Researchers assess the advantages and trade-offs of a reimagined Middle East strategy where strategic goals link to a broader understanding of stability that prioritizes reduced conflict, better governance, and greater growth and development. They analyze long-standing U.S. interests and relationships with central partners and develop an alternative framework in which the Iranian challenge is one among several factors that should be considered.

The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform asked RAND to provide an independent analysis of PPBE-like functions in selected countries and federal agencies. In this report--Volume 5 in a seven-volume set of case studies--RAND researchers analyze the defense budgeting processes of five additional allied and partner nations: France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and Sweden.

The return of great-power competition has highlighted the risks of conflict with nuclear-armed great powers. Such a conflict would entail escalation risks that the United States has not seriously considered since the Cold War. Using three historical case studies, the authors examine decisionmakers' ability to identify adversary thresholds and to apply this information to control escalation during militarized crises between nuclear-armed states.

The author assesses similarities and differences between four historical examples of technology governance--nuclear technology, the Internet, encryption products, and genetic engineering--and artificial intelligence (AI) to identify lessons for AI governance. The author then discusses the importance of norms in technology governance, challenges in governing physical versus nonphysical assets, and partnerships between the public and private sectors.

The U.S. defense strategy and posture have become insolvent. Sustained, coordinated efforts by the United States, its allies, and its key partners are necessary to deter and defeat modern threats, including Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine and reconstituted forces and China's economic takeoff and concomitant military modernization. This report offers ideas on how to address shortcomings in defense preparations.

Researchers from the RAND Corporation and AidData jointly built a new database on China's artificial intelligence (AI) export projects funded with official development financing. In this report, the authors analyze this quantitative dataset--adding qualitative country case studies based on interviews and social media analysis--to examine the distribution, technology, financing, and data safety aspects of China's AI exports.

South Korea faces challenging choices as the great-power rivalry between the United States and China intensifies. In this report, the authors describe their key insights from an analytical policy game they designed featuring two scenarios that explored the policy choices for South Korea to balance its economic, geopolitical, and technological equities regarding its role in the global semiconductor and electric vehicle battery supply chains.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has waged a wide-reaching, high-volume, multichannel disinformation campaign that seeks to not only undermine Ukrainian resilience but also gird Russian support for the war and deplete international support of Ukraine. In this report, the authors provide an overview of Ukrainian efforts to counter this disinformation war and identify lessons for the United States and allied militaries.

The authors of this survey study gauge the U.S. adult population's attitudes toward full risk-sharing, partial risk-sharing, and risk-based pricing in setting health, term life, auto, and flood insurance premiums. Findings have implications for public policy in insurance regulation and the role that insurance can play in mitigating the effects of natural and other hazards.

To determine how much the United States can rely on its network of allies and partners, researchers constructed global networks representing diplomatic, military, and economic elements of national power in 1989, 2000, and 2017 and compared the connections, centrality, interdependence, vulnerability to disruption, risk of conflict contagion, network depth, and U.S. access to network depth per dollar of U.S. assistance provided to network members.