The Bureaucratic Politics of Cyber Strategy
How bureaucratic politics inside the U.S. national security state shape the development and use of offensive cyber capabilities.
I study political violence and armed groups — how they recruit, hold together, fragment, and how they adapt to new tools of war.
I'm an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Connecticut and a Democracy Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center. I received my PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2015.
My current work centers on rebel recruitment — who joins armed groups, and how that shapes the conflicts they wage — and also how armed groups innovate and employ new technologies like AI.
The book · Oxford University Press, 2022
Divided Not Conquered
How rebels fracture, and how splinters behave.
A theory of why armed organizations break apart — and what their splinters do next. Drawing on case studies and original data, the book argues that internal politics, not external pressure, is the engine of rebel fragmentation.
Finalist · Conflict Research Society Book of the Year, 2023 · Reviewed in Armed Forces & Society, Perspectives on Politics, and Choice
Featured articles
All publications →Veterans, Novices, and Patterns of Rebel Recruitment
Why some armed groups draw on military veterans and others recruit novices — and what that means for how they fight.
Internal Politics and the Fragmentation of Armed Groups
A theory of organizational fracture: how internal contests over leadership and ideology break rebellions apart.