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Fires and Falsehoods in California
Security actors around the world are beginning to recognize the risks posed by information manipulation surrounding extreme weather, climate resilience, and the clean energy transition. The overlapping interests in the physical carbon economy and the digital attention economy provide fertile ground for opportunistic extremists and authoritarian states to scapegoat adversaries, undermine democratic legitimacy, and warp policymaking processes.
California is a prime example of where these dynamics will continue to play out as climate change impacts worsen, geopolitics fragments, and information ecosystems are transformed. California plays an outsized economic role both in the United States and globally. The state produces three-quarters of the country’s fruits and nuts, is home to a significant portion of global tech infrastructure and Fortune 500 companies, and ranks number one in the country for tourism spending. California’s GDP would rank fourth globally, just ahead of Japan, if it were an independent nation. California hosts the largest military population of any US state, houses infrastructure for detecting or countering missile attacks on the United States, and would be a critical US staging ground in the event of conflict over Taiwan or North Korea.
It is also highly vulnerable to climate change impacts and extreme weather, most notably wildfires and drought. These economic, environmental, and security factors result in a state that is susceptible to the kind of mis- and disinformation that undermines climate action, sows seeds of social division, endangers citizens during disasters, and undermines national security. These threats can come from a mix of actors and motives, including opportunistic political leaders, foreign actors conducting hybrid warfare, domestic extremists undermining social cohesion, outrage merchants monetizing attention, and well-meaning people caught up in algorithmic echo-chambers.
(more…)Feeding Resilience: The Conflict, Climate, and Food Nexus of the War in Iran
By Erin Sikorsky and Noah Fritzhand
In 2023, the Center for Climate and Security (CCS) launched the Feeding Resilience project to examine the intersection of food, climate, and national security. One of the precipitating shocks informing the project was the Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent global food crisis that stemmed not only from the conflict but also from climate change-driven hazards and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Food prices reached an all-time high in the summer of 2022, and Russia wasted no time in exploiting the fragile global food system for its political ends. As we wrote in 2022, these conditions impacted countries outside Eastern Europe, including Somalia, where consecutive droughts compounded with price shocks, Ecuador and Panama, where food shortages sparked protests.
Now, with the war in Iran, we have a second tragic example of how conflict and climate shocks intersect with one another to negatively affect food security worldwide. The conflict poses risks to food security at the local, regional, and global levels – risks amplified by intensifying extreme weather and climate hazards. Further compounding the crisis is the global humanitarian support system’s current lack of preparedness, with agencies like the World Food Program woefully underfunded. This post takes each of these challenges in turn.
(more…)WATCH: How Might Solar Geoengineering Affect Global Security?
Earlier this week, CCS Director Erin Sikorsky joined SRM360 for a live webinar on the nexus of national security and solar geoengineering. Other speakers included Sofia Kabbej, associate researcher at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS), an IMCCS consortium member, and Beth Chalecki, associate professor of International Relations at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
CCS also partnered with SRM360 on a new primer on the topic, which you can read here.
For more on CCS’s work on the security dynamics of climate intervention, click here.
CSR Takes Main Stage at the 2026 Munich Security Conference
The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR), including its Center for Climate and Security (CCS), had several team members take the Main Stage at the Munich Security Conference last weekend. From the compounding effects of climate change to the new frontier of competition in outer space to the challenge of managing nuclear proliferation, CSR experts offered key observations and analysis as the world convenes to solve our most pressing security challenges.
A Peacekeeper’s Guide to the Galaxy? Relaunching Space Governance
CSR Chief Executive Officer Mallory Stewart joined government ministers from France and Germany, as well as private-sector leaders, to discuss the future of space security and the implications of emerging technologies for 21st-century space governance.
Mushrooming: Tackling Growing Nuclear-Proliferation Risks
CSR Board Member Rose Gottemoeller talked about the future of nuclear risk with the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a leading member of the French National Assembly, and academic experts.
Degrees of Instability: Climate Security in a Warming World
CCS Director Erin Sikorsky moderated a Climate Security Town Hall among German, Indian, and US senior policymakers on how a changing climate and environmental conditions are reshaping and exacerbating global patterns of vulnerability and instability.