Registration

Opening remarks

Keynote address

Networking break

Panel 1: The Shifting International political and economic system

This panel examines how the global financial order is being reshaped by the evolving use, and limits of economic statecraft. For decades, U.S. dominance has been reinforced by its central role in global finance and its expansive sanctions regime. However, a combination of factors is beginning to challenge this position: the perceived overuse of sanctions, rising concerns around U.S. debt, and the emergence of parallel financial channels among sanctioned states. In particular, the growing use of cryptocurrencies and alternative payment systems is facilitating the development of a “second” financial ecosystem that operates partially outside traditional institutions. These shifts carry significant defence and security implications, including new pathways for sanctioned actors to finance and procure military goods, evade export controls, and sustain conflict capabilities. The panel will explore whether the international financial system is fragmenting, what this means for the future of sanctions as a policy tool, and how governments can adapt to maintain strategic and regulatory leverage in an increasingly shifting financial landscape.

Lunch

Presentation: CASIS Essay Competition Winners

Panel 2: Middle Power Chorus - Trade and Defence Partnerships

This panel explores how middle powers like Canada can navigate an increasingly complex global landscape where trade, security, and intelligence are deeply intertwined. As countries seek to diversify and expand trade relationships, the role of intelligence is becoming central to informed economic decision-making. From open-source and market intelligence to more traditional forms of economic intelligence, governments are leveraging insights to shape trade agreements, assess risks, and identify opportunities. At the same time, these engagements raise critical questions about supply chain security, technology transfer, and exposure to adversarial influence. The panel will examine how intelligence services can support trade while safeguarding national interests, particularly in the context of defence procurement and the protection of sensitive technologies. It will also consider the growing importance of “intelligence diplomacy,” including expanded intelligence-sharing arrangements with trusted partners, and how these relationships can reinforce both economic resilience and defence cooperation in a more contested global environment.

Networking break

CASIS Research Project

Panel 3: Domestic security and intelligence challenges arising from emerging technologies, particularly the role of all-source and open source intelligence and partnerships

This panel examines how rapid advances in emerging technologies, such as generative AI, are reshaping domestic security and intelligence practices. As the threshold for identifying and responding to “imminent harm” evolves, agencies must adapt to a landscape where threats can emerge, scale, and mobilize faster than ever before. Central to this shift is the growing importance of all-source intelligence, integrating traditional classified streams with open-source intelligence (OSINT), digital signals, and data generated across the public and private sectors. This transformation is also redefining who produces and analyzes intelligence, with private companies, technology platforms, and specialized firms playing an increasingly prominent role. At the same time, governments are rethinking longstanding assumptions about classification, access, and information-sharing. The panel will explore how partnerships are expanding beyond traditional security actors to include non-traditional stakeholders, such as schools, libraries, and community organizations, who are often closest to early indicators of risk. Together, these developments raise critical questions about coordination, accountability, and the future of domestic intelligence in a more networked and technologically driven security environment.

Panel 4: Gray-Zone Activity, International Law, and International Order

Gray-zone activities—including hybrid warfare, state-sponsored terrorism, proxy conflict, foreign interference, cyber operations, and covert action—are not simply tactics for competing below the threshold of armed conflict; they are instruments through which states and other actors contest, reproduce, and reshape international order. By exploiting ambiguity, intermediaries, and divisions within existing institutions and relationships, these activities allow actors to challenge established distributions of power and influence without directly confronting the laws, rules and structures that sustain them. In this sense, gray-zone competition is not only about avoiding escalation, but about altering the terms under which international order operates.

For middle powers, this creates significant legal and strategic challenges. Existing legal frameworks were largely designed around more overt forms of interstate conflict, leaving difficult questions of attribution, state responsibility, countermeasures, and collective responses to persistent activity that deliberately exploits the boundaries of existing rules. This panel will examine how gray-zone activities are reshaping the international order and the distribution of influence within it, how legal frameworks can adapt to these forms of contestation, and how intelligence, international cooperation, and institutional resilience can enable middle powers to respond effectively and lawfully while contributing to the maintenance and adaptation of international order even in the face of shifting hegemony.

Closing Remarks