When people hear national security, they often picture intelligence agencies, classified briefings, or military operations.
That’s not wrong—but it’s incomplete.
National security is not a single discipline
National security is not owned by any one profession, institution, or discipline.
It is an umbrella term for work that examines how societies identify, manage, and respond to serious risks—especially risks that affect public safety, democratic systems, social cohesion, and state resilience.
That includes traditional domains like defence and intelligence. It also includes areas that sit outside traditional security categories, and are central to how security actually functions in practice.
We are interested in work that sits between policy and practice, between academia and lived experience, and between technical systems and human consequences.
What does count as national security at Nat Sec Press
We publish work that engages with security questions across a wide range of domains, including (but not limited to):
- Counterterrorism and violent extremism
- Intelligence
- High-stakes decision-making under uncertainty
- Cybersecurity
- Cybercrime
- Behavioural science
- Social Justice
- Emergency Management
- Information operations and influence campaigns
- Technology, algorithms, platforms, and digital harms
- Crisis response and emergency management
- Policing, public safety, civil security and community safety
- Investigations
- Border security, migration, and organised transnational crime
- Law, governance, and oversight
- Research ethics, researcher safety, and harm mitigation
- The human impacts of security policy—on communities, professionals, and researchers themselves
- Deterrence, Disengagement, Prevention or Countering initiatives and interventions
If your work examines how security is designed, implemented, governed, or experienced—and who bears the risks, responsibilities, and consequences—you are likely within scope.
We’re also interested in work that grapples with converged risks and threats—where technological, social, political, and security dynamics collide, creating complex challenges that can’t be understood, or addressed, in isolation.
What doesn’t fit our scope
We are not the right place for:
- Memoirs or war stories presented without analytical purpose
(although we welcome real-world examples when used in context and service of analysis) - Content that is likely to re-victimise, retraumatise, or place additional burden on affected or victimised communities
- Work that extracts testimony, imagery, or accounts of harm from affected communities without clear permission, purpose, or appropriate contextual care
- Content that relies on speculation, conjecture, or insider implication rather than evidence
- Submissions that prioritise provocation over care, rigour, or consequence
- Reproduction of harmful content where it is not analytically necessary
- Sensationalist treatment of violence, trauma, or extremist material
- Classified, restricted, or otherwise non-public material
- Work that breaches legal, contractual, or ethical obligations
This list is not exhaustive. Editorial discretion applies.
National security work, and the publications that shape it, carry real-world consequences. We take that responsibility seriously.
Security is not just about states
One of the most persistent misconceptions about national security is that it is only about the state.
In practice, security decisions are felt most acutely by individuals and communities—often those with the least power to influence them. That includes:
- Victim-Survivors and their communities
- Communities bearing long-term social, economic, or reputational effects of security action
- Civilians living with the downstream effects of security policy—whether as citizens subject to its reach, or as individuals affected by enforcement and intervention outcomes.
- Families and support networks experiencing indirect or cumulative impacts
- Frontline service providers responding to the social consequences of security measures
We are especially interested in work that makes these dynamics visible, rather than treating them as background noise.
Context Matters
We favour work that connects ideas to practice, evidence-base to consequence, and analysis to decision-making. That might look like:
- A practitioner reflecting critically on a system they worked inside
- A researcher translating complex findings for a broader audience
- A case study that surfaces trade-offs, constraints, and second-order effects
- An examination of how decisions were made under uncertainty or time pressure
- A comparison between intended policy outcomes and lived or observed impacts
If your work helps people think better, decide better, or do better—especially under pressure—it may be a good fit for our Press.
Independence matters
NatSec Press is independent. We are not aligned with any government, agency, or political agenda. Nor do we receive funding from external sources.
That means we publish work that is able to be:
- Critical as well as constructive
- Willing to question institutional assumptions
- Honest about uncertainty and failure
- Alert to ethical risk and unintended harm
It also means we expect our authors to take responsibility for what they publish—legally, ethically, and professionally.
Our independence does not override your obligations.
A Final Word
If your work grapples with risk, power, harm, resilience, or responsibility at a societal level—and does so with rigour and care—we'd be happy to hear from you.
National security is about understanding how security decisions shape the world we live in.
That’s the conversation we’re building at Nat Sec Press.
