Description
The National Security Economic Theory (NASCENT) program aims to establish a principled theoretical foundation for geoeconomics, enabling evidence-based economic statecraft and defining a rigorous scholarly field of quantitative geoeconomics. The program seeks to achieve the following objectives: test the technical hypothesis that economic mechanism design, computer science formal methods, and experimental economics can be combined to construct a robust scientific framework for geoeconomics, and prevent strategic surprise by building the methodologies and tools necessary to both anticipate and mitigate unintended consequences of economic statecraft. Key aspects of the program include:
* Development of a geoeconomic toolbox to provide an operational advantage to the Department of War (DoW), other U.S. Government entities, and the U.S. private sector
* Creation of novel economic mechanisms that generate economic value while creating positive national security outcomes for the United States
* Reduction to practice of NASCENT theory in algorithmic form
* Sound assumptions that are precisely described, realistic, and minimal
* Research methodology approaches that may range from novel approaches to "pencil and paper" mathematics, microeconomic theory, and theoretical computer science to usage of highly parameterized transformer-based models
* Notional operational use of theory, including the creation of a "playbook" of notional geoeconomic responses to preconditions created by adversary actions
* Test and evaluation of geoeconomic theory developed by NASCENT performers according to the metrics described in the program metrics section.