China reduced troops in Ladakh by half in last one year, says The Economist

Debdutta Chakraborty

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New Delhi: China reduced its forward troop presence in eastern Ladakh by half over the last one year, reports The Economist.

It also added that China is building infrastructure at four times the pace of India.

Satellite imagery reviewed by Indian officials shows a tenfold increase in permanent Chinese structures since 2020, the report also said. Indian and Western officials report a quiet de-escalation by China post 2024, since a diplomatic breakthrough between New Delhi and Beijing.

As ThePrint reported then, India and China, back in 2024, entered an agreement on the “agreed perceived Line of Actual Control”, including in Depsang and Demchok, even as there was unlikely to be any immediate thinning of troops other than those pulled back in the winter under norms. According to the latest Economist report, a fragile calm now prevails, with patrols resumed across the LAC, commanders of both sides speaking regularly, and even soldiers exchanging “waves”. So much so that even during Operation Sindoor, India felt “confident enough to divert two brigades from the LAC to the border with Pakistan”, according to a Western official quoted in the report.

China drills feed info war targeting faith in Taiwan’s defenses

Jeff Pao

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The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) this week launched new military exercises near Taiwan, stepping up pressure on the self-governing island after Washington announced a US$11 billion arms sale to Taipei.

Alongside the shows of force, Beijing has also ramped up information warfare aimed at undermining confidence in Taiwan’s defenses. An overseas Chinese military commentator said the campaign seeks to persuade overseas audiences that Taiwan’s forces and equipment would be unable to withstand a PLA attack.

On Monday (December 29), the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command carried out joint drills involving naval vessels and aircraft in waters and airspace around Taiwan. The exercises focused on simulated strikes against sea and land targets, air‑control operations and anti‑submarine missions.

China’s 6G surface could convert enemy radar beams into power for stealth jets

Aman Tripathi

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Researchers in China have reportedly developed a smart electromagnetic surface capable of converting ambient electromagnetic waves into electrical power.

This development represents an integration of electromagnetic engineering and communication principles.

“In the case studies, by jointly optimizing parameters such as transceiver beamforming, robot trajectories, and RIS coefficients, solutions based on multi-agent deep reinforcement learning and multi-objective optimization are proposed to solve problems such as beamforming design, path planning, target sensing, and data aggregation,” said the researchers in a new paper

Sixth-gen fighter: China speeds up development of J-36, J-50 jet; challenge US’ air dominance

Prabhat Ranjan Mishra

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China is reportedly accelerating the development of two advanced fighter jets, according to the U.S. Department of War report released in December 2025. Often referred to as the J-36 and J-50, these aircraft are widely believed to represent China’s vision for future air dominance and naval aviation, potentially placing the country among the first to test sixth-generation combat aircraft.

In recent years, competition among major powers has increasingly shifted toward the development of next-generation military aviation. One of the most significant developments in this area is China’s reported acceleration of its sixth-generation fighter aircraft programs.

Xi Jinping vows to reunify China and Taiwan in New Year’s Eve speech

Amy Hawkins and Helen Davidson

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China’s president, Xi Jinping, has vowed to reunify China and Taiwan in his annual New Year’s Eve speech in Beijing.

Speaking the day after the conclusion of intense Chinese military drills around Taiwan, Xi said: “The reunification of our motherland, a trend of the times, is unstoppable.”

China claims Taiwan, a self-governing island, as part of its territory and has long vowed to annex it, using force if necessary.

US intelligence is increasingly concerned about the advancing capabilities of China’s armed forces to launch such an attack if Xi decides the time is right.

On Monday and Tuesday, China’s People’s Liberation Army launched live-fire military drills around Taiwan, simulating a blockade of main ports and sending its navy, air force, rocket force and coastguard to encircle Taiwan’s main island. The drills, called “Justice Mission 2025”, came closer to Taiwan than previous exercises, and involved at least 200 warplanes across the two days, the highest tally for more than a year. Taiwan said 27 missiles were also fired towards Taiwan, with several landing within 27 nautical miles of its coastline.

US to ‘run’ Venezuela after Maduro captured, says Trump: Early analysis from Chatham House experts

Dr Christopher Sabatini

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On Saturday 3 January US President Donald Trump announced a large-scale US strike on Venezuela – and stated that the US had also captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

US Attorney General Pamela Bondi later posted on X that Maduro and his wife had been charged with drugs-related offences and would ‘face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts. At a press conference later on Saturday, President Trump said the US was ‘going to run the country’ until a transition could be safely arranged.

Here is early, provisional, analysis from Chatham House experts, who will monitor developments over the weekend with updates, additions and further commentary to follow.

Joint Ukraine-NATO training and analysis team gets classified, AI-enabled Google Cloud

Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

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WASHINGTON — Google has been tapped to provide classified cloud services, including AI, to a unique collaboration between NATO and Ukraine whose mission is to analyze data and lessons-learned from the ongoing war with Russia, the company announced Monday.

Google said the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) had awarded a “multi-million dollar” contract for its Google Distributed Cloud to “handle classified workloads” for the nearly year-old Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre (JATEC), which formally opened this February in the Polish town of Bydgoszcz, already a growing hub of NATO training, tech, and other alliance activities.

As a “unique” NATO partnership with a foreign country, according to its website, “JATEC identifies and supports the [application of] lessons from Russia’s war against Ukraine.” It also claims a leading role in NATO’s adoption of cloud computing: “The first place NATO will see these technologies at work is at JATEC.”

What’s next for Army’s ambitious Next Gen C2 effort: 2026 preview

Mark Pomerleau

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One major Army initiative that’s expected to pick up speed in 2026 is its Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) effort, specifically through a series of experiments designed to slowly expand the scope of the new tech before a single culminating exercise.

Two of the goals for 2026: kick off smaller-scale experiments for one NGC2 prototype, and expand experiments of another prototype to test it with an entire division in 2026, since going forward the division will be the unit of action for the Army.

Described as a clean-slate approach, for NGC2 the service wants to essentially start from scratch and develop a holistic architecture for how soldiers and commanders ingest, visualize and share battlefield information, all with the goal of providing decision advantage and being faster than the adversary on a dynamic battlefield.

150 aircraft, cyber effects and ‘overwhelming force:’ How the Venezuela operation unfolded

Aaron Mehta 

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WASHINGTON — The surprise, complex operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was the result of long-term planning between the US military and its intelligence agencies, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine said today.

“The word integration does not explain the sheer complexity of such a mission, an extraction so precise it involved more than 150 aircraft launching across the western hemisphere in close coordination, all coming together in time and place to layer effects for a single purpose, to get an interdiction force into downtown Caracas while maintaining the element of tactical surprise,” he said. “Failure of one component of this well-oiled machine would have endangered the entire mission.”

Speaking after President Donald Trump announced the results of what was termed “Operation Absolute Resolve,” Caine laid out details of the operation while noting he would only speak in generalities because “there is always a chance that we’ll be tasked to do this type of mission again.”

Disinformation Floods Social Media After Nicolás Maduro’s Capture

David Gilbert

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Within minutes of Donald Trump announcing in the early hours of Saturday morning that US troops had captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, disinformation about the operation flooded social medi Some people shared old videos across social platforms, falsely claiming that they showed the attacks on the Venezuelan capital Caracas. On TikTok, Instagram, and X, people shared AI-generated images and videos that claimed to show US Drug Enforcement Administration agents and various law enforcement personnel arresting Maduro.

In recent years, major global incidents have triggered huge amounts of disinformation on social media as tech companies have pulled back efforts to moderate their platforms. Many accounts have sought to take advantage of these lax rules to boost engagement and gain followers. “The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post in the early hours of Saturday morning.

What Happens Next in Venezuela—and the Rest of Latin America?

Fernanda González

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Venezuela will remain under US control following the arrest of Nicolás Maduro. That was Donald Trump's message during a press conference held at his Mar-a-Lago compound after US forces launched an offensive against various military targets in Venezuela early Saturday morning. The operation culminated in Maduro's capture.

In the briefing, Trump stressed that his administration will not allow someone “that does not have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind” to take control of the country. “We have had decades of that. We are not going to let that happen,” he said. “We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”

Trump explained that the leadership of Venezuela will be in the hands of high-ranking US officials, including secretary of state Marco Rubio and secretary of defense Pete Hegseth.

At the same time, María Corina Machado, considered the main leader of the opposition to Maduro and Hugo Chávez and recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, issued a statement in which she said that opposition party figure Edmundo González Urrutia must immediately assume the presidency of the country.

A little history of winter warfare

Peter Caddick-Adams

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Even when at the mercy of winter’s icy fangs, warriors have always served. From antiquity, the campaigning season traditionally ended in October, when troops headed for end-of-year quarters containing food, fodder for animals, warmth, and shelter. Even then, they typically jousted, exercised and drilled, repaired equipment, and made future plans. In the days when the northern hemisphere was mostly afforested, its populations were barely connected by a poor road network interspersed with settlements. The larger were protected by stone or timber ramparts, and contained granaries stocked with food. Armies therefore tried to stay put when faced with the icy veil, for the season of hoary-headed frosts degraded roads, froze grain, men and horses, and brought illnesses associated with cold. Snow and mire, the curse of angry weather gods, played havoc equally with wheels, hooves and boots.

The month of March was when troops traditionally emerged from winter lairs and headed out for a new season of dragon-slaying and derring-do, and, for millennia, this was considered as the start of the year. The French named this month Mars, after the Roman god of war, a tradition borrowed from Ancient Greece and their equivalent, Ares. In pre-history, the disappearance of the seven-star cluster of the Pleiades around 20 March each year, visible throughout the winter months in the northern hemisphere, marked the vernal equinox, and acted as a celestial warning for the ancients to start sowing – and sharpening their weapons. Although much fighting took place in spring and summer, big campaigns looked to autumn, when the men and horses that were needed earlier in the year for sowing and reaping had gathered in their harvests, and could thus be released for war.

China’s Rapid Military Build-Up Highlighted in New Report

Jack Burnham

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The United States is facing an ever-more sophisticated Chinese military. On December 23, the Department of Defense released its annual report on the state of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The report documents Beijing’s pursuit of a military capable of countering the United States across a range of domains while preparing to potentially use force to seize Taiwan. The report highlights the Chinese military’s commitment to building out the capacity to project power abroad while increasing its reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies.

China Seeks New Aircraft Carriers, Military AI

The report notes that China has significantly invested in its capacity to project military power abroad, including announcing plans to build six new aircraft carriers by 2035, introducing a range of land, air, and sea-based missile systems, and deploying a new fifth-generation fighter aircraft. These developments match the surging growth of China’s nuclear arsenal, including a rapid build-out of silo-based missiles in western China and lower-yield warheads likely intended for battlefield use.

The Use and Abuse of ‘Narco-Terrorism’

Philip A. Berry

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Since early September, the U.S. military has launched a series of deadly attacks against suspected drug-running boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, resulting in the deaths of at least 70 people so far.

The Trump administration has presented several dubious legal and rhetorical arguments for these controversial—and unlawful—operations. Many center around “narco-terrorism,” a designation that President Donald Trump presents as a self-evident justification for the use of military force

Trump: ‘We Are Going to Run’ Venezuela

Rishi Iyengar

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U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday announced that the United States would “run” Venezuela following an extraordinary U.S. operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

“We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump, flanked by top cabinet officials, said in televised remarks from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.”

For Hamas Actually to Disarm, Trump Must Forget About All of Its Supporters: Turkey, Qatar, Pakistan, Iran – and the Palestinian Authority

Con Coughlin

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Ever since Trump succeeded in implementing the first stage of his 20-point plan for ending the Gaza conflict, Hamas has received widespread backing from its supporters in Ankara, Doha, Islamabad and Tehran for ignoring demands to surrender its weapons.

Hamas's recalcitrance on the disarmament issue, moreover, has been reinforced by the support it has received from its backers in Turkey, Qatar, Pakistan and Iran to ignore the Trump administration's disarmament demand.

Israeli officials believe that Turkey, and Qatar, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, are instead working on alternative solutions that would not require Hamas to disarm. The Turks and Qataris have proposed that Hamas either transfer its weapons to the Palestinian Authority (PA), or to some kind of "secure storage under oversight." Behind both proposals lies the aim of preserving Hamas' influence in Gaza and ability to rearm. Israel insists, however, that Hamas must be weapons‑free.

Trump Sets a Devastating Precedent in Venezuela

Michael Hirsh

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By attacking Venezuela, seizing its president, and promising to “run” the country indefinitely—all without any congressional or United Nations authorization—U.S. President Donald Trump may well have shredded what little is left of international norms and opened the way to new acts of aggression from U.S. rivals China and Russia on the world stage, some experts say.

In return, Trump probably achieved little in the way of stopping narcotics flows into the United States, even as he asserts what he calls the “Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine in his new National Security Strategy, which aims “to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.”

While it’s true that much of the world and, by most accounts, a majority of Venezuelans did not see President Nicolás Maduro as legitimate—and Maduro has been indicted in the United States on charges of being a drug trafficker—Trump has now set a potentially devastating precedent, some critics and experts say. Beijing and Moscow could decide to act in similar fashion against regional leaders whom they deem to be threats—especially in Ukraine and Taiwan—all without worrying about the legitimacy of such actions...

Winning the 6G Race

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Section 1. Purpose. The next generation of mobile communications networks (6G) will be foundational to the national security, foreign policy, and economic prosperity of the United States. This technology will play a pivotal role in the development and adoption of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, and implantable technologies. 6G will also provide faster, more resilient, and more secure communication networks that can be utilized for national security and public safety purposes.

It is the policy of the United States to lead the world in 6G development. Certain steps are necessary to achieve the goal of this policy, including steadfastly advancing American interests in the international standards bodies that will play a crucial role in 6G development, and identifying a significant volume of radiofrequency spectrum that can be harmonized for 6G networks internationally. My Administration has been studying multiple spectrum bands this year to determine what Federal spectrum can be reallocated to commercial use for 6G development without undermining national security missions that occur in those bands. Consistent with the preliminary conclusions of those evaluations, I am hereby directing the following actions to ensure America’s leadership in 6G development.

The War Unicorns Defense Tech's Billion Dollar Beasts

Pete Modigliani and Matt MacGregor

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The Department of War has a blessing of non-traditional unicorns charging into military innovation. These billion-dollar beasts—startups valued at $1B+—are rewriting the rules of modern warfare, blending Silicon Valley speed and tech with battlefield grit.

These disruptors are delivering autonomy, agentic AI capabilities, data mesh, and cutting-edge affordable hardware that counters many of the pacing threats. They are non-traditional by the fact that they brought private capital and novel concepts into the defense space rather than relying on government-funded RDT&E and reimbursed IR&D.

Over the last five years, venture capital firms have invested over $180B in defense tech.

We’re rounding up the herd: a comprehensive snapshot of the 22 defense tech unicorns powering tomorrow’s arsenal.

Trump, Maduro and the Panama Precedent

Lawrence Freedman

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Once again the US has undertaken a military operation that was effectively executed in support of an uncertain political objective. A dramatic first step has been taken without the second step being at all clear. The operation was done at the behest of the Department of Justice to take by force two people accused of pushing drugs into the US. This is not the same as a regime change in Venezuela. Yet President Trump has spoken as if regime change has already happened, confusing matters by then adding that there could be a ‘second wave’ of intervention if it turns out the old regime was still in charge and making its own decisions.

The Panama Precedent

We can start with the obvious precedent. Exactly 36 years ago, on 3 January 1990, General Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian dictator, surrendered to US forces and was flown to Miami where he was put on trial. Noriega had never won even a rigged election himself. He ruled through puppet presidents. He saw off several attempted coups and, in September 1989, annulled elections which his party had comprehensively lost. In his time he had been a CIA asset and during the Reagan administration’s first term sided with the US against the left-wing government in Nicaragua and with the right-wing government in El Salvador. But his involvement in the drug trade caused his relations to sour with the US. He ignored diplomatic and legal pressures and then angered the US even more when he shifted sides in regional geopolitics by

Trump Says the U.S. Will “Run” Venezuela

Olga Lautman

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All of this is so insane that I had to stop and figure out how to even write this post, and in doing so, realized that, like many others, I am left with far more questions than actual insight. And let’s be clear, because facts still matter even when everything else has gone off the rails. Nicolás Maduro is a criminal, an illegitimate ruler who stole elections, brutalized his own population, and for years functioned as a corrupt proxy of Russia until the Kremlin, as it so often does, abandoned yet another client state when the costs outweighed the benefits. None of that is in dispute. What is in dispute, and what should deeply alarm everyone, is what followed.

This is not even regime change, and that is, in fact, the most revealing part. Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, a core loyalist of the regime, has already been sworn in and remains openly defiant, publicly calling for Maduro’s release and vowing that Venezuela will not become a colony of the United States, meaning the power structure Maduro built remains intact. Yet Trump stood at his presser and told the American people that the United States “will run Venezuela,” openly describing a de facto takeover while simultaneously leaving the same authoritarian apparatus in place, which raises an unavoidable question: What does “running the country” actually mean when the regime loyalists remain in control?

Regime Change in America’s Back Yard

Jon Lee Anderson

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Early Saturday morning, when President Donald Trump launched a bombing raid on Venezuela and captured its strongman President, Nicolás Maduro, few observers were entirely surprised. Trump has long said that he wanted Maduro out of power, branding him a narco-terrorist and placing a fifty-million-dollar bounty on his head. In recent months, Trump and his “Secretary of War,” Pete Hegseth, have deployed a huge military force to the region, launching attacks on at least thirty so-called narco-boats and killing more than a hundred alleged drug runners.

Maduro and his wife were taken into custody aboard the U.S.S. Iwo Jima, an assault ship; unverified photos circulated of Maduro in handcuffs. Attorney General Pam Bondi swiftly congratulated Trump, saying that Maduro had been indicted in the Southern District of New York on drug-trafficking and other charges and would “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who by all accounts was key to the campaign, re-shared a post on X that he made in July: “Maduro is NOT the president of Venezuela and his regime is NOT the legitimate government. Maduro is the head of the Cartel de los Soles, a narco-terror organization which has taken possession of a country.” Rubio’s assertions, like Trump’s claims that the attacks on boatmen have stopped fentanyl smuggling into the U.S., were unaccompanied by any publicly available evidence.

Trump's Golden Hour: Historically Flawless Military Masterclass or Just Another Theatrical Production?

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The world is aswirl with theories, takes, and chest-thumping chauvinism. America is back! The great power behind such flawless executions as Desert Storm, Libya, and many other legendary operations has returned to the world stage.

Let’s first note that on the surface the operation had echoes of the USSR’s famous Operation Storm-333, wherein Soviet special forces conducted a large-scale military raid to oust Afghan president Hafizullah Amin in his Kabul compound.

The reasoning was similar: the Soviets felt that Amin was ‘illegitimate’ and backed by the West, and imposed a much more ‘blunt hammer’ approach compared to the “flawless precision” of Trump’s much smaller-scale raid. Of course, the Soviet attack was a real one, with real fire fights and casualties, and the Trump one again has all the hallmarks of the ‘theatrical production’ of the late-stage American empire.1

AI Changed Work Forever in 2025

Erik Brynjolfsson

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Future historians will see that the seeds of a profound transformation were planted in 2025. By 2050, most people will command workforces larger than the biggest multinational corporations of today. But our “employees” won’t be people sitting in cubicles or standing on factory floors. They will be fleets of AI agents—digital workers which can perform tasks like design products, write code, negotiate supply chains, run complex experiments, and devise marketing campaigns while we sleep.

The speed at which agentic AI has spread throughout the workforce accelerated over the past year. A survey of business executives by PwC indicates that 79% of companies are leveraging agentic AI. And though many have understandably criticized companies which have invested in AI without immediate bottom-line benefits—a phenomenon I call the “productivity J-curve”—agentic AI promises to drive true productivity gains, fueling further adoption.

VIEWPOINT: How AI Can Build U.S. Information, Decision, Lethality Advantages

James Ryseff

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Everyone is hunting for the next “killer app” for AI.

In defense, that label won’t go to a clever chatbot or a personalized recommendation engine. It will belong to systems that help commanders and operators make better informed decisions faster than an adversary, under uncertainty and at scale. The payoff is not novelty; it’s compressing the time from sensing to understanding to action while raising the quality of each choice.

Modern battle networks are drowning in information. Proliferated sensors produce continuous streams of imagery, telemetry and signals. Human sources add their own object sightings, reports and analysis. Meanwhile, enterprise software applications generate their own logs, events, alerts and data sets that flood analysts faster than they can interpret them.

For example, Ukraine’s Delta situational awareness platform ingests over 600,000 new reports of enemy objects uploaded by human soldiers every month.

Assessing Venezuela’s Future After Nicolás Maduro’s Bold Capture

Shannon K. O'Neil, Elliott Abrams, Max Boot, and Roxanna Vigil

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U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife after weeks of mounting military pressure on Venezuela. The regime leader has been removed from Venezuela, and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said he would face drug and weapons charges in the Southern District of New York.

More From Our Experts

During a press conference after his initial announcement, President Donald Trump said that the United States would “run” Venezuela until a “safe, proper, and judicious transition” could occur, but he did not provide a timeline or details on his plans for the country’s governance. He did, however, note plans to have U.S. companies develop the country’s oil reserves.

The Aftermath of Maduro’s Capture

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Ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is due to appear in U.S. court today on drug trafficking and corruption charges as questions swirl about the country’s future in the aftermath of his dramatic capture. After U.S. forces seized Maduro and his wife in an early Saturday raid, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would “run” Venezuela. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday that Trump meant Washington would use a continued oil quarantine as leverage to direct policy in the country. He also said that Maduro’s seizure did not require prior notification to Congress as it was a law enforcement operation. News of the raid caused consternation among some lawmakers, due to be briefed by U.S. officials today.

Zooming in. The U.S. bombings and raid in Caracas reportedly killed at least forty people, thirty-two of them Cuban security personnel. Venezuela’s Supreme Court named Delcy Rodríguez—formerly Maduro’s vice president—acting president on Saturday. That day, she shared a statement denouncing U.S. “military aggression,” while Trump told The Atlantic that Rodríguez would “pay a very big price” if she did not cooperate with the United States. She shifted her tone the next day, posting that Venezuela and the United States should work together “towards shared development.”

Trump’s Venezuela Raid Changes the Map: Cuba, China, and Russia Face a New Reality

Reuben Johnson

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President Donald J. Trump makes an investment announcement, Monday, March 3, 2025, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley.)

Key Points and Summary – “Operation Absolute Resolve” was a strategically consequential U.S. raid that combined air, sea, and ground power to seize Nicolás Maduro—highlighting scale (over 150 aircraft), tight joint integration, and deep intelligence access to Maduro’s inner security architecture.

-The operation signals American reach and may trigger a regional “paradigm change,” with knock-on effects for Havana, Moscow, and Beijing.

The End of the Beginning in Venezuela

Juan S. Gonzalez

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The United States’ use of military force to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro marks a turning point for Venezuela and for U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere. But it would be a mistake to confuse drama with resolution. Images of Maduro in U.S. custody create the impression of finality. Yet this is not the beginning of the end of Washington’s long struggle with Venezuela. It marks the end of the beginning, and the start of a far more difficult and perilous phase.

Trump’s coup in Venezuela didn’t just break the rules – it showed there aren’t any. We’ll all regret that

Nesrine Malik

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Inever thought it possible that you could look back on the Iraq war, and the foreign invasions of the “war on terror” in general, and feel some measure of nostalgia. For a time when there were at least concerted attempts to justify unilateral interventions and illegal wars in the name of global security, and even a moral duty to liberate the women of Afghanistan or “free the Iraqi people”.

Now, as the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, is in essence abducted and Venezuela taken over by the US, there is barely any effort to situate the coup in any reasoning other than the US’s interests. Nor are there any attempts to solicit consent from domestic or international law-making bodies and allies, let alone the public. The days of the US trying to convince the world that Saddam Hussein did in fact have weapons of mass destruction despite secretly having no reliable intelligence were, in fact, the good old days.

How the operation to take out Venezuela's Maduro unfolded

Dave Lawler, Marc Caputo, Barak Ravid

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Trump gives a press conference on the attack flanked by (L-R) Stephen Miller, John Ratcliffe, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Image

The order came at 10:46pm ET on Friday night, along with a message from President Trump: "Good luck and godspeed."

The big picture: Trump's order sent 150 aircraft into the skies, triggered a stunning raid on Nicolás Maduro's fortified compound, and ended with the Venezuelan leader blindfolded on a U.S. battleship and the future of his country entirely uncertain, but seemingly in Trump's hands.

The planning began months earlier, with special forces soldiers training on a replica of Maduro's home, the CIA laying the groundwork in Venezuela, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller advocating for action from Washington.

Here's what we know about how the operation came together, based on public statements from Trump and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, and interviews with sources familiar with the details.

Military exercises seek to erase vital buffer zone between China and Taiwan.

Andrew Yeh

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For the thousands of frustrated travelers facing delayed and cancelled flights between Taiwan and its outlying Matsu Islands and Kinmen, there may have been a sense of déjà vu. Last week’s multi-domain Justice Mission 2025 exercises were not the first occasion on which China’s large-scale military drills have disrupted civilian air routes in the region. Yet the increasingly routine character of such exercises should not obscure their significance, nor the ways in which they are challenging long-standing cross-strait arrangements.

Beijing is, once again, testing a core element of the status quo that has underpinned a fragile peace across the Taiwan Strait for decades. This time, the focus is Taiwan’s contiguous zone – the 12-nautical-mile buffer surrounding its territorial waters. The steady normalization of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) military activity within this space marks a subtle but consequential shift, one that lowers thresholds, increases the risk of miscalculation, and sets a potentially destabilizing precedent for future Chinese military operations.

The West anticipates an invasion. Beijing trusts its 15th Five-Year Plan.

Ashton Ng

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The dawn of 2026 arrived in the Taiwan Strait with a thunderous dissonance. On the water, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was concluding Justice Mission 2025, a massive exercise involving 89 warplanes, drone swarms, and blockade simulations that Taipei rightly characterized as an unprecedented escalation. Yet, on the airwaves, President Xi Jinping’s New Year’s address offered a different frequency. While he reiterated that reunification is “unstoppable,” the context was not one of imminent fiery conquest, but of cool, historical inevitability.

For defense planners in Washington and Taipei, the impulse is to merge the drills and the speech into a single signal of accelerating aggression – a countdown to a D-Day scenario. Such a reading is superficially correct but strategically flawed. By misinterpreting Beijing’s confidence as urgency, the West risks preparing for the wrong war.

The Changing China Challenge: Nixon To Trump – OpEd

Lim Teck Ghee

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In April 2026, President Donald Trump will undertake a trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Most observers view the visit as a symbolic but significant reaffirmation of China’s rise in the world order that is reshaping geopolitics today, and in the short and medium term future.

This visit comes just over 50 years after President Richard Nixon’s pathbreaking visit in 1972 which was aimed at using China as an American wedge in the US escalating confrontation with the Soviet Union, at that time entering its most heated and dangerous phase.

The event and following developments have been regarded as one of the most significant strategic pivots of the 20th century. Although propagated to the public as a “peace mission”, it was a calculated move in realpolitik by the U.S., then undoubted leader of the world order, to reshape the Cold War’s power structure and to reinforce the American position.

China Is Turning the Indo-Pacific Into a Pressure Cooker

Joe Varner

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As we approach 2026, China is pursuing a unified, and increasingly assertive, military posture across the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Korean Peninsula, and the Himalayan frontier. These theatres are often discussed as separate issues. They are not. Beijing is treating them as interconnected fronts in a long-term campaign to erode U.S. influence, evaluate allied cohesion, and normalize Chinese dominance across Asia.

Nowhere is this clearer than Taiwan, the centre of gravity in China’s regional strategy. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) now flies dozens of sorties a week around the island, with many crossing the once-respected median line in the Taiwan Strait. Warships operate off Taiwan’s east coast. Large encirclement drills, once rare, have become routine, rehearsing maritime blockades and coordinated missile strikes. These are not signals of imminent invasion, but they are far more than political theatre. China is conditioning the region to live with a permanent, intrusive PLA presence. The goal is simple: make Taiwan’s isolation feel inevitable and U.S. support appear costly.