Indian Strategic Studies

18 March 2026

Pentagon-Anthropic Dispute Over Autonomous Weapon Systems

Kelley M. Sayler

On February 27, 2026, President Donald J. Trump directed federal agencies to “IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of [American AI company] Anthropic’s technology.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (who is now using “Secretary of War” as a “secondary title” under Executive Order (EO) 14347 dated September 5, 2025) subsequently directed the Department of Defense (DOD, now using “Department of War” as a secondary designation under EO 14347) to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk to national security; barred defense contractors, suppliers, and partners from working with Anthropic; and described an up-to-six-month period of transition away from Anthropic products.

This designation follows a reportedly months-long dispute between DOD and Anthropic over DOD use of Anthropic products, including the company’s generative AI model, Claude. On March 9, Anthropic filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and a petition for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit regarding these directives. Some lawmakers have called for a resolution to the disagreement and for Congress to act to set rules for the department’s use of AI and/or autonomous weapon systems.

Ukraine’s Expertise In Countering Iranian-Designed Shahed Drones Attracting Growing International Demand

Can Kasapoğlu

The operational tempo moderated slightly across the battlespace last week, with Ukrainian reporting and open-source indicators suggesting that Ukraine and Russia waged roughly 100 to 150 combat engagements per day, down from the 200-plus daily engagements that characterized the previous several weeks. This reduction likely signals a temporary ease in the fighting rather than a structural shift in either side’s campaign.

Several sectors remained principal flashpoints. Kupiansk, Lyman, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, Huliaipole, Pokrovsk, and Orikhiv continued to be the focus of most ground combat and probing attacks. These areas form the operational spine of the war’s eastern and southeastern fronts and will likely remain decisive terrain in the coming weeks. Kyiv suffered tactical-level losses in the Huliaipole sector—where Russia has deployed marine infantry and combat formations from the 68th Army Corps—and in Udachne.

Europe Chides US For Lifting Russian Oil Sanctions

EurActiv

(EurActiv) — uropean leaders have launched a rare rebuke of the United States’ decision to lift sanctions on Russian oil exports amid the ongoing war in the Middle East that has created havoc in global oil and gas markets. “We believe that easing sanctions now, for whatever reason, is the wrong thing to do,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on a visit to Norway on Friday.

Overnight, Washington moved to unleash around one day’s worth of global oil demand by lifting sanctions on seaborne Russian oil. The US has also given a waiver to Indian refiners to purchase sanctioned Russian oil since the Iran war began. This comes as the EU is attempting to convince its member countries, Hungary and Slovakia, to sign up to a 20th round of sanctions on Russia.

US Army officers say battlefield leaders facing new drone threats have another problem to deal with — it's information overload

Kelsey Baker

New information flows on modern battlefields can be overwhelming for commanders.

Army leaders warn of "cognitive overload" for commanders on the ground facing new and traditional threats. The battlefield is changing dramatically amid new drone and EW threats.

Amid an explosion in new kinds of battlefield tech, from all kinds of drones to the systems and sensors being built to defeat them, commanders at all levels are grappling with the growing challenge of information overload. As the Army absorbs lessons from Ukraine, "we're seeing a cognitive overload on the ground for commanders who have to fight both the ground fight and the air fight," said Maj. Andrew Kang, the fire support officer for the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, during a media roundtable last week.

Trump and Rubio’s Vision of War: The Art of Destroy and Deal

Edward Wong and Michael Crowley

Soon after President Trump joined Israel in launching a new war against Iran, an A.I. video featuring Secretary of State Marco Rubio circulated online. Clad in a black turban and robe, he presides over an Iranian military parade, speaks at a mosque and gazes over the Tehran skyline. The caption: “Marco Rubio realizing he’s the new Supreme Leader of Iran.”

Though intended as satire, the video crystallizes a pivotal moment for Mr. Rubio.

Throughout his long political career, Mr. Rubio has advocated toppling governments hostile to the United States. He was once considered so ideologically out of step with Mr. Trump that many officials and politicians doubted he would last a year in the administration. But today, Mr. Rubio is at the helm of Mr. Trump’s aggressive campaigns to reshape the governments of Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and beyond.

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Adam T. Biggs

Military professionalism is a foundational component of an effective fighting force. Army doctrine describes the Army profession as a “trusted vocation of Soldiers and Army civilians whose collective expertise is the ethical design, generation, support, and application of landpower; serving under civilian authority; and entrusted to defend the Constitution and the rights and interests of the American people.”

Whereas the Army’s definition provides some context for military service as a profession, understanding how professionalism contributes to military success provides further depth. Doctrine and scholarly work have emphasized how professionalism allows a military to function optimally by exploring the respective roles of civilians and servicemembers in civil-military affairs. For example, professionalism directly contributes to mission success by creating disciplined initiative among personnel, though political scientists have long questioned how civilian authorities should interact with or govern the military forces protecting the population.

Pentagon AI chief praises Palantir tech for speeding battlefield strikes

O'Ryan Johnson

As the US continues its strikes on Iran as part of Operation Epic Fury, speakers at Palantir's AIPCON event on Thursday said the company’s Maven Smart System product has shortened the time it takes the Department of Defense to select and hit targets on the battlefield during the conflict.

“So we’ve gone from identifying the target to now coming up with a course of action, to now actioning that target, all from one system. This is revolutionary,” said Cameron Stanley, chief digital and artificial intelligence officer for the DoD. “We were having this done in about eight or nine systems where humans were literally moving detections left and right in order to get to our desired end state, in this case closing a kill chain.” Palantir’s chief commercial officer Ted Mabrey told the AIPCON audience that the analytics software company is supporting Operation Epic Fury.

The Asymmetry Trap: Why $20,000 Iranian Drones are Exhausting America’s Multi-Million Dollar Missile Reserves

Reuben Johnson

Defense expert Reuben F. Johnson evaluates the strategic “stress test” facing the U.S. military during the third week of Operation Epic Fury in Iran. -As of March 14, 2026, Iran’s use of low-cost Shahed drones and ballistic missiles has created a dangerous disparity, forcing the U.S. to use $3M–$12M interceptors against $20K targets.

-This report analyzes the 80% reduction in Iran’s conventional response alongside its successful strikes on UAE oil refineries and the deployment of mines in the Strait of Hormuz. -Johnson explores the munitions production lag, concluding that Tehran’s goal is “economic disruption” through $200-per-barrel oil.

Hegseth cranks up pressure on US war colleges

Alex Nitzberg

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that a task force will scrutinize Senior Service Colleges to ensure they provide quality education that is not tainted by wokeness.

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has announced a task force to evaluate senior service colleges to ensure they are not tainted by woke ideology and offer quality education.

"Professional Military Education should produce warfighters and leaders—not wokesters," he asserted in a post on X.

"That’s why we are establishing a Task Force to evaluate our Senior Service Colleges and ensure the focus is where it belongs. No distractions. Just warfighting," the post adds. War Sec. Pete Hegseth arrives for the inaugural Americas Counter Cartel Conference at the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) headquarters in Doral, Florida, on March 5, 2026.

Editorial: U.S. will regret Hegseth's decision to end CMU military fellowship

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s move to end certain military fellowships at 21 disfavored universities, including Carnegie Mellon, will achieve the opposite of its purported intention.

He cites the need to train members of the Armed Forces to “think critically, free of bias or influence.” He asserts that the 21 elite institutions — which include Harvard, Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — teach a “biased” perspective on the United States and its international affairs. The secretary says removing these schools and using others will improve the “readiness” of America’s military for battle, but it will not.

Air denial is not air control, and the Air Force should not pretend it is

Lt. Col. Grant “SWAT” Georgulis

A recent argument in the defense press contends that the US Air Force is buying the wrong kind of airpower. Instead of prioritizing advanced fighters and high-end capabilities, the claim goes, the service should emphasize large numbers of drones and munitions that can deliver persistence in modern war. Mass and layered defenses, we are told, can deny adversaries freedom of action long enough to shape outcomes.

That prescription rests on a subtle but consequential reframing of the problem, shifting the objective of airpower from controlling the air and gaining strategic advantages by doing so to merely denying enemy access to it.

Palantir Demos Show How the Military Could Use AI Chatbots to Generate War Plans

Caroline Haskins

An ongoing and heated dispute between the Pentagon and Anthropic is raising new questions about how the startup’s technology is actually used inside the US military. In late February, Anthropic refused to grant the government unconditional access to its Claude AI models, insisting the systems should not be used for mass surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon responded by labeling Anthropic's products a “supply-chain risk,” prompting the startup to file two lawsuits this week alleging illegal retaliation by the Trump administration and seeking to overturn the designation.

The clash, along with the rapidly escalating war in Iran, has drawn attention to Anthropic’s partnership with the military contractor Palantir, which announced in November 2024 that it would integrate Claude into the software it sells to US intelligence and defense agencies. Palantir says the Claude integration can help analysts uncover “data-driven insights,” identify patterns, and support making “informed decisions in time-sensitive situations.”

To Fight Iran’s Drones, U.S. Taps Ukraine’s Hard-Earned Knowledge

Michael Schwirtz

The Ukrainian drone operators were in the middle of fierce fighting when a white-haired American arrived at the front and began peppering them with questions. He wanted advice for producing battle drones like the ones Ukraine was then using, Sgt. Oleksandr Karpiuk, the commander of the drone unit, recalled.

On the advice of Sergeant Karpiuk and others, the tech billionaire shifted gears. Instead of creating a battle drone, he made Merops, an anti-drone system that has become critical to Ukraine’s defenses. The system, developed with the help of Ukrainian fighters, has used its small, cheap interceptor drones to take out thousands of long-range Russian attack drones, saving untold numbers of lives, officials and fighters said.

Pentagon, Anthropic, and the promise of Military AI

Zerodha

Our goal with The Daily Brief is to simplify the biggest stories in the Indian markets and help you understand what they mean. We won’t just tell you what happened, we’ll tell you why and how too. We do this show in both formats: video and audio. This piece curates the stories that we talk about.

Two years ago, Anthropic’s Claude became the first large language model (LLM) to operate inside the Pentagon’s classified networks. The government clearly wanted to embed it into its systems. It was fast-tracked through layers of security clearance that normally take years to navigate, and had quickly found itself working across the breadth of America’s government.

When Tools Become Agents: The Autonomous AI Governance Challenge

Jianli Yang

Autonomous or agentic artificial intelligence will create challenges for public trust in the technology. That is why building systems of accountability and safety is essential to AI’s future development. A recent research study titled Agents of Chaos provides one of the first empirical glimpses into the behavior of autonomous AI agents operating in a semi-realistic environment. The researchers deployed language-model-based agents with persistent memory, email accounts, Discord communication, file system access, and shell execution, then allowed 20 researchers to interact with them for two weeks in adversarial conditions.

The results were sobering. The agents exhibited numerous failures with real-world implications, including unauthorized disclosure of private information, noncompliance with strangers’ instructions, destructive system actions, denial-of-service conditions, and even the spread of false accusations among agents. These findings matter not merely because they reveal technical weaknesses in current AI systems. They illustrate a deeper shift: artificial intelligence is no longer merely a tool. It is becoming more like an agent.

Key questions of reliability and accountability emerge in military AI use in Iran

Ian Reynolds

With the help of artificial intelligence, the United States struck 1,000 Iranian targets in the first 24 hours of the war that began on February 28. America’s ongoing military campaign in Iran, along with recent operations that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, demonstrate the degree to which AI-enabled tools are now integrated into the practices of war. Despite the reported use of these tools, it’s unclear how they are evaluated for performance and reliability and the degree to which human judgment is retained or diminished.

This lack of clarity could introduce serious risks into military campaigns and lead to the prioritization of metrics, such as the speed of operational and tactical decision making, rather than achieving strategic and political goals.

These aren’t AI firms, they’re defense contractors. We can’t let them hide behind their models Avner Gvaryahu

There is an Israeli military strategy called the “fog procedure”. First used during the second intifada, it’s an unofficial rule that requires soldiers guarding military posts in conditions of low visibility to shoot bursts of gunfire into the darkness, on the theory that an invisible threat might be lurking.

It’s violence licensed by blindness. Shoot into the darkness and call it deterrence. With the dawn of AI warfare, that same logic of chosen blindness has been refined, systematized, and handed off to a machine.

Israel’s recent war in Gaza has been described as the first major “AI war” – the first war in which AI systems have played a central role in generating Israel’s list of purported Hamas and Islamic jihad militants to target. Systems that processed billions of data points to rank the probability that any given person in the territory was a combatant.

17 March 2026

Why China Won’t Help Iran Beijing Cares About the Oil, Not the Regime

Yun Sun

China is watching carefully as the United States and Israel bombard Iran. Beijing is, after all, Tehran’s most important partner. The two countries grew close over shared history and goals: both trace their roots to leading ancient non-Western civilizations, and both oppose a Western-dominated global order today. China’s energy security is also connected to its relationship with Iran. More than 55 percent of China’s total oil imports in 2025 came from the Middle East (approximately 13 percent from Iran itself), most of which must pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway bordered by Iran. Because the recent bombing

The Iran War’s Hidden Front: Food, Water, and Fertilizer

Michael Werz

The consequences of the Iran conflict, which are already being felt in the region, will reverberate globally as an exacerbated food crisis swells. The normally bustling Gulf is not only a regular channel for crude oil but for food and crucial agriculture fertilizers as well. But with the war at risk of expanding and the Strait of Hormuz shuttered, the effect on these states and the role they are unable to play in global food markets will prove significant.

The countries in the region—which boast over 60 million people—are particularly exposed to food shocks. They are almost entirely import-dependent when it comes to rice (77 percent), corn (89 percent), soybeans (95 percent) and vegetable oils (91 percent), according to Institute for Public Policy Research. Any disruption of supply chains will quickly have significant consequences. In Iran, food price inflation has risen 40 percent in the past year, prices for rice have increased sevenfold, green lentils and vegetable oil threefold. It is likely that new overland transport corridors will open, putting Russia, Turkey, and Syria in a position of strategic control over vital supplies. Saudi Arabia traditionally imports through its Red Sea ports which have been massively affected because of attacks by Iran-aligned Houthi rebels.

Iran’s Navy Is Largely Gone, But The Threat To The Strait Of Hormuz Is Not

Kian Sharifi

The United States and Israel have largely destroyed Iran’s conventional naval fleet in a massive bombing campaign since February 28. But Tehran’s threat to the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping routes, has not diminished. Iran has effectively closed the narrow waterway, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies flow, by using asymmetric warfare tactics.

Besides Iran’s conventional navy, the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the elite branch of the country’s armed forces, has its own naval units that continue to hound and attack shipping in the Persian Gulf. “While I think the Iranian Navy is largely combat ineffective at this point, the IRGC navy remains able to harass shipping,” said Sascha Bruchmann, a military and security affairs analyst at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

How to Lose a Navy in 10 Days

Benjamin Jensen

While air strikes in Iran have captured the headlines, the naval campaign offers a harbinger of future battles likely to unfold at sea. Iran lost the majority of its naval capability in less than 10 days, as pulsed operations in the first 48 hours disrupted Tehran’s ability to disperse its submarines and ships to wage the asymmetric maritime campaign it had planned for decades. As of March 11, the United States and Israel had hit and taken out more than 60 Iranian ships, according to U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) Commander Admiral Brad Cooper. As a result, Iran can still threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz but will struggle to counter U.S. convoys in the weeks ahead. Looking further ahead, the campaign carries a cautionary tale for Taiwan, the United States, and Japan about how to survive the initial salvo likely in any Pacific war.

What We Know About the Naval Campaign

Based on open-source reporting and official announcements, the United States appears to have prioritized destroying Iran’s ability to counterattack by sea in the opening hours of its combined strikes with Israel. With sorties by both states averaging more than 1,000 a day—combined with information warfare commingling effects in space, cyberspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum—Washington and Tel Aviv struck command-and-control systems, degraded air defenses, and targeted Iran’s ballistic missiles. These dramatic attacks, which included an opening decapitation strike, set conditions for an equally audacious series of naval strikes. As shown in the table below, the strikes reflect a distinct targeting logic indicative of a clear campaign: a sequence of tactical actions designed to disrupt Tehran’s plan and deny the regime the ability to launch a coordinated naval campaign in the Persian Gulf.

What on earth is going on with the oil price?

Jemma Crew

The price of oil rarely makes it into dinner table conversation.

But over the last two weeks it has dominated headlines, with huge and unusual rises and falls starting to feel like the new norm. It is currently trading over a third higher than before the conflict began, pushed up by air strikes on shipping and energy infrastructure and the effective closure of the key Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway that carries a fifth of global oil supplies.

There were wild swings in the price on Monday, which was described by the BBC's economics editor Faisal Islam as the most volatile day of oil trading in history. Most of the talk around prices concerns the cost of Brent crude - a widely-used international benchmark for oil. Contracts to buy and sell oil will often use Brent as a reference point, so it has significant influence on global energy costs. The vast majority of oil is traded for delivery at a future date, says Lindsay James, investment strategist at Quilter, and prices are rising now due to concerns about supplies in the months ahead.

Iran’s Drone Advantage The Pentagon Copied Tehran’s Technology but Is Still Struggling to Keep Up

Michael C. Horowitz and Lauren A. Kahn

When the United States launched airstrikes on Iran on February 28, 2026, it marked the combat debut of the U.S. military’s newest drone, the Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System. U.S. Central Command confirmed that the new LUCAS drones were used in the strikes and has said more of them “remain ready for employment” in Iran. The great irony, however, is that the LUCAS drone is based on Iran’s own low-cost one-way attack drone, the Shahed-136. In May 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump publicly praised the Iranian drones as cheap to produce, as well as “very good … and fast and deadly.” And when the Pentagon released the LUCAS in December, astute observers were quick to notice its similarities to the Shahed-136.

The idea that the United States, the world’s preeminent military power, would copy Iranian technology would have seemed fantastical just a few years ago. And yet, the Shahed-136, after being sold to Russia for use against Ukraine, was captured and studied by the U.S. military, improved on and produced by a small company in Arizona, and is now being used against Iranian targets. For its part, Tehran has unleashed a wave of Shahed-136 drones across the Middle East as part of its response to Washington’s Operation Epic Fury. The drones have struck buildings in Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, and even the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia. Although the size of Tehran’s remaining stockpile of drones is unclear, their sweeping deployment has become a critical element of the Iranian strategy for retaliation and proves that the character of war has changed.

The Other Global Crisis Stemming From the Strait of Hormuz’s Blockage

Noah Gordon and Lucy Corthell

The war in Iran has already claimed many direct victims, from the more than 100 children killed in a U.S. strike on an Iranian elementary school, to the Iranians inhaling toxic substances released by Israeli strikes on oil facilities in and around Tehran, to those soldiers and civilians killed and wounded across the region by the conflict. And no matter how quickly the fighting ends—wars often resist one protagonist’s desire to end them—its indirect victims could include billions of people hoping for good harvests and affordable meals in the coming year.

The Gulf region is a key producer not only of liquified natural gas (LNG) and oil products but also of fertilizer. About one-third of global seaborne trade in fertilizers typically passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been nearly entirely closed since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. In particular, Gulf countries are important producers of nitrogen fertilizers, which depend primarily on natural gas burned at high pressure in the presence of hydrogen to synthesize ammonia. (The hydrogen usually comes from natural gas as well.)

The world doesn’t have enough ammo for the Iran war

Joshua Keating

President Donald Trump has suggested that the US-Israeli air campaign in Iran will continue until “they cry uncle, or when they can’t fight any longer.” Iran’s foreign minister has said their own military will fight “as long as it takes” and that they have little interest in negotiating a ceasefire.

But continuing the war isn’t just a question of will; it’s a question of means. And one key constraint on how long the conflict might rage is how much ammunition each side has to continue it. Currently, it’s an arms race between Iranian missiles and drones and US, Israeli, and Gulf State countermeasures to shoot them down. And while the answers to questions about their capacity are closely guarded, there are signs of strain on both sides. With its conventional military overmatched and its network of regional allies badly degraded, Iran’s main remaining means of “fighting” is its missile and drone stockpile.

The war on Iran is already upending the Middle East. Look to the Gulf states to see how

Nesrine Malik

There is a tendency to think of the Gulf powers as static and unchanging. They are, after all, fortified by massive wealth and absolute monarchical rule, and secured with deep economic and military relationships with the US. The past week of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran, and Iran’s retaliations, have brought into focus what these countries export (oil and gas) and what they import (tax avoiders and labour). But beyond thinking about energy-supply challenges to the global economy and engaging in the cheap and popular sport of smirking at influencers in war zones, we must remember that the current conflagration will have profound consequences for the entire region. This is not just about the US, Israel and Iran; it is about a complex, overlapping political order in the Middle East that is much more fragile than it looks.

Amid all the ways the region has been changing over the past few years, the low-key evolution of three Gulf countries in particular has been the most significant. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have been rapidly making changes, the effects of which have been felt from Libya to Palestine. The 7 October attacks, which arguably set off the chain of events that led to this moment, were partly inspired by Hamas’s desire to stop the normalisation process that Saudi Arabia was undertaking with Israel; this was following the UAE and others signing the 2020 Abraham accords with Israel. The three countries have been pursuing in different ways, often at odds with each other, ambitious global and regional agendas. And they are also much more unsteady than their decades-long familial rule suggests.

The New Khamenei How America and Israel Solved Iran’s Succession Problem

Akbar Ganji

Israel and the United States’ targeted assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—and subsequent strikes on a gathering of the Islamic Republic’s Assembly of Experts—turned long-standing deliberations over who should succeed Khamenei into an opaque emergency process. The assembly’s decision to choose Khamenei’s son Mojtaba was thus made as much out of necessity as it was out of merit. It reflected an effort to preserve a degree of continuity at the top of the regime after the U.S.-Israeli operations killed much of the regime’s military and clerical leadership.

But neither the urgency of the moment nor the desire for continuity fully explains Mojtaba’s rise. The most significant factor in his selection was U.S. President Donald Trump. The president’s expressed desire to help select Iran’s next supreme leader, along with Israeli assassination threats, made Mojtaba the only viable option for regime survival. With its sovereignty undermined and its leadership humiliated, Iran opted to elevate a figure representing resistance to foreign pressure—even as that choice contradicted the regime’s ideological principles and constitutional norms.

The War Over Iran Is Really About China

Dinesh T. Chawla

The conflict unfolding in Iran may be only one theater in a much larger strategic struggle between Washington and Beijing. Despite recent military successes, Americans remain deeply anxious about the escalating conflict. Tensions with Iran began in 1979 with the international spectacle of the hostage crisis. But even that pales in comparison with the risks at hand. The cauldron of troubling interactions has reached its boiling point.

The prospect of boots on the ground terrifies Americans and has created a fracture within Trump‘s support base because of his repeated and demonstrative criticism of foreign intervention. His vice president, J.D. Vance, was even more critical of foreign interventionist policies prior to joining the Trump administration.

GPS jamming: The invisible battle in the Middle East

Chris Baraniuk

Hundreds and hundreds of ships. But they're all in the wrong place. "Oh my goodness," says Michelle Wiese Bockmann, senior maritime intelligence analyst at Windward, a maritime AI company, as she checks the live positions broadcast by commercial vessels in waters off Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

"I'm up to… 35 different clusters," she says, looking at a map of the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding areas. The clusters she mentions are weird circles of icons layered over the map, with each icon representing a real ship. But ships don't bunch together in tight, unnaturally perfect circles. And they also don't hover over land – which is where some of the clusters appear. No, their GPS coordinates have been disrupted, obfuscating their true location.

Can Iran’s asymmetric warfare hold US-Israeli military power at bay?

Priyanka Shankar

Despite United States President Donald Trump’s repeated declarations of victory in the US-Israeli war on Iran, Tehran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel and US military assets in the region have continued, upending global financial and energy markets.

“We’ve had two decades to study defeats of the US military to our immediate east and west. We’ve incorporated lessons accordingly,” Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi wrote in a post on X on March 1, the day after US and Israeli strikes on Tehran killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials.

How Hegseth Came to See Moral Purpose in War as Weakness

Greg Jaffe

Long before President Trump chose him to lead the U.S. military, Pete Hegseth described the moral calling that had compelled him to volunteer to serve in Iraq. He was working on Wall Street in the summer of 2005 and had read an article about an insurgent who blew himself up, killing 18 Iraqi children. “To me, that was the face of evil,” Mr. Hegseth told The Princeton Alumni Weekly, adding, “That sent to me a signal that I need to do my part not to let that ideology win in Iraq.”

He deployed to the war-torn city of Samarra a short time later.

Today, Mr. Hegseth describes the mission and moral purpose animating the war in Iran, now in its second week, in starkly different terms. The goal, he said recently, is to unleash “death and destruction from the sky all day long.” Instead of seeking justice, U.S. forces are pursuing vengeance against an implacable foe.

US allies near China on edge as weapons shift from Asia to Iran

ALASTAIR GALE, PHILIP J. HEIJMANS AND YIAN LEE BLOOMBERG

TOKYO — When the United States pulled its only aircraft carrier based in Asia to support the military surge in Afghanistan back in 2010, allies in the region had little concern that China or North Korea might look to take advantage. Today things are different. As the U.S. continues to pour weapons into the Middle East for military operations against Iran, current and former defense officials in Asia are growing concerned that more American firepower will be shifted over time if the war drags on. And even if fighting wraps up soon, they warned that depleted stockpiles of munitions could also take years to replace, leaving Taiwan and other places vulnerable.

In a Cabinet meeting this week, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung confirmed the U.S. may need to relocate air defense assets to the Middle East and subsequent reports said that multiple launchers of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system were spotted moving out of a southern base.

Palantir Demos Show How the Military Could Use AI Chatbots to Generate War Plans

Caroline Haskins

An ongoing and heated dispute between the Pentagon and Anthropic is raising new questions about how the startup’s technology is actually used inside the US military. In late February, Anthropic refused to grant the government unconditional access to its Claude AI models, insisting the systems should not be used for mass surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon responded by labeling Anthropic's products a “supply-chain risk,” prompting the startup to file two lawsuits this week alleging illegal retaliation by the Trump administration and seeking to overturn the designation.

The clash, along with the rapidly escalating war in Iran, has drawn attention to Anthropic’s partnership with the military contractor Palantir, which announced in November 2024 that it would integrate Claude into the software it sells to US intelligence and defense agencies. Palantir says the Claude integration can help analysts uncover “data-driven insights,” identify patterns, and support making “informed decisions in time-sensitive situations.”

U.S. Military Operations Against Iran: Munitions And Missile Defense

Hannah D. Dennis and Daniel M. Gettinger

Congress has expressed interest in the status of the U.S. military’s inventories of munitions (e.g., ammunition, bombs, missiles, torpedoes, anti-aircraft weapons, missile interceptors). Since the United States and Israel launched military operations against Iran on February 28, 2026, some Members of Congress have sought information on the stockpiles and availability of U.S. weapons from the Department of Defense (DOD, which is “using a secondary Department of War designation,” under Executive Order 14347 dated September 5, 2025).

Some Members have raised concerns about potential shortfalls in munitions, while other Members have said munitions are not an immediate concern. President Donald J. Trump has said U.S. munitions are “virtually unlimited.” DOD officials have said sufficient munitions are available, while maintaining that the status of U.S. stocks is considered “an operational security matter.” In these comments, officials have not differentiated between stocks of air-to-ground and air-to-air munitions versus missiles and missile interceptors.

Nepal’s Election Marks a Generational Break—and a New Strategic Moment in the Himalayas

Anjali Kaur

Nepal’s latest election has produced something the country has not seen in decades: a genuine generational rupture with its political past. But the significance extends well beyond Kathmandu. As a younger political figure rises to national leadership, Nepal is entering a new strategic moment—shaped by intensifying geopolitical competition, shifting development partnerships, and a generation of voters who have run out of patience with institutions that promise reforms but rarely deliver.

The victory of former Kathmandu mayor Balendra “Balen” Shah places a leader at the helm who sits outside Nepal’s traditional political establishment. At 35, Shah represents a stark contrast to the governing class that has defined Nepal’s politics since the end of the monarchy—a small circle of senior party figures, many now in their 70s and 80s, whose influence has survived coalition after coalition with remarkably little accountability. His election signals that a growing share of Nepali voters, particularly younger ones, are no longer willing to accept political recycling as a governing philosophy.

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