Background and training

Patrick Logan is an independent researcher based in Vancouver, Canada, working on cross-domain deterrence and strategic threat modelling. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of Manitoba, with a concentration on the great powers, Russia and China.

Before turning to policy research he spent nearly two decades in enterprise quality assurance and systems integration, leading verification and release management on critical infrastructure and government programmes. He ran the testing programme for a national carrier's LTE deployment, core network, IP backbone, and billing integration, defined its operational alarm thresholds, and worked with operations management to approve the transition to production. Earlier work covered utility market systems under regulatory deadline and federal service delivery in Canada.

The verification framework described below is adapted directly from that career. He has also built and operated audience segmentation and message-testing systems at commercial scale: the same operational machinery that influence operations repurpose.

How claims are tagged and qualified

Every substantive claim is tagged by its evidentiary basis. OBSERVED means the claim rests on a document, image, or record that can be independently retrieved and checked. INFERRED means it is a conclusion drawn from observed material, with the reasoning stated. MODELLED means it describes a mechanism under test rather than an event, and is not a prediction.

Confidence is stated explicitly and separately from the tag, a claim can be observed and still low-confidence if the source is thin. Alternative explanations are retained in the section where they apply rather than collected in a footnote, so a reader encounters them at the point of judgment. Each paper closes with an annex stating what the analysis could not establish, and why.

How the work is checked before it ships

Research is produced under a documented verification framework adapted from enterprise software quality assurance.

Every claim is traced to its source in a register maintained alongside the document, so any assertion can be walked back to the material it rests on. Sourcing effort is prioritized by risk: claims that carry the argument get primary documents and independent corroboration, peripheral claims get proportionate treatment, and the difference is visible in the citations. Revision proceeds in defined stages with stated entrance and exit criteria, so a section is not reopened until the prior stage closes. Corrections are logged against versions, which prevents a fixed error from reappearing in a later draft.

Within that framework, drafting and research are AI-assisted. Every paper states this boundary in its methodology annex.

What sources are accepted, and what is not

Sources are ranked and the ranking is applied consistently. Primary government documents and Think Tanks sit at the top: including audit and oversight reports, congressional and parliamentary records, agency budget justifications, and declassified assessments. First-tier press is accepted where reporting is attributed to named sources. Trade press is accepted for domain-specific reporting within its competence.

Open-source research and independence

All work is open-source. No classified information is handled, sought, or required, and no finding depends on privileged access.

Published research is independent. No government, party, company, or advocacy organization commissions it, funds it, selects its subjects, or approves its findings.

Standing commitments

Reviewer comments are confidential. Feedback offered on a draft is never published, quoted, attributed, or cited as endorsement without written permission. Comments are used to improve the work, not to credential it.

Commissioned work is disclosed. Analysis produced under contract does not become published research without stating who paid for it, and no client has approval rights over findings.

Financial relationships are declared in the paper. Any relationship bearing on a paper's subject appears in that paper, not only here.