Strategic surprises are often preceded by warnings. The WARN project, led by Nikki Ikani, studies these warnings: how are signals detected, communicated, interpreted and acted upon, and where this process breaks down as information journeys through organisations and into political decision-making.

Funded by an NWO Veni grant, WARN examines warning processes at national and international level, with particular attention to the Netherlands, NATO and the European Union.

WARN is particularly concerned with the organisational problems that arise once a threat has been detected. How are competing assessments compared? Which warnings reach senior decision-makers, and with what degree of urgency? How do political priorities, institutional routines and differences in threat perception shape the response? By examining these questions across national and international settings, the project seeks to identify practical ways to strengthen warning, escalation and decision-making processes before the window for effective action closes.

A central theme emerging from the research concerns the journey between detecting a threat and acting on it. Warning problems frequently occur after relevant signals have already been identified. Assessments may lose urgency as they travel through organisations, decision-makers may interpret the same evidence differently, and political commitments can shape which warnings receive attention.

The WARN project encourages collaboration, inquiries, and dialogue from fellow researchers, professionals in crisis management, and the media interested in warning processes and their impact on security: n.ikani@fgga.leidenuniv.nl

In Beyond the Binary: A New Typology for Evaluating Warning Success and Failure in Strategic Surprise, published in International Studies Review in 2025, Ikani developed a framework for assessing warning performance across analytical, process and political dimensions. The article treats warning performance as a spectrum and provides a way of identifying where particular warning processes succeed or break down.

In the 2026 NATO Defense College Outlook Heed the warning: how NATO can find and fill the gaps in its warning systems, she applies and extends this work to NATO. The paper examines the fall of Kabul, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the coup in Niger, and identifies the reconciliation of divergent national assessments as a recurring problem for collective warning. It adds Allied integration as a fourth dimension of warning performance and proposes practical measures including divergence drills, red teaming, contingency packages and rapid after-action reviews.

In December 2025, Ikani wrote 'Bird flu warnings are being ignored. I’ve seen this pattern before' for The Conversation about warning failures surrounding the growing bird flu threat. Drawing on lessons from COVID-19 and other crises, the article examined how early signals can lose force as they move through bureaucratic systems, and how declining surveillance capacity can weaken preparedness.

A broader set of publications and outputs from WARN is currently in development. This includes Catastrophe Foretold, a forthcoming book examining the warnings that preceded major catastrophes and the choices made in the period before disaster. The book will be published in 2028 in seven countries, including by Viking/Penguin in the UK, and by Union Square & Co/Hachette in the US.

Knowledge utilisation forms a substantial part of the NWO Veni project WARN. The project creates opportunities to test academic findings with professionals involved in warning, intelligence and crisis response, and to bring practitioner experience back into the research.

Ikani is a Senior Non-Resident Associate Fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome, where her areas of expertise include strategic warning, crisis early warning and response, and EU-NATO relations. The fellowship provides an institutional setting for exchange between the WARN research and NATO practitioners. In March 2026, she presented her research on strategic warning at the NATO Defense College in Rome. The 2026 NDC Outlook grew from this wider strand of engagement with NATO warning and intelligence.

This also fits a wider body of work at ISGA and the Research Group of Intelligence & Security on NATO and European security. Researchers working on related NATO questions include Dr Aiden Hoyle and Dr Linde Desmaele.

On 23 June 2025, WARN hosted a practitioner workshop at the Campus in The Hague. Participants from NATO, NATO StratCom, the Netherlands Defence Academy, IRSEM, TNO and academia took part in two interactive sessions. Nikki Ikani led a workshop on Strategic warning in a rapidly changing security landscape. Dr Aiden Hoyle led a second workshop on Anticipating narrative alignment. The meeting brought researchers and practitioners together to examine how organisations detect emerging threats and how warning approaches need to adapt.

WARN also contributed to an academic engagement event connected to the OECD project on 10 December 2025 on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference in the Netherlands. The discussion included the warning dimension of FIMI: how emerging information threats are recognised, assessed and communicated before they produce wider effects.

WARN also contributes to public debate on how institutions respond to emerging threats, including in areas beyond traditional security.

In February 2026, she was interviewed by Gavi’s VaccinesWork about lessons from warning research for pandemic preparedness. The interview discussed how bureaucracy, political pressures, fragmented data and declining trust can prevent accurate warnings from producing timely action, and how intelligence research can inform public-health warning systems.

In May 2026, Ikani appeared on NPR’s The Indicator from Planet Money in an episode on NATO, defence spending and the changing transatlantic relationship. Speaking in her capacity as a NATO Defense College fellow and researcher on warning, she discussed how changes in US signalling and burden-sharing debates affect the Alliance.

• Have we already forgotten the lessons of COVID-19? We asked an expert in anticipating crises, Gavi The Vaccine Alliance, 17 February 2026
• Ikani, N. (2025), Bird flu warnings are being ignored. I’ve seen this pattern before, The Conversation
• Ikani, N. (2025), “Beyond the Binary: A New Typology for Evaluating Warning Success and Failure in Strategic Surprise,” International Studies Review.
• Ikani, N. (2026), Heed the warning: how NATO can find and fill the gaps in its warning systems, NATO Defense College, Strategy Series, Outlook 09-2026.
• NATO Defense College researcher profile: Nikki Ikani.
• Should NATO be pay-to-protect? Podcast The Indicator from NPR Planet Money
• Catastrophe Foretold, forthcoming 2028.