Articles – Page 2

The Future of the Frontline: Embedding Gender in the Transition to Drone Warfare

The transition toward drone warfare is transforming the frontline. Drawing on Ukraine’s experience, this article explores how remote warfare challenges conventional standards for combat effectiveness. These transformations create new opportunities and threats; the necessity for precision, composure, and critical thinking bolsters women’s greater capacity to perform as impressive drone operators. Alternatively, gendered stereotypes and psychological challenges persist. This article outlines pathways through which NATO can integrate gender perspectives into the deployment of uncrewed systems in order to optimize the integration of combat innovation.

Cyber Security and Emerging Threats

Resilience Through Marketing, Dual‑Use Technologies, and the Power of Public Opinion

Whether it is NATO’s eastern front or the Persian Gulf, wars today have a variety of drivers that range from troops to weapons systems. Many of these advanced technologies are dual-use in nature, often switching between military and commercial (or civilian) settings. Bringing greater urgency to this matter, prominent defence technologies that are sensitive also Read More…

Tessa McDermid Women in Security

Encoded Bias: How Gender Analysis Benefits NATO’s AI Expansion

Military AI technologies have the potential to replicate gender bias due to the ways AI machine learning encodes patterns in data. In this article, Tessa McDermid argues that as NATO expands its investment in military AI technologies, it must equally commit to monitoring how these systems risk reproducing gender bias. By adopting corrective frameworks that align its AI Strategy with core Alliance values, NATO can meet its goals in advancing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda.

Previous Events

AI and Warfare: When Machines Make Decisions – Event Report

On Monday, May 25, 2026, the NATO Association of Canada hosted a panel discussion titled “AI and Warfare: When Machines Make Decisions”. The discussion brought together experts from defence, academia, policy, and industry to examine the growing role of artificial intelligence in modern warfare. This report provides a detailed overview of the event’s discussions.

Cyber Security and Emerging Threats

Delegating Destruction: AI and the Ethics of Warfare

As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in modern warfare, it is reshaping how states conduct war and raising urgent questions of ethics and accountability regarding the potential absence of human judgment in lethal decisions. If machines can decide when force is used, who ultimately remains accountable for the decision to take a human life in war?

Security, Trade and the Economy

Trade Law and the Coordination of Security-Based Trade Measures

As economic security becomes increasingly central to international policymaking, trade law is being reshaped by sanctions, export controls, and other security-based economic measures. In this article, Hassan Ahmed examines how the WTO’s national security exception has evolved from a narrow safeguard into a more routine justification for strategic economic action, and how allied states increasingly coordinate such measures through informal alignment rather than unified legal frameworks. Using examples ranging from semiconductor export controls to sanctions coordination following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the article explores the growing intersection of trade law, strategic competition, and alliance politics, including the implications for middle powers such as Canada.

Centre For Disinformation Studies

Special Report: Iran, Russia, & Hybrid Warfare Influence Operations

In this special report, Soha Sarfraz examines how Iran and Russia use influence operations and information warfare to weaken democratic cohesion across NATO societies. Particularly by targeting key institutions through digital disruption, narrative manipulation, and the covert exploitation of grassroots mobilization. She argues that these campaigns threaten not only institutions themselves, but also the social trust, political consensus, and informational resilience that sustain collective defence, underscoring the need for stronger democratic resilience and alliance-wide responses to hybrid threats.

Centre For Disinformation Studies

How AI-Generated Misinformation Creates Friendly-Fire Confusion Among NATO Allies

How can allied democracies inadvertently amplify each other’s friendly-fire of confusion and panic? What existential threat does this pose to content creators, journalists, or news anchors? Ji Young Kim examines how AI-generated misinformation shapes interpretation in the context of recent geopolitics and modern media culture.

Canadian Armed Forces

The Citizen-Soldier Problem: What WWI Teaches Us About Today’s Recruitment Gap

Drawing on a collection of WWI-era letters and the experience of Canada’s “citizen-soldiers,” Emma Zhang argues that today’s recruitment gap is not just logistical but cultural, rooted in the erosion of the civic-military bond. Her article explores how rebuilding local connections to service may be key to solving the Canadian Armed Forces’ recruitment crisis.

NATO and Canada

Elephants in the Room: How the Rise of the European Right Poses NATO’s Next Cohesion Challenge

How stable is NATO? While the Presidency of Donald Trump has drawn significant attention to the future of the alliance, the rise of similar far-right ideologies in Europe presents a similar, yet less publicized threat to NATO. Ahead of the 2027 French presidential elections, Jonah Moffatt uses the Rassemblement National as a case study to assess the impact of a victory for the right on NATO cohesion and Canadian foreign policy interests.