# Center for Strategic and International Studies The **Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)** is a Washington, D.C. think tank founded in 1962, focused on defense, national security, foreign policy, and (increasingly since the 2010s) technology policy and economic security. CSIS is **bipartisan in formal positioning but operationally hawkish** — it sits in the same "establishment-nonpartisan-but-defense-leaning" band as the [[Council on Foreign Relations]] and [[Brookings Institution]] on defense matters, but with a much more pronounced defense-budget and force-structure-analysis competence. CSIS is the **principal think-tank consumer of, and contributor to, the Pentagon's annual planning cycle**. Its defense-budget analyses, wargaming exercises, force-structure assessments, and Indo-Pacific deterrence work directly inform Congressional Defense Authorization Act debates and Pentagon procurement decisions. ## Founding and Trajectory CSIS was founded in 1962 at Georgetown University as the Center for Strategic and International Studies, with a focus on Cold War strategic competition with the Soviet Union. The institutional spine of the early CSIS was a cluster of policy intellectuals connected to the Eisenhower–Nixon Republican-foreign-policy tradition — including Arleigh Burke (former Chief of Naval Operations) and David Abshire (CSIS's founding executive director). The org separated from Georgetown in 1987 and became an independent 501(c)(3). Under successive leaders — including former Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) and former Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre — CSIS built out the deep specialized expertise that distinguishes it from peer institutions: - **The Defense Budget Analysis Program** — Todd Harrison's (now Mark Cancian's) work on annual U.S. defense budget assessments - **Wargaming Center** — large-scale Indo-Pacific and Russia-Eastern-Europe scenario exercises - **China Power Project** — Bonny Lin and Scott Kennedy's work on Chinese military and economic capacity - **Iran Project** — Jon Alterman's regional policy work - **Technology and Public Policy** — emerging-tech policy, semiconductor supply chains, AI governance - **Energy Security and Climate Change Program** — Sarah Ladislaw's earlier work, now Kathleen Cooke ## Notable Personnel CSIS has hosted an extensive roster of senior national-security alumni: - [[Henry Kissinger]] — counselor (until his death in 2023) - [[Zbigniew Brzezinski]] — counselor (until his death in 2017) - Sam Nunn — co-chair (former U.S. Senator, Georgia) - John Hamre — president and CEO (former Deputy Secretary of Defense) - Anthony Cordesman (deceased 2024) — long-running senior security analyst - Michael Green — former Senior Vice President for Asia; Bush 43 NSC senior director for Asian affairs - Kathleen Hicks — CSIS scholar before becoming Biden-era Deputy Secretary of Defense The Kissinger and Brzezinski dual-counselor relationship is structurally important: it visibly signaled CSIS's commitment to a bipartisan establishment-foreign-policy posture across decades. ## Programmatic Focus CSIS's contemporary research agenda concentrates on: 1. **Indo-Pacific deterrence** — Taiwan defense scenarios, Japan/Korea force-posture, Philippine alliance 2. **China policy** — economic security, technology competition, military modernization 3. **Defense budget and force structure** — annual analyses widely cited by Congressional Armed Services committees 4. **Ukraine and the broader Russia challenge** — since 2022, very active on Ukraine military assistance, sanctions, and post-conflict planning 5. **Technology policy** — semiconductor industrial policy, AI governance, biotech security 6. **Energy security** — LNG markets, oil-market geopolitics, climate-and-security intersection 7. **Middle East policy** — Iran, Israel, Gulf states, regional security architecture ## Funding CSIS funding is heavily defense-industry-connected and includes substantial foreign-government contributions — both of which have generated periodic transparency controversies: - **Defense contractors** — [[Lockheed Martin]], Raytheon (now RTX), Boeing, [[Northrop Grumman]], General Atomics, and other major Pentagon vendors - **Foreign governments** — Japan, Taiwan, UAE, [[Saudi Arabia]], South Korea, Germany, Norway, and others (CSIS publishes a partial donor list including governments) - **Corporate sponsors** — major tech, energy, and financial firms - **Foundations** — Smith Richardson, Hewlett, MacArthur, Carnegie Corporation - **Individual donors** — high-net-worth defense-and-foreign-policy-engaged donors The combination of defense-contractor and foreign-government funding has generated criticism from both left (concerned about defense-industry capture of think-tank research) and from MAGA-restraint right (concerned about foreign-government influence on U.S. defense policy). CSIS's response has historically been to publish donor lists (more transparently than many peer institutions) and to maintain editorial-independence policies. ## KB Significance CSIS matters to the KB for three reasons: 1. **The defense-hawkish establishment anchor.** CSIS is the principal Washington institution where bipartisan defense-hawk consensus is built, refined, and disseminated. Its annual defense-budget analyses, wargaming exercises, and Indo-Pacific work substantially shape what Congress and the Pentagon treat as "the responsible defense position." MAGA-restraint critics correctly identify CSIS as a central institution of the "Blob" they want to dismantle. 2. **The China-hawk intellectual infrastructure.** CSIS's China Power Project and adjacent work is among the most influential intellectual infrastructure for the bipartisan post-2017 turn toward strategic competition with China — a turn that connects Trump-1 trade-war framing, Biden-era [[CHIPS Act]] and export controls, and contemporary Republican-coalition China hawkishness. 3. **The foreign-government-funding template (and controversy).** CSIS's disclosed foreign-government funding is one of the better-documented cases of what is often opaque elsewhere in the think-tank world; the controversy is illustrative of the broader transparency-and-influence questions that apply across the foreign-policy think-tank ecosystem. ## See Also - [[Hudson Institute]] — peer defense-hawk think tank - [[Brookings Institution]] — peer bipartisan establishment think tank - [[Foundation for Defense of Democracies]] — peer hawk on Iran/sanctions - [[Council on Foreign Relations]] — peer establishment foreign-policy institution - [[RAND Corporation]] — peer defense-research institution (FFRDC, different model) - [[American Enterprise Institute]] — peer center-right defense-and-foreign-policy shop - [[Henry Kissinger]] — long-time CSIS counselor - [[Think Tank Ecosystem]] — broader ecosystem hub