The Lowy Institute’s MacArthur Foundation Asia Security Project aims to explore the limits of security cooperation in Asia and promote measures to prevent the region's growing strategic rivalries from deepening and escalating into war. A generous grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has funded the Lowy Institute’s research on this project since 2009. The Lowy Institute has been working alongside 26 other leading regional institutions in the MacArthur Foundation’s Asian Security Initiative to help shape a practical agenda for security cooperation in Asia.

In 2012 the MacArthur Foundation Asia Security Project will release a major publication analysing strategic cyber competition between major powers in Asia: the trajectory of cyber conflict and cyber espionage, and the prospect for normalising competition and conflict in the cyber domain. Additionally, the project will continue to focus on the security dynamics of Asia’s maritime environment, investigating the actors and factors shaping prospects for cooperation and conflict at sea.