From the Research Desk
Research-grounded analysis on conflict early warning, narrative intelligence, information warfare, and human-AI hybrid foresight, written by the people who do the work.
What Is Conflict Early Warning, and Why Does It Keep Failing?
Most early-warning systems watch for events: incidents, spikes, threshold breaches. But by the time events register, the window for prevention has usually closed. The earliest signals live in language, and they are observable, measurable, and analysable if approached correctly.
Narrative Intelligence: How Language Predicts Violence Before It Happens
The road from grievance to justification to dehumanisation is gradual, directional, and measurable. Reading that trajectory, not counting incidents, is the core of narrative intelligence.
Measuring Information Warfare: Lessons from Mapping the Syrian Coastal Massacres
Information warfare is usually described, rarely measured. Building a 3,087-node knowledge graph from 100,000 posts showed it can be quantified, and what becomes possible when it is.
The Third Intelligence: Why Human-AI Hybrid Analysis Beats Either Alone
Human judgment cannot process today's informational scale. AI cannot understand meaning, ethics, or consequence. Deliberately bridged, they produce a third capability that neither has alone.
Forecasting Terrorism Six Months Early: What ISIS's Own Newsletter Revealed
Doctoral research at the University of Bath applied machine learning to ISIS's al-Naba' newsletter, and demonstrated that rhetorical patterns could forecast terrorist activity up to six months in advance.
Field Notes & Applied Analysis
Dr. Al-Khayer also publishes hands-on analyses, audience studies, and methodological essays on Substack.
Syria's Second Battlefield
What social media reveals about the new mechanics of conflict: the discourse war that ran parallel to the violence on Syria's coast.
What a Knowledge Graph Sees That We Cannot
How an LLM-built map of online discourse is rewriting conflict analysis capabilities.
Networked Sectarianism: How the March 2025 Massacres Exposed the Failure of Syria's Transition
A machine-learning influence-chain analysis of Syrian social media.
Decision Dominance in the Age of AI: A Practical Field Guide
How to use AI to turn the world's information into intelligence, and decide faster, and better, than everyone else.
My Ambition for Building a Digital Peace Observatory
The path to unlocking a revolution in peacebuilding.
The Last Frontier for AI: Why Conflict Resolution Still Lags Behind
Artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of science and industry, so why not peace?
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