“The spread of advanced technologies may be the central security challenge of the 21st century,” said Neil Narang, a UC Santa Barbara assistant professor of political science.

 

Narang would know. The international relations scholar spent much of the last two years in Washington, D.C., working with the U.S. government on issues of national security, including as a senior advisor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy on a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship. As part of the office’s strategy team, he worked on assessing risk across a range of global threats.

 

Now, with the help of a recently awarded $500,000 grant from the Carnegie Corp. of New York, he is jointly leading a new initiative to study the impact of emerging technologies on international security, in partnership with co-investigators from the University of Virginia and George Washington University.

 

Narang hopes that it will be the first of many such grants awarded at UCSB.