Indian Strategic Studies: 07/25/24

25 July 2024

The Mandala, Agency and Norms in Indonesia-India Global Affairs

Nia Deliana

The notion of the Mandala can be traced back to a Tamil inscription that describes a settlement and commercial system of a South Indian communal compound before the Chola’s raid in 1025 CE. The records note a commercial system in Lobu Tua of Southern Aceh dated in 1088 CE (McKinnon 1994). Mercantile exchanges between the two regions continued despite political turbulence resulting from domestic or global affairs. Many scholars believe that the Mandala of the Indian Ocean was the most substantial factor that engineered this international relationship. Mandala is a Sanskrit word that means a circle of space and time that connect through a circulation of being, according to Bose (2006). Through the shared Muslim cultures across the Indian Ocean (Pradines and Topan, 2023), The Mandala’s international norms ruled not only the entanglement on networks, ports, commodities, and agencies that characterized the systemic order of sovereignty, rivalry, and alliances with the great powers but also the fluid political ecosystem of the Ocean. It guided mobility, interactions, and a sense of belonging to the native-becoming South Indians, Arabs, Chinese, Jews, and Europeans.

Fernand Braudel highlighted a similar notion of mandala in French as revealed in his book, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II (1972). He coined the “long duree” concept to explain spatial and temporal connections threaded in the cycle of economic and political circulatory processes that shaped inter-civilizational pluralism and inclusivity. Complimentary to Braudel’s, Acharya’s reflection (2019) on the origin of the global economy and international politics showcases the cycle of circulation pattern between various empires. It contributed to a “civilizational state” where “embedded norms and cultures engineered pluralism and unipolarity” that formed the global order across the Indian Ocean. Such multiplexity had to owe to the ‘open’ character of the surrounding sovereignties, as Manjeed S Pardesi (2022) concluded. He showed that the ‘open’ character contributed to shaping a ‘de-centered hegemony’ of the centric world order system, referring to the case of 15th century Malacca’s international politics with the global powers.

AI and Deepfakes Played a Big Role in India’s Elections

Samriddhi Sakunia

In February, ahead of elections in India, the Indian National Congress, the chief opposition party, shared a parody video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Instagram. It used AI tools to superimpose his face on that of Justh, an Indian singer whose song “Chor” (“Thief”) went viral on social media. Producers slightly changed its lyrics, cloned Modi’s voice and paired it with animated visuals of the leader with industrialist Gautam Adani. The video was a gibe on their closeness that had led to Adani’s acquiring several airports, seaports and power plants in the country after Modi’s ascent to power in 2014.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also responded with an AI-generated video. In it, senior Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi’s face had been superimposed on that of Tejashwi Yadav, an opposition leader in Bihar. It was made to seem as if he was addressing Mamata Banerjee, a leader who had broken with the Congress-led alliance just before the elections. It was a dig at the fragile relations in the opposition bloc.

This exchange marked the onset of an AI-driven war and paved the way for a new way of political campaigning in the country, where AI tools, such as voice cloning, conversational bots, personalized video and text messaging, QR codes to click selfies, hologram boxes and deepfake technology were employed by political parties to reach out to voters and take jabs at one another.

Readying for war or being prepared for crises? China’s stockpiling of resources raises eyebrows and questions

Bong Xin Ying

SINGAPORE: What do grain, oil, copper, cobalt and iron ore have in common?

They’re but some of the key resources and minerals China has recently been amassing, according to media reports, in an alleged pattern of behaviour that has blared red for some observers and rival superpower the United States.

Chief of which is Washington’s concern that Beijing’s hoarding could be a precursor to war - specifically over Taiwan which it claims as its territory - as singled out during a hearing last month by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

While Beijing understandably keeps its cards close to its chest, analysts CNA spoke to believe preparation for war is but one piece of the overall stockpiling puzzle - and even then, it’s likely low on the priority list.

Instead, they see the latest fortification of national reserves as primarily aimed at ensuring the world’s second-largest economy is primed for potential shocks arising from a tumultuous geopolitical environment, climate change, and natural disasters.

“The focus is less on imminent war and more on long-term resilience and strategic positioning,” said Mr Andy Mok, a senior research fellow at Beijing-based think tank, Center for China and Globalization.

The Crumbling Edifice of Conventional Deterrence

Lawrence J. Korb & Stephen Cimbala

Current and aspiring nuclear great powers (the United States, Russia, and China), together with other comparatively small nuclear weapons states (either declared or widely acknowledged as such), are investing in expensive and expansive modernization of their nuclear arsenals. This pattern of growing commitment to larger and costlier nuclear weapons deployments is predicated on the assumption that nuclear weapons are a necessary and sufficient deterrent to a major war, including nuclear war. But that assumption is now under widespread challenge.

What we are seeing is a growing willingness of state and non-state actors to engage in large-scale conventional and unconventional warfare, even against the interests of nuclear powers. It turns out that, without the capability to deter or win conventional wars or unconventional attacks against vital interests, a state’s nuclear arsenal is, effectively, a one-dimensional success story sitting atop a glue factory of military insufficiency.

Dissenters of the preceding view might argue that nuclear weapons serve to deter a nuclear attack against the state and its vital interests and nuclear blackmail by one state against another or its allies. This concept is of little consolation to practical heads of state and military planners. A deliberate nuclear strike “out of the blue” by one nuclear power against another, not preceded by a conventional war, is one of the least likely paths to nuclear war. More likely is the expansion of a conventional war into a decision by one side to engage in nuclear first use.

Russia, China Sell Cyber Weapons to Hamas, Cybersecurity Expert Claims

Hugh Cameron

Hamas has reportedly acquired sophisticated criminal malware to target Israeli infrastructure and entities, opening another front in the ongoing conflict.

However, one expert told Newsweek that attacks originating from the Gaza Strip were becoming increasingly unlikely due to the damage caused to the region by Israeli bombardment.

According to National Security News, Hamas has begun "renting complex computer viruses" and using these to attack the Israeli Defense Forces and other government agencies.

Using cheap malware known as "info-stealers," the group is reportedly uploading viruses to target computers via emails, games or PDF documents, and using these to steal confidential data.

Alberto Casares, chief technology officer at California-based cyber security company Constella Intelligence, told National Security News that the technology could have originated from Russia, China, Iran or North Korea.

China vs. World: Cybersecurity Reporting Duel

Tom Uren

Western cybersecurity agencies are co-authoring reports with an increasing number of overseas agencies into Chinese cyber activity. And China doesn’t seem to like it.

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) last week issued an advisory co-authored with German, Korean, and Japanese intelligence; cybersecurity and law enforcement agencies; as well as the standard Five Eyes agencies that regularly contribute to advisories. The advisory documented two successful compromises of Australian organizations and resulting investigations by the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC). The agencies attributed the compromises to APT40, a People’s Republic of China (PRC)-sponsored group that operates on behalf of the Ministry of State Security (MSS). The report documents what it calls a “notable” shift in tradecraft, away from using hacked websites for command and control to using compromised small office/home office devices to relay communications.

There is only a tiny amount of information in the report that could be ascribed to organizations other than ASD. The corralling of international agencies as authors is all about presenting a united front against Chinese cyber operations.

China, however, is pushing back by issuing its own reports on purported U.S. activity or attempting to cast doubt on reports into its own behavior.

Is China’s social contract about to break down?

JOHN RAPLEY

Steady as she goes. That was the message from the Third Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party, which concluded yesterday. Watched closely as an indicator of the ruling elite’s policy intentions, the communique that emerged from the meeting suggested no major change to the country’s economic direction.

But Xi Jinping saying everything is going to plan is starting to sound a bit like Joe Biden saying he’s going to beat Donald Trump in November’s election. Because in an unfortunate piece of timing, as the Plenum began the Chinese statistical agency reported that economic growth had recently fallen below the talismanic 5% figure.

For quite some time, economists have been warning that the current Chinese growth strategy is running out of road. Building manufacturing industries to export to the world has delivered Beijing the phenomenal rise in income it has experienced in the last 30 years. However, there’s only so much capacity on the planet to absorb Chinese products.

The China-Only Republicans

Alexander Motyl

The Republican concern with China’s threat to America is understandable, arguably even laudable, as many of China’s economic, security, and human rights policies do, in fact, challenge America.

When that laudable concern turns into a single-minded obsession, however, then it does more than a disservice to America. It becomes exactly that which it was supposed to deter: a threat to America’s security.

Both former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, along with the Heritage Foundation and scores of conservative analysts, suffer from this obsession.

If China were the only big country that matters in the world, the China-only camp would be right. But because China isn’t the only country that matters to U.S. interests, the China-only camp is wrong. This is elementary.

The China-only camp could counter that while it’s definitely true that India, Brazil, Mexico, Europe, and Nigeria also matter, China outdoes them in terms of strategic importance that a China-only foreign policy is warranted.

U.S. Launches Effort to Stop Russia From Arming Houthis With Antiship Missiles

Michael R. Gordon & Lara Seligman

U.S. intelligence agencies are warning that Russia might arm Houthi militants in Yemen with advanced antiship missiles in retaliation for the Biden administration’s support for Ukrainian strikes inside Russia with U.S. weapons.

The new intelligence comes as the top U.S. Middle East commander recently advised in a classified letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that military operations in the region are “failing” to deter Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and that a broader approach is needed, according to U.S. officials.

The White House has launched a confidential push to try to stop Moscow from delivering the missiles to the Iranian-backed Houthis, who have been attacking shipping in the Red Sea for eight months in a show of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

The Houthi threat was highlighted early Friday local time when an armed drone that the Israeli military said was launched from Yemen struck Tel Aviv, the militant group’s first successful targeting of the city since the beginning of the Gaza war. One person was killed and several people were injured by the blast, which hit an apartment near a U.S. diplomatic building, authorities said.

A Deadly Alliance: Al-Shabaab and the Houthis

Emily Milliken

On June 11, United States intelligence made a startling claim: Yemen’s Houthi rebels are looking to cooperate with Al Qaeda’s Somali affiliate al-Shabaab and are discussing a deal to provide the Somali fighters with weapons.

The potential agreement would reportedly provide advanced weapons systems to al-Shabaab in return for much-needed revenue for the Houthis. Still, the deal would also mean a new strategic relationship that could benefit the rebels. While it is unclear exactly what kind of weapons would be exchanged, al-Shabaab already has access to small arms and surveillance drones through its prolific smuggling network and the black market in Somalia. Thus, the Houthis are most likely offering attack drones or surface-to-air missiles because more advanced systems like anti-ship ballistic missiles and cruise missiles would require significant training and logistical assistance that would be difficult for al-Shabaab to obtain, given the risks associated with Houthi and al-Shabaab militants traveling.

Although United States officials have not discovered any direct evidence of weapon exchanges occurring at this time, even the possibility of these two groups putting their sectarian differences aside to cooperate should be a concern. Al-Shabaab is trying to establish jihadist rule over territory in Somalia. The Houthis, a Zaydi Shia rebel group backed by the regime in Tehran, are fighting the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and, since November, have been focused on maritime attacks targeting vessels they see as allied with Israel. Nevertheless, the Houthis are following in the footsteps of their backers in Iran, who have, on occasion, worked with Al Qaeda and its affiliates pragmatically, even harboring some of its most senior leadership.

Houthi drone attack and Iranian nukes loom over Israel’s strategic future - OPINION

Cindy Adams, Rich Lowry & Kirsten Fleming

As Israel grinds ever closer to victory over Hamas, it got hit Friday with reminders that Iran has more catspaws poised to strike: The next battle in the Islamic Republic’s wider war against the Jewish state is just beginning.

The good news: It looks like the IDF took out a top Hamas leader last week, and the group is said to be increasingly open to some ceasefire-and-hostage-release deal that doesn’t require Israel to quit its Gaza operations.

Bad news: Friday saw a successful drone attack in Tel Aviv, claimed by the Houthi militia of Yemen, plus dozens more missiles shot from Hezbollah in Lebanon, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Iran is now only one to two weeks away from producing enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.

The drone, a long-range Iranian-made weapon, killed at least one and injured several others.

Early signs are that it got through Israel’s formidable surveillance systems thanks to human error, but it’s still a stunning blow for an Israeli defense establishment already reeling — and a sure signal from Tehran that the regime is laser-focused on keeping up attacks against the Jewish state.

A Simulation of Military Rule in Gaza: The Advantages and Disadvantages

Udi Dekel

Using a simulation involving many actors, INSS examined a scenario in which Israel, with the goal of preventing Hamas from rebuilding and ensuring that the Gaza Strip is not engulfed in total chaos, is forced to recapture the territory and impose martial law. This analysis showed that the costs of such an occupation would be extremely high for Israel. In addition, while Israel would be required to formulate a strategy for ending the war in Gaza, the war of attrition being waged against Israel by Iran’s proxies would continue and possibly even intensify. Above all, the most significant potential damage would be the elimination of any possibility of a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as a regional security coalition led by the United States, including the moderate Arab states and Israel.

INSS conducted a simulation to examine the implications of Israel’s reoccupation of the Gaza Strip and whether it would have any significant impact on altering the negative developments in the war arena.

The Scenario

Following the failed attempt to reach a deal with Hamas for the release of the hostages and the introduction of a ceasefire, Israel completes its mission to take control of the Rafah district and deploys along the Philadelphi Corridor to block off Hamas’s smuggling routes and prevent it from rearming.
Israel controls all the border crossings into Gaza. Given the situation that has been created, the international community declares that Israel has full control over the Gaza Strip and responsibility for it as well as for the well-being of the Palestinian population there.

The Inevitability of Big Tech Backing Trump

JASON PARHAM

IT IS TRUE just about everywhere, but especially in America: Real power is having control over the flow of resources. Property. Money. Information. If you command the levers of production—who gets what, when, and how—you dictate what the future holds and who gets a say in it. Or in this case, you get to decide the future of the United States. On the verge of another presidential election, no one knows that better than Silicon Valley CEOs and investors, some of whom publicly announced their support for Donald Trump and his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, this week.

Behind the calculated loyalties of Big Tech, says Jared Clemons, a political science professor at Temple University, we can begin to understand what is happening in the moment before us. “I try to not be hysterical about politics. I know that's really hard because you turn on the TV and it seems like the world is always falling apart,” he tells me. “But none of this started happening overnight.”

Clemons identifies as socialist but “not in like a crazy, conspiratorial way,” he jokes. He believes the best path forward is a collective future where we let go of the vestiges of a capitalist past, which Republicans and Democrats refuse to relinquish. He wants people to understand that the old ways of bureaucratic governance no longer serve us. (Clemons routinely unpacks complex issues like this on his YouTube series, #Poli-Side-Eye.)

Ukraine Military Situation: Russian Combat Formation Continue Advance In Eastern Ukraine – Analysis

Can Kasapoğlu

Battlefield Assessment

Last week, Russian combat formations advanced in several locations in eastern Ukraine, most notably in the direction of the city of Pokrovsk. Russian forces also registered tactically significant territorial gains, including the capture of the long-contested town of Yasnobrodivka, although the Ukrainian General Staff denies the town has fallen and reports that fighting there is ongoing.

Alarmingly, Russian forces also made progress in their efforts to capture critical infrastructure and logistics arteries along the road that connects Kostiantynivka and Pokrovsk. This push threatens already outgunnedUkrainian defensive combat operations in the town of Chasiv Yar, a vital position to which both sides have dedicated considerable resources.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin continued to drop glide bombs on Ukraine’s population centers, a menacing tactic that Kyiv can only address by targeting the airbases deep inside Russia from which the strike packages originate. But the Kremlin’s overall gains come with a heavy price tag: according to several assessments, the Russian death toll has been skyrocketing. Some sources have suggested that Russian losses have roughly doubled since 2023.

Drone evades Israel's vaunted air defenses in Tel Aviv strike

Colin Demarest

An overnight attack on Tel Aviv, Israel, was executed with a souped up Iranian attack drone dubbed Samad-3.

Why it matters: The strike, which killed one person and injured more, highlights the difficulty of air defense, even in a country renowned for its missile interceptions.

Zoom in: The Israel Defense Forces believe the attack was launched from Yemen. Houthi rebels there have for months choked the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with unmanned weaponry, both in the sky and on the water.

The Samad-3 has a reported range of 1,500 kilometers and carries an explosive payload but isn't notably stealthy or sophisticated, experts told Axios. A Houthi spokesman told Semafor the drone was an upgraded type that could evade interception.
Footage circulating on social media shows the drone swooping over a beach, toward the skyline and then blowing up.
Central Command, which oversees U.S. military efforts in the greater Middle East, in 2020 shared images of a Samad-3 in Houthi hands.

What they're saying: "Houthi long-range strike capabilities are simply out of control," said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. "Whatever deterrence the U.S. believes it is creating in the Red Sea has today been rendered a fiction."

Project 2025’s plan for the US military

Project 2025, a series of policy recommendations for the next Republican president facilitated by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, has moved to the center stage of the U.S. presidential election. The plan’s authors include dozens of conservative from the first Trump administration, while it has been assailed by Democrats.

A Task & Purpose review of Project 2025’s plan for the Pentagon and active duty troops finds a number of starkly partisan changes already pushed by Republicans. But the plan also includes a wide range of day-to-day changes to the force that don’t fit neatly into political labels but would change life in the military. Those include drastically reducing the number of generals, adding 50,000 soldiers to the Army with more planes and ships for the Air Force and Army, and reaching all the way down to the platoon level in the Marine Corps to mandate how senior a Marine must be to lead a rifle squad.

The nearly 1,000-page handbook includes a 41-page chapter on proposed changes to the Defense Department. The Heritage Foundation describes Project 2025 as a “playbook for the first 180 days of the next Administration.” It was produced by hundreds of experts, and the chapter concerning the Defense Department was overseen by former Defense Secretary Chris Miller, who declined to comment for this story.

At its heart, the plan claims to be an effort to unshackle America’s military from what the authors view as long-term rot of misspent budgets, politically driven policies and a lack of focus on the military threat posed by China.

Outgoing NCTC Director Lays Out Today’s Very Real Terrorist Threat

Christine “Christy” Abizaid was sworn in as director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) in June of 2021, as the threat of terrorism was already on the rise. Domestic terrorism investigations had grown by 357% over the decade prior to her swearing in as the new head of the organization tasked with collecting and sharing information on those threats with federal, state and local government partners.

Just months after Abizaid was sworn in to the role, The Cipher Brief sat down with her at The Cipher Brief Threat Conference in her first public interview as director, to talk about how the terrorist threat to America was changing.

“First of all, we’ve got to recognize just how ideologically diverse the threat is,” she said during the onstage interview. “If you think about where the threat to the homeland is most likely to emerge from, it’s most likely to emerge from individuals who are inspired to act by some ideology, whether that’s a domestic violent extremist ideology, or whether it’s an Al-Qaeda-inspired ideology.”

Three years later, as she prepares to retire, the threat landscape is no less diverse.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Appropriations Committee in April that he was hard-pressed to recall a time “where so many threats to our public safety were so elevated all at once” telling the committee that, “we’ve seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole ‘nother level after October 7.”

Africa’s population boom: challenges, opportunities

TATIANA KANUNNIKOVA

Africa’s population will continue to rise rapidly over the next few decades, particularly in the Sahel. While this trend has both upsides and downsides, it has a tangible impact on global processes. Namely, Africa’s demographic boom may be among the factors behind regional conflicts, food insecurity and uncontrolled migration.

The statistics are unequivocal: by 2050, Africa’s total population will increase to almost 2.5 billion, an impressive gain compared with 1.36 billion inhabitants in 2023. In less than 80 years, one out of every two newborns worldwide will be African.

The good news is that the increased share of working-age individuals is beneficial to the economies of African countries and beyond. But on the flip side, a larger proportion of the young population means a greater financial burden for governments, as well as added social and security risks.

The thing is that a growing population demands increased food production, something that many African nations may fail to achieve. As of today, four of the five countries in the world with the highest number of children suffering from malnutrition are in Africa, with Nigeria and Ethiopia topping the list.

France races to head off ISIS-K threat to Paris Olympics

Gabriel Stargardter and Juliette Jabkhiro

Tajik journalist Temur Varki received a disquieting call from Paris police in late March, days after Islamic State militants from his homeland allegedly carried out a massacre in Moscow.

The two officers questioned him about France's tiny community of immigrants from Tajikistan, an impoverished former Soviet republic in Central Asia.

"Who do you know? How many? Where?" Varki recalled the officers asking, with one of them speaking Russian, a commonly used language across Central Asia. Varki, a political refugee in France who has worked for outlets including the BBC, told the police callers he knew a handful of Tajiks in the country, mainly fellow emigres and dissidents.

"But I don't know any jihadists," he told them.

Ahead of the Paris Olympics that begin on July 26, French security services have been racing to address an intelligence blind spot and forge deeper ties with Tajiks and other Central Asians in the country, according to more than a dozen people with knowledge of the drive. They include current and former intelligence officials, police, diplomats and Central Asian migrants who have been contacted by authorities.

Russia Isn’t Behind Armenia’s Military Defeats, Geopolitical Choices Are - OPINION

Taras Kuzio

Former Soviet republics have a penchant for conspiracy theories, preferring to blame national minorities, antagonistic neighbors, and foreigners for protests, revolutions, economic crises, and military defeats. Conspiracies against the nation are all the rage in Armenia which is desperately searching for the ‘guilty’ party behind its military defeats and loss of territories.

Armen Grigoryan, Secretary of Armenian Security Council recently blamed Russia for taking control of and transferring Karabakh to Azerbaijan. This conspiracy fails to consider more pertinent factors behind Armenia’s military defeats that are blatantly evident in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Russia, which three years ago claimed it had the ‘second best army in the world,’ was unable to defeat Ukraine because its military training is still Soviet, and its military equipment is of very poor quality.

The Armenian army relied on Russian (i.e., Soviet) training and Russia (i.e., Soviet) military equipment. Becoming an independent state in 1991, Armenia chose to tie itself militarily to Russia. In contrast, Azerbaijan’s army was trained by NATO members and its military equipment was primarily Western, especially Israeli, and Turkish.

David Lammy is dangerously naive about Hamas

Stephen Pollard

Well that didn’t take long. David Lammy has been foreign secretary for just two weeks, but it’s now clear where he stands on those who enable terror. To put it bluntly: he couldn’t care less.

Speaking this morning in the Commons, Mr Lammy confirmed what had been expected – that the UK will resume funding to Unrwa (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, to give it its full title).

In January, the Conservative government stopped funding Unrwa when the Israeli government claimed that some of its employees had taken part in the October 7 Hamas massacre – and that Unrwa had a long history of doing nothing about Hamas’ infiltration of the organisation.

Lammy’s response to this, as he told the Commons today, is that, “I was appalled by the allegations that Unrwa staff were involved in the October 7 attacks.” But, heh ho, all’s well: “We are reassured that after Catherine Colonna’s independent review, Unrwa is ensuring they meet the highest standards of neutrality and strengthening its procedures, including on vetting.”

How Israel Turned the Tide in Rafah - Opinion

Elliot Kaufman

Something changed in Gaza. After months of rejecting Israeli cease-fire proposals and holding out for more concessions, Hamas has begun to offer concessions of its own. Israel is closer than ever to freeing many of its remaining hostages, and it has gained the leverage to demand terms that protect the strategic gains of the war.

If you believe the media drumbeat—that Israel’s war effort is futile, its strategy absent, and its political isolation growing—it’s impossible to account for the breakthrough. Why, after months of contemptuous stalling, did Hamas begin to bend?

“Two reasons,” says Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, in an interview at the Journal’s office. “One, they understand now that there will be no cease-fire without a hostage deal. Two, the IDF is acting aggressively against the terrorists in Gaza. Especially important was entering Rafah,” Hamas’s stronghold at the southern end of the strip.

Israel cut off Hamas’s supply routes and now holds Hamas “by the throat,” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently put it. Senior terrorists are dropping at a faster clip as Israeli intelligence closes in; half of Hamas’s military leadership has been eliminated. Even after a large Israeli bombardment to kill Hamas’s military chief, Mohammed Deif, who is considered unlikely to have survived, Hamas barely attacked in response and rushed to clarify that it isn’t leaving negotiations. “Hamas is under much more pressure now,” Mr. Katz says. “That’s what made the difference.”

Irreconcilable Differences

LAWRENCE FREEDMAN

Since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War ‘realists’ have warned that Ukrainians are foolish to resist Russian aggression and should instead agree a compromise peace that might still leave them with the bulk of their country at the cost of conceding a chunk to Russia. How much independence the rump Ukraine could then enjoy would depend on what had also been agreed on its future security arrangements. These same realists would expect Ukraine to accept that it could never join NATO.

A recent example of such ‘realism’ can be found In a letter in the Financial Times signed by individuals who have long taken this position, including former UK and US Ambassadors to Moscow. They do not expect concessions from Russia other than a possible promise that it would not try to take even more territory. They urge that the US should start talks with Moscow ‘on a new security pact which would safeguard the legitimate security interests of both Ukraine and Russia’ without explaining how that would work.

Drone Strike Hits Tel Aviv, a First During Gaza War

Anat Peled and Carrie Keller-Lynn

A drone strike caused an explosion in Tel Aviv, slipping through the country’s vaunted air defenses in the first such attack on Israel’s commercial capital since the war in Gaza began more than nine months ago.

The Israeli military said the blast was caused by a large uncrewed aerial vehicle that could travel long distances. It said it believes the device was launched by the Iran-aligned Houthi militant group from Yemen, roughly 1,250 miles away.

The Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it had targeted Tel Aviv with a new drone called “Yaffa” that can evade Israeli air-defense systems.

The drone strike marks an advance in the militant group’s capabilities and threatens to widen what is already a multifront war. The fact the drone got through highlights Israel’s difficulties defending against drones, a relatively cheap means of attack that is frustrating militaries around the world.

“The Israeli security system will come to terms with anyone who tries to harm the state of Israel or send terror against it in a clear and surprising way,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Friday after meeting with security chiefs. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was briefed on the drone attack in real time and held a situation assessment on Friday morning, according to a statement by his office.

What is CrowdStrike, and how did it cause a global Windows outage?

Nick Robins

A global technology outage on Friday grounded flights, disrupted health services, crashed payment systems and blocked access to Microsoft services in what experts believe is one of the largest IT failures in history.

The cause of the disruptions originated from a cybersecurity firm called CrowdStrike, which provides software to a wide range of industries. An update to one of CrowdStrike’s pieces of software, Falcon Sensor, malfunctioned, throwing a wrench into computers running Windows, leading to major tech failures around the world, the company said.

Here’s what we know about the outage so far.

What is CrowdStrike?

CrowdStrike is an American cybersecurity firm founded in 2011 and based in Austin, Texas. Since its inception, the company has grown rapidly as it began to offer a range of security services using cloud-based software. It has raised millions in funding from Silicon Valley powerhouses such as Google’s venture capital arm. It employs thousands of workers and services businesses in countries across the globe, boasting on its website that it protects 538 out of the Fortune 1000 companies.