Around the Table with Karim Farishta

Around the Table is a three-question interview series from the Make Room email newsletter as a part of the CNAS Make Room initiative. Each edition features a conversation with a peer in the national security community to learn about their expertise and experience in the sector.

Karim Farishta is a senior advisor at Agentic Learning Labs and a graduate lecturer on “Cities and States in National Security” at George Washington University. A CNAS NextGen National Security fellow, Farishta holds a master’s in public policy from Harvard Kennedy School and a BA from George Washington University. He is also a former presidential appointee at the White House and the U.S. Department of Defense.

You lecture at GW on cities and states in national security. What role can subnational politics play in U.S. security, particularly in an increasingly polarized federal system?

Cities and states play a significant and still underappreciated role. They are not just stakeholders in national security; they are implementers. They operate at the front lines of many of today’s most pressing challenges: infrastructure resilience, cyber threats, public health, supply chains, and even geopolitical competition. While federal strategy often sets direction, subnational leaders determine whether that strategy succeeds in practice.

In an increasingly polarized federal system, this role becomes even more critical. When national consensus is difficult to achieve, states and cities often move ahead by experimenting, adapting, and leading through moments of transition. We saw this during COVID-19, in climate policy, and now in AI adoption. Governors, mayors, and their teams punch above their weight because they are closer to the problem and to the people affected by it.

Through my course at George Washington University on cities and states in national security, one theme emerged repeatedly: Proximity builds trust, and trust enables action. That matters in crisis response, in countering misinformation, and in building resilience against external threats.

Subnational actors are also navigating domestic responsibilities while increasingly engaging in international affairs. Often, this means forging economic partnerships, engaging in climate diplomacy, or participating in global events such as the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics. They operate in a space where the local and the global constantly intersect.

This creates both friction and opportunity. Friction, because authorities and responsibilities are not always clearly defined across levels of government. Opportunity, because these actors can serve as bridges, translating global dynamics into local action and vice versa.

What is underappreciated is how practical and tactile this work is. National security is often discussed in abstract terms, but at the subnational level, it becomes concrete. Permitting decisions affect critical infrastructure; workforce training shapes industrial capacity; and emergency management determines response times in a crisis.

Recognizing the expansiveness of this requires a mindset shift. We need to invest in capacity at the state and local levels. And we need to recognize that the future of national security will be built as much in city halls and state capitals as in Washington.

You have held several fellowships—including this year as a Next Gen fellow at​ CNAS! Can you talk a bit about your career trajectory, and how you find and make the most of such opportunities to​ learn, grow, and keep moving forward?

My career trajectory has been a mix of intentionality and serendipity. I’ve been drawn by a commitment to stay proximate to problems that matter. Fellowships have been critical in that journey because they create a structured space to step back, pressure-test assumptions, and learn in community.

For me, learning is fundamentally experiential. You can’t fully understand national security, technology, or governance from a single vantage point. You have to move across sectors, geographies, and disciplines. It’s essential to be in conversation with people who see the world differently. Fellowships accelerate that exposure. They surround you with practitioners, scholars, and leaders who challenge your priors and expand your field of vision.

I’ve also come to value curiosity as a discipline. The most impactful opportunities often come from following a thread—an idea, a question, or a relationship—without knowing exactly where it leads. That requires a willingness to embrace ambiguity and to be humbled by the complexity of the systems we’re trying to navigate.

What gives you hope for the future?

What gives me hope is the longer arc we are a part of and our agency within it. As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, I think more about the construction of the next 250 years. We are not just inheritors of institutions; we are architects of what comes next.

That perspective shifts how I think about national security, technology, and governance. Too often, we operate in a mindset of prediction—trying to anticipate the next crisis, the next disruption, the next risk. But the real opportunity is in expanding what is possible. Moving from a paradigm of probability to one of possibility requires imagination.

I see imagination emerging in unexpected places: in cities experimenting with new models and in younger generations less constrained by legacy assumptions about how power should operate.

Hope, to me, is an active commitment to shaping conditions for human improvement. It requires us to hold complexity, to work across differences, and to build institutions that are more responsive and more inclusive than those we inherited.

We don’t get to control the future, but we do get to help design its scaffolding. That responsibility, more than anything, is what gives me hope.