Jonathan W. Welburn

Financial Panic in the Age of Digital Banking and Social Media

Bank runs as a source of systemic risk are nothing new. To manage systemic risks in the age of social media, regulators may need to anticipate where the crisis will go and build in automatic brakes to slow them down. There likely won't be time to react at the speed of negotiation between regulators and bankers.

Stress Tests: The Right Tool for Strengthening Supply Chains

Isolated interruptions to individual supply chains feel like a thing of the past. Today, the risks are more likely to cut across supply chains and leave companies vulnerable to shared or cascading threats. If we want to make supply chains more resilient, it's time to apply some stress tests.

How the United States Can Deter Ransomware Attacks

To rein in ransomware attacks, the United States needs to upend the risk-reward ratio for hackers and for the countries that harbor or support them. Such a strategy would make networks harder to breach, hit back harder against hackers, and claw back gains from those who succeed.

Supply Chains Have a Cyber Problem

We are entering a world in which cyber disruptions easily become supply chain disruptions, and where supply chains for hardware and software create new cyber risks. Managing these will demand digital-era solutions, including updating tools, regulations, and reporting requirements.

Is DarkSide Really Sorry? Is It Even DarkSide?

The U.S. military relies heavily on commercial energy assets, making the implications of events like the Colonial Pipeline outage more serious than just higher prices at the gas pump. The origins and severity of an attack dictate what the United States might do in response.

A Case for Vaccinating Teachers First

Most agree that America's 18 million health care workers should top the list for COVID-19 vaccination. The 3.3 million teachers should come next. Vaccinating teachers could make it possible to open schools permanently and get parents back to work. That would help the economy recover.

Too Interconnected to Fail

The 2007–08 financial crisis made regulators and lawmakers acutely aware that some financial institutions had become too big to fail. The next big economic crisis may arise outside the financial sector, in highly networked companies that are too interconnected to fail.

Balancing Public Health and Economic Effects of Physical Distancing: Q&A with Jonathan Welburn

Jonathan Welburn, an operations researcher at RAND, has spent years studying how economic shocks ripple outward like a contagion through the economy. He recently helped develop an online tool that policymakers can use to manage the health and economic effects of COVID-19 interventions.

Supply Chain Disruptions Due to COVID-19 and Social Distancing

There are significant epidemiological and economic risks and uncertainties with physical distancing policies put into effect in the United States to reduce the growth of COVID-19. We have estimated the economy-wide impacts of a set of these policies to provide a sense of their likely economic toll.

The Danger of Converting a Health Crisis into a Financial Crisis

The impulse to do something to help businesses right now is well-intended, but lending to companies that were highly leveraged pre-crisis is a risky bet. Assistance could be best directed toward sound enterprises that are likely to survive and contribute to boosting the economy in the coming years.

The Social Distancing Economy: Q&A with RAND Experts

Congress and the White House are weighing economic policies to help people acutely affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Here are insights from RAND experts on what might be effective in terms of fiscal policy, stimulus spending, and emergency relief to affected workers.

When Cyber Attacks Occur, Who Should Investigate?

Data breaches and cyberattacks cross geopolitical boundaries, targeting individuals, corporations and governments. Creating a global body with a narrow focus on investigating and assigning responsibility for cyberattacks could be the first step to creating a digital world with accountability.

Let's (Not) Play Games with Dodd-Frank

Dodd-Frank, the 2010 financial reform law, is now itself the target of reform. Those involved with the overhaul could draw inspiration from an unlikely source: video games. A simulation game could help predict the effects of changes to regulations—and avoid high-stakes missteps.

Report

Identifying and Prioritizing Systemically Important Entities: Advancing Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience

This report helps the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency codify the concept of systemically important critical infrastructure by documenting the work surrounding systemic risks and cyber risks in software supply chains.

Journal Article

Modeling America's Racial Wealth Disparities: Mathematical Models Help Chart Pathways for Closing Racial Wealth Gaps

This commentary discusses how simulation models can help chart pathways for closing racial wealth gaps in the United States.

Draft

The Global Economy at the Firm-Level: Estimating Input-Output Linkages in Production Networks and the Potential for Systemic Risk

Estimates a true firm-level model with global input-output linkages in production networks and the potential for systemic risk.

Draft

Exploring Intergenerational Wealth Transfer Dynamics with Agent-Based Models

Introduces a modeling environment that could be used for testing the long run impacts of policy interventions on differences between white and Black wealth.

Draft

Interdependence Across the National Critical Functions

Provides a novel interpretation of national critical functions to enhance their use for research by the risk analysis community.

Report

Overcoming Compound Racial Inequity: Policies and Costs for Closing the Black-White Wealth Gap

The wealth gap between Black and white Americans is the result of inequities compounded over time. Using Survey of Consumer Finances data, the authors analyze the wealth gap and the potential impacts of disparity-reducing wealth-allocation policies.

Report

Rivalry in the Information Sphere: Russian Conceptions of Information Confrontation

Information confrontation, with historical roots in Russian (and Soviet) military thinking, is an important element of Russian military strategy. The Ukrainian experience offers insights into Russia's present-day and future use of information confrontation and hybrid warfare.

Journal Article

Cyber Deterrence with Imperfect Attribution and Unverifiable Signaling

Examines a game of deterrence in which the defender can signal its retaliatory capability but can only imperfectly attribute an attack. We show that there are equilibria in which the defender sends noisy signals to increase its expected payoff.

Report

Identifying Critical IT Products and Services

Researchers have identified the software and businesses that provide critical information technology products and services and developed a framework to continue this analysis as technology evolves. They assessed both software risk and business risk.

Commentary

Disclosure of Software Supply Chain Risks

This Perspective presents a set of proposed disclosure rules that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could implement to help address software supply chain risks and improve security.

Report

A Risk Assessment of National Critical Functions During COVID-19: Challenges and Opportunities

This report presents a framework for assessing risk that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses to the National Critical Functions, describes challenges in implementing the framework, and provides recommendations for improving it.

Report

U.S. Air Force Enlisted Classification and Reclassification: Potential Improvements Using Machine Learning and Optimization Models

The authors review options for improving processes for classifying and reclassifying enlisted active-duty, non–prior service airmen for initial skills training in the United States Air Force.

Report

Cyber Mission Thread Analysis: An Implementation Guide for Process Planning and Execution

Cyber mission thread analysis, which identifies mission-critical systems in a cyber threat environment, requires a disciplined, well-planned process for its execution. This report provides a proposed guide for its planning and implementation.

Commentary

Securing the Microelectronics Supply Chain: Four Policy Issues for the U.S. Department of Defense to Consider

The authors analyze how the U.S. Department of Defense could mitigate microelectronics supply chain risk. They consider the appropriate mix of policy levers to promote a microelectronics technology ecosystem that is aligned with U.S. strategic goals.

Draft

Addressing Emerging Technology Adoption in Food Production through Digital Games

Examines how blockchain, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence with machine learning, and satellite imaging are being or could be implemented to decrease uncertainty and mitigate risks to support agricultural production and distribution.

Journal Article

Systemic Cyber Risk and Aggregate Impacts

High-profile attacks illustrate the potential for systemic cyber risk. We estimate the aggregate economic impact of firm-specific attacks finding potential large losses from downstream propagations.

Draft

Estimating the Impact of COVID-19 on Corporate Default Risk

Estimates the impact of COVID-19 and the likelihood of firm defaults, the potential for firm exits, and average firm default probabilities.

Report

An Estimation of the Economic Costs of Social-Distancing Policies

This report offers a series of economic models that provide an initial assessment of possible short-term economy-wide effects of some social-distancing policies during the coronavirus disease 2019 crisis.

Tool

The Health and Economic Impacts of Nonpharmaceutical Interventions to Address COVID-19: A Decision Support Tool for State and Local Policymakers

There is an urgent need for an assessment of public health interventions to address coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and determine when to relax them. This document describes the COVID-19 Decision Support Tool, which is designed to fill that need.

Report

Building Agile Combat Support Competencies to Enable Evolving Adaptive Basing Concepts

RAND researchers review the motivations for adaptive basing, describe a footprint model used for estimating its implications for Agile Combat Support (ACS), and discuss recommendations for the ACS community and the U.S. Air Force at large.

Report

Measuring Cybersecurity and Cyber Resiliency

This report presents a framework for the development of metrics -- and a method for scoring them -- that indicates how well a U.S. Air Force mission or system is expected to perform in a cyber-contested environment.

Research Brief

Systemic Risk: It's Not Just in the Financial Sector

After a decade of focus on financial firms, new analysis using an innovative approach and new dataset shows that firms in a diverse range of sectors, such as technology and telecommunications, pose a systemic risk to the economy at large.

Report

Systemic Risk in the Broad Economy: Interfirm Networks and Shocks in the U.S. Economy

Following the 2008 financial crisis, little attention was paid to systemic risks in the economy at large. The authors of this report address that gap, finding evidence that systemic risk extends beyond the financial sector.

Report

Deterring Attacks Against the Power Grid: Two Approaches for the U.S. Department of Defense

The Defense Department increasingly relies on electric power to accomplish critical missions. This report explores two approaches for deterring attacks against the U.S. power grid: deterrence by denial and deterrence by cost imposition.

Research Brief

Evaluation Finds Excess Property Program Is Efficient and Effective, but Perceptions About Militarized Police Persist

The Law Enforcement Support Office program is efficient and effectively reuses excess Department of Defense property, but perceptions persist that the program contributes to the militarization of police.

Report

An Evaluation of the Department of Defense's Excess Property Program: Law Enforcement Agency Equipment Acquisition Policies, Findings, and Options

The Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO) program is efficiently run and effectively reuses excess Department of Defense property, but this is unlikely to resolve perceptions that the program contributes to the militarization of police.

Draft

Crises Beyond Belief: Findings on contagion, the role of beliefs, and the Eurozone debt crisis from a borrower lender game

Presents a borrower-lender game with sequential moves and imperfect information, to discuss the potential for contagion through debt and trade channels while highlighting the role of beliefs.

Report

Estimating the Global Cost of Cyber Risk: Methodology and Examples

This report shares a transparent and adaptable methodology for estimating present and future global costs of cyber risk. The report has a companion Excel-based modeling and simulation platform that allows users to alter assumptions.

Report

Stateless Attribution: Toward International Accountability in Cyberspace

This report reviews the state of cyber attribution and examines alternative options for producing standardized and transparent attribution that may overcome concerns about credibility.