Inside Vanderbilt’s Asness Summit: Rethinking conflict in an age of asymmetry

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum exhibits trace the global reach of Nashville’s music industry. But in the museum’s glass-walled atrium, the conversation on April 22 shifted from cultural exports to national security as military leaders, private and public sector policymakers, and academic researchers gathered from around the world over some Nashville hot chicken.

The reception was part of Vanderbilt University’s Asness Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats. The two-day program April 23–24 examined how advances in technology—particularly artificial intelligence, drones and cyber capabilities—are reshaping conflict and allowing smaller actors to challenge more powerful nations. This year’s theme was “The Shadow of War, The Illusion of Peace: National Security in the Age of Asymmetry,” which explores the shifting balance of power, technology and diplomacy in our complex era.

Now in its fifth year, the summit organized by Vanderbilt’s Institute of National Security has grown steadily in size and influence. It moved from campus to a larger venue in downtown Nashville, The Pinnacle, and it was renamed through a gift from Laurel and Cliff Asness.  The $10 million gift, part of the university’s Dare to Grow campaign, was designated to support the institute.

Keynote speakers and panel sessions at the 2026 Asness Summit explored topics ranging from cyberattacks and artificial intelligence in weapon systems to disinformation and the protection of critical infrastructure like power grids.

The battle of systems

Competition is increasingly defined by systems rather than individual technologies.

The shifting balance of power is already playing out across global supply chains, which panelists described as a “gray zone” battleground. Rather than relying on traditional military force, adversaries can exploit choke points in areas such as semiconductors and rare earth minerals to create disruption without direct confrontation.

Dan Wang, a fellow at Yale Law School and author of Breakneck: China’s Quest To Engineer the Future, argued that the real contest is about a nation’s ability to build at scale. If the United States loses its manufacturing base, it risks losing its capacity to innovate. He pointed to widely used semiconductors found in cars, appliances and medical devices, noting that “if China becomes the dominant provider of the world’s legacy chips, they gain a form of asymmetric leverage that is just as powerful as a fleet of submarines.”

In her keynote chat, The Hon. Gina Raimondo, former U.S. secretary of commerce,

said the line between trade and defense has effectively disappeared. “Economic statecraft is now at the center of our national security strategy,” she said, pointing to efforts to expand U.S. production of advanced semiconductors and reduce reliance on foreign supply chains.

The race for tech relevance

While the nature of conflict is still rooted in human competition, the way wars are fought is changing fast.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during his opening keynote that the United States must move faster than the traditional 10- to 15-year technology development cycle to maintain an edge.

That dynamic is clearly visible on the battlefield, where low-cost technologies like drones are changing the economics of warfare. Panelists pointed to the war in Ukraine, where tools once reserved for advanced militaries are now widely accessible, which means smaller groups can inflict significant damage on larger adversaries.

And retired Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla described the Middle East as a real-time “innovation hub” for these threats. “We are in a race for relevance,” Kurilla said. “If we don’t innovate faster than our adversaries, we risk losing our competitive edge.”

That shift is now playing out globally, as Iran’s use of low-cost drone swarms in the Middle East, along with its supply of drones to Russia, has accelerated the scale and speed of drone warfare in conflicts like Ukraine.

Ultimately, Kurilla said, success now depends on the ability to process massive amounts of data through artificial intelligence more quickly than an opponent.

The role of universities

Throughout the summit, speakers stressed that nations cannot compete through hardware alone.

“It requires leaders who can move fluently between innovation and strategy, and between engineering and geopolitics,” Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said. He emphasized the role of higher education in building that capacity.

“Universities are where breakthrough technologies originate and where future leaders are trained to operate across domains,” he said. “If policymakers ignore the crucial role of universities, they risk overlooking one of the most important drivers of national security in the 21st century.”

A global dialogue in Nashville

In his closing remarks, retired Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the institute’s founding director, described the summit as part of a broader global dialogue, calling Nashville the “third leg of a stool” alongside major policy gatherings in Davos and Munich.

The European gatherings focus on economics and military strategy, and the Asness Summit is their integral academic counterpart. Without the academic community to challenge existing assumptions, Nakasone said, the stool “cannot stand.”

His message was clear: Investing in education and talent is inseparable from national security.