RESEARCH

My research explores a range of international security topics including alliance politics and military strategy, emerging technology, and the interaction of domestic and international security institutions.

​I leverage mixed methods in research design and draw empirical evidence from historical and contemporary contexts.

Dissertation book project

My dissertation, How Friends Fight: International Alliances, Military Technology, and Intra-Alliance Bargaining in the Shadow of Conflict, examines what makes it possible for states to succeed in adapting allied military strategy and technologies to dynamic security environments. I argue that the material features of modern warfare—chief among them, the need for states and coalitions to effectively organize complex, combined-arms operations to ensure battlefield victory—give a substantial military edge to alliances who adopt deep, rather than shallow, alliance institutions. In contrast to assertions of neorealist theory, these international institutions substantively alter the structure of intra-alliance bargaining tables where states negotiate the stakes relevant to allied military strategy: from grand strategy and policy, to operational logistics, tactics, and doctrine. By doing so, institutional depth, rather than only shared threat perceptions or alliance members'  relative military effectiveness, helps explain variation in strategic cooperation in alliances. The project's chief contribution to the academic literature is in identifying previously unexplored social-network mechanisms by which institutions affect intra-alliance flows of information about threats, technology, and strategy, features that rest at the center of canonical explanations of alliance behavior. Empirical evidence to test the argument is drawn from an analysis of cross-national quantitative analysis; the histories and archives of the Anglo-American alliance in World War II; and from Bayesian process-tracing analysis of new interview data exploring the adoption of military applications of artificial intelligence in contemporary U.S. alliances. Given that the return of multipolarity and the information revolution are changing the incentives before states who are navigating new choices about how to secure themselves in an uncertain world, this project hopes to shed light on questions of alliance management relevant to both policy practitioners and International Relations scholars.

Alliance politics and institutions

“The Multiple Logics of Offstage Alliance Signaling: How Publicity Changes the Support Allies Receive From Democratic Major Powers, 1950-2005”​ (working paper)

International security and technology

“War, Diplomacy, and Innovations in Information and Communications Technology: The Case of the Interstate Telegraph Network, 1846-1914,” with Michael Horowitz (working paper)
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“The International Balance of Power, Strategy, and Artificial Intelligence,” for the Oxford University Handbook on AI Governance, with Michael Horowitz and Shira Pindyck (forthcoming 2022)