Policy Researcher & Developer
Alyssa I. Agard
I am a Master of Public Policy candidate at Rutgers University and founder of Agard Research Associates Inc., a nonprofit research institute. My work spans defense policy analysis, quantitative research, and institutional design.
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Research
Featured Research
Deterrence in Orbit
PLA Counterspace Doctrine, JADO, and the Vulnerability of Space-Based Nuclear Command and Control
This article introduces the concept of the “space-nuclear firewall.” The concept describes a critical doctrinal assumption: that conventional space operations and nuclear C3 functions can be managed within a unified domain framework without triggering escalation.
I am a historian first, drawn to the raw human experience of conflict: the motives that compelled warriors to fight, to endure, and to die for causes larger than themselves. My interests run from the Mongol Empire and the statecraft of Inner Asia to Norse and Viking martial tradition, and thence to American military history from the Revolution through the Cold War, held together throughout by one question, which is what persuades a person that death in pursuit of something meaningful is preferable to a life without it.That question carried me by no long road into contemporary defense policy, where I study escalation under incomplete information, the vulnerability of the command architectures built to restrain it, and the organizational and cognitive habits of the people who decide, joining archival and primary source work to quantitative and geospatial modeling. I hold that the best policy research rests upon a deep reading of the past, and that the historian's instinct to ask why is the most valuable habit a researcher can carry into any field; I am, in the end, still asking whether the motives that shaped the battlefields of 197 AD yet operate in the command centers of the present.
Projects
Featured Project
The Primacy Premium
Conditional Forcasts of Defense and Commercial Markets Under Chinese Military Primacy
A conditional forecasting pipeline that models how global defense spending, arms transfers, and commercial risk pricing would reallocate under three distinct pathways to Chinese military primacy by 2035.
Where no existing tool answers the question, I build one. Python handles the simulation and numerical modeling, R and SPSS the statistics, SQL the data management, ArcGIS the geospatial work. When a model needs to reach readers who will not install anything, it runs in the browser in JavaScript and React, standalone and dependency-free.The simulations rest on formal structure rather than fitted curves: escalation adjudicated algorithmically across a graduated ladder, satellite constellation degradation traced through its effect on missile warning coverage, decision value under delay composed from Amdahl's Law and exponential decay. Each is validated against documented empirical cases and traced to its cited sources.Current work applies the same apparatus to economic questions. Parameterized inputs, exponential decay, sensitivity surfaces, now in financial modeling for economic research rather than corporate finance. I also ship production software, chiefly Office add-ins built on the Office.js API and released open-source.A model is worth nothing if its assumptions cannot be inspected. The audit is part of the instrument, not an appendix. Everything is reproducible: code, documentation, and methodology on GitHub.
© 2026 Alyssa I. Agard. All rights reserved. Site content, text, and original media may not be reproduced without permission. Source code for projects hosted on GitHub is licensed under their respective repository licenses.