Background:
Divergent Options is a non-politically aligned non-revenue generating national security website that, in 1,000 words or less, provides unbiased, dispassionate, candid articles that assess a national security situation, present multiple options to address the situation, and articulate the risk and gain of each option. Please note that while we assess a national security situation and may provide options, we never recommend a specific option.
Below you will see a Call for Papers. If you are not interested in writing on this topic, we always welcome individual articles on virtually any national security situation an author is passionate about. Please do not let our call for papers cause you to hesitate to send us your idea. We look forward to hearing from you!
Call for Papers:
The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) positions technological leadership as a cornerstone of American national power, essential for both economic dominance and military superiority. The strategy emphasizes that the United States must remain the world’s most scientifically and technologically advanced nation to secure its future. Moreover, the strategy identifies three specific fields that should drive the world forward under U.S. standards: Artificial Intelligence (AI), biotechnology, and quantum computing. Technology is described as providing a “qualitative edge” to the U.S. military with emphasis on modernizing the industrial base, developing next-generation missile defense systems, and hardening networks with American encryption. Yet, the NSS also stresses that technological development is difficult for militaries to “get right” due to an increasingly complex combination of economic, institutional, and strategic challenges.
Below is a list of prompts that may inspire potential writers:
– Assess the capacity for America’s industrial sector to meet both peacetime and wartime production demands.
– Assess the impacts of global trade and outsourcing on the infrastructure needed to produce advanced military systems at scale.
– Provide options to overcome supply chain vulnerabilities and breakthrough bottlenecks where an adversary can cut off access to core components, raw materials, and finished products.
– Provide options to address the gap between low-cost technologies, such as drones and simple missiles, and the (relatively) expensive systems required to defend against them.
– Assess how the U.S. and its allies can promote a culture that attracts, retains, and rewards the best talent to maintain advantages in defense innovation.
– Provide options to address the threat posed by competitors engaging in intellectual property theft and industrial espionage to close the technological gap with the U.S.
– Assess the impacts of resource dilution on technological advancements. What country, region, issue, or cause merits reconsideration in the face of limited resources?
Please limit your submission to 1,000 words and write using our Options Paper or Assessment Paper templates which are designed for ease of use by both writers and readers alike.
Please send your article to submissions@divergentoptions.org by February 22, 2026.
