Mission

Mission statement

The Department of Strategic Continuity (DSC) is a federal research department. It was established on 12 January 2026 to study the conditions under which modern civilization could lose the capacity to sustain itself, and to develop the knowledge and infrastructure that would let essential capabilities, records and understanding outlast such a loss.

The mission has three parts, and each corresponds to a body of research. Systemic risk covers how energy, food, water, finance, supply chains, information systems and institutions depend on one another, and how failure in one can spread to the rest. Advanced computational systems covers frontier artificial intelligence as a source of capability and of dependence, together with the computing infrastructure the Department builds for its own work. Preservation of human knowledge and cognition covers the long-term storage of records and data and, in its most ambitious form, the open question of whether human cognition could one day be represented and sustained on computational systems.

Vision

The Department works toward a country able to see long-horizon systemic risk clearly and early enough to act on it, and one that does not lose what it knows to a single failure of technology, institutions or infrastructure. In practice this means three things: an evidence base on civilizational-scale risk that is rigorous, reviewable and published openly; physical infrastructure for computation and preservation that is designed to last decades rather than procurement cycles; and a research program that approaches the hardest questions about human cognition with the caution they warrant.

Core values

Scientific integrity

Findings follow from evidence and stated methods. Results that are inconvenient, uncertain or negative are reported in the same way as those that are not. Each division’s scientific conclusions are its own and are not altered for presentation.

Long-horizon stewardship

Decisions are judged by their consequences over decades. Facilities, data and institutional practices are designed to be maintained, inherited and understood by people who were not present when they were created.

Transparency

Methods, assumptions, limitations and dissenting views are published alongside results wherever security and privacy allow. Where something cannot be published, the Department says so.

Humility under uncertainty

Model outputs are conditional estimates, not forecasts of certain events. Uncertainty ranges are reported with every headline figure, and the Department’s staff are expected to state plainly what is not known.

Respect for persons

Research that touches human tissue, human data or human identity is conducted only under independent ethical review and with informed consent. No research objective overrides this.

Independence of review

The Department’s most consequential work is examined by bodies that do not report to its authors: the External Scientific Advisory Board, the Research Ethics Review Board, the Model Review Panel and the Office of the Inspector General. See Institutional Governance.

What the Department does

• Builds, maintains and publishes the Integrated Civilizational Systems Model (ICSM) and the Outlook series of assessments derived from it. See Risk Assessment.
• Evaluates frontier computational systems, and the degree to which critical infrastructure has come to depend on them, through the Frontier System Evaluation Program.
• Conducts foundational research in computational neuroscience and connectomics through the Neural Continuity Research Program, under standing ethical review.
• Designs and operates three Continuity Research Facilities for high-performance computing and long-duration preservation.
• Develops methods for forecasting and for decision-making under deep uncertainty over multi-decade horizons.
• Publishes its reports, working papers and frameworks in the publications library, with methods and limitations.

What the Department does not do

• It has no regulatory, licensing, enforcement or law-enforcement authority, and it does not direct the operation of any infrastructure.
• It is not an intelligence or defense organization. It does not collect intelligence and does not conduct surveillance.
• Its model results are not predictions that a particular event will occur on a particular date. They are estimates of how likely different outcomes are under stated assumptions.
• It does not offer, and has not developed, any means of preserving an individual person’s mind. Whole-brain emulation has not been demonstrated, and the Department treats it as an unproven, long-term research objective.
• It does not conduct human-subject research on emulation outside protocols approved by the Research Ethics Review Board.

The limits of the Department’s authority are set out in full on the Research Mandate page.