quiet Revolution: How Russia Is Reshaping Modern Warfare with Military AI

    From Soviet Cybernetics to AI-Driven Warfare in Ukraine Artificial intelligence has become the defining military technology race of the twenty-first century. While public attention often focuses on the United States and China, Russia has quietly transformed itself into one of the world’s most operationally experienced military AI powers. The war in Ukraine has accelerated this…

  • Multiband Antennas for Communications and Electronic Warfare: The New Frontier of Spectrum Dominance (2026 Update)

    Introduction: The Electromagnetic Arms Race Enters a New Era The electromagnetic spectrum has become one of the most fiercely contested domains of modern warfare. Alongside land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace, control of the spectrum increasingly determines military effectiveness, strategic deterrence, and battlefield success. The proliferation of advanced military communications, satellite constellations, unmanned systems, precision-guided…

  • From SSA to SDA: Why Space-Based Sensors Are Critical for Space Domain Awareness in an Era of Great-Power Competition

    Introduction: The Space Domain Has Become a Strategic Battlespace Space is no longer merely an enabler of military operations—it has become a contested warfighting domain in its own right. The rapid expansion of satellite constellations, increasing geopolitical rivalry, growing dependence on space-based infrastructure, and the emergence of counterspace weapons are fundamentally transforming how nations perceive…

  • Carbon Nanotubes: Powering the Carbon Revolution for the Post-Silicon Era (2026 Update)

    Introduction: From Laboratory Curiosity to Strategic Technology Platform For more than three decades, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have occupied a unique place in advanced materials science—celebrated as one of the strongest, lightest, and most electrically conductive materials ever discovered, yet repeatedly constrained by manufacturing complexity, purity challenges, and commercialization bottlenecks. In 2024–2026, that long transition from…

  • The Cognitive Battlefield: How Artificial Intelligence Is Revolutionizing Electronic Warfare and Spectrum Dominance

    Introduction: The Electromagnetic Spectrum Becomes a Warfighting Domain The nature of warfare is undergoing a profound transformation. While tanks, ships, aircraft, missiles, and satellites remain visible symbols of military power, an increasingly decisive battle is being fought within an invisible domain—the electromagnetic spectrum. Modern military operations depend upon uninterrupted access to communications networks, radar systems,…

  • Beyond Silicon: How Biological Computers Powered by Human Brain Cells Are Reshaping the Future of AI (2025–2026 Update)

    Introduction: The Beginning of the Wetware Computing Era For more than half a century, the global computing revolution has been driven by silicon. From microprocessors to modern AI accelerators, progress depended on shrinking transistors, increasing chip density, and scaling computational power through Moore’s Law. But by 2025–2026, the limitations of conventional semiconductor architectures are becoming…

  • Beyond Silicon: The Rise of Biological Supercomputers and Synthetic Intelligence

    Introduction: The End of Moore’s Law and the Emergence of Living Computing For more than seven decades, the digital age has been powered by Moore’s Law—the relentless doubling of transistor density that transformed room-sized computers into AI supercomputers capable of training trillion-parameter models. That era is now approaching fundamental physical and economic limits. Advanced semiconductor…