The Cascade Brief

When one wall moves, the others move with it. Alliances, trade routes, lending programs, defense pacts — the systems built for stability become the transmission lines for crisis. The Cascade Brief traces those pathways.

This is geopolitical and security analysis for practitioners — the people who manage risk in the places where these structures carry real weight. Corporate security leaders, risk managers, policy professionals, defense and intelligence analysts, and anyone who needs to understand how regional shocks propagate across domains before they arrive at the door.

I’m Devin Carlson. I’ve spent 17 years leading security operations in high-threat environments across three continents, most of that time in South Asia and the Middle East. I write about risk, leadership, and decisions that matter. Views are my own and do not represent any government or organization.

Currently publishing “Architecture of Risk,” a three-part series on how March 2026 revealed the structural fault lines in the systems we depend on.

To learn more about the tech platform that powers this publication, visit Substack.com.