A New Understanding of National Security

Mattias Lundquist

International relations scholar Arnold Wolfers states (1952), “It would be an exaggeration to claim that the symbol of national security is nothing but a stimulus to semantic confusion, though closer analysis will show that if used without specifications, it leaves room for more confusion than sound political counsel or scientific usage can afford” (p.483). Despite 70 to 80 years of analysis and study of the term “National Security,” the meaning of “security” remains fluid and ever-changing. Confusion regarding the term, highlighted by Wolfers, isn’t new but is now more applicable than ever in 2025. Since the end of the Cold War, the scope of what includes a threat has broadened significantly. In the 50’s, national security focused on nuclear deterrence and territorial defense (specifically combating the spread of communism). In the early 2000s, the world saw terrorism take center stage, as well as economic instability thereafter. Since the beginning of the 21st century, nations worldwide have faced a plethora of security issues, shifting from traditional notions of military strength to new challenges such as natural disasters, AI warfare, resource instability, misinformation, and cybersecurity threats. The digitalization of nearly every national function, from banking and defense to water treatment plants and electricity grids, means that a single algorithmic failure or security breach can destabilize entire economies or governments in seconds from any computer worldwide. Security in this century now involves many variables and factors that extend beyond borders and military force. Being able to narrow down a definition will enable nations to allocate resources and budgets more effectively, thereby better protecting themselves. If national security once meant protecting borders, what does it mean now when the most significant dangers are faced through the digital world in systemic, invisible ways? In this essay, I will propose an updated definition of the term, national security, arguing that the strength of cybersecurity and the importance of controlling artificial intelligence are the key steps needed to defend a state and its people. These new technologies highlight what it now means to be secure in 2025, connecting and branching from the theories proposed by David Baldwin, Richard Ullman, and Arnold Wolfers.

From Military Power to Systemic Resilience

For a greater part of the twentieth century, national security was mostly applicable to military strength. A nation itself was understood as a territorial force whose survival mainly depended on physical defense, deterrence, and the control of power in other unstable countries, such as the global south. However, as Wolfers warned in 1952, the term national security risks becoming “a stimulus to semantic confusion” without clear specifications. David Baldwin, later in 1997, attempted to clarify Wolfer’s argument of ambiguity, reasoning that security should be understood as “a low probability of damage to acquired values” (p.13).  Baldwin notes that scholars have neglected the conceptual analysis of security despite the concept’s importance in justifying warfare and resources. Although the neglect is paradoxical, he suggests that it occurred because military force, rather than security itself, has historically been the central concern of security studies scholars. Therefore, by detaching security from purely military contexts, Baldwin enables a new evaluation of the various threats of this day and age – technological, economic, and informational – through the same analysis, using his benchmark questions as a guide. Specifically, most relevant for today’s analysis: “From what threats?, By what means?” and “In what time period?” 

Moreover, Richard Ullman, in his text, Redefining Security (1983), reasons that the dangers to national well-being can arise from any event that “degrade[s] the quality of life for the inhabitants of a state, or (2) threatens significantly to narrow the range of policy choices available to the government of a state or to private, nongovernmental entities… within the state” (p.133). This new framework highlights the essence of 21st-century insecurity, most notably from the technological approach. Seen prevalent throughout media today, cyberattacks, artificial intelligence-driven misinformation bots, and the weaponization of data all degrade the quality of life of persons of a state, as well as interrupt political decision-making without a single shot or war taking place. International relations scholar Peter W. Singer, in his book Cybersecurity and Cyberwar (2013), underscores that it is evident that the term national security encompasses a new threat in the 21st century: 

“These issues will have consequences well beyond the Internet. There is a growing sense of vulnerability in the physical world from new vectors of cyberattack via the virtual world. As a report entitled “The New Cyber Arms Race” describes, ““In the future, wars will not just be fought by soldiers with guns or with planes that drop bombs. They will also be fought with the click of a mouse a half a world away that unleashes carefully weaponized computer programs that disrupt or destroy critical industries like utilities, transportation, communications, and energy. Such attacks could also disable military networks that control the movement of troops, the path of jet fighters, the command and control of warships”” (p.4). 

Ullman’s argument is clearly evident almost 40 years later, as cyberspace and control of information systems are now described as a new threat that replaces territorial disputes with military force. The transition from two drastically different threats has shifted the national security perspective to a systemic resilience approach, so that nations can anticipate, absorb, and recover from disruptions that target the most crucial and vulnerable online systems essential for national security and daily life/logistics.

            In today’s new digital world, resilience has become a form of deterrence to outside threats. According to the Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Unión Europea y Cooperación de España, in their report titled Resilience in the Context of National Security, they underscore, critical infrastructure sectors such as “administration, space, nuclear industry, chemical industry, research facilities, water, energy, health, information and communications technologies (ICT), transport, food and the financial and tax systems” are supported by resilient “organizational structures whose proper design and adequate allocation of human resources are fundamental to guaranteeing the functioning of essential services in crisis situations” (p.27). Cyber attacks on infrastructure, markets, and democratic institutions make it increasingly easier to understand that the power now lies in maintaining operations under pressure from worldwide threats. Regarding Baldwin’s theories, this redefines the means of pursuing security in terms of the threats that affect nations, as well as the time period and type of threats that these pose. In Ullman’s sense, the updated term security has been expanded to include non-military dangers that threaten the nation’s way of life and its policy choices. Although states are still focused more on prevention rather than cure, the resources invested in preventive measures have shifted away from “military intervention” to resilience and adapting to unfolding attacks, always being a step ahead of the threat. 

Cybersecurity – A Technological Border Worth Protecting

The dominant security vulnerabilities and threats in 2025 challenge the basis that the fundamentals of twentieth-century security were founded upon and studied by political scientists and scholars–containment and excessive militaristic terms. Confusion still persists in national security, as cyberattacks, misinformation, and environmental disasters are often viewed as peripheral issues rather than as threats to a state’s borders and its protection of democracy, when analyzed through the lens of the United States. The principles most at risk in the 21st century are no longer just sovereignty and territorial gain, but now stability of interconnectedness and informational integrity, which protect civil liberties and the population within a state. Artificial intelligence, alongside cybersecurity, should now be examined and viewed as the core pillars upon which national security and a nation’s vulnerability sit.

The most profound variable and vulnerability relating to a nation’s security is cybersecurity. The most immediate danger has come to life in the past decade, with several noteworthy examples: the Yahoo data breach (2013), the Equifax breach (2017), which exposed millions of social security numbers, and the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack (2021), resulting in fuel shortages across the United States (Babu, 2023). Wars between computers and code can paralyze and force nations to a complete halt faster than any ballistic or missile can, and all with a click of a button. Of course, the time, skill, and effort behind these cyber attacks can be taken into account. Still, the ability to hurt the critical infrastructure of the world’s biggest economies and populous nations is a danger that is deeply concerning in its own right. From financial markets to hospital charting systems, cyberattacks degrade the quality of life and limit a government’s capacity to act, representing Ullman’s theory in a new digitalized era of the world. Manipulating electoral systems and infrastructure not only exposes personal data and secrets but also corrupts public confidence and trust in the state to protect their liberties, consequently harming the factors that support democracy. For example, the Equifax breach exposed millions of Social Security numbers, leaving identities vulnerable to hackers or countries for potential identity theft, financial harm, or fraudulent claims of tax refunds or unemployment benefits in one’s name. States that fail to invest in cybersecurity measures ultimately compromise their sovereignty since, in the 21st century, control over data and infrastructure defines what it means to be independent and safeguarded from outside threats. 

Artificial Intelligence – More Harm Than Good

Furthermore, the combination of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity threats blurs the lines between defense and threat. Artificial intelligence algorithmic bias has significantly contributed to a misinformation campaign launched by foreign nations against each other through advertisements and social media “bots” that push a specific agenda or spread false information. How will nations be able to identify and eliminate misinformation? The world is still trying to figure this out; AI is rapidly advancing with little to no regulations, which is increasingly worrisome and poses a growing danger. The use of deepfakes, surveillance algorithms, and fake news represents a weaponized approach that utilizes software to manipulate markets and influence investors, thereby affecting stock prices. With the use of a deep fake, any ordinary individual can now program public figures to say or do anything in video format with the help of artificial intelligence. It has become so realistic that some videos are initially presumed to be real until fact-checked by outside sources. This is where the most significant problems arise. In addition to domestic issues, China has emerged as a leader in the field of artificial intelligence, with no end in sight, employing its capabilities across other nations to shape political agendas. Notably, this was evident during COVID-19, when misinformation about vaccines spread rapidly on social media, causing opposition in many communities (Insua, 2025). Consequently, political polarization amongst far-right and far-left parties sparked a digital world with hatred and instability, thanks to the help of misinformation. Creating a phony media profile in under a minute and using AI to generate inaccurate news can easily influence people who scroll through apps and websites without second-guessing the origin of this information. Overall, cognitive warfare has been on the rise in recent years, largely unchecked, demonstrating the ease and power of AI in influencing geopolitical issues within a nation, ultimately harming national security. States must now interpret security as the capacity for technological control to maintain security and sovereignty.

Despite the evolution of threats to an increasingly digital world, national spending patterns, specifically in the United States, remain mostly unchanged. Less than 4% of their $895 billion defense spending budget in 2024 is focused on cybersecurity, now the largest security threat (Sivesind, 2025). Baldwin would view this same imbalance as a policy failure because he noted that security must compete with other policy goals, as well as contend with natural disasters. Applying Baldwin’s logic to 2025, the excessive military budget remains evident. Although cybersecurity can be categorized under the defense budget, insufficient funds are allocated to this sector compared to traditional troop and arms spending. Although 30 billion may seem like a lot, in relation to other sectors, it is rather minuscule. Underinvestment in cybersecurity and inadequate disaster preparedness leave the population of any nation vulnerable to threats that compromise everyday life. National security in this decade should consist of strengthening digital, environmental, and social systems on which a country functions, not strictly Department of Defense spending.

New alignments and partnerships among countries are shifting towards technological partnerships, which shows some promising growth in this sector. Alliances such as the NATO cyber command and quad AI frameworks enable friendly states to coexist and protect their citizens from technological threats. On top of this, private sector companies have immersed themselves in governmental security policies, such as Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and Palantir. Billion-dollar contracts have been awarded to several companies, providing them with as much strategic influence as governmental defense departments. With security spending reallocated toward information protection in cloud-based servers, data infrastructure, and AI regulation partnerships, nations are headed in the right direction. However, unless national security is defined with clear and concrete definitions, protection and preventative measures may be too late. The military is now just one subset of many other factors that can inflict pain upon a nation and its citizens. Clarity must be extended to digital sovereignty, not physical borders.

Force may still be at the top of governmental agendas, but function and systemic resilience must be made more aware of and become a new priority. Wolfer’s ambiguity still stands true seventy years later. Baldwin’s contribution also reminds us that security must be weighed against other societal goals and resources. In today’s terms, governments must compare the opportunity costs of military spending with the new investments in cybersecurity and infrastructure protection. National security in 2025 is the preservation of a nation’s digital, economic, and informational autonomy in an era where the greatest dangers do not come from missiles, but from autonomous technologies and machines. Artificial intelligence evolves faster than the policies designed to contain it, so the actual test for security will be whether nations can protect not just their borders but also their data-driven and digitized societies. In summary, national security in the 21st century must be redefined as the ability of a state to safeguard its citizens, as well as its systems, that threaten the integrity of society.