Peer-Reviewed Publications

Technology, Behavior, and Effectiveness in Naval Warfare: The Battles of Savo Island and Cape Saint George (with Stephen Biddle). International Security, 50 (3): 156-191. 2026.

Abstract What explains success and failure in naval warfare? Most political science research on military effectiveness focuses on land combat, often overlooking how behavior shapes outcomes at sea. This article uses a paired comparison of two World War II naval battles—Savo Island and Cape Saint George—to examine how material and nonmaterial factors interact in maritime conflict. In both battles, U.S. forces held significant material and technological advantages, yet they suffered a catastrophic defeat in the former and achieved a lopsided victory in the latter. The decisive difference, we argue, lay in commanders’ behavioral choices, organizational structure, and crew proficiency in using technology under stress. Using case study comparison and counterfactual analysis, we demonstrate how similar material conditions produced dramatically different outcomes as a result of variation in nonmaterial performance. These findings suggest that naval combat is more sensitive to human factors than prevailing materialist assessments acknowledge. As U.S.-China competition intensifies in the Western Pacific, our analysis calls for greater attention to training, leadership, and doctrine when evaluating the implications of China’s growing material power. Naval warfare is a deeply social process, and understanding its outcomes requires integrating human behavior with technological and material analysis.

Making AI Inevitable: Historical Perspective and the Problems of Predicting Long-Term Technological Change (with Mark Fisher). Oxford Intersections: AI in Society. 2025.

Preprint available on arXiv / SSRN.

Abstract This article demonstrates the extent to which prominent debates about the future of AI are best understood as subjective, philosophical disagreements over the history and future of technological change rather than as objective, material disagreements over the technologies themselves. It focuses on the deep disagreements over whether artificial general intelligence (AGI) will prove transformative for human society—a question that is analytically prior to that of whether this transformative effect will help or harm humanity. The article begins by distinguishing two fundamental camps in this debate. The first of these can be identified as “transformationalists,” who argue that continued AI development will inevitably have a profound effect on society. Opposed to them are “skeptics,” a more eclectic group united by their disbelief that AI can or will live up to such high expectations. Each camp admits further “strong” and “weak” variants depending on their tolerance for epistemic risk. These stylized contrasts help identify a set of fundamental questions that shape the camps’ respective interpretations of the future of AI. Three questions in particular are focused on: the possibility of nonbiological intelligence, the appropriate time frame of technological predictions, and the assumed trajectory of technological development. In highlighting these specific points of nontechnical disagreement, this article demonstrates the wide range of different arguments used to justify either the transformationalist or skeptical position. At the same time, it highlights the strong argumentative burden of the transformationalist position, the way that belief in this position creates competitive pressures to achieve first-mover advantage, and the need to widen the concept of “expertise” in debates surrounding the future development of AI.

Military Effectiveness and Naval Warfare (with Stephen Biddle). Security Studies, 33 (3): 325-47. 2024.

Abstract Military effectiveness has attracted a growing literature, but this work has focused overwhelmingly on continental warfare. China’s rise highlights naval warfare. Do this literature’s central findings hold for war at sea? We explore this question by comparing patterns in naval and land combat via a new dataset on all interstate surface naval battles fought between 1649 and 1988. We find important differences deriving from the contrasting nature of the sea and land as military environments, which have made naval outcomes more sensitive to materiel, quicker, and more one-sided. But there are also important similarities involving material-nonmaterial interactions. These features pose important implications for policy on future anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) warfare in east Asia, the balance of investment in skill and materiel in naval resource allocation, and research on military effectiveness.

Working Papers

The Synthesis Problem: Knowledge Production and Integration in the Age of AI

Prediction Markets and War

Where the Model Frequently Meets the Road: Combining Statistical, Formal, and Case Study Methods with Andrew Bennett and Bear Braumoeller

Works in Progress

State Capacity and Capital-Intensive Warfare: The Influence of Institutional Structure During the Anglo-Dutch Wars

Defining Militarism: Towards an Empirical Framework

Time and the Nation: War, History, and Collective Identity