Research Interests

Military Innovation

Military Effectiveness

Military Organizational Culture

Nuclear Strategy & Strategic Stability

Naval Strategy

Regional Focus: East Asia

Dissertation Project

There is a convergent view in the academic literature on the military value of demonstrated technologies and the subsequent expectation for other militaries to at least try to emulate. Emulation of a demonstrated innovation comes with less uncertainty. Nevertheless, the emergence of a new military technology, whose value has not been unequivocally demonstrated in real operational environments, rarely produces homogenous reactions across different military decision- making circles. Even though long-term isomorphism of militaries might appear to be the case with the eventual wide diffusion of the innovation, if one looks better and closer at the emergence point of the new capability, there is a wide range of choices organizations can choose from apart from just emulating.

That said, what determines the preferences and reactions of military organizations vis à vis an emerging technology- a process where the element of uncertainty dominates? More importantly, what are the determinants behind a military organization's decisions to assign an emerging technology to specific roles, tasks, and missions. Capitalizing on my dissertation for this research project, I claim that, at least, during the first stages of the life of a military technology, military organizations will try to make sense of it through the spectrum of already acquired and trusted ideas on the effective and efficient way of the application of military power. In specific, I find that three elements are explanatorily critical: a. an organization's theory of victory b. its metrics of effectiveness and c. its consolidated ideas on weapon/platform design feature optimization. Those three elements will function as prisms through which information on the emerging technology will be filtered and evaluated. The final outcome of potentially innovative operational uses of an emerging technology by a military organization towards increased levels of military effectiveness can be explained through this theoretical framework.

Policy Relevance

We are slowly entering a new phase of warfare technology as the informationalized war is gradually turning into what is usually named as algorithmic warfare. Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing, for instance, are only two of the most promising emerging technologies that threaten to cancel or reinforce well-established power asymmetries, creating new opportunities as well as uncertainties for militaries that seek to improve their military effectiveness. In a post-information revolution environment, fluidity of technological maturation estimates -combined to narratives on power transition and the ability of emerging technologies to either facilitate it or prevent it from happening- raise several questions regarding emerging technologies and their impact on world politics. In a nutshell, emerging technologies such as hypersonic weapons combined to AI can heavily impact the distribution of power at the international level. At lower levels of analysis, hypersonic weapons combined to other emerging technologies such as AI can have a heavy impact on conflict initiation, nuclear escalation, crisis stability or conflict duration.

In more detail, a frequent claim in the policy world is that emerging technologies will transform warfare and confer incomparable advantages in production of military effectiveness to the military that manages to unearth their operational potential after having solved all related technological riddles in order to reach maturity. However, it needs to be noted that technology rarely has an independent causal effect on military effectiveness or other war-related phenomena. Put differently, we expect specific technologies to come with revolutionary effects on warfare, in essence equating their revolutionary potential to expected empirically observable behavior. We do this without taking into consideration the context within which these technologies are scientifically developed or the doctrinal context within which these technologies will be conceived and exploited. Therefore, I claim that emerging technologies' impact on military effectiveness and strategic stability needs to be measured and examined thoroughly once we have more information on the ways a military organization plans to integrate them into their concepts of operations and doctrines. Only then we can grasp regional military balances in a more accurate way and come up with more realistic predictions and answers to questions such as battle initiation, escalation dynamics, number of casualties or conflict duration.

Manuscripts in Progress

"Military Technologies and Alliance Entrapment: the case of the US-Japan joint BMD development and enhanced interoperability" In preparation

"Italy and the Aircraft Carrier Before World War II: A Story of Rejection, Regrets, and Bitter Inter-Service Rivalries" In preparation

"Paper Tigers and Iron Tigers: China’s Limited Nuclear Arsenal and the Drivers Behind Its Nuclear Doctrine" Under Review

"The Fear of Fighting Blind: Anti-Satellite Weapons, Signaling and Escalation Control" In preparation

Archival Work across Europe and Asia