Adi Rao

Adi Rao is a postdoctoral fellow in technology and international security at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), based in Washington, D.C. His research focuses on the intersection of intelligence, emerging technology, and international security, with particular emphasis on how states gather, process, and act on covert information. Adi holds a B.A. in Economics from New York University, an M.A. in Politics from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University, where his dissertation developed a formal model of intelligence search and tested its predictions using a large-scale randomized experiment involving millions of cyberattacks.

From 2022 to 2024, he served as an adjunct researcher at RAND Corporation’s Project Air Force, contributing to work on space governance and allied defense capabilities. At Cornell’s Tech Policy Institute, he worked on an Office of Naval Research–sponsored project applying network theory and supply chain analysis to U.S. defense vulnerabilities.

Plans for Fellowship: At IGCC, Adi is developing a book project that blends formal modeling, causal inference, and machine learning to study modern security threats—especially intelligence targeting: who gets spied on, for how long, and why. The project leverages breakthroughs in open-source intelligence to generate data-driven insights for counter-intelligence policy.