Ankit Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research interests include nuclear strategy, escalation, missiles and missile defense, space security, and U.S. alliances. He is the author of The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon (Polity, 2025), Indo-Pacific Missile Arsenals: Avoiding Spirals and Mitigating Risks (Carnegie, 2023), and Kim Jong Un and the Bomb: Survival and Deterrence in North Korea (Hurst/Oxford, 2020). Panda is co-editor of New Approaches to Verifying and Monitoring North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal (Carnegie, 2021).
Panda has consulted for the United Nations in New York and Geneva, and his analysis has been sought by U.S. Strategic Command, Space Command, and Indo-Pacific Command. Panda is among the most highly cited experts worldwide on North Korean nuclear capabilities. He has testified on matters related to South Korea and Japan before the congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Panda has also testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. Before joining Carnegie, Panda was an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists and a journalist covering international security.
Panda is a frequent expert commentator in print and broadcast media around the world on nuclear policy and defense matters. His work has appeared in or been featured by the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Economist, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Atlantic, the New Republic, the South China Morning Post, Politico, and the National Interest. Panda has also published in scholarly journals, including Survival, the Washington Quarterly, and India Review, and has contributed to the IISS Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment and Strategic Survey. He is editor-at-large at the Diplomat, where he hosts the Asia Geopolitics podcast, and a contributing editor at War on the Rocks, where he hosts Thinking the Unthinkable With Ankit Panda, a podcast on nuclear matters.
The United States faces a looming crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Diplomacy has broken down, and the United States has focused mainly on strengthening its alliances with South Korea and Japan as the Kim regime grows more threatening. What options does the United States have to prevent war on the Peninsula?
After President Yoon’s January 2023 public, not-so-veiled proliferation threat, the April 2023 Washington Declaration was a two-way exchange of assurances: South Korea reaffirmed its commitment to abstain from developing nuclear weapons, while the US agreed to augment its security reassurances in return.
What is the state of India's nuclear strategy? Carnegie fellow Ankit Panda joins Milan Vaishnav to analyze key developments in India's missile program and where it stands in the new "missile age" of the Indo-Pacific.
As Russia’s calculus shifts in response to its war in Ukraine, U.S.-Russian alignment to manage global nuclear risks, especially from Iran and North Korea, is unraveling.
The two Koreas are mired in an intense security dilemma, which could cause future crises between them to spiral quickly into a possible, large-scale war.
A discussion on new nuclear dynamics, the meaning of deterrence, and debate about the future of U.S. nuclear weapons strategy.
An article on the proliferation of long-range missiles in the Indo-Pacific may seem like a strategic advantage for different nations, but collectively increases the danger level.
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Ankit Panda writes in this op-ed that the proliferation of long-range missiles in the Indo-Pacific may seem like a strategic advantage for different nations, but collectively increases the danger level.
North Korea’s exploitation of growing rifts between Russia and the West, paired with its ambitions for advanced nuclear capabilities, should prompt a substantial reevaluation in Washington of the problems posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and how the United States approaches the Korean Peninsula.
As countries in the Indo-Pacific region expand their missile inventories, security dilemmas related to North Korea and the Taiwan Strait grow more complex and the risks of nuclear escalation increase. The United States and its Asian allies must recognize these risks and act quickly to mitigate them.
