Research Agenda

The questions the Institute
is currently investigating.

Sixteen active inquiries across the four pillars. Each carries a status, a publication target, and a path from question to output. Updated as work moves through the pipeline.

Status legend
DraftingWriting in progress ScopingQuestion defined, scope developing ForthcomingDeliverable identified, scheduled PublishedOutput available
Pillar I · 2026 Spearhead
Responsible AI
Emerging Technology Governance

The institutional architecture required to govern AI is forming in real time. Most organizations using AI have no formal governance framework, while regulators are converging on lifecycle requirements. The supervisory expectation is shifting from compliance to organizational design.

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How do board risk committees develop AI risk appetite frameworks when system behavior cannot be fully specified ex ante?
Drafting HSI Brief · June 2026
What does continuous lifecycle monitoring require operationally, and what is the eighteen-month build path for institutions starting from compliance-only postures?
Drafting Horizon Scan 001 · 20 May 2026
How should the three lines of defense be restructured for agentic systems where ownership is distributed across product, engineering, compliance, and legal?
Scoping HSI Brief · Q3 2026
Where do MAS lifecycle controls, EU AI Act post-deployment obligations, FDA Total Product Lifecycle frameworks, and SR 11-7 evolution converge in operational expectations?
Drafting Horizon Scan 002 · Q3 2026
Pillar II
Human Performance
Cognitive Liberty & Neurogovernance

Sound institutional judgment depends on cognitive conditions that current information environments are engineered to fragment. Attention has become the scarcest resource in most decision-making contexts. Information diet is a governance variable that organizations have not yet learned to manage.

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What does cognitive sovereignty mean at the institutional level, and how do organizations operationalize it?
Scoping HSI Brief · Q3 2026
How do attention economies and engineered fragmentation degrade institutional decision quality, and what governance structures resist this degradation?
Scoping Searchlight series · Q3 2026
What does post-AI cognitive performance look like for executives, analysts, and operators?
Scoping HSI Brief · Q4 2026
How should institutions structure information diet, decision rhythms, and recovery protocols for cognitive resilience?
Forthcoming Horizon Scan · 2027
Pillar III
Planetary Futures
Post-2030 Pathways

Most institutional risk frameworks were built for stable systems. The 2030+ horizon is not stable. Compound transitions across technology, climate, governance, and social systems create non-stationary risk environments that traditional frameworks cannot model.

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What scenarios should inform 2030+ institutional risk frameworks, and what does scenario stress-testing look like for non-stationary systems?
Scoping Horizon Scan · Q4 2026
How do institutions plan against compound transitions where technology, climate, and social systems interact in non-linear ways?
Scoping HSI Brief series · Q4 2026
What is the institutional logic for long-horizon investment under deep uncertainty?
Forthcoming HSI Brief · 2027
Where do planetary, technological, and governance transitions create cascade risks that current frameworks underweight?
Forthcoming Horizon Scan · 2027
Pillar IV
Governance & Diplomacy
Track II Diplomacy & Networked Multilateralism

The institutions designed for the multilateral order of the late twentieth century are not designed for the governance challenges of the 2030s. In an era of fragmented authority and accelerating technology, Track II becomes a primary mode of cross-border governance work.

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What governance infrastructure supports cross-jurisdictional coordination on technology and AI when no single regulator has authority?
Drafting Horizon Scan · Q4 2026
How can Track II convenings be structured to produce institutionally consequential outputs rather than commentary?
Scoping HSI Brief, post NYC Salon · 2026
What does networked multilateralism look like in practice for governance questions that exceed any single state's reach?
Published Linked: UN Charter at 80 · OECD Forum
How do institutions translate dialogue into structured agreement at decision-making scale?
Forthcoming HSI Brief · 2027
On this page

The agenda is the editorial pipeline, made visible.

Most research institutes publish only the outputs. The Institute publishes the inquiries themselves. The discipline is twofold: it forces clarity about which questions the Institute is actually able to address, and it gives readers, patrons, and partners a way to engage with the work before it lands as a finished publication. The agenda updates as inquiries move through scoping, drafting, and publication. Questions that fail to resolve into publishable form are retired with note rather than allowed to drift.