Indian Strategic Studies

13 December 2025

Countering the Digital Silk Road

Vivek Chilukuri and Ruby Scanlon

The year 2025 marks the 10th anniversary of the Digital Silk Road (DSR), China’s effort to strengthen its global ties and influence through technology. In the decade since the initiative’s launch, technology has moved to the center of emerging market priorities, China’s domestic and foreign policy, and the U.S.-China competition. Rapid digitalization, spurred by emerging market policies seeking to harness technology’s potential, has led to surging global demand for the connective infrastructure and cutting-edge services that will power the modern world. But even as technology vaults to the top of government and corporate agendas, the DSR’s origins, goals, and tools remain obscured, complicating U.S. and allied efforts to assess its effectiveness and mobilize a response.

Those seeking official strategies and plans behind the DSR will be disappointed. Its nature is amorphous, expanding alongside Beijing’s growing interest in strategic technologies and receding as commercial and political interests require. Ten years after its inception, the Digital Silk Road is, paradoxically, at once less visible and more ubiquitous than ever. Launched in 2015 as the digital arm of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the DSR grew into its own effort as technology leadership became increasingly important to Beijing. Rising backlash against the BRI and the DSR abroad, however, made formal affiliation with a state-led initiative a liability, and Chinese officials and companies now rarely tout official linkages. Domestic economic headwinds and fiscal pressures also caused Beijing to retrench from the earlier years of massive state-backed infrastructure projects in favor of a “small yet smart” approach that emphasized technology as a low-cost, high-impact avenue of continued developmental support. At home, Beijing embraced technology as a path to economic diversification, development, and security consistent with the Made in China 2025 initiative. Private and semiprivate companies—Huawei, ZTE, Alibaba, and Tencent—led the way, with considerable success. Huawei is now the world’s top provider of telecommunications equipment and operates in over 170 countries.

From Intelligence Gathering to Financial Gain: Countering DPRK Cyber Operations

Dr. Julie Kim

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) has developed aggressive cyber operations that have evolved into serious global security threats. North Korea’s early cyberattacks were primarily politically motivated, focusing on collecting intelligence and gaining insight into how its adversaries operate. Key targets included government officials, academics, journalists, and North Korean defectors. In addition, the DPRK has targeted the defence industry to gain access to sensitive information on weapons development, with particular focus on technologies related to satellites and semiconductors.

The scope of these operations shifted dramatically toward financial gain after the United Nations adopted successive sanctions in response to its nuclear tests. Despite multiple sanctions and international efforts, North Korea continues to fund its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs through illicit cyber activities. This includes payments remitted by overseas information technology (IT) workers. A significant portion of financial theft is believed to support its nuclear and missile development programs. In fact, a former White House official claimed that about half of North Korea’s missile program is funded by cyberattacks and cryptocurrency theft. Thus, DPRK cyber operations are not only a cyber security issue, but also a direct threat to broader military and defence security.

Steps toward AI governance in the military domain

Melanie W. Sisson, Colin Kahl, Sun Chenghao, and Xiao Qian

Rapid advances in the sophistication and functionality of military platforms enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) make it necessary and urgent to minimize the likelihood that states will use them in ways that cause harm to civilians. Of particular concern is the possibility that AI-powered military capabilities might cause harm to whole societies and put in question the survival of the human species.

China and the United States are the leaders of AI development and diffusion, and so their governments have a special responsibility to seek to prevent uses of AI in the military domain from harming civilians. They can achieve this together by pursuing mechanisms believed to reduce the likelihood that AI-powered military crises will occur. This is the goal of governance regimes. The United States and China can also seek to protect civilians in an AI-powered military crisis by implementing mechanisms believed to reduce the consequences of those crises, if they do occur. This is the goal of preparedness regimes (Figure 1).

When Do Cyber Campaigns Cross a Line?

Tom Uren

When Do Cyber Campaigns Cross a Line?

A new paper from the Germany-based think tank Interface has attempted to define the threshold at which peacetime state cyber operations become irresponsible. The author thinks that more concrete definitions of responsible behavior would help guide states and prevent dangerous conduct. It's a commendable effort, but we don't think the architects of cyber operations really care about norms, and a German think tank writing down its preferred rules on a piece of paper won't make any difference to state behavior.

Governments do, however, care about potential political costs and the risk of retaliation. One of the paper's goals is to provide a framework that makes it easier for victim states to flag irresponsible operations and respond appropriately. The paper defines seven principles-based "red flags" and gives examples of some real-world cyber operations that might have raised these flags.

The first red flag, "causing physical harm, injury or death" is pretty straightforward. It's a threshold that states have observed, and the paper does not list any cyber operations that it thinks have crossed the line. The most interesting red flag is "lacking or losing operational control." The author argues that maintaining effective operational control "is essential," because risks increase when operations spiral out of control.

Trump’s United States of the Americas

RICHARD HAASS

NEW YORK – National security strategies, released from time to time by every US administration, often say little and are quickly forgotten. The latest one, however, issued by the Trump administration late last week, is the exception. It is must reading, for it previews the biggest redirection of US foreign policy since the dawn of the Cold War 80 years ago.

Make Russia Pay for Its War on Ukraine

JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ & ANDREW KOSENKO explain why it is in Europe's interest to mobilize frozen Russian assets to ensure Ukraine's survival.

What leaps out is the prioritization of economic and commercial interests. The document speaks of reducing America’s trade imbalances, increasing commerce, securing supply chains, and reindustrializing the country. Allies are considered allies only so long as they assume a much larger share of the defense burden. Geoeconomics has superseded geopolitics. Investment is in; assistance is out. Fossil fuels and nuclear power are in; wind, solar, and other renewables are out – along with climate change concerns.

12 December 2025

India's Cautious Stance toward the Securitization of the Quad

Rohan Mukherjee

Even as the Quad has gained increasing strategic significance in the Indo-Pacific, India remains hesitant to embrace it for greater security cooperation. Are there discrepancies between India’s vision for an open, stable, and prosperous Indo-Pacific and that of its Quad counterparts. If so, what is driving these differences?

Much depends on what we mean by “security cooperation.” If this means a treaty alliance, then India is unlikely to embrace it. If we mean more robust cooperation on security issues, then India has supported this vision of the Quad since at least 2020, when the border standoff between India and China began in Ladakh. How firmly New Delhi pursues such cooperation is probably where the difference lies between India, on the one hand, and the United States and its treaty allies, Japan and Australia, on the other. It is noticeable that India became more active in the Quad and supportive of its security objectives after relations with China soured in 2020. Now that diplomacy between Beijing and New Delhi has yielded some agreement on a disengagement process, there will be less incentive for India to aggressively counter China, especially given the importance of bilateral trade.

Crises May Now Drive Japan’s Relations With China

Sheila A. Smith

Crises are not new to the Japan-China relationship, but their impact only grows. There is little reason to hope for a quick resolution to the current one. The last crisis was long-lasting, begun by a drunken fishing trawler captain and ended with an awkward handshake between Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō and Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2014. There is much to fear in that today’s crisis will escalate further. This crisis pits Japan’s security goals against China’s longstanding desire to reclaim full control over Taiwan. Finding an exit from these tensions will, at the very least, take time.

Diplomatic crises often change the stakes for each, and for the Japanese, the consequences of this crisis are multifaceted. Japan’s new prime minister, Takaichi Sanae, was the initial focal point. As the Washington Post editorial board aptly noted, she said the “quiet part out loud” when she responded to an opposition party lawmaker’s question in the Diet, acknowledging that China’s use of force against Taiwan could be seen to threaten Japan’s survival. In official Japanese government speak, that means that Japan might have to order its Self-Defense Forces to respond with others.

Foreign Aid With Chinese Characteristics

Alicia R. Chen

Earlier this year, after U.S. President Donald Trump effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, the world’s largest bilateral aid program, many observers raised fears that China would step in to fill the geopolitical vacuum. USAID, after all, had served as a key tool of U.S. diplomacy for more than six decades, and the American retreat has created an opportunity for China to expand its economic statecraft and win influence in many parts of the world.

Pressure points: Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait

Pressure Points part 2 explores Beijing’s growing use of military coercion against Taiwan, detailing events around Asia’s most volatile flashpoint. The analysis draws on open-source data, satellite imagery, military imagery, governmental reporting and other resources to deliver an accurate and comprehensive picture of China’s approach.

It examines how Beijing frames its claim to Taiwan, the coercive and military tools it increasingly wields to enforce that claim, how Taipei is responding to mounting pressure, and how other governments are managing the growing risk of confrontation. It also details potential scenarios that President Xi may pursue to forcibly unify Taiwan. The result is a concise and interactive account of one of the Indo-Pacific’s most consequential strategic landscapes.

The project also provides policy recommendations for governments, especially regional militaries and likeminded nations. These recommendations center on improving transparency of operations, enhancing multi-national coordination among like-minded states, strengthening resilience (military and civilian) in Taiwan, and maintaining sustained commitment in the face of persistent Chinese pressure.

Views of China across the Global South: The Rule and the Exceptions

Ken Ishii

From the colonial “scramble for Africa” to Cold War coups and proxy conflicts backed by the United States and Soviet Union, the developing world was frequently an arena for competition among rival great powers in the 20th century. In today’s world of geopolitical flux, however, many countries in Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America hold greater agency, increased state capacity, growing populations, and generally positive economic prospects. In a context of sharpening geopolitical divides, the societies of the Global South are likely to significantly influence the outcome of the current strategic competition. The emerging views regarding China in the Global South are relevant to understanding many countries’ foreign policies, investment regimes, trade policies, soft power initiatives, and approaches to educational or cultural exchanges.

It is not news that China is more popular in the Global South than in the West. But contrary to common assumptions — and previous research — Global Public Opinion on China’s (GPOC’s) data show the world is by no means neatly divided along North-South lines. As the previous paper in this series noted, on a population basis, the negative-leaning views of India’s 1.4 billion people offset the strongly positive views that prevail in more than 50 countries in Africa. Which regions and countries drive the overall positive view of China, and which cut against the general tendency? What have been the trends over time? How has the COVID pandemic’s legacy played out in the developing world? This GPOC brief offers a closer look at the significant variations in views of China across the Global South.

Trump reveals what he wants for the world

Nahal Toosi

President Donald Trump intends for the U.S. to keep a bigger military presence in the Western Hemisphere going forward to battle migration, drugs and the rise of adversarial powers in the region, according to his new National Security Strategy.

The 33-page document is a rare formal explanation of Trump’s foreign policy worldview by his administration. Such strategies, which presidents typically release once each term, can help shape how parts of the U.S. government allocate budgets and set policy priorities.

The Trump National Security Strategy, which the White House quietly released Thursday, has some brutal words for Europe, suggesting it is in civilizational decline, and pays relatively little attention to the Middle East and Africa.

It has an unusually heavy focus on the Western Hemisphere that it casts as largely about protecting the U.S. homeland. It says “border security is the primary element of national security” and makes veiled references to China’s efforts to gain footholds in America’s backyard.

“The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity — a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region,” the document states. “The terms of our alliances, and the terms upon which we provide any kind of aid, must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence — from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined.”

The awful arithmetic of our wars

Peter W. Singer

At the lowest point of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln characterized the core factor between victory and defeat as finding a general who understood the “awful arithmetic” of war. War is a contest of blood and treasure; each can, and must, ultimately be counted and measured. It has been the same for every conflict before and after.

Yet this arithmetic is constantly changing, and never faster than right now. If the United States cannot update its calculations to properly reflect our new era, our failure will not just cost us blood and treasure, but will drive us toward defeat.

Cost imposition has long been a tenet of U.S. strategy. During the Cold War, the U.S. launched expensive programs such as stealth and Star Wars not just for their tactical value, but to send a strategic signal to the Kremlin: neither your economy nor your war machine can keep up. Gorbachev, persuaded, gave up the decades-long competition with the U.S.

The very same concept of cost imposition was also elemental to the most celebrated operations of the past year. In Operation Spider’s Web, Ukraine used inexpensive drones, reportedly costing less than $500 each, to damage strategic bombers worth many millions of dollars, degrading Russia’s long-range strike capabilities for years to come. Similarly, in Operation Rising Lion, cheap Israeli drones took out Iranian surface-to-air missiles and radars, paving the way for the destruction of command and nuclear facilities worth tens of billions of dollars. In each, the tactical became the strategic through new operational concepts that leveraged the new math of new technologies.

Opinion | Trump’s closure of Voice of America is coming back to bite him

President Donald Trump has said he won’t rule out anything when it comes to removing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro from power. Yet he is missing an important tool from the arsenal: the Voice of America.

Since Trump’s March executive order dismantling the news agency, most of VOA’s 1,300 staff members and contractors have been fired or placed on administrative leave, its website has been frozen and the 83-year-old broadcaster has gone dark for the first time since its founding during World War II.

Before being shuttered, VOA’s weekly Spanish-language audience in Latin America was more than 100 million people, according to an audience survey released in January by the U.S. Agency for Global Media. That’s especially important in Venezuela, where the regime of Nicolás Maduro has closed most independent media outlets and continues to harass journalists. Around eight journalists are in prison. Many more have fled.

Until Trump’s edict, the broadcaster focused on communicating U.S. foreign policy to Venezuelans, including letting audiences hear unfiltered news conferences, briefings and congressional hearings focused on Maduro’s political repression, corruption, economic mismanagement and, yes, Maduro’s drug trafficking ties

Trump to Close Voice of America’s Overseas Offices and Radio Stations

Minho Kim

The Trump administration last week told lawmakers that it would further shrink the broadcasting capacity of Voice of America despite a judge’s order to maintain robust news operations at the federally funded news group, which provides independent reporting to countries with limited press freedoms.

Kari Lake, a Trump ally who leads the broadcaster’s parent agency, wrote in a Nov. 25 notice to Congress reviewed by The New York Times that the administration intended to close its six overseas news bureaus and four overseas marketing offices, including in Jakarta, Indonesia; Islamabad, Pakistan; Nairobi, Kenya; and Prague, Czech Republic.

The plans are part of the Trump administration’s broader, monthslong effort to shutter federally funded news groups. President Trump first moved to shut down Voice of America in March, and has also targeted other broadcasters, such as Radio Free Asia.

The campaign has met resistance from courts and even from some Republican members of Congress, who believe V.O.A.’s reporting helps counter misinformation and propaganda campaigns from American adversaries like China and Russia.

The expected closures appear to contradict a federal judge’s order from April, which required Trump officials to resume operations at V.O.A. so that it would “fulfill its statutory mandate” to serve “as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.”

Does Europe Finally Realize It’s Alone?

Nathalie Tocci

Europeans lulled themselves into the belief that U.S. President Donald Trump is unpredictable and inconsistent but ultimately manageable. This is strangely reassuring, but wrong. From U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech denigrating Europe at the Munich Security Conference in February to the new U.S. National Security Strategy that was released on Dec. 4, the Trump administration has long had a clear and consistent vision for Europe: one that prioritizes U.S.-Russia ties and seeks to divide and conquer the continent, with much of the dirty work carried out by nationalist, far-right European forces that now enjoy backing from both Moscow and Washington. It is long past time for Europe to realize that, when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine war and the continent’s security, it is, at best, alone. At worst, it now faces two adversaries: Russia in the east and Trump’s United States in the west.

Every time Trump or members of his administration have lashed out at Europe, including Ukraine, Europeans have absorbed the blow with a forced smile and bent over backwards to flatter the White House. They believe this is a clever ploy, playing on Trump’s perceived incoherence and vanity to bring him back into the transatlantic fold. Yet each time Trump has turned his narrow attention to the Ukraine war, he has sided with Russia—from the Oval Office trap set for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, to the red carpet laid out for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska in August, to the 28-point “peace plan” that was likely written in Moscow. On every occasion, Europeans have taken the hit, busying themselves with keeping Washington engaged and salvaging what remains of the transatlantic bond. Europeans have turned so many cheeks to Trump that one wonders if they have any left at all.

The Army's $15 Billion Turnover Crisis: Why Half Our Captains Quit

The U.S. Army invests between $600,000 and $1 million to produce an experienced captain. Then 54% separate before making major.

That's not a retention problem. That's a replacement crisis. We're spending $10 billion annually not to retain talent but to constantly churn out replacements for officers who leave the moment their service obligations end.

Of the 13,000 officers commissioned each year, only 46% stay long enough to be considered for promotion to O-4. The other 54% serve their initial commitment and walk. West Point graduates who cost $500,000 to produce serve an average of 11.8 years and leave. ROTC officers who cost $168,000 serve 12.6 years and leave. Neither group sticks around.

This isn't about money alone. It's about a lieutenant who spent $500,000 of taxpayer investment at West Point, led soldiers in combat, and discovers his battalion commander is toxic. It's about a cyber officer who took three years and $500,000 to train, then got forced into a command track that ignores her technical expertise. It's about a captain who got branched Infantry when he wanted Signal, served his five years exactly, and left for Google.

We know why they're leaving. We've known for years. Leadership quality matters more than anything else, but we don't hold commanders accountable for driving out talent. Branch assignments ignore preferences and talents, creating resentment from day one. Technical experts get forced into command tracks. And junior officers have zero control over their careers, their assignments, or their futures.

Are We at War with Russia? How Warden’s Rings Map Russia’s Hybrid Strategy

Calvin Bailey

Russia’s hybrid campaign against Europe since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine shows that war in the 2020s is not defined by the moment tanks cross borders. Conflict today is a continuum, one in which hostile states use non-kinetic, unattributable means to degrade the ability of an adversary to function long before conventional forces engage. The West still tends to treat these actions as ‘pre-war’, or something separate from conflict itself. They are not. They are part of an escalatory strategy aimed at undermining and degrading our deterrence logic. This makes it difficult to ascertain where Europe is on the ‘spectrum of conflict’ with Russia. We may not be exchanging fire, but our infrastructure, airspace and people are still subject to Russian aggression.

To understand where we are, we must understand who Russia targets and why. Revisiting a model developed for an earlier era is helpful: John Warden’s ‘Five Rings’, first outlined in The Enemy as a System. Originally conceived for air campaigns against industrial states, Warden’s framework argued that a state could be paralysed by striking at the system that sustains it: leadership, organic essentials, infrastructure, population and, lastly, its fielded forces. Warden proposed delivering this effect through long-range precision strike, bypassing armies to attack the core. This doctrine has been central to how the US has waged war through its overwhelming airpower advantage.

In major restructure, Army stands up new Western Hemisphere Command

Patty Nieberg

In a major shake-up of how the Army divides up the world, the service announced Friday the activation of the Western Hemisphere Command, shuffling three commands under a single four-star general.

Gen. Joseph Ryan will be the first commander of the Army Western Hemisphere Command, which the Army is referring to as USAWHC. Ryan will take over from his role as the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans, and Training at the Pentagon.

USAWHC will be tasked with the defense of U.S. territory, supporting humanitarian assistance and relief missions for natural disasters like wildfires, hurricanes in both the continental U.S., its neighbors and countries in South America.

“This reform modernizes the Army’s command structure, reduces overhead, eliminates duplication, and puts more soldiers in operational formations where they can directly contribute to warfighting readiness. It’s based on threat, strategy, and the need to prioritize the homeland and the need to treat the homeland as a priority theater,” said Col. Mike Burns, a spokesperson for the USAWHC.

Technology and Partner Capacity in Irregular Warfare

For nearly seventy years, U.S. Army Special Forces have thrived at the intersection of people, ideas, and technology. From the OSS agents operating behind enemy lines in World War II to the Green Berets riding with Afghan horsemen in 2001, Special Forces have always fused the technical with the human. Radios, air controllers, and precision munitions have been tools—but never the center of gravity. The decisive factor has always been the credibility that comes from empowering others to fight for themselves.

In the era of strategic competition, that balance must be rediscovered. The Army’s Special Forces Regiment faces a defining challenge: how to harness emerging technologies not simply to make Operational Detachments–Alpha (ODAs) more lethal and survivable, but to make partners more capable, confident, and credible. The purpose of integrating new technology is not modernization for its own sake; it is to give partners the means to resist coercion, to act independently, and to operate alongside U.S. forces when deterrence fails. In this, the measure of success is not how much capability the ODA can wield, but how much capability it can transfer—and how enduring that capability becomes when the team leaves.

The Regiment must therefore view technology through two complementary lenses. The first is internal: ensuring ODAs retain the agility, mobility, and survivability to operate effectively in the gray zone and in potential large-scale combat operations (LSCO). The second—and increasingly decisive—is external: using technology as an instrument of credibility and influence. The ODA’s ability to identify, deliver, and sustain the right technologies for the right partners—those that are employable, maintainable, and tailored to specific environments—is what will distinguish Special Forces from all other instruments of national power in the decades to come.

Russia Builds Coercive State Apparatus in Ukraine’s Occupied Territories

Maksym Beznosiuk

In October 2025, the Russian government finalized the full integration of all occupied Ukrainian regional administrations into its federal digital monitoring platform—the Governor’s Dashboard. This system allows the Kremlin to track budgets, personnel performance, construction progress, and administrative compliance in real time (Government of Russia, October 31). This recent move places the occupied Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts under the same performance metrics used across the Russian Federation. They are increasingly under the Kremlin’s tightened, authoritarian grip, which is supported by administrative personnel imported from Russia since 2022 (Radio Svoboda, September 29, 2022).

The Kremlin-led digital transition coincides with broader efforts to institutionalize Russian governance across Ukraine’s occupied territories. Since the outset of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has pursued an administrative annexation of occupied Ukrainian territories. In 2023, Russian authorities announced a transition period until January 2026 to fully incorporate the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), as well as the occupied parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, into Russia’s legal and governance system (TASS, September 29, 2023). To this end, they have introduced a series of regulatory and institutional changes to replicate the Russian state across these regions. Specifically, the Kremlin has deployed courts, prosecutors, the Federal Security Service (FSB), Rosgvardiya units, tax offices, migration structures, property registries, and social funds throughout the occupied regions.

How Israel’s Victory Strengthens America’s Hand

Zineb Riboua

“From diplomacy to soccer, Israel is becoming a pariah on the global stage.” Thus a September headline from an article on the CNN website, which went on to detail how Israel is “increasingly isolated” due to the war in Gaza, and faces “backlash seeping into economic, cultural, and sporting arenas.” The article had much to say about condemnations from European governments and human-rights organizations, votes in the UN General Assembly, and a possible boycott from the Eurovision song contest. Such analyses have become something like conventional wisdom throughout the West. Typically, they have little to say about strategy or security.

Arthur Herman, in his masterful analysis of Israel’s war and its diplomatic consequences, takes a different approach, arguing that military success has left the Jewish state anything but isolated. While this approach may seem counterintuitive to those who get their news from English-language sources, it’s very much in keeping with the perception of the war in the Middle East. In the West, analysts tend to focus on symbolism, reputational harm, and shifting public moods, none of which informs how governments in the region make decisions. The calculations of Middle Eastern regimes turn on more concrete questions: who commands intelligence superiority, who can blunt Iranian power, and who remains anchored in the American security system. By those measures, Israel has become indispensable. Its performance on the battlefield and its record in covert operations have only reinforced its value to governments that prioritize their own survival and long-term modernization.

What happened to the Gaza peace plan?

Lawrence Freedman

As Donald Trump struggles to make good on his campaign promise to end the Russo-Ukraine War his main foreign policy achievement – ending the war in Gaza - is coming under increasing strain. For a supposed ceasefire there has been no shortage of violence. Last week, two Hamas fighters emerged from a tunnel shaft in Rafah and launched a rocked propelled grenade at an Israeli armoured personnel carrier. Four soldiers were wounded, one seriously. Soldiers returned fire and killed one of the fighters. Following this the Israeli Defence forces (IDF) targeted a senior Hamas commander with an air strike. Six Palestinians, including two children, were killed.

Despite this ‘problem’, as it was described by Trump, the President still insists that he is determined to move soon to the second stage of his peace plan. The UN Security Council resolution backing his plan was passed on 17 November. It agreed that there should be an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) with a mandate to ‘demilitarize’ the Gaza Strip, secure its borders, and protect civilians and aid operations. The other key element will be a Committee of Palestinian technocrats to provide governance, with a complex oversight structure involving a management committee and then a Board of Peace.

Are Palestinians Ready to Shed Hamas?

Mohamed Elgohari

The fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas has offered the first real opening to end the two-year war in Gaza. The outlines of a peace process have broad buy-in, with the UN Security Council approving U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed plan on November 17, but many political questions remain unresolved. And the thorniest among them—who will govern Gaza, whether and how Hamas will be disarmed and involved in politics thereafter, and what to do about Israel’s ongoing occupation—cannot be answered by international decree. In no small part, the outcome of any peace process will be shaped.

America’s Magical Thinking About Ukraine

Sergey Radchenko

In August, U.S. President Donald Trump was disappointed when a meeting in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to produce a breakthrough in ending the war in Ukraine. “We didn’t get there,” Trump acknowledged at the time. Putin had evinced little interest in ceding ground on his maximalist demands, making a peace deal look remote, but the entirely predictable failure of the Alaska misadventure evidently did not deter Trump from trying again. In November, a 28-point peace plan—which media reports suggest was put together by both Russian and American officials—sent Kyiv and Ukraine’s European allies into conniptions because it largely reflected Russian positions on territory and Ukraine’s future. In tough negotiations with the United States, the Ukrainians successfully pushed back against many of these Russian-leaning positions, arriving at a new plan that Putin has yet to agree to.

Amid this pageantry of proposal and negotiation, Trump remains committed to chasing a fantasy. The U.S. president is seemingly unwilling to accept that his Russian counterpart does not want to end the war without securing Ukraine’s complete surrender. Trump continues to believe that, if only provided with sufficient inducements or threatened with new sanctions, Putin will trade his long-term goals for a reasonable settlement that will preserve a truncated but basically independent Ukraine, one able to defend itself against further Russian encroachment

Building the digital front line: Understanding big tech decision-making in Ukraine

Emma Schroeder

The war in Ukraine has seen Russia launch and sustain a full-scale invasion across the information and physical domains against a country that has embraced technological development and increased technological and geopolitical connections to the United States, Canada, and Europe. Private technology companies have provided essential and often irreplaceable support to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in 2022 and—especially in the early months of the conflict—did so largely without a request from an allied state or payment from Ukraine.

However, more than three years on, although the private sector’s assistance in Ukraine has been well-documented, the policymaking community at large is still largely unaware of how companies decided whether and how to provide technological support to and in Ukraine. Through open research as well as interviews and roundtable discussions with various private sector and government representatives, this report posits that companies were primarily motivated by a complex combination of factors in tandem, which pulled them toward or pushed them away from support. The factors pulling companies toward cooperation were the moral clarity of the conflict, and alignment with existing business opportunities. At the same time however, among factors pushing companies away from involvement in Ukraine was the difficulty of coordinating assistance in-country, as well as the risk of Russian retaliation. Meanwhile, both sets of factors were either enhanced—or mitigated—due to various actions taken by Ukraine, allied states, and international bodies. This includes Ukrainian tech diplomacy; the development of Ukraine’s technical capabilities; aid facilitations and coordination efforts by both various groups and entities; and risk mitigation efforts undertaken by both states and private companies.

The Critical-Minerals Race Is Putting the Planet at Risk

JOHANNA SYDOW and NSAMA CHIKWANKA

BERLIN – The environmental and human toll of mineral extraction is becoming clearer – and more alarming – by the day. Roughly 60% of Ghana’s waterways are now heavily polluted due to gold mining along riverbanks. In Peru, many communities have lost access to safe drinking water after environmental protections were weakened and regulatory controls were suspended to facilitate new mining projects, contaminating even the Rímac River, which supplies water to the capital, Lima.

These environmental crises are exacerbated by deepening inequality and social divides in many mining-dependent countries. The Global Atlas of Envirnsama-chikwankaonmental Justice has documented more than 900 mining-related conflicts around the world, about 85% of which involve the use or pollution of rivers, lakes, and groundwater.

The rise of the disinformation-for-hire industry

A quiet revolution has taken place in the world of propaganda. Operations that used to be run by authoritarian governments and intelligence agencies are now outsourced to private firms that sell disinformation and deception as a service. From fake social-media armies to AI-driven smear campaigns, disinformation and Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) have become a global business, giving authoritarian regimes new ways to influence others – and to deny everything.

From state propaganda to disinformation for hire

For decades, information operations were tightly controlled by states. The Soviet Union perfected the craft of dezinformatsiya; later, Russia institutionalised it through modern digital operations such as the Internet Research Agency (IRA)(opens in a new tab).

But over the past decade, this model has commercialised. Disinformation and deception have become a for-profit service offered by companies with intelligence, military, or marketing backgrounds. These firms, operating around the world, sell complete FIMI campaign packages that include fake social-media campaigns, hacking, data leaks, and ‘narrative management’ in order to spread false and manipulated content in democratic countries.

(Artificial) Intelligence saturation and the future of work

Konrad Kording and Ioana Marinescu

Macroeconomic models typically treat AI as just another form of capital and predict a slowly evolving world, while computer science scaling laws applied to the whole economy predict explosive growth and the potential for a singularity-like event. Both views gloss over the asymmetric reality that intelligence capital or AI scales at computer-science speeds, whereas physical capital and labor do not. What’s missing is a unified, parameter-driven framework that can nest assumptions from both economics and computer science to generate meaningful predictions of AI’s wage and output impacts.

Here we use a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function framework that separates physical and intelligence sectors. Whereas physical capabilities let us affect the world, intelligence capabilities let us do this as well: The two are complementary. Given complementarity between the two sectors, the marginal returns to intelligence saturate, no matter how fast AI scales. Because the price of AI capital is falling much faster than that of physical capital, intelligence tasks are automated first, pushing human labor toward the physical sector. The impact of automation on wages is theoretically ambiguous and can be non-monotonic in the degree of automation. A necessary condition for automation to decrease wages is that the share of employment in the intelligence sector decreases; this condition is not sufficient because automation can raise output enough to offset negative reallocation effects.

SOF, AI, and Changing Western Conceptions of War

Scott Douglas

AI is an emerging technology that will impact every sector and field across the globe. Militaries have a particularly hard challenge ahead, as mistakes in AI implementation cost lives. More importantly, there will be dramatic implications for the world order if Western adversaries can outmaneuver the U.S. and its allies. For the U.S military, the key to implementing AI will be Special Operations Forces (SOF). SOF has a unique skill set and ability to implement AI quickly and effectively and provide tangible real-world feedback on its performance. In this paper, I assess how AI will impact SOF operators and change Western conceptions of war. My research is informed by interviews with three retired SOF veterans: David Cook, who served in the 4th Psychological Operations Group of 1st Special Forces Command; Pete Chenko, a retired Marine Raider who remains active on the reserve force; and David Maxwell, a retired U.S Army Special Forces Colonel. Through my interviews, I gained an understanding of how AI will be used and how it will impact SOF operations. I focus on training, intelligence gathering/analysis, the role of SOF in the next generation of conflict, proposed uses for AI in combat, and the impact of AI on the levels of war. Ultimately, AI is the fulcrum of a seesaw; the East on one side, and the West the other. How America implements and operationalizes AI will determine which side of the seesaw goes up, and which side goes down. 

Enabling Decision Dominance through Human-Machine Teaming

Edward Olson, John Yanikov

Modern conflicts such as the ongoing war in Ukraine demonstrate the enduring necessity of technical adaptation Regional conflicts like Nagorno-Karabakh and Sudan provide contemporary examples of how quickly crisis can escalate into war with regional and global implications. Strategic leaders rely on officers across the Joint Force whose professional military education and operational experience enable them to inform commanders’ decisions. The pace of modern conflict demands the ability to provide “decision dominance” or “providing commanders the ability to assess the battlefield, make decisions, and apply lethal capabilities …[and] do it quicker than the enemy can do it.” To increase the speed of decision making, the US Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is expanding its digital toolbox with systems that offer opportunities for faster analysis, plans development, and automated execution processes through artificial intelligence (AI) and improved collaboration capabilities. In 2025, the Secretary of the Army directed the integration of AI into Command and Control nodes to accelerate decision making, reinforcing the educational modernization at CGSC.

As the Army’s “School for War” the Command and General Staff School (CGSS) is a school for applied warfighting and organizational leader development. It prepares field grade warfighters to plan, synchronize, and execute operations to win at the Joint and Combined Task Force, Corps, and Division levels through a curriculum that integrates data analytics, AI, and “system” thinking. CGSC provides its students with access to modern AI and collaborative tools in recognition of the need for adaptive officers to enable the planning process and provide commanders creative, data enabled solutions to complex challenges. In enabling its graduates, leading warfighters Day 1 at their next role, educational efforts through augmentation by teaming human capability, experience, creativity, and ethics, with machine capacity, the school provides experiences in keeping with its mission to educate and develop graduates who are.

11 December 2025

Hybridization of the Terror Threat in India

Rueben Dass

India suffered two terrorist incidents in a span of a few days, one of which was successful and the other thwarted in time. On November 10, a car packed with explosives was detonated by a suicide bomber near the Red Fort in Delhi during the evening rush hour. The blast killed 15 and injured 28 people.

The attack was perpetrated by a cell of medical doctors dubbed the “white collar terror module,” allegedly linked to Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, a group affiliated with al-Qaida. The suicide bomber was identified as Umar un-Nabi, a doctor working at Al-Falah University in Faridabad. Other co-conspirators include Nabi’s colleagues at the university, namely Muzammil Shakeel Ganai, Adeel Ahmed Rather, Muzaffar Ahmed Rather, and Dr. Shaheen Shahid, the alleged financier of the Delhi cell and senior member of JeM’s women’s wing.

A day before the Delhi blasts, Gujarat counterterrorism officials arrested another medical doctor identified as Dr. Ahmed Mohiyuddin Saiyed from Telangana and two other individuals who were allegedly plotting to carry out a bio-terror attack using ricin. The cell was uncovered during a routine stop of Saiyed’s car, in which police found a cache of firearms, ammunition, and castor bean cake, a precursor for the manufacture of ricin.

Modi Courts Putin With An Eye On Trump’s Disapproval

Dr. Shanthie Mariet D Souza

It may be no more than an annual ritual: the Indian Prime Minister and the Russian President meeting each other alternately in either country. However, the current geopolitical churn creates a special interest in Vladimir Putin’s impending visit to India, tentatively planned for the first week of December 2025, to attend the 23rd India-Russia Summit.

He is expected to devote a large part of his meeting with Narendra Modi to finding ways to keep the strategic relationship alive amid New Delhi’s continuing attempts to arrive at a compromise trade deal with Donald Trump’s America.

Unlike Putin’s India visit in 2021, which was a quieter affair, New Delhi is now laying out the trappings to greet the Russian President. Although the visit may not witness the grand optics mostly reserved for US leaders, a slew of preparatory visits by senior officials from either side are underway to make Putin’s official trip appear out of the ordinary.

Pakistan Might Be on the Brink of a Civil War

Brandon J. Weichert

Imran Khan is a lightning-rod figure in Pakistani politics. A celebrity-turned-politician, he rode a populist wave to power in 2018, only to lose power four years later in a very Pakistani fashion—a putsch by a coalition of his opponents, including both civilian and military leaders. Today, one of Khan’s leading opponents, Shehbaz Sharif, leads the government as prime minister, with the all-important backing of the Pakistan Army and its Svengali-esque chief of staff Asim Munir.

After the coup, Khan was arrested and imprisoned, and his ultimate fate has been a constant question on the minds not only of his supporters but also on the minds of concerned observers the world over. Because of Khan’s personal celebrity as a successful cricketer playing for the Pakistani national team, he has legions of supporters around the world. And even non-cricketers can see that Pakistani politics today resembles an elaborate morality play, in which the jailed former leader has the support of the people and a shadowy cabal of his enemies is working to exclude him and his allies from power.

Where Is The Working Class In 24’s Movement And Its Transition In Bangladesh?

Dr. N N Tarun Chakravorty

Much has been said about the events of August 5, 2024. Some describe it as a revolution, while others call it a people’s uprising. Regardless of how it is labeled, the aftermath saw the emergence of a new military-backed government, formed by the protestors and their chosen representatives, aiming to implement profound changes in the state machinery.

A revolution is not merely about reforming the state; it is about completely transforming its very structure. True revolution seeks to build a political system where the working class— who are often marginalized in comparison to the wealthy, influential, and elite families— holds power at the center.

While reforms can bring changes in the state’s laws, they cannot alone sustain lasting progress. Without a genuine transformation in people’s mindsets, the old system is bound to return. Only through a deep, collective shift in attitudes and values can society permanently reject corrupt politics and establish a just order

Five Months to Save the First Island Chain from China

Ryan Fedasiuk, and Kareem Rifai

President Donald Trump must take decisive steps toward bolstering US alliances in the Indo-Pacific before talks with Xi Jinping in April.

China is testing the Trump administration’s resolve in the Indo-Pacific, probing for cracks in America’s alliance architecture while calibrating how far it can push before Trump’s state visit next April. The administration’s efforts to build a more stable relationship with China have created tactical space for diplomacy on core American interests—but recent weeks have seen Beijing interpret American restraint as permission to escalate grey-zone coercion against Tokyo and Taipei.

The coming months present a narrow window to shore up alliance credibility, signal clear limits to Chinese adventurism, and proceed with US-China diplomacy from a position of alliance cohesion and American strength.

Tokyo’s increasingly explicit warnings that a Taiwan contingency threatens Japanese survival are an accurate accounting of its security environment. Prime Minister Takaichi’s November 7 statement—that PLA use of force against Taiwan could qualify as a “situation threatening Japan’s survival” under the 2015 Peace and Security Legislation—constitutes the most direct Japanese commitment to Taiwan’s defense in modern history.

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