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C4ADS, also known as Center for Advanced Defense Studies, is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that analyzes and provides evidence-based reports on data related to global conflict and emerging security threats. The company is described as a think tank. C4ADS has various departments (cells) with experts specializing in specific work categories.
The conflict finance and irregular threats cell at C4ADS focuses on conflict economies as drivers of global conflict. The company examines the networks that profit from human suffering and the corporate, financial, and logistic infrastructure that enables it. C4ADS's research centers on civil wars, conflict economies, and gray zone competition—focusing on the Middle East and Africa.
The C4ADS counterproliferation cell is responsible for the exposure of illicit state-sponsored procurement and financial networks that trade technologies for chemical, nuclear, and missile programs. Projects that have been worked on include:
- Chinese defense and intelligence modernization
- North Korean sanctions evasion
- Iranian ballistic missile development
- Russian arms exports
- Pakistani Weapons of Mass Destruction procurement networks
- Syrian chemical weapons supply chains.
The environmental crimes fusion cell is tasked with combatting the global illegal wildlife trade as a data interface connecting a global network of 120 organizations across conservation, law enforcement, financial intelligence, and regulatory communities.
The natural resource cell at C4ADS looks to locate importers and accomplices by identifying those enabling or engaging in natural resources illegal movement. C4ADS can illuminate differences between legal, illegal, and “gray area” actors by mapping natural resources supply chains.
The organized crime and grand corruption cell is a subsection of C4ADS tasked with identifying the convergence of organized crime, large-scale corruption, and the facilitators who help it cross borders. The department focuses on how large-scale corruption disrupts and weakens societies and enables illegal networks in both origin and destination countries.
