Karl P. Mueller is a senior political scientist at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy. He specializes in research related to military and national security strategy, particularly coercion, deterrence, and escalation.
Mueller has written and lectured on a wide variety of subjects, including airpower theory, grand strategy, strategic competition, nuclear weapons, economic sanctions, Baltic and Nordic defense issues, space deterrence, and wargaming. Among his unclassified RAND publications are Exploring Instability Risks in the U.S.-China AI Rivalry (2026), Revisiting RAND’s Russia Wargames after the Ukraine Invasion (2023), The Limits of Restraint: The Military Implications of a Restrained U.S. Grand Strategy in the Asia-Pacific (2022), The Air War Against the Islamic State (2021), Innovation in the United States Air Force: Evidence from Six Cases (2016), Precision and Purpose: Airpower in the Libyan Civil War (2015), Dangerous Thresholds: Managing Escalation in the 21st Century (2008), and Striking First: Preemptive and Preventive Attack in U.S. National Security Policy (2006).
His current projects focus on the strategic implications of advanced artificial intelligence, the future of nuclear deterrence, defense strategies for middle powers and small states, and developing expert-adjudicated wargames for examining future conflict scenarios in Europe and Asia.
Before joining RAND, Mueller was a professor of comparative military studies at the U.S. Air Force's School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS). He earned his Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University and his B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago.
Ph.D. in politics, Princeton University; B.A. in political science, University of Chicago
