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Garrett Hinck

@garretthinck.bsky.social
125 followers 223 following 33 posts

PhD candidate at Columbia, studying security, nuclear weapons, space, cyber and intelligence. Formerly @ Carnegie Endow Check out my writing here: strategicdefense.substack.com

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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
14) Ted and I will also be discussing the report in a webinar hosted by @berkeleyrisk.bsky.social next week on August 27th at 1 pm ET - we hope to see you there! Link below: brsl.berkeley.edu/event/ai-enh...
brsl.berkeley.edu
AI-Enhanced Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance and U.S.-China Strategic Stability – UC Berkeley Risk & Security Lab
Join BRSL and CSR for a webinar on how AI capabilities for space-based remote sensing are reshaping U.S.-China strategic stability and the implications of these…
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
13) For more (and there is a lot more) see our full report here: councilonstrategicrisks.org/2026/08/20/p...
councilonstrategicrisks.org
Precarious Transparency: Artificial Intelligence, Space-based ISR Capabilities, and US-China Strategic Stability - The Council on Strategic Risks
While space-based sensing and computer vision for satellite imagery offer novel capabilities relevant to strategic stability, their impacts vary significantly depending on the specific task, the count...
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
12) Despite our emphases on some of the limits of AI-enhanced ISR, each side will have to plan for the worst. As a result, we predict increased pressures for augmenting nuclear forces, especially for China. This maybe impossible to prevent, so the US should plan for it.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
11) Thus, we think the US has incentives to promote measures to protect space-based ISR, such as agreements on non-interference like those that were part of US-Russia arms control. This would be a productive point to raise in US-China strategic stability dialogues.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
10) For now, however, more effective AI-enhanced ISR will tend to benefit the US more than China. This will be contingent, however, on how widespread and effective the use of counterspace capabilities will be across crises and conflicts and even in peacetime.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
9) One major problem is that we lack real understanding about how AI models might perform in realistic conditions of conflict or crisis. Like nuclear weapons themselves, AI-enhanced ISR has many potential points of failure and risk which are difficult to assess in peacetime.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
8) Precarious Transparency means that while there are improvements in each side's ability to target the others nuclear forces (especially the US ability to target PRC mobile missiles) as well as improvements in verification capabilities, those advances will be limited, contingent, and asymmetric
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
7) Our analysis dives deep on several different tasks to which AI-enhanced ISR could be employed, from targeting, to strategic early warning, to monitoring and verification. The likely overall effects of AI-enhanced ISR that emerge from this are what we term "Precarious Transparency".
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
6) On the strategic side, space-based ISR will also be constrained by countermeasures from adversaries, particularly counterspace capabilities. But these effects will vary significantly between peacetime, when counterspace use is unlikely, to wartime.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
5) On the AI side, the capabilities to accomplish these tasks are still in development, and because they involve not just identifying objects but drawing broader inferences, AI vision-language models for ISR will be vulnerable to many failure modes associated with popular LLMs like hallucinations.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
4) However, now the game is in higher-level processing. Think assessing if movements on particular roads indicate that China is dispersing its mobile missiles. Or in data fusion of many different sensor feeds, like the much-discussed Maven Smart System that has been used in the Iran conflict.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
3) When we think about AI (machine learning for the most part) in the context of ISR, we tend to think about computer vision for object detection and classification. I.e. can we tell if a TEL is a TEL or a tank is a tank? That is a mature use of AI for ISR.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
2) In the last five years, the US and China have both rapidly expanded their space-based sensing capabilities, with both military satellites like the NRO's proliferated constellation and commercial ones like CGST's Jilin-1. The sheer amount of data generated naturally creates a niche for AI models.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
1) Report launch! My colleague Ted Fujimoto and I looked how the rise of proliferated, space-based ISR and AI are affecting strategic stability, with a focus on U.S.-China. A quick summary of our main findings here:
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berkeleyrisk.bsky.social @berkeleyrisk.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Join BRSL and @councilonstrategicrisks.org next week for a webinar on @garretthinck.bsky.social and Ted Fujimoto's forthcoming paper on how AI capabilities for intelligence surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) promise to radically augment the detection, tracking, and targeting of military assets.
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Andrey Baklitskiy @baklitskiy.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
UnderSecT DiNanno: "China has used decoupling method to decrease the effectiveness of seismic monitoring to hide their activities from the world. China conducted one such yield producing nuclear tests on June 22 of 2020"
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Good take- one way you can guess that the concept of "grand strategy" is somewhat flimsy is that the question of "how do we know if a grand strategy is good or not" tends to lead to rhetorical contortions that would make fun pasta shapes.
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Andrey Baklitskiy @baklitskiy.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Axios reports a draft agreement has been reached in Abu Dhabi between Witkoff/Kushner and Russian officials on sticking to New START limits after treaty expiration. Still needs to be approved by Trump, but seems likely. Deus ex machina www.axios.com/2026/02/05/n...
axios.com
Scoop: U.S. and Russia agree to observe New START nuclear pact after expiration
New START is the last major guardrail constraining the nuclear arsenals of the two countries that together hold some 85% of the world's warheads.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
This makes the case for a successor agreement stronger, as more transparency would be beneficial about these systems.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
Good thread. I’d add that while the loss of transparency via inspections is significant, that has not been in effect for years at this point and would be less important anyway as new Russian systems are developed that fall outside the treaty limits.
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James Cameron @jjjcameron.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
The basic problem with the United States' call for Europe to lead on conventional forces while it takes care of nuclear deterrence.
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SpaceNews @spacenewsinc.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
The overlooked space race: keeping satellites alive U.S. Space Command’s push for “dynamic space operations” — the ability to maneuver in orbit without worrying about running dry — demands logistics the military has never had.
spacenews.com
The overlooked space race: keeping satellites alive
U.S. Space Command’s push for “dynamic space operations” — the ability to maneuver in orbit without worrying about running dry — demands logistics the military has never had.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
I'm back up at Strategic Defense with a look at the extension of New START and the politics of linkage that will likely determine its fate. Check it out and let me know what you think! open.substack.com/pub/strategi...
open.substack.com
New START Extension: The Political Side of Arms Control
Maybe the real arms control was the friends we made along the way?
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
No idea if this will mean actual testing of weapons or of old (or new) delivery systems, based on the qualifier of matching Russia/China. Likely they don't know yet (or perhaps don't know the difference). www.npr.org/2025/10/30/g...
npr.org
Trump suggests the U.S. will resume testing nuclear weapons
President Donald Trump appeared to suggest the U.S. will resume testing nuclear weapons for the first time in three decades, saying it would be on an "equal basis" with Russia and China.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
The USG needs to improve public comms about cyber espionage - and refrain from conflating it with offensive cyber operations. Further, it should think through how OCOs might impact crisis stability with China - particularly as China might seek to reveal such capabilities as tensions mount. /FIN
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
One complicating factor in all this is that these hacks are playing out in public, which raises the bar for US government responses. It's difficult to clearly tell the public what the difference between "Salt" and "Volt" are.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
As @mikepoznanski.bsky.social and Erica Lonergan argued in War on the Rocks - cyber espionage and attacks on critical infrastructure are fundamentally different and require different responses. warontherocks.com/2025/02/a-ta...
warontherocks.com
A Tale of Two Typhoons: Properly Diagnosing Chinese Cyber Threats - War on the Rocks
How should the United States address the multiple cyber “typhoons” emanating from China? Over the past year, Chinese cyber threat actors have gained
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
But the United States has (allegedly) conducted similar compromises of telecoms for intelligence purposes. See for instance: www.reuters.com/article/tech...
reuters.com
A scramble at Cisco exposes uncomfortable truths about U.S. cyber defense
When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange disclosed earlier this month that his anti-secrecy group had obtained CIA tools for hacking into technology products made by U.S. companies, security engineers at Cisco Systems <CSCO.O> swung into action.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Like many US policymakers, Neuberger conflates China's Salt Typhoon (telecom espionage) with Volt Typhoon (pre-positioning in critical infrastructure). She suggests that compromises of telecoms could have been used to disrupt civilian and mil comms during a conflict.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Fmr DNSA Anne Neuberger argues that, in response to the Chinese cyber threat, the US needs to establish a "new cyber-deterrence policy". This side-steps an important question: what should be the limits of adversary cyber espionage against the US? Article: www.foreignaffairs.com/china/china-...
foreignaffairs.com
China Is Winning the Cyberwar
America needs a new strategy of deterrence.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 22/06/2025
It’s night in Iran now - once the sun rises and if weather is clear, satellite imagery may give clues about the impact but info will be limited. Follow-on strikes could be based on subsequent intel. Likely next desired target would be fissile material through Iran but that is a difficult quarry.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
Happy #caturday !
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Rebecca Plevin @rebeccaplevin.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
Following a loud public outcry about job cuts at the National Parks Service — and a relentless media campaign from outdoors enthusiasts across the country — it looks like the Trump administration has blinked. via @jackdolan.bsky.social
latimes.com
Trump administration backtracks on eliminating thousands of national parks employees
Following a loud public outcry, and relentless media campaign from outdoors enthusiasts, the Trump administration has reversed course on a plan to eliminate thousands of seasonal workers at the Nation...
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Gravel Influencer @gravelinfluencer.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
This comment on r/fednews really stood out to me. Trump and Musk want people to think they're firing do-nothing "bureaucrats," but they're really getting rid of people dedicated to serving this country and keeping it operational. I hope these stories get told.
I lost my job. USDA Forest Service.


My probation was up next week.


I did everything right. I took a GS-7 role with a master’s degree just to get my foot in the door. I spent years doing seasonal fieldwork for low pay, working in remote places, gaining experience, and building skills, just for a chance at a permanent position. I was about to be a GS-9. I wrote NEPA reports. I conducted field surveys. I worked fire support. I dedicated myself to this work because I believed in it.


Public lands don’t manage themselves. The wildlife, watersheds, and forests we protect don’t just stay protected without people on the ground making it happen. My coworkers and I took on that responsibility, often in places most people never think about but that matter more than they know.


And now? Just like that, I’m out.


Edit: I’ve consistently supported progressive policies and have voted Democrat in every national and local election since I was 18. I do appreciate folks asking, I have some coworker having a serious 'leopards ate my face' moment right now.
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
ABC: “.. Multiple current and former employees described the situation as ‘a national security crisis.’” @abcnewsgo.bsky.social abcnews.go.com/Politics/liv...
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
My new post for Strategy Defense looks at how psychology and strategy interact in debates on nuclear weapons, specifically whether there has been a "nuclear revolution". Plus I cover some ongoing developments with missile defense - check it out here: open.substack.com/pub/strategi...
open.substack.com
It's All In Your Head: Psychology and Strategy
What we can and can't learn from taking human psychology seriously in strategy
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Check out the post to see more and consider subscribing if you're interested in the topic: strategicdefense.substack.com
strategicdefense.substack.com
Strategic Defense | Garrett Hinck | Substack
Thoughts on strategic issues related to nuclear weapons, space, cybersecurity, and other issues where technologies impact national security. Click to read Strategic Defense, by Garrett Hinck, a Substa...
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
For instance, fielding interceptors in space raises new escalation risks - and means that the US would still need to rely on deterrence to protect its missile defenses!
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
In my view, the EO adopts a strategy of "throw everything at the missile and hope something sticks" without considering some of the strategic trade-offs in these forms of missile defense.
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
The second part to my post covering Trump's missile defense plans is now out, including discussion of the new EO: open.substack.com/pub/strategi...
open.substack.com
Under the Dome Part II: Strategy and Reality
Unpacking the new executive order and considering the broader strategic picture
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Garrett Hinck @garretthinck.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
Announcement! I've started a blog - Strategic Defense - where I'm writing about issues involving strategic forces, technology, and international relations. My first post is live and looks at Trump's call for the US to have its own "Iron Dome". Check it out here: open.substack.com/pub/strategi...
open.substack.com
Welcome / Under the Dome - SDI Redux?
This post is somewhat in lieu of an introduction.
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