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Decision-Support Tools for National Policymakers

Dr. Christopher Ford • November 20, 2021

The MITRE Corporation published a paper on November 19, 2021, to outline an approach being developed by its researchers to help U.S. leaders make better use of subject-matter expertise in complex policymaking situations such as great power competition with  the People's Republic of China.  Dr. Ford's paper explains the MITRE approach and urges its further exploration as a decision-support tool.  You can download the full paper using the button below, or access it from MITRE's website here.

Download GPC Tools Paper

Executive Summary


Decision-support tools cannot replace the human judgment of high-level decision-makers, but they can assist national leaders in addressing complex national challenges. This paper offers a brief outline of one emergent decision-support methodology that is being developed and evaluated at the MITRE Corporation to support decision-making in advancing U.S. interests in our country’s strategic competition with China. This MITRE methodology captures rigorously-structured insights from a community of human Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), and then incorporates these inputs into a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) model. Beyond simply testing candidate Courses of Action (COAs) against this aggregated expertise, this methodology also permits users to adjust its parameters to test policy ideas against alternative environments. It thus has great promise in helping U.S. leaders cope with a challenging security environment.

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Below is the prepared text upon which Dr. Ford drew in his panel discussion for an even sponsored by the New York State Bar Association on "Nuclear Weapons and International Law" on January 30, 2025.
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Below is the text upon which Dr. Ford based his remarks to the workshop on “Enhancing Regional Security and Addressing WMD Threats in the Middle East,” held in Abu Dhabi, UAE, on January 23, 2023. 
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By Dr. Christopher Ford December 24, 2024
Below is an edited and revised version of the remarks Dr. Ford prepared for a CSIS/PONI Workshop on “Irreversibility in Nuclear Disarmament” at Wilton Park, in the United Kingdom, on December 18, 2024.
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