Hide table of contents

This article is part of our series focused on improving AI risk strategy. Later entries will explore potential contenders for AI risk macro strategies, as well as outline our current work modeling AI risk scenarios (with the goal of improving strategic planning). You can learn more about our motivations for this project by reading Piece 0 in this series; furthermore, if you'd like to learn more about our current AI risk modeling work, you can find our website for the Automating-MTAIR portion of our project here

 

Table of Contents:

  • Definition & Characteristics
    • What is A Grand Strategy?
    • Core Principles of Grand Strategies:
    • The Difference between “Normal” Strategies, Grand Strategies, and Merely Big Projects
  • Examples of Macro & Grand Strategic Efforts:
    • The Marshall Plan (1948-1951)
    • China's Belt and Road Initiative
    • The Apollo Program (1961-1972)
    • The Manhattan Project
    • The New Deal
    • Bretton Woods (Post WW2 World Order)
    • Eradication of Smallpox
    • Open Source Software Development (Linux foundation)
    • Svalbard Seedbank
    • Allfed (or GiveWell or the strategies behind the ecosystem of similar orgs)
  • Examples of Projects that we would not count as Macro or Grand Strategies
    • Coordination around Satellites
      • Grand Strategy vs. National Strategy
    • Impactful projects but not grand strategy:
      • Arab spring
    • Coalitions vs. Alliances
  • Conclusion

 

Executive Summary: 

Two strategic terms that hold great potential for AI Governance, as well as the broader effort of mitigation of existential risk from AI are found in the concepts of Macro and Grand StrategiesMacro and Grand strategies represent comprehensive frameworks for coordinating multiple domains and actors toward achieving overarching objectives. From the Marshall Plan's reconstruction of post-war Europe to the global effort to eradicate smallpox, these examples demonstrate how grand strategies can mobilize resources, align incentives, and coordinate diverse stakeholders toward transformative goals. The key principles of strategic thinker’s conception of grand strategies specifically that we examine in this piece—Friction, Reciprocal Effect, Unity of Purpose, Resource Management, and Adaptability—provide crucial insights into both the challenges and requirements for successful strategic implementation at the grandest scale. It is important to note from the onset that not all macro strategies are grand strategies but all grand strategies are macro strategies. When we wrote this piece initially, we were focusing on grand strategies and later expanded the scope to include macro-strategies that share core characteristics of grand strategic thinking. Nonetheless, the case examples we delve into here provide valuable insights into top-level strategic thinking, planning, and execution, despite the differences between grand and macro-strategies being contested within most of the strategic literature and expert input we have encountered over the course of this project.

As introduced in Piece 0 of this series, the international system faces an unprecedented challenge in the development of artificial intelligence. The existential risks posed by advanced AI systems demand a response that matches the scale and complexity of the challenge. Yet despite the growing recognition of AI's transformative potential and associated risks, we currently lack a coherent grand strategy to address these challenges. The examples and principles explored in this piece illuminate why such a strategy is not just desirable but necessary.

The historical cases we've examined demonstrate that grand strategies are particularly crucial when facing challenges that:

  • Span multiple domains and require coordinated action across different sectors
  • Involve both immediate actions and long-term planning
  • Necessitate the alignment of diverse stakeholders with potentially competing interests
  • Demand significant resource mobilization and sustained commitment
  • Present complex, evolving threats that require adaptive responses

The development of artificial intelligence checks all of these boxes. Like the Manhattan Project's race to develop nuclear weapons or the Apollo Program's moon landing mission, the challenge of ensuring beneficial AI development requires coordinating technical innovation, policy frameworks, and institutional arrangements. However, the stakes are even higher—while previous grand strategies often focused on national power or specific achievements, the challenge of AI safety concerns the future of human civilization itself.

The absence of a comprehensive grand strategy for AI risk is particularly concerning given the principles we've discussed. Without accounting for friction in AI development and deployment, we risk underestimating the challenges of implementing safety measures. Without considering the reciprocal effects of AI policy decisions, we may inadvertently create more dangerous competitive dynamics. Without unity of purpose among key actors in AI development, we risk working at cross-purposes and failing to achieve crucial safety objectives.

As we move forward in this series, we will build upon these foundational concepts of grand strategy to examine how they can be applied specifically to the challenge of AI risk. Understanding how previous grand strategies succeeded—and failed—in coordinating responses to existential challenges provides crucial insights for developing a coherent response to the unprecedented challenge of ensuring beneficial AI development.

The task ahead is as monumental as it is historically unique, but the challenges overcame by previous grand strategic efforts were, in many cases, also untrodden territory. By learning from historical examples, reading into the literature of strategic planning, and reflecting on the thousands of hours of discussions about AI risk with those working in the field, we can begin to develop a comprehensive framework needed to guide humanity's approach to one of the most consequential technological developments in our history. Staying on a narrow path as AI capabilities continue to race towards AGI–and, one day, super-intelligence– is no easy feat, nor one that any one team of researchers alone can hope to develop. One of our goals with this series is to start a discussion about what a grand strategy for AI risk may look like, and provide an overview at our efforts to add to past projects (specifically, MTAIR) in order to create tools that can help the branches of the AI safety community to coordinate, plan, and execute that which we need to in order to maximize our shot at survival this decade and beyond. 

 

Introduction

As we outlined in Part 0, we believe that something is missing in the current AI risk discourse–a central, systemically designed macro or grand strategy for AI risk governance and mitigation. This begs the question, what even is a grand or macro strategy to begin with?

 

In this piece, we introduce core definitions of grand strategy, provide an overview of some of the strategic studies literature we have dove into over the past 6-months, and introduce some core considerations that we recognize as key to the creation of any grand strategy, or accomplishment of any purposefully, mono-motivationally coordinated effort to tackle the greatest threat this century: risks related to artificial intelligence. 

 

After providing an overview of the strategic literature, highlighting core considerations for macro strategies, and introducing our framework that we build upon in further articles in this series, we turn to outlining some of the historical examples of implementations of grand strategies.

Definition & Characteristics

 

In short, a grand strategy is a comprehensive, long-term approach that coordinates multiple domains and actors toward achieving an overarching goal. While often associated with nations and military power, grand strategies can be applied to any large-scale, complex challenge requiring sustained, coordinated effort across different domains. Macro strategies  span multiple domains in order to achieve a goal for any set of agents. Where-as grand strategy most often refers to the pursuit of nation state objectives, there is broader agreement in strategic literature that macro-strategies apply to larger swaths of organization structures, coalitions, objectives types, etc…

 

What is a Macro Strategy?

Game theoretically, a macros strategy can be defined in game theoretic terms as a set of strategies for multiple agents (institutions, individuals, etc..) that tells each of them what to do in every possible situation. 

Macro strategies combine/specify the strategies of a “coalition” of agents such that the overall results/payoffs are significantly better than in the default (uncoordinated) outcome.

In other words, a grand strategy is a set of “best responses” for a group/coalition of agents that fully define exactly how each of them responds/act to all possible states of the world in order to achieve an overarching motive or goal, where the goal is (largely) shared by all members of the coalition.

Historical examples of grand and macro strategies illustrate how these principles operate in practice. The Western containment strategy during the Cold War exemplifies a coordinated effort among multiple nations to limit Soviet expansion, integrating military alliances (e.g., NATO), economic initiatives (e.g., the Marshall Plan), and ideological efforts to maintain Western dominance. Similarly, the UK's post-World War II strategy as a junior partner to the United States—accepting a subordinate but influential role within the Western alliance—demonstrates a calculated response to geopolitical shifts that preserved British global influence despite economic decline.

Other cases illustrate how grand strategies emerge in response to power transitions. Postwar Germany and Japan, once adversaries of the Anglo-American order, strategically aligned themselves with the U.S.-led system, securing economic prosperity and security under the American nuclear umbrella while positioning themselves as critical economic powers. Conversely, Stalin’s "socialism in one country" doctrine in the Soviet Union represented a grand strategy distinct from traditional expansionist approaches, prioritizing domestic industrialization and military strength over international communist revolution. Similarly, France’s postwar pursuit of strategic autonomy under Charles de Gaulle, including its independent nuclear program and diplomatic maneuvers outside of NATO’s integrated command structure, highlights an alternative grand strategy aimed at maximizing national sovereignty in a U.S.-dominated world.

These examples underscore that grand strategy is not confined to military campaigns alone. While securing state power often involves military considerations, strategic planners must account for broader societal, economic, and environmental contexts to meet strategic priorities effectively. The concept of a Pyrrhic victory—a short-term tactical success that ultimately undermines broader strategic objectives—illustrates this principle. For instance, the overextension of Soviet resources in its arms race with the United States contributed to its eventual economic collapse, demonstrating how a poorly calibrated strategy can be self-defeating.

Macro strategies focus on achieving goals in the face of complex and often competing pressures, offering a framework for making decisions in a way that transcends short-term tactics, providing recommendations on thinking through key trade-offs. A Grand strategy is an essential framework for addressing complex challenges and achieving sustained goals across various domains–with most historical examples being that of primarily nation-state power. This brings us to another advantage of the grand strategy–and more broadly macro-strategies– as a strategic approach: often when people think about how nations secure power, the most immediate example of this is through the use of military campaigns. However, even when the explicit goal of a grand strategy is to secure state power–done so primarily through military means–strategic planners need to also account for other domains such as broader societal, economic, and environmental contexts in order to best meet strategic priorities. We can think of cases like that of Pyrrhus, the Greek king who defeated the Romans in 279 BCE but whose victory was so costly in terms of resources, men, etc… that it was not worth the effort. This event led to the term pyrrhic victory to describe victories that, although tactical successes, do not aid–but hurt– overall strategic objectives. 

Within classical military doctrine, Grand Strategies are subject to Political Policies, or the overarching plural goals of a nation-state. In this rendering, grand strategies are utilized as a functional bridge between political policy and operational strategies. However, later iterations of this doctrine muddle the distinction between political policies and grand strategies, however, for the sake of this, we will be referring to political policies as the overarching goals a grand strategy is subject to. The concept of political policies refers specifically to the policies of nation-states, given that our framework is meant to apply to all strategies, including but not only including that of nation-states, we instead will be opting to just refer to a given group's goals broadly, instead of to political policy more narrowly. 

Game theoretical definition of grand and macro strategy is found within the field of strategic studies. Macro strategy within strategic planning refers to a comprehensive, large scale, long-term plan that integrates and aligns the political, economic, military, and diplomatic resources of an entity (such as a nation, organization, or institution) to achieve overarching objectives (Silove, 2017Charles Hill, 2004Posen & Ross, 1997). Before further distinguishing grand strategy from the more popular conception of strategy, it is important to first look at how strategic scholars think about strategy itself. As the father of modern strategy, Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz, penned in his work On War “Strategy is the employment of the battle to gain the end of the War; it must therefore give an aim to the whole military action, which must be in accordance with the object of the War; in other words, Strategy forms the plan of the War, and to this end it links together the series of acts which are to lead to the final decision” (Clausewitz, 1832/1909 Pg. 98). Looking to a more modern notion of strategy, we can turn to Thomas Mahnken in his book Thinking About Competitive Strategies, “Strategy is concerned with how one applies one’s resources to achieve one’s aim. In the military sphere, it is concerned with how to employ military means to influence a particular competitor” (Mahnken, Pg.7). Compared to other conceptions of strategy, grand strategy focuses on achieving an overarching priority in the face of complex and often competing pressures, offering a framework for making decisions in a way that transcends short-term tactics. One of the key benefits of grand strategy is in its capacity to provide recommendations on thinking through key trade-offs. In other strategic frameworks, strategic priorities account for a more narrow set, or sub-set, of considering factors while taking other aspects of the game board, so to speak, as expected. For example, a strategy employed by an organization may account for resource management & acquisition, team management, and KPIs for a given time. However, a grand strategy–often suited for only the largest scale goals– perhaps created for a coalition of world-spanning, well-connected organizations may involve strategic considerations and plans surrounding economic, diplomatic, and scientific factors. grand and macro strategies, at their core, therefore, serve as comprehensive frameworks that align political, economic, military, and societal elements to achieve overarching objectives while navigating uncertainty and competition (Silove, 2017Posen, 1984).

In discussions about grand strategies employed by nation-states, the scope of the strategy extends beyond military considerations to encompass the full spectrum of a state's capabilities, ensuring that economic stability, political cohesion, and diplomatic leverage align toward long-term strategic aims (Brands, 2014Liddell Hart, 1967). The comprehensive approach enables states to anticipate and manage emerging threats while maintaining the flexibility to adapt to shifting geopolitical landscapes (Dueck, 2006). Moreover, a successful grand strategy relies on a state's ability to balance immediate security needs with sustainable growth, preventing overextension or resource depletion that could jeopardize long-term power projection (Kennedy, 1987). In this sense, a grand strategy functions as both a guiding philosophy and a practical roadmap, linking policy decisions across multiple domains to maintain national or organizational strength over time (Mahnken, 2012).

Furthermore, we recognize that generally grand strategy is a term reserved for the level of strategic planning we have already discussed employed by nation-states or groups of nation-states. Although the term typically sits outside of discussions around corporate or non-profit strategy, we will be using the term to describe the top level of coordination or strategic planning for any large group of people–including nation-states, corporations, and non-profits, as well as mixed coalitions of the three. However, as we argue in more depth here, we see limiting grand strategy to solely the domain of nation-states and military objectives overlooks the category of strategy’s core utility: the structured alignment of diverse resources toward overarching, long-term goals. At its heart, grand strategy is about system-level thinking—coordinating actions across domains to shape the future in a desired direction.

This series is largely predicated on the view that in the modern era, global catastrophic risks like bio risk, AI risk, climate change, nuclear risks, as well as broader threats to the normal functioning of society like financial stability, preservation/expansion of democracy, human/animal rights, etc… require a similar level of integrated, long-term planning. These issues transcend borders, sectors, and traditional power structures, often involving a range of non-state actors—from international organizations and NGOs to corporations and academic consortia.

The macro strategy framework provides a foundation for addressing complex challenges and achieving sustained goals across various domains. We concede that most historical examples of grand strategies are primarily nation-state power–especially involving diplomatic and military implementations. However, in this piece, we hope to provide substantive examples of attempts at implementing grand strategies by both nation-states and in civilian capacities.

 

A grand strategy typically refers to a comprehensive, long-term approach that:

  1. Coordinates and directs all instruments of national power (economic, military, diplomatic, etc.)
  2. Serves overarching national objectives
  3. Provides a framework for handling multiple challenges and opportunities
  4. Extends across multiple administrations/time periods

Some of the key characteristics of a grand strategy include:

  • Holistic Approach: Incorporates multiple domains (e.g., political, economic, military).
  • Long-term Perspective: Aims for sustainable outcomes over decades or even centuries.
  • Alignment of Resources: Ensures that diverse actions and tools contribute to the same overarching objectives.
  • Adaptability: Anticipates and adjusts to changing circumstances and threats.

Core Principles of Grand Strategies: 

The challenging project of developing a grand strategy can perhaps be best summed up by Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz’s quote: 

 "Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean that everything is very easy" 

Clausewitz (1832/1984) highlights the inherent complexity of strategic planning, where even seemingly straightforward principles require skillful, systematic addressing due to the unpredictable and evolving nature of conflict, diplomacy, and resource allocation (Gray, 2016Murray & Grimsley, 1996). This section outlines five strategic considerations that go into making up grand strategies. The five components here are not exhaustive. However, in our research, we have found these to come up time and time again, and see the five combining to equip strategists with a pragmatic, adaptive path forward toward a given goal. In this section, we outline the core principles that go into grand strategies, these are Friction (or Friktion), the Reciprocal Effect (or Wechselwirkung), Unity of Purpose, Resource Management, and lastly, Adaptability.

The framework we present in this section only reflects one of multiple potential approaches to grand strategy. Our framework is primarily inspired by the work of Von Clausewitz’s lecture series on grand strategy and Clausewitz. Grand strategy is a concept that has taken numerous forms throughout history – and the framework we present here that delineates our understanding of grand strategy is aimed at providing a useful framework for both governmental and civilian motivations. It is written with both organizational design principles and military doctrinal principles in mind, in order to provide an adaptive understanding of grand strategy. We decided to do this for reasons that will become clear later on. 

We will be looking at Friction (or Friktion), Reciprocal Effect (or Wechselwirkung), Unity of Purpose, Resource Management, and lastly, Adaptability.

Each of these principles represents a critical factor that shapes the formulation and implementation of grand strategy, ensuring its resilience and effectiveness amid dynamic geopolitical and organizational landscapes (Freedman, 2015; Brands, 2014).

For now, we will turn toward some of the core principles of grand strategy as outlined by Clausewitz and other strategic scholars:

 

1.Friction (Friktion): 

Written in German as Friktion, Clausewitz's concept that even simple tasks become more challenging when executed in the field. In Book 1 of On War, Clausewitz describes friction as “the force that makes the apparently easy so difficult” While friction manifests at all levels of war, from logistics to decision-making under uncertainty, grand strategy must account for friction on a systemic scale, mitigating its impact on the execution of strategic objectives.

For example, the concept of the fog of war illustrates a form of challenge that might otherwise remain unaccounted for when planning a military campaign. Taking on on a literal meaning on the battlefield while Clausewitz was on campaign during the Napoleonic wars. Yet, even without the black-powder-choked battlefields of the Jena-Auerstedt and the Waterloo campaigns in Clauswitz’s time, the fog of war remains a very real part of any strategic planning. 

A compelling example of overcoming friction in grand strategy is Operation Desert Storm (1991). The U.S.-led coalition faced immense logistical and operational challenges in its effort to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The harsh desert environment, massive troop deployments, coordination among 34 coalition nations, and the unpredictability of Iraqi responses all introduced significant friction. However, the coalition mitigated these issues through meticulous planning, pre-positioning of supplies, and a comprehensive command structure that maintained strategic flexibility.

A key component in reducing friction was the extensive use of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) and real-time battlefield intelligence, which allowed for highly effective strikes with minimal wasted effort. Additionally, strategic deception—such as Operation Desert Sabre, which misled Iraqi forces into expecting a direct amphibious assault—allowed the coalition to execute its ground campaign with minimal resistance. The rapid 100-hour victory in Kuwait demonstrated how thorough strategic preparation, technological superiority, and adaptive execution can overcome the inherent friction of war.

 

2.Reciprocal Effect (Wechselwirkung)

Wechselwirkung – Is another idea from Clausewitz that, as Yale Professors Charles Hill notes in his lecture on Grand Strategy, that there is no perfect translation for. But broadly, Wechselwirkung (Wech-sel-wir-kung) refers to the mutual altering that occurs anytime an action is taken, changing the strategic landscape. When you take an action, you change the game board which in turn leads to your opponent modifying their action. Clausewitz likened war to politics, writing "War is a continuation of politics by other means" and politics–in terms of competition between elites-might best be understood as a chess-like back and forth of moves between opponents, and we see this reflected in Wechselwirkung

Wechselwirkung—Clausewitz’s concept of reciprocal effect—refers to how strategic actions alter the landscape, compelling opponents to adapt and respond dynamically. In grand strategy, this principle means that no plan remains static; every move reshapes the conflict environment, forcing continuous recalibration. Clausewitz captured this idea when he wrote, “War is a continuation of politics by other means” (Clausewitz, 1832/1909), highlighting how political and military competition can both be thought of as ever-evolving–and hence involving a reciprocal effect.

The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) is perhaps one of the highest-stakes examples of Wechselwirkung. When the Soviet Union deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba, it dramatically shifted the strategic balance, forcing the United States to respond. President John F. Kennedy had to navigate a delicate escalation ladder, ensuring that U.S. actions did not provoke a nuclear war while also compelling Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to withdraw the missiles. With each move, the other side had to respond in a way that both met the overarching grand strategic motivation (in this case, national security).

The resolution of the crisis demonstrated that effective grand strategy is not about static planning but about dynamic responsiveness. The ability to anticipate and shape an opponent’s reactions while avoiding miscalculation is essential in any strategic competition, whether in military conflicts, economic rivalries, or geopolitical tensions.

The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) is one of the clearest historical examples of Wechselwirkung, or reciprocal effect, in grand strategy. When the Soviet Union deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba, it dramatically shifted the strategic balance, forcing the United States to respond (Allison & Zelikow, 1971Gaddis, 2005). The U.S. response was not just a reaction, but a deliberate calibration of strategy designed to compel Soviet withdrawal while avoiding full-scale war (Fursenko & Naftali, 1998).

Kennedy’s strategy incorporated a three-tiered de-escalation strategy that consisted of a naval blockade (termed a “quarantine” to avoid the connotations of war), direct diplomatic backchannels, and carefully calibrated signaling through military posturing. Khrushchev, in turn, altered his approach, initially escalating but later negotiating a withdrawal in exchange for a secret U.S. commitment to remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey. This back-and-forth maneuvering illustrates Wechselwirkung in action—every move prompted a counter-move, requiring both sides to continually reassess and adapt their strategies.

The Soviet response demonstrated reciprocal strategic adaptation—Khrushchev initially escalated tensions but later shifted to negotiations, agreeing to withdraw missiles in exchange for a secret U.S. commitment to remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey (Dobbs, 2009).

This dynamic exemplifies Wechselwirkung: each strategic move prompted a countermove, forcing both sides to continuously reassess and refine their strategies (Freedman, 2013; Luttwak, 2001).

 

3.Unity of Purpose

Also referred to as group cohesion or goal alignment, unity of purpose can be thought of as alignment between all instruments of power in the pursuit of the strategic goals (Freedman, 2013).  For example, in the case that the grand strategy is for a nation-state, unity of purpose would refer to all instruments of power within that nation-state working towards the strategic goals outlined in the grand strategy. There is record of working in concert being seen as critical to strategic success starting as far back as Sun Tzu, around ~450 C.E., where he wrote "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat" (Sun Tzu, trans. Griffith, 1971). 

Goal defection or drift are very real threats to corrupting unity of purpose and goal cohesion within a coalition of actors enacting a grand strategy.  A well-structured grand strategy anticipates and corrects for inevitable goal drift through structural, operational, and cultural mechanisms. For example, structural mechanisms laid out in a grand strategy might include independent oversight boards with audit power, incentives tied to strategic objectives, and clear reporting structures - as demonstrated by the Manhattan Project's use of compartmentalized teams under central oversight (Gosling, 1994). These are complemented by operational elements like regular strategy reviews and strategic resource allocation, similar to how the Marshall Plan maintained alignment through conditional aid and regular progress monitoring. 

The cultural dimension requires leadership development focused on strategy, regular learning exercises, and clear communication of priorities, which the Apollo Program exemplified through its coordinated mission focus across NASA, contractors, and research institutions. 

To detect and correct drift, organizations need monitoring systems with early warning indicators and clear correction protocols, much like how the Bretton Woods system used regular economic indicators to maintain international monetary stability (Eichengreen, 2019). External mechanisms round out this framework through stakeholder consultation and transparent progress reporting. Together, these mechanisms create a comprehensive system for preventing goal drift and maintaining strategic focus, helping to ensure efforts nested under the grand strategy are not wasted. 

 

4.Resource Management: 

Strategic resource allocation requires careful balancing of immediate needs with long-term objectives, while maintaining sufficient reserves for unexpected challenges (Betts, 2000). For example, within The Manhattan Project there was a calculated effort to not only produce a sufficient amount of nuclear material for testing, but also for the use of a would-be bomb. Given the strategic goal The Manhattan Project was meant to be (i.e. U.S. national power), using all of the strategic resources of nuclearly enriched material for a round of testing would have been clearly short sighted, given the overwhelming cost every additional day of the war placed on the U.S. 

The New Deal showed how resource management could transform an entire economy by strategically directing public investments across multiple sectors and programs. Clear prioritization frameworks, regular resource audits, and adaptive allocation systems are essential - as further seen in the Apollo Program's management of its massive budget across thousands of contractors and research initiatives.

Perhaps the best example of effective resource management comes from the Marshall Plan also exemplified sustainable resource management by coupling aid distribution with recipient-matching requirements, ensuring both immediate impact and long-term economic stability. The Marshall Plan's resource management was innovative in requiring European nations to match American aid with their own funds deposited in special counterpart accounts. According to historian Michael J. Hogan in "The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952", the counterpart fund system required European governments to deposit in special accounts amounts of local currency equivalent to the aid received. In turn, these funds were only able to be used with approval by the U.S. and generally had to be devoted to productive investment rather than merely consumption. The counterpart fund system was highly effective, accumulating over $8.6 billion by 1952, forming a crucial investment pool for European economic reconstruction (Eichengreen, 2019). According to scholars like Olúfẹ́mi Táíwòcapacity-building approaches to aid (rather than short-term relief) lay stronger foundations for long-term national stability (Táíwò, 2022). This strategic allocation model has since become a mainstay in international finance, influencing modern development programs.

This mechanism embedded in the Marshall Plan had several key implications: it ensured recipient investment and commitment, created local currency reserves for reconstruction, prevented aid from being diverted to non-productive uses, and built long-term economic capacity rather than just providing short-term relief. Hence, coupling aid distribution with recipient-matching requirements allowed for the Marshal Plan to better leverage the finite aid it was allocated. 

By carefully structuring resource management, The Marshall Plan ensured that limited aid funds were leveraged for maximum long-term impact, aligning financial investments with U.S. post-war grand strategy.

 

5.Adaptability

Lastly, we have adaptability, which can be thought of as requiring organizations to evolve their approaches while maintaining core objectives. Adaptability in grand strategy implementations requires maintaining the fundamental objective of a grand strategy while evolving tactics and implementation methods to increase the overall likelihood of success. As Eisenhower noted, "Plans are useless but planning is essential" - a principle demonstrated by the Bretton Woods system's ability to adapt its monetary mechanisms while preserving its fundamental goal of international economic stability. The Bretton Woods system demonstrated adaptability through multiple monetary policy shifts between 1946-1971. For instance, when the initial rigid exchange rate system proved problematic in the 1960s, the system evolved to include new mechanisms like Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) in 1969 while preserving its core goal of international monetary stability.

The Manhattan Project exhibited this adaptability by pursuing multiple technical approaches simultaneously, allowing rapid shifts based on new discoveries. Similarly, China's Belt and Road Initiative has shown adaptability by modifying its implementation in response to international feedback, and launching new environmental initiatives while maintaining its core strategic goals of expanding global influence. The key is building flexible systems and decision-making processes that can respond to changing circumstances while preserving strategic alignment - something the Marshall Plan achieved through its evolving aid criteria and implementation methods.

The Manhattan Project's adaptability was institutionalized in its structure. General Leslie Groves describes in his memoir "Now It Can Be Told" how the project simultaneously pursued:

  • Gaseous diffusion at Oak Ridge
  • Electromagnetic separation at Y-12
  • Plutonium production at Hanford
  • Multiple bomb design approaches at Los Alamos

Parallel development is a common theme in maintaining adaptability. In the case of the Manhattan Project, it meant that when challenges arose in one approach, resources could be quickly redirected to more promising alternatives which in turn decreased the overall amount of time wasted–which, as we have already noted in the resource management example, was aligned with the U.S.’s grand strategy the Manhattan Project was nested under.

For a more modern example, we can turn to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). According to the World Bank's 2019 report "Belt and Road Economics", The BRI has evolved from its initial 2013 goals of developing two significant areas of infrastructure investments: the Silk Road Economic Belt, and the New Maritime Silk Road. The BRI has expanded to better account for potential fiscal, governance, and social risks associated with as large of an economic project as was initially divised by the Chinese Communist Party. This evolution reflects both stakeholder feedback and changing global priorities while maintaining China's core objective of growing its economic, and in turn, political supremacy. The BRI is now seen not just as an economic project but as a geopolitical strategy, used to deepen ties with developing nations, counter U.S. influence, and secure resources (Hillman, 2020).

The lesson across these examples is that effective grand strategies build in mechanisms for adaptation from the start, rather than treating change as an exception. This allows them to maintain strategic continuity while tactically evolving.

Each of the five principles key to grand strategies interact with one another. We discuss common failure modes for grand strategies in more depth here but briefly, such instances of failure in operationalization of a grand strategy come down to one or more of the five principles being neglected or poorly tested. Additional more subtle failure modes may result from a combination of underperformance in more than one of these domains, leading to cascading failures in the overall strategy, leading to tipping points that the sufficiently planned portions of the grand strategy cannot pick up the slack of. 

The Difference between “Normal” Strategies, Grand Strategies, and Merely Big Projects

How are grand strategies different from other strategies, or just really large-level coordinated efforts?

A grand strategy is different from more localized strategies due to its scope. The grand in grand strategy refers to the top-level perspective the strategy in question is often derived from.

These large-scale initiatives serve as concrete, tangible windows into how grand strategies actually manifest in practice. By examining projects like the Marshall Plan, Apollo Program, or the New Deal, we can better understand how nations translate their high-level strategic objectives into specific, actionable programs. These examples demonstrate the real-world mechanics of how grand strategies are implemented - showing us not just the abstract theory of strategic thinking, but how nations actually mobilize resources, coordinate multiple stakeholders, and create lasting institutional changes to achieve their broader strategic goals.

In other words: while a grand strategy might be characterized as the overarching motivation/goal that takes absolute priority over all other motivations for a state, entity, etc… For example, the grand strategic motivation might be to "maintain global supremacy”. Underneath this priority, a nation may reason that technological and economic supremacy is key for best meeting the grand strategic motivation. Next initiatives like the Apollo Program show us exactly how that abstract motivation and instrumental goals get turned into specific actions, investments, and organizational structures. These examples help bridge the gap between theoretical strategic thinking and practical implementation on the largest scale possible. Next we will turn to examples of grand strategies being operationalized via large-scale, specific implementations nested underneath the overarching grand strategic motivation. 

Drawing this conceptual distinction further, there are also plenty of examples of major coordination that are not the product of grand strategies, or even necessarily centrally coordinated efforts. For example, coordination around satellites not smashing into each other while in orbit is not based on any grand strategy but is merely the product of–often competing actors–being directly incentivized to cooperate with each other. The satellite example isn't too dissimilar to the same incentives that (usually) stop you and other drivers from purposefully smashing into one another. Major coordination and global projects don’t require a grand strategy. However, as the following examples are meant to illustrate, many of humanity's greatest achievements have been connected to central grand strategic efforts, and this does not only apply to accomplishments done by nations. 

The following examples are very dense, but we felt they were worth including to demonstrate the operationalization of grand strategies into specific projects. Furthermore, in later pieces we reference many of these examples, and are planning on writing additional research dives into some of them. 

 

Examples of Grand and Macro Strategy Initiatives and Efforts:

Each of the following examples are not of a grand strategy but initiatives nested underneath broader–in these cases–mostly national grand strategies. We chose to provide examples of grand strategic initiatives as a way to provide a less merely theoretical understanding of grand strategy.

The Marshall Plan (1948-1951)

Within the broader United States government’s post-war plan to strengthen American power & help rebuild Western Europe, the European Recovery Program , better known as the Marshall Plan represents one of the most successful implementations of economic statecraft in modern history. As noted by David Ellwood, in his article The Marshall Plan: A Strategy That Worked, the plan did not start off as a coherent, broad expansive initiative but more-so arose from incremental, practical implementations of U.S. post-war grand strategy, until it “evolved swiftly into a vast, spirited, international adventure” as Ellwood cites the plan’s official historian as remarking. The post-war United States found itself as the dominant economic and technological power in the world in the aftermath of world war 2. With the national grand strategy of continued dominance, decision makers like President Truman leveraged newfound economic and technological power to build alliances through aid to would-be allies. As noted by Ellwood, after the failure of the Truman Doctrine and the “grueling experience of Secretary of State George Marshall in the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers” in 1947, there was a need for a plan that could act as “a cure rather than a palliative” as Marshall put it. In 1948, Congress created the European Recovery Program. The ERP, as Immanuel Wexler writes “stipulated a recovery plan based on four specific endeavors: (1) a strong production effort, (2) expansion of foreign trade, (3) the creation and maintenance of internal financial stability, and (4) the development of (European) economic cooperation” (Ellwood, P.19)

The plan's implementation was remarkably comprehensive. Beyond the commonly cited $13 billion in aid (approximately $144 billion in today's dollars), the program:

  • Established the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), which later became the OECD
  • Created mechanisms for intra-European trade and monetary settlements
  • Required recipient nations to match aid with local currency deposits, encouraging fiscal responsibility
  • Promoted European economic integration, laying groundwork for the European Coal and Steel Community

According to historian Michael J. Hogan in "The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952,” the program was one of the most successful diplomatic initiatives undertaken by the United States during the Cold War. Hogan continues by suggesting that a reason we know this is that the success can be measured not just in economic terms but also in terms of its measurable institutional legacy– many of the organizations it spawned continue to shape international cooperation today.

China's Belt and Road Initiative

With the 21st centuries’ great power competition in full swing, China’s grand strategy of maintaining/growing supremacy has projects nested underneath it of both military and economic components. One of the key projects being used to bring about their broader grand strategy is the Belts and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI represents an unprecedented opportunity - by 2023, China had signed cooperation agreements with over 150 countries and 30 international organizations. With a total budget exceeding well over the trillion dollar mark, the BRI represents perhaps one of the most costly international economic strategies employed by one dominant power historically. 

The strategy operates on multiple levels:

  • Physical Infrastructure: Railways, ports, and energy projects
  • Digital Infrastructure: The "Digital Silk Road" including 5G networks and fiber optic cables
  • Financial Infrastructure: Creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)
  • Cultural Infrastructure: Educational exchanges and "Confucius Institutes"

In her article in Foreign Affairs titled Demystifying Belt and Road, Professor Yuen Yuen Ang of the University of Michigan notes that the BRI represents a new model of development that challenges Western approaches to international aid and development.

The initiative has faced significant challenges and criticism. The Center for Global Development identified eight countries at high risk of debt distress due to BRI projects. However, the strategy's adaptability has been notable - in response to criticism, China launched the "Green Silk Road" initiative and improved debt sustainability guidelines.

 

The Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project demonstrates how grand strategy can mobilize national resources for a singular technological goal. General Leslie Groves, the project's military director, structured it as a matrix organization before such concepts were common in management theory.

The project's scope and impact was staggering:

  • The Manhattan Project's scope was extensive, involving three major research and production facilities—Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford—each playing a crucial role in nuclear development.
  • At its peak, the project employed approximately 125,000 people, making it one of the largest scientific and military undertakings in history (Shore & Zollo, 2015).
  • The project also coordinated multiple parallel approaches to atomic weapon development, ensuring a rapid and diversified research process that contributed to its ultimate success (Lenfle, 2012).
  • To support its vast operations, entire towns were created specifically for workers and researchers involved in nuclear development and their families in order to ensure secrecy.

Richard Rhodes, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," argues that the project changed not just the course of World War II but the course of human history. The project's legacy extends beyond nuclear weapons to areas such as:

  • National Laboratory System: Creation of a network of government-funded research facilities
  • Science Policy: Establishment of patterns for government-funded basic research
  • Scientific Ethics: Development of frameworks for considering the moral implications of scientific research

The project's organizational innovations included:

  • Compartmentalization of information
  • Integration of civilian scientists with military leadership
  • Creation of special procurement and security systems
  • Development of new project management techniques

The strategic importance of the Manhattan Project has been widely recognized, with some scholars arguing that its framework can be adapted to address modern existential hazards like climate change (Bhatt & Heller, 2023) and AI (Aschenbrenner, 2024). We will discuss the Manhattan Project’s framework and its implications for existential risk-focused strategic planning in substantially more depth in future entries in the Grand Strategy for AI Risk series. However, broadly the Manhattan project has given rise to discussions on the ethical and social responsibilities of scientists involved in the project, highlighting its long-term impact on scientific research and global security (Dan-he, 2005).

Robert Oppenheimer's famous quote after the Trinity test - "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" (Iskander, 2022) - might be one of the most provocative renderings of the power that technologically focused strategic efforts can hold not just for a nation-state but for humanity as a whole. Grand strategic initiatives, particularly in technological domains, carry with them the weight to change the balance on the collective risk scale of humanity. 

 

The New Deal

Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration structured the New Deal as a comprehensive program of relief, recovery, and reform - establishing a new relationship between government, markets, and society, and in turn the Deal transformed the United States economic paradigm from zero-sum thinking to positive-sum dynamics. The New Deal was conceived under the broader grand strategy of a post-depression United States, with many still harboring isolationist rhetoric/political positions. Compared to other era’s of the United States discussed in this article, the 1930’s isolationist mentality in U.S. politics may have been largely responsible for the lack of emphasis on military supremacy in the national grand strategy. Some of the strategic national goals in turn were: 

  • Rebuilding American economic and social stability
  • Preserving democratic capitalism against the rise of communism and fascism
  • Establishing a new role for government in American life

Given these national priorities, the New Deal’s scope was unprecedented in terms of efforts to transform the economic realities of the vast majority of Americans. The Deal created over 40 new agencies and programs, helped to employ 8 million Americans, managed tens of thousands of infrastructure projects (simultaneously!), and created institutional shifts that have become central to American financial and social programs. The total impact of the project cannot fully be covered in this piece. The program's statistics tell a story of transformation that starts to help to capture it’s breadth:

  • GDP Fall (1929-1933): 30% decline reversed to growth by 1936
  • Unemployment: Reduced from 24.9% to 14% by 1937
  • Banking System: From 9,000+ failures to nearly zero post-reform
  • Infrastructure: Electrification rate increased from 10% to 90% in rural areas

The New Deal's core insight was that economic laws are not natural laws but human constructs that can be reshaped for collective benefit. This understanding continues to influence approaches to global challenges like climate change, technological transformation, and economic inequality.

The New Deal's lasting impact demonstrates how grand strategic initiatives, particularly in socio-economic domains, carry the potential to fundamentally reshape the relationship between government, markets, and society, establishing new paradigms for addressing collective challenges.

 

Bretton Woods (Post WW2 World Order)

The Bretton Woods system represented a pivotal implementation of America's post-war grand strategy of establishing global economic leadership and stability. Emerging from a conference of 44 allied nations in 1944, the Bretton Woods framework established a new international monetary order that would shape global economics for decades to come. As Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau declared at the conference's opening, the goal was to create "a dynamic world economy in which the peoples of every nation will be able to realize their potentialities in peace."

The system's architecture was remarkably comprehensive, establishing World Bank: Providing reconstruction and development loans International Monetary Fund (IMF): Managing international payment imbalances Fixed Exchange Rate System: Pegging global currencies to the U.S. dollar, which was backed by gold General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT): Promoting free trade (later evolved into the WTO)

The scope of this institutional framework was unprecedented: Creation of a dollar-based international reserve system Establishment of mechanisms for multilateral economic cooperation Development of rules-based international financial governance Integration of national economies into a cohesive global system

Economist Barry Eichengreen, in his work "Globalizing Capital," argues that Bretton Woods created the most successful international monetary system the world has ever seen. The system's impact extended far beyond monetary policy to areas such as: International Development: Creating frameworks for global poverty reduction Financial Stability: Establishing mechanisms for crisis prevention and response Economic Integration: Facilitating unprecedented growth in global trade Institutional Innovation: Developing new models of international cooperation.

The system's organizational innovations included: Multilateral decision-making processes Integration of national sovereignty with international oversight Creation of technical assistance programs Development of international financial surveillance mechanisms

While the original fixed exchange rate system ended in 1971 when President Nixon suspended dollar-gold convertibility, the institutional framework created at Bretton Woods continues to shape global economic governance. The success of these institutions in fostering post-war recovery and development demonstrates how carefully designed international frameworks can serve both national strategic interests and broader global stability.

The great paradox of Bretton Woods, as noted by economic historian Harold James, was that "it created a framework for international cooperation that simultaneously enhanced American power while making that power more acceptable to others." This delicate balance between national interests and international cooperation offers enduring lessons for modern attempts at global economic coordination. This balance 

The Bretton Woods framework demonstrates how a nation's grand strategy can be implemented through carefully designed institutional architecture. This is doubly true when a focus on incentive structures–in this case economic–is baked into the initiative goals. Within America's broader post-war grand strategy of establishing global leadership, while containing Soviet influence, Bretton Woods served as a masterclass in using economic statecraft to achieve geopolitical aims. By creating institutions that served both American interests and global stability, the U.S. succeeded in building a Western-oriented economic order that would help define the entire Cold War era. Showing how grand strategic initiatives, particularly in the realm of international economic architecture, can create enduring systems that extend well beyond their original scope - transforming not just the balance of power between nations, but the very rules by which that power is exercised. 

The Apollo Program (1961-1972)

Looking for examples of nation-states working to achieve their grand strategy for national power through technological innovation/breakthroughs, we find key examples in the Apollo Program and the Manhattan Project. For the Apollo Program, its origins are found in the national strategic priorities of the late 50’s early 60’s, where-in national power was seen as both a military, economic, and, importantly, ideological battle for supremacy. With the national grand strategy in toe, we see an effort to rally the American people, as well as have meaningful technological breakthroughs contribute to the resources dumped into the early space race. 

President Kennedy's famous speech at Rice University in 1962 set the tone for this component of the U.S. mid-century national strategy:

"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

The program's impact extended far beyond the space race:

Technological Innovation: Over 6,300 new technologies were developed

  • The Apollo program led to the development of numerous new technologies, particularly in aerospace, computing, and materials science (Herbert, 1983).
  • The contractor system and industrial cooperation helped create one of the first modern political stakes in technological development (Turcat, 2008).

Economic Impact: For every dollar spent on the space program, the U.S. economy generated roughly $7-14 in benefits

  • Economic studies have highlighted the Apollo program’s return on investment, indicating a significant multiplier effect in economic benefits (Gisler & Sornette, 2008).

Educational Impact: NASA's budget helped fund university research programs, creating a generation of scientists and engineers

  • Between 1961 and 1967, over 10,000 students and more than 200 universities participated in Apollo-related research and training programs (Turcat, 2008).

Commercial Spillover: Innovations in materials science, computer miniaturization, and telecommunications

  • Apollo spurred commercial applications, from miniaturized computing to advanced communication systems, leading to commercial spillovers across multiple industries. Even the Apollo project structure became a model of focused technological advancement that later influenced global commercial technological development (Herbert, 1983).

Former NASA historian Roger Launius has argued that Apollo represented the single largest peacetime government investment in American history. Although this claim is disputed, given the on-going cold-war, the overarching government investment into the Apollo Program still represents a major effort by the United States to bring about a national strategic priority. The program's management innovations, particularly its systems engineering approach, influenced project management practices across industries. While the latter victory of being the first to get to the Moon cemented a sense of American exceptionalism and achievement over the Soviets, despite the race's earlier ties. 

 

Non-Nation-State Examples of Top Level Strategic Planning:

As we note above, the history of strategic theory is heavily focused on the strategy of nation-states, especially through military means: Past discussions of grand strategy are no different. However, we would argue this comes from the historical context in which the field of strategic studies was developed—primarily within government or military institutions. It wasn’t until later interest in game theory–which itself was born in part out of the novel challenges of the Cold War–that strategic planning was substantially broadened in usage–including under the usage of the term macro-strategy. Yet the essence of grand strategy—coordinating diverse resources over time to achieve high-stakes goals—applies far beyond the military sphere that grand strategy is commonly used to refer to. In the following section, we will discuss additional examples of top level strategic planning done by mixed coalitions. These examples might be thought of as macro-strategies that reflect elements of grand strategic thinking. 

Consider the following non-nation-state examples:

  • Global Health Initiatives: Organizations like the Gates Foundation have adopted long-term, systemic strategies to eradicate diseases like polio and malaria, aligning research, policy advocacy, funding, and local partnerships in a grand strategic framework.
  • Corporate Grand Strategies: Multinational corporations often employ strategic thinking on a grand scale when shaping global markets. Consider Apple’s ecosystem approach—integrating hardware, software, and services to lock in user bases and shape consumer behavior over decades.
  • Climate Change Coalitions: Transnational efforts like the Paris Agreement represent a kind of grand strategy in action—aligning multiple nations and stakeholders toward a common, long-term goal of mitigating global warming, using coordinated economic, regulatory, and technological levers.
  • AI Governance and Risk Mitigation: Even in our own field of AI risk, leading research labs and consortia are increasingly thinking in terms of long-term societal impacts. The creation of multi-decade safety roadmaps, ethical guidelines, and governance structures exemplifies non-military grand strategy, aimed at preventing global catastrophic risks.

Why This Matters for EA, Rationality, and AI Governance Communities

Effective altruism, rationalist thought, and AI governance communities inherently aim to make high-leverage interventions in complex systems. These movements already engage in forms of strategic foresight and long-term planning, often under different names: cause prioritization, existential risk mitigation, or multi-agent coordination.

Recognizing these efforts as forms of macro strategy helps clarify the scale and stakes of the planning required. More importantly, it offers a rich body of knowledge—developed over centuries—that can be adapted and applied to non-military challenges. Strategic planning at the scale of global catastrophic risks or AI alignment is not just a technical problem; it’s a grand strategic one.

By adopting and adapting the grand strategy framework, these communities can better navigate complex incentive landscapes, coordinate across diverse actors, and plan for long time horizons—all essential for tackling the unprecedented challenges of the 21st century.

 

The Eradication of Smallpox (1966-1980):

The eradication of smallpox stands as one of the most ambitious yet successful implementations of global public health strategy. In 1966, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Intensified Smallpox Eradication Programme, a monumental effort to eliminate a disease responsible for an estimated 300 million deaths in the 20th century alone (WHO, 1980Fenner et al., 1988). The campaign, led by Dr. Donald Henderson, marked a shift from mass vaccination efforts toward a more targeted "surveillance and containment" strategy. Instead of attempting to vaccinate entire populations, the WHO focused on identifying outbreaks, isolating cases, and ring-vaccinating those in contact with infected individuals, a method that proved far more efficient given logistical constraints (Henderson, 2009).

The scale of the program was immense: over a decade, more than 2.4 billion vaccine doses were distributed, with smallpox cases plummeting from 10-15 million annually in the mid-1960s to just a handful by the late 1970s (WHO, 1980). Field teams, often working in remote and politically unstable regions, systematically tracked and responded to outbreaks with unprecedented speed and coordination. The campaign's effectiveness was bolstered by the introduction of the bifurcated needle, a simple yet revolutionary tool that made vaccine administration more efficient and reduced vaccine waste (Brilliant, 1985).

Key Contributions and Innovations:

  • Targeted "surveillance and containment" strategy: Shifted from mass vaccination to ring vaccination around outbreaks, reducing the number of vaccines required (Henderson, 2009).
  • Use of the bifurcated needle: Improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness of vaccine delivery (Brilliant, 1985).
  • International coordination: Over 70 countries participated, with thousands of field workers ensuring rapid response to outbreaks (Fenner et al., 1988).
  • Final eradication confirmed in 1980: Marked the first and only time a human disease has been completely eliminated through coordinated intervention (WHO, 1980).

The final stages of eradication required extraordinary international cooperation. In 1977, the last known natural case of smallpox was reported in Somalia, and after an extensive three-year global search for any lingering cases, the WHO officially declared smallpox eradicated in 1980. The eradication of smallpox was not just a triumph of medical science but also a testament to the power of centralized coordination around a strategy for projects spanning the globe. Its success reshaped international disease control policies, laying the groundwork for modern vaccination campaigns against polio, measles, and other infectious diseases. The legacy of the smallpox eradication program endures, proving that with sustained commitment, global cooperation, and adaptive strategies, even the most devastating diseases can be defeated.

 

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault and Agricultural Resilience

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, often referred to as the “Doomsday Vault,” represents one of the most ambitious long-term strategies for global agricultural security. Established in 2008 on the remote Svalbard archipelago, the vault was conceived as a safeguard against biodiversity loss, ensuring that vital crop seeds remain preserved in the face of war, climate change, and natural disasters (Fowler, 2024). The facility, managed by the Norwegian government in partnership with the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center, serves as a fail-safe repository for the world’s agricultural heritage, housing over one million seed samples from nearly every country (Westengen, O.T., et al, 2020).

The vault is a part of a broader project to ensure global food resilience of key crops, with varieties of backup heirlooms in the face of potentially catastrophic plant pathogens (Dempewolf, et al. 2023).  

The vault’s design prioritizes resilience and longevity:

  • Location and structure: Buried 130 meters deep in an Arctic mountain, the facility is protected from rising sea levels, earthquakes, and other environmental threats (Fowler, 2024).
  • Temperature stability: Seeds are stored at -18°C (-0.4°F), significantly slowing genetic degradation, allowing some varieties to remain viable for centuries (Westengen, O.T., et al, 2020Westengen et al., 2019).
  • Global participation: More than 1,700 gene banks worldwide have sent deposits, ensuring that critical agricultural biodiversity is protected across geopolitical boundaries (Cary Fowler & Mooney, 2019). This has major implications due to the well documented loss in biological diversity among crops (Montenegro, 2024).
  • Emergency backups: The vault has already played a critical role in restoring seed collections lost due to conflicts, such as the 2015 retrieval of seeds to replenish Syria’s war-damaged gene bank (Frison, 2016).

Beyond being a storage facility, the Svalbard Vault is a grand strategy in global food security, reinforcing the interconnected nature of agriculture, biodiversity, and human resilience. The initiative ensures that future generations retain access to diverse crop genetics necessary for adapting to evolving climate conditions, disease threats, and soil degradation. It serves as a biological insurance policy, securing genetic diversity as a fundamental tool for agricultural adaptation and sustainability.

Key Contributions and Innovations:

  • Global agricultural preservation: Protects over one million seed samples from nearly every country (Westengen, O.T., et al, 2020).
  • Geopolitical neutrality: Allows international seed banks, including those in conflict zones, to deposit seeds for future use (Frison, 2016).
  • Climate change mitigation: Ensures biodiversity for crop adaptation in response to shifting environmental conditions (Dempewolf, et al. 2023).
  • Resilient infrastructure: Designed to endure natural and human-made disasters for centuries (Fowler, 2024).

 

The Development of Linux and the Linux Foundation

The development of Linux and the subsequent rise of the Linux Foundation illustrates how grand strategy can shape global technological infrastructure through decentralized, open collaboration. Originating in 1991 when Linus Torvalds released the first version of the Linux kernel, the project evolved from a hobbyist endeavor into a cornerstone of modern computing. Unlike proprietary software models dominated by companies like Microsoft, Linux embraced open-source development, allowing a distributed network of programmers to modify, improve, and share its code freely (Raymond, 2001). This decentralized approach, initially seen as an unconventional strategy, has since proven to be one of the most effective models for technological progress.

By the early 2000s, the sheer scale of Linux’s adoption—powering everything from enterprise servers to smartphones—demanded a structured governance model to coordinate contributions from corporations, developers, and independent researchers. In response, the Linux Foundation was established in 2007, bringing together major technology firms such as IBM, Intel, and Google to provide financial and strategic support for Linux’s ongoing development (Weber, 2004). The foundation operates as a neutral hub, ensuring that Linux remains open while benefiting from corporate investment and large-scale collaboration.

The impact of Linux on global computing has been profound:

  • Market penetration: Linux now powers over 90% of cloud servers and supercomputers worldwide (Statista, 2024).
  • Android dominance: Google’s Android OS, based on the Linux kernel, runs on approximately 70% of the world's mobile devices (Statista, 2024).
  • Open-source revolution: The success of Linux inspired the broader open-source software movement, influencing the development of projects like Kubernetes, Apache, and Git.

Key Contributions and Innovations:

  • Decentralized development model: Enabled global contributions from programmers and corporations alike.
  • Corporate-backed Linux Foundation: Established a sustainable funding and governance structure while preserving Linux’s open-source nature (Weber, 2004).
  • Global infrastructure impact: Powers cloud computing, mobile devices, and enterprise technology (Tozzi, 2017).
  • Catalyst for the open-source movement: Inspired widespread adoption of collaborative software development models, as well as broader linux focused open-source foundations (linuxfoundation.org, 2024).

The Linux Foundation's organizational model has set a precedent for how open-source projects can thrive at a global scale. By providing a structured yet flexible framework for collaboration, it ensures that Linux continues to evolve as a critical component of modern computing. The foundation's success highlights how grand strategy can extend beyond governments and traditional institutions, demonstrating that decentralized, cooperative models can drive technological progress on an unprecedented scale.

 

Each of these examples also reflect the core considerations of macro strategies that we discussed earlier. To look into one for the sake of explanation, each example showcases the reciprocal component of strategy (i.e. wechselwirkung). The Marshall Plan prompted Soviet countermeasures through the Molotov Plan and accelerated the Cold War division of Europe. The Apollo Program triggered intensified Soviet space efforts and altered the entire landscape of the Space Race. The Belt and Road Initiative has spurred Western responses like the G7's Partnership for Global Infrastructure. The Manhattan Project not only ended WWII but fundamentally changed the nature of global power politics. The New Deal's transformation of American capitalism influenced both domestic opposition and international approaches to economic crisis management. Finally, the Bretton Woods system compelled the Soviet Union to create alternative economic institutions for its sphere of influence, while simultaneously reshaping how all participating nations approached international trade and monetary policy.

In each case, we see Clausewitz's principle of Wechselwirkung in action - the initial strategic moves fundamentally altered the strategic landscape, forcing all actors to adapt and respond within a new reality they helped create. 

 

Distinguishing between Macro/Grand Strategic Efforts, Grand Narratives, & Other Levels of Coordination

As we discuss in Piece 0 in this series, grand strategies have, at their core, a grand narrative. Grand narratives can be thought of as an overarching story, that helps to define the problem, priorities, and playing field actors must coordinate in, and with what priorities, and values. However, although all grand strategies will have at their heart a grand narrative, grand narratives do not require grand strategies. Furthermore, grand narratives are also not necessary for large scale coordination. It is important to note that additional large scale movements with varying levels of coordination/planning may have resulted in large scale changes in the world without meeting the criteria to be considered as nested under a grand strategy. In this section we will attempt to briefly delineate these distinguishing components in some detail. 

One example of a grand narrative without a broader macro or grand strategy is the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring was framed by a powerful grand narrative of democracy, dignity, and resistance to authoritarian rule, which spread rapidly across the Middle East and North Africa in 2010-2012 (GIGA Hamburg, 2016). This narrative provided a unifying ideological framework that inspired widespread mobilization across different nations, even though the uprisings were decentralized and not coordinated under a singular strategic plan. While protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and beyond shared a vision of political reform and justice, the movement lacked a cohesive long-term strategy that specified concrete, coordinated actions across different domains (political, military, economic). The Arab Spring's results varied significantly from country to country, with some transitions leading to democratization (Tunisia) while others resulted in civil war (Syria, Libya) or a return to authoritarian rule (Egypt). This illustrates how a grand narrative can inspire broad action but does not necessarily translate into an effective grand strategy, which would have required a structured, multi-domain approach to securing stable political change.

In contrast, some large-scale coordination efforts lack both a grand strategy and a grand narrative, for example, spontaneous coordination or emergent order, which manifests as an outcome of individual actors being incentivized to cooperate for their own benefit. Game theoretically, spontaneous coordination can be understood as a form of equilibrium where actors converge on locally optimal strategies that enhance their own payoffs, even in the absence of centralized planning or overarching shared goals. This often results in large-scale coordination local maxima—where cooperation persists because defecting would impose higher costs on all involved, even among nations or entities that may otherwise be rivals. In such cases, coordination is self-reinforcing, as actors adjust their strategies dynamically in response to each other’s incentives, leading to stable but non-strategically planned cooperative behaviors. An example of spontaneous coordination would be international cooperation surrounding satellites. The global satellite system is an increasingly congested and contested domain, with thousands of satellites and pieces of space debris orbiting Earth. While spacefaring nations and private entities coordinate on collision avoidance, spectrum allocation, and orbital slot management, this is not the result of a grand strategic effort with a unified goal. Instead, coordination emerges piecemeal through bilateral agreements, technical standards, and market incentives, as each actor independently seeks to protect their own assets and avoid catastrophic collisions (Silverstein, 2023). Unlike the Arab Spring, which was driven by an ideological grand narrative, space cooperation operates without any overarching ideological framework or common vision—it is purely functional, driven by immediate necessity rather than a shared strategic vision. This illustrates how large-scale coordination can emerge without a unifying narrative or long-term strategic planning, relying instead on pragmatic, self-interested actions that converge toward mutual benefit.

 

Conclusion/Next Steps: 

The imperative for a grand strategy in addressing AI risk is not merely a theoretical exercise—it is a necessity born from the scale, complexity, and transformative potential of artificial intelligence. As this piece has shown, grand strategies are most effective when they integrate diverse actors, align competing interests, and adapt to dynamic challenges over time. The historical successes and failures of past grand strategies offer crucial lessons for how we might approach the unprecedented stakes of AI development today. Ensuring the safe and beneficial evolution of AI demands more than isolated policies or technical safeguards; it requires a coherent, long-term vision that coordinates efforts across sectors and scales. As we move forward in this series, our aim is not just to explore what an AI grand strategy might look like, but to actively contribute to its formation—offering frameworks, tools, and insights that can help unify the fragmented efforts within the AI safety community. The stakes could not be higher, and the path forward is fraught with challenges, but through strategic foresight, interdisciplinary cooperation, and a commitment to long-term thinking, we can chart a course that maximizes humanity’s chances of not just surviving, but thriving in the age of artificial intelligence.

 

 

 

THE END 

 

Authors’ End Note: 

Thank you for reading, if you’re interested in helping with the project–especially, if you have technical experience with Bayesian Networks or are interested in automatic data extraction, please reach out. Furthermore, if you are a grant maker or a potential donor interested in supporting this project, please reach out to Coleman or Valentine, at cjs386@cornell.edu.  

 

CITATIONS:

 

  • Allison, G. T., & Zelikow, P. (1999). Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Longman.
  • Belfield, H. (2021). The Dangers of AI in Strategic Stability and Warfare. Centre for the Governance of AI.
  • Betts, R. K. (2000). Is Strategy an Illusion? International Security, 25(2), 5-50.
  • Brundage, M., Avin, S., Wang, J., Belfield, H., Krueger, G., Hadfield, G., et al. (2018). The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation.
  • Dafoe, A. (2018). AI Governance: A Research Agenda. Future of Humanity Institute.
  • Dobbs, M. (2009). One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. Knopf.
  • Freedman, L. (2013). Strategy: A History. Oxford University Press.
  • Fursenko, A., & Naftali, T. (2006). "One Hell of a Gamble": Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964. Norton.
  • Gaddis, J. L. (2005). The Cold War: A New History. Penguin Press.
  • Jervis, R. (1976). Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton University Press.
  • Luttwak, E. N. (2001). Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Harvard University Press.
  • Schelling, T. C. (1966). Arms and Influence. Yale University Press.
  • Trachtenberg, M. (2012). The Cold War and After: History, Theory, and the Logic of International Politics. Princeton University Press.

 

 


7

0
0

Reactions

0
0

More posts like this

Comments
No comments on this post yet.
Be the first to respond.
Curated and popular this week
Relevant opportunities