Emerging Risks — Long-Term Horizon

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

  • The Next Frontier in Electronic Warfare: How Metasurfaces and AI Are Creating Reconfigurable Battlefields

    Introduction: The Rise of Programmable Electromagnetic Battlespaces Electronic warfare is entering a decisive new phase—one defined not by incremental improvements in jammers or sensors, but by a fundamental transformation in how the electromagnetic spectrum itself is shaped, controlled, and weaponized. The convergence of artificial intelligence, software-defined architectures, and engineered materials such as metasurfaces is enabling…

  • Heat-to-Power Technology and Thermoelectrics: Powering the Future of Wearables, Homes, Vehicles, and More

    Introduction: From Energy Loss to Distributed Power Infrastructure For over a century, waste heat has been treated as an unavoidable inefficiency—an inevitable byproduct of engines, electronics, and industrial systems. Today, that assumption is being fundamentally challenged. As global energy demand accelerates alongside the expansion of artificial intelligence, data centers, electrified transport, and distributed electronics, waste…

  • The Future of Command Posts: Enhancing Security, Mobility, and Efficiency for Enhanced Military Operations

    Introduction: From Static Headquarters to Adaptive Command Ecosystems Command posts are no longer merely physical locations—they are evolving into dynamic, distributed decision ecosystems at the heart of modern warfare. In an era defined by compressed decision timelines, pervasive surveillance, and multi-domain operations, the traditional model of large, static headquarters has become increasingly untenable. These legacy…

  • The New Era of Distributed Electronic Warfare: How Miniaturization is Revolutionizing Battlefield Dominance

     From Mass to Mesh — The Software-Defined Electromagnetic Battlespace Electronic Warfare (EW) is undergoing a structural transformation that mirrors the broader shift from industrial-age mass to information-age networks. For decades, spectrum dominance depended on a limited number of high-power, platform-centric assets—aircraft, ships, and armored vehicles equipped with large, centralized jamming and sensing systems. That paradigm…

  • DARPA’s Microsystem Induced Catalysis (MICA): Engineering the Next Frontier of Bio-Electronic Integration

      Introduction A new frontier is emerging at the convergence of biology and microelectronics—one that has the potential to redefine how machines sense, compute, and interact with the physical world. DARPA’s Microsystem Induced Catalysis (MICA) program sits at the center of this transformation, advancing a radical concept: the direct programmability of biochemical processes through electronic…

  • From Liability to Lifeline: How Carbon Capture Innovations Are Turning CO₂ Into the Building Blocks of Our Future

    Introduction For over a century, carbon dioxide has been treated as the unavoidable externality of industrial progress—a waste product to be minimized, regulated, or stored. Today, that paradigm is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Driven by advances in chemistry, materials science, and artificial intelligence, CO₂ is being redefined from an environmental liability into a strategic industrial…

  • Researchers realizing challenging goal of integrating lasers on silicon photonics

    The global digital infrastructure is approaching a critical inflection point. Explosive growth in artificial intelligence, hyperscale cloud computing, 5G/6G networks, and data-intensive applications is pushing conventional electronic architectures toward their physical and economic limits. While silicon-based CMOS scaling has sustained decades of performance gains, the bottleneck has decisively shifted from computation to communication—specifically, the inability…

  • The Digital Vanguard: How Real-Time Signal Processing is Redefining Modern Electronic Warfare

    The Spectrum as a Battlespace of Algorithms The electromagnetic spectrum is no longer just a medium for communication and sensing—it has become a contested, data-saturated battlespace where advantage is determined in microseconds. As modern militaries deploy increasingly sophisticated radars, communications networks, and sensors, Electronic Warfare (EW) has evolved from a supporting function into a central…

  • The AI-Powered Photonic Nose: Revolutionizing Sensory Technology

    From Detection to Cognitive Sensing A quiet revolution is underway in how machines perceive the chemical world—one that could prove as consequential as the rise of computer vision or radar. The emergence of AI-powered photonic noses signals a transition from passive chemical detection to cognitive sensing systems capable of interpreting complex molecular environments in real…