Red Sky at Night

Positioning for the Future

Red sky at night, sailors delight.

In the last post, we looked to foresight research documents from the United States, United Kingdom, and Atlantic Council to make predictions for what the future holds. In this post, I offer recommendations for national security strategy enhancements that would best prepare for such a future. While predictions have varying levels of certainty, I am fairly well convinced of one point: Things will change faster than we think they will. And things are changing faster that we think they are.

We need to be ready.

The future operating environment analysis illustrates a possible world where rapid technological acceleration and institutional weakness lead to governance disequilibrium, increased contention, and more conflict. It highlights artificial intelligence, automation, and energy as dominant forces in global power. To prepare for such a future, the country needs a strategy to mitigate negative effects and bolster the potential for positive outcomes. The recommendations below offer ways that national leaders can best use traditional tools of national power—diplomacy, information, military, economics, finance, intelligence, and law enforcement—to prepare for and leverage these changes. Additional recommendations include developing a National Economic Strategy and National Energy Strategy to complement the National Security Strategy and assessing energy and adaptability as new tools of national power, given the importance of each in an electrically-driven, rapidly changing future operating environment.

Strategic Philosophy

As societies developed and globalized, the character of war has changed but its nature has stayed the same. It remains as Thucydides wrote: “…the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”1 This is as true with oppressors on the playground or athletes in the arena as it is with monopolies in the marketplace or combatants on the battlefield. The nature of war is to threaten the health, safety, and life of another. It is, in particular, a mortal or existential threat that opposes the natural desire for self-preservation and allows for coercion by the stronger entity.

The character of warfare is ever evolving, especially as technology advances, environments change, and combatants strive to stay ahead and stay competitive. The character of war is historically a threat of force, from sticks and stones or swords and shields, to guns and bombs, or in the future, autonomous drones. In its earliest form, the character of war was to threaten bodily harm, as such direct use or threat of force was necessary when people carried all they needed to survive in their heads and on their backs. Now, we are dependent on other infrastructure.

As society developed and people began relying on other tools, resources, and systems to survive, a combatant could attack other targets in those areas to threaten their existence and self-preservation. This could include burning crops, salting fields, killing flocks, or conducting sieges and blockades. In order to determine what constitutes war and warfare today, we must consider what is needed to survive. By this logic, an act of war could be defined differently by different parties. For the Greek god Antaeus, whose strength came from the earth, an act of war might be holding him in the air.2 For other gods, however, such an act would not be so threatening. A naval blockade of an island with no local resources or food could be catastrophic, while salting its barren land or burning inedible foliage would be less of a concern.

The character of warfare changes because the things that can threaten humans’ existence change. While in the past acts of war often necessitated physical violence, today warfare could include destroying the systems that provide for the people’s welfare or ruining resources they need to survive. Such acts could include attacking infrastructure, supply chains, cyber assets, reputations, and citizens’ mental states, as long as there is a tie to survival.

This logic helps explain the emergence of new “forms” of warfare, such as hybrid warfare, unrestricted warfare, or the Gerasimov doctrine.3 4 5 Those who employ such strategies understand that strategic effects can be had from actions short of open violence, and that this is true now more than ever before. In particular for the United States, one could argue that the democratic nation’s population is its center of gravity, and that the people’s psychology, mindset, or general will to fight is a critical vulnerability that must be defended.6 Likewise, in a future where productivity and the general defense is primarily provided by automation and robotics, the ability to construct and power these systems becomes critical to survival and must therefore be defended. Threatening any part of that productivity chain could be an act of war. We already see the effects on the economy when fuel prices rise—an economy driven by electricity will see the same influence. The following examines the tools of national power and how to leverage them for success in such a future operating environment.

Military

Military strength will remain a critical tool of national power. As in conflicts before, having the capability to cause more destruction than an opponent, either through offensive and or defensive tools, will still be important. Given technological changes, the most powerful tools are likely to trend toward standoff weapons, like missiles and bombs, and autonomous platforms that are able to move, swarm, attack, iterate, and generally cycle through the required OODA loop7 faster than a human operator and faster than the opponent’s platforms.

While technological superiority for a specific platform will still be useful, another critical piece of the whole weapon system—for low-cost swarming drones in particular—will be the production systems and supply chains. Similar to the Ford assembly line advancement of a hundred years ago and the vertical integration and highly-automated factories that produce Tesla electric vehicles today, countries and companies will increasingly compete on the efficiency and productivity of their automated production systems, the robotic factories. With waves of drones at the front lines, countries will be competing on their ability to manage production inputs and resources, leverage economies of scale, and move through production learning curves better than their opponents.

All of the traditional areas of weapon competition, such as speed, power, force, and payloads, will continue to be important, but in a conflict with state and non-state actors using distributed drones or autonomous agents, a country will be tested as much on its systems as on specific technological advances. Examples of similar situations include the strategically important U.S. production of ships, planes, and trucks in World War II, as well as modern production of ships in China, and the constrained production of precision-guided munitions in the U.S.8 9 Building general economic strength will help significantly in this endeavor.

Economic and Financial

Increasingly, the economic tool of national power may be the most important. As the world market has become globalized, countries are competing more and more in the economic space. Not only will a strong economy have transferable benefits to the general operation of the country and its institutions like the military, it will also put the country and its people in a more competitive, better position to succeed.

Improved economic performance will lead to more individual wealth and more tax resources collected, which can provide discretionary services, supply mandatory spending entitlements, and support the implementation of social safety nets. It will also likely leave individuals better off when acting on their own, prior to any government support. The result of each of these is likely a reduction in the probability of discontent or uprising from economic strains.

As the contemporary national security strategy observes, the economy is the bedrock of the U.S. global position and a necessary foundation of its military.10 As such, it would be prudent to also develop a National Economic Strategy to align industrial policy, fiscal policy, and monetary policy with the overarching National Security Strategy. Such a strategy could help ensure that supply chains are not overly concentrated or lack resiliency, it could direct analysis of various systems for systemic risks, and it could chart a path for future growth and development. Emphasis on sharpening the economic tool of national power and generally improving the nation’s economy could bring to a higher level General Omar Bradley’s observation that “amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics.”11

For the United States in particular, maintaining a strong economy with lower comparative financial risk helps bolster its financial international powers, maintaining the stability of its treasury bonds, and keeping the dollar’s inertia as global reserve currency. As such, maintaining the stability and reputation of the faith and credit of the United States is a center of power for the country.

The future use of the financial tool of national power should be similar to its contemporary use, including international lending, development aid or assistance, debt control, and potentially debt leverage. The United States should protect its national financial stability and build a strong “fortress balance sheet” to attract foreign investment, maintain its reserve currency status, wield powerful financial incentives abroad, and have the resources to adapt and innovate quickly when required.

The objective is to remain solvent, creditworthy, and hard to coerce financially. In addition, the U.S. could expand its financial efforts by building a financial influence tool similar to that of the PRC Belt and Road Initiative, but designed to provide better and more appealing solutions to other countries. It needs to offer a stronger “customer value proposition” to the rest of the world.

The diplomatic tool of national power will maintain its importance, particularly with implementing other tools of national power abroad. In the future this will involve determining what the country needs, aligning incentives with other countries and non-state actors, and making deals to succeed together. Such international negotiations could involve trading AI expertise or computational equipment for energy resources or hosting compute “bases” in foreign areas. As wealth inequality between nations grows due to rapidly increasing automation and as the automation requires increased amounts of energy, the U.S. should look to build a network of states to trade energy resources for AI advances or financial resources.

The diplomatic tool of national power will be useful in implementing other efforts abroad, such as the use of information, intelligence, and financial tools. Leveraging diplomacy for military efforts could include aligning the interoperability of autonomous platforms and other weapons, such that two or more nations could combine drone fleets into a much larger and more powerful swarms. It could also involve implementing sanctions, tariffs, pricing operations, and import/export controls in coordination with the National Economic Strategy and within the National Security Strategy guidance. As the structure of the rules-based international order tends to dissolve into the future, the use of the legal or law enforcement tool of national power is likely to decline accordingly.

Information and Intelligence

The future use of the information and intelligence tools of national power will also be similar to their contemporary use. The intelligence tool will be valuable in determining what the country needs, what supply chains might be threatened, and with which nations it can negotiate or trade to reduce risk. Both the informational and intelligence tools may offer useful products to entice other nations in negotiations.

One unique use of the informational tool in the future would be as a national source of truth. For example, building an independent national source of truth would provide information accuracy, verified facts, and trust around events, data, and other matters for the populace. Such an asset would lay a groundwork for national cohesion and trust and help defend against psychological attacks, disinformation efforts, and other information warfare. In his Insurgent’s Dilemma, David Ucko writes about Walter Lippman offering concerns in the early 1900s around special interest groups’ ability to “manufacture consent” using monopolies on information and gave the warning that “there can be no liberty for a community which lacks the information by which to detect lies.”12

Additionally, in a world of AI and robotics, compute sovereignty will be increasingly important. Ensuring continued and reliable access to national compute resources could include a domestic compute industrial base for hardware supply chains, local datacenter siting, national energy resources, and maybe an additional government-owned national compute reserve to ensure the nation is not stretching its resources too thin or overly reliant on a foreign entity or multinational corporate supplier.

Energy

Energy is not traditionally characterized as a national power, but it should be in the future. In a world driven by artificial intelligence and automation, a country’s energy and electrical system will play a critical role in its economy, military, government, and in the lives of its people. To effectively operate the country, it will be critical to have sufficient natural resources, enough reliable electricity generation, the appropriate resilience and redundancy of the supply chains and transmission/distribution system, and energy delivered to end users at an acceptable cost. Just as Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan knew of the strategic importance of maintaining access to coaling stations for steam ships, strategists of the future will need to ensure security and stability of electricity for the nation’s automations and robotics.

As the nation increasingly functions on electricity—and as this functioning and productivity spirals upward with the expansion of AI—the ability to power the nation’s endeavors will become a critical national tool. As such, the United States should develop a National Energy Strategy to align energy resource plans, electric grid investment and operation, and technological research and development with the goals of the overarching National Security Strategy and related sub-strategies, like the National Defense Strategy, National Military Strategy, and future National Economic Strategy. Because securing abundant, cheap, and resilient electricity will be a foundation of national power, prudent actions in an energy strategy would be to overbuild any and all kinds of generation, harden the grid, secure strategic energy reserves, and work to develop skills in energy geopolitics and energy diplomacy. Similarly, the U.S. should consider developing an energy-centric international influence initiative by exporting the development and operation of nuclear fission power plants, bringing non-nuclear countries large amounts of clean energy in exchange for helping the U.S. advance in its preferred areas.

Adaptability

One final new tool of national power that the United States should consider for a dynamic future is adaptability. Given the expected rapid shifts in the future operating environment, the U.S. should be developing and exercising its skills in adaptation and innovation at every level. In a world of rapid change, the country, companies, and individuals who are best prepared and most able to innovate and adapt are the ones who will be able to adjust and thrive.

Changes in an automated, increasingly digital future will likely be constant and rapid. The only durable strategy in such a dynamic environment will be one that leverages a mindset of adaptability and innovation and which ensures reserved resources to act accordingly. The country with a solid foundation of economic, financial, and political strength will be best prepared for emergent, compound crises for which it either had not specifically prepared or could never have predicted.

Conclusion

The United States, United Kingdom, and Atlantic Council foresight reports envision a future world that changes rapidly, is multipolar, fragmented, and increasingly contested. This future world includes state and non-state actors rising in prominence, rapid changes in technology that allow for increased asymmetric capabilities, and new common operating areas open to competition and exploitation. The predictions also indicate pending inequality, both within and between nations.

However, as discovered in the past, such foresight analysis does not always capture rapid changes or accurately assess the pace of change, sometimes lagging reality. In particular, the expectation is that the changes from AI, automation, and robotics could lead to a development and implementation flywheel effect that exceeds the expectations indicated in these reports. In this situation, there will be trends of rapid technological change and increased wealth inequality—even beyond the degree in the foresight reports—leading to severe challenges in governance, and increased instability in the international system.

To add to the disruption, national power for nations in this environment will be strongly based on the output and productivity from AI, automations, and robotics. In that case, it will be critical that the nations have stability in these technology and information systems, stability of their natural resource supply chains, and stability and resilience of electricity generation and distribution. In this new operating environment, the United States will need an amended national strategy.

A new National Security Strategy for the United States in the age of AI must be built for a future with primarily drone warfare and the critically important drone production systems. The nation will need to be able to rely on a strong economic and financial foundation for regular operations, international influence, and defensive or military operations. A strong electricity generation, transmission, and distribution system will be required for the new AI, automation, and automated production systems.

The Recommended National Security Strategy section of this analysis offers solutions to gaps identified by the previous future operating environment analysis, including emphasis on ways to further leverage the tools of national power. Next steps among these includes the development of a National Economic Strategy and National Energy Strategy to complement the National Defense Strategy under the National Security Strategy. Additionally, the strategy recommends reviewing and assessing energy and adaptability as new tools of national power, given the importance of each in an electrically-driven, rapidly changing future operating environment. These additional tools will be critically important in the future.


— The previous article lays out the future environment analysis: Red Sky in the Morning — Predictions for the Future

Footnotes

  1. Thucydides, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, edited by Robert B. Strassler, translated by Richard Crawley (New York: Free Press, 1996), 352. ↩

  2. Edith Hamilton, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942), 174. ↩

  3. Frank Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars (Arlington, VA: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007). https://www.potomacinstitute.org/images/stories/publications/potomac_hybridwar_0108.pdf ↩

  4. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare (Naples, Italy: Albatross Publishers, 2020). ↩

  5. Valery Gerasimov, translated by Robert Coalson, “The Value of Science Is in the Foresight: New Challenges Demand Rethinking the Forms and Methods of Carrying out Combat Operations,” Military-Industrial Kurier (2013), printed in Military Review (2016). ↩

  6. Daniel Lasica, Strategic Implications of Hybrid War: A Theory of Victory (Fort Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced Military Studies, United States Army Command and General Staff College, 2009), 11. ↩

  7. Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2002), 334. ↩

  8. Seth G. Jones and Alexander Palmer, Rebuilding the Arsenal of Democracy: The U.S. and Chinese Defense Industrial Bases in an Era of Great Power Competition (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 2024). ↩

  9. Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Preparing the U.S. Industrial Base to Deter Conflict with China,” accessed January 4, 2026. ↩

  10. US Office of the President, National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: Office of the President, 2025). https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf ↩

  11. Murat Caliskan, “Hybrid Warfare Through the Lens of Strategic Theory,” Defense & Security Analysis (2019), 13. ↩

  12. David H. Ucko, The Insurgent’s Dilemma: A Struggle to Prevail (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022), 161. ↩