SKP’s Latest Campaign: Expanded Propaganda and External Operations

Dr. Colin Clarke, Lucas Webber and Peter Smith

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Introduction

The Islamic State Khurasan Province’s (ISKP) capabilities and intent to carry out attacks outside of its nucleus in Pakistan and Afghanistan are increasing. After a recent flurry of activity, ISKP has conducted several successful operations, including a bombing in Iran that took the lives of nearly 100 people in early January and a sophisticated attack in Moscow that claimed the lives of 145 people while injuring another 551.

The threat was underscored yet again, most recently with the May 31 arrest of an 18-year-old Chechen man — who was communicating with ISKP — in France’s Saint-Etienne region for an alleged plot to attack spectators and security staff during the upcoming Paris Olympics. This follows months of propaganda specifically calling for terrorism against sporting events in Germany, France, Spain, the United States and more.

Most branches of the Islamic State (IS) are focused on their specific region or Wilayah, while ISKP is setting its sights beyond its borders as it works to expand its external operations attack network, not just in South and Central Asia but also in the West and beyond. There has been a notable surge in ISKP’s external activities since mid-December. In addition to the attacks in Iran and Russia, ISKP was involved in an attack in Turkey and reportedly Tajikistan, alongside plots foiled in Austria, Germany, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia.

US, Taiwan, China race to improve military drone technology

Katherine Michaelson

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This week, as Taiwan was preparing for the start of its Han Kuang military exercises, its air defense system detected a Chinese drone circling the island. This was the sixth time that China had sent a drone to operate around Taiwan since 2023.

Drones like the one that flew around Taiwan, which are tasked with dual-pronged missions of reconnaissance and intimidation, are just a small part of a broader trend that is making headlines from Ukraine to the Middle East to the Taiwan Strait and is changing the face of warfare.

The increasing role that unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, play and rising concern about a Chinese invasion of democratically ruled Taiwan is pushing Washington, Beijing and Taipei to improve the sophistication, adaptability and cost of drone technology.

'Hellscape' strategy

Last August, the Pentagon launched a $1 billion Replicator Initiative to create air, sea and land drones in the "multiple thousands," according to the Defense Department's Innovation Unit. The Pentagon aims to build that force of drones by August 2025.

An Arab Spring for Bangladesh?

M. Niaz Asadullah

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In recent weeks, the Bangladeshi government has cracked down violently on students demanding equitable access to coveted government jobs amid an unemployment crisis. To contain the protests, authorities have shut down all educational institutions, imposed a strict curfew, and cut off internet access. Thousands of police officers and paramilitaries have been patrolling the streets, and more than 170 people have died.

Such unrest in one of Asia’s most populous and promising emerging economies, which has made remarkable progress on development and political stability in the half-century or so since it gained independence, did not come out of nowhere. Bangladesh’s youth uprising, with its echoes of the Arab Spring, illustrates how corruption, cronyism, and inequality tend to accompany GDP growth, especially under an increasingly authoritarian regime.

Since taking power in 2009, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League has largely failed to deliver on promises of job creation. To be sure, Bangladesh’s public-sector workforce has expanded over the past two decades, and civil servants have received steady raises and improved benefits. But access to these jobs is now a matter of politics. The implicit social contract, whereby the youth population remains compliant as long as the government provides jobs and keeps the cost of living down, has been broken.

Myanmar Is Running Out of Gas. What Happens Next?

Guillaume de Langre

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Myanmar’s domestic gas production is plummeting. The country’s biggest gas field, called Yadana, is nearing the end of its lifetime. According to Thai energy data, Thai imports of Yadana gas have dropped 47 percent since the military takeover of February 2021, which has plunged the country into conflict. Less gas production also means less electricity for Myanmar: generation capacity has dropped 35 percent since the coup. The depletion of Yadana has been expected for a long time, and there were plans to develop new gas reserves and renewable sources of energy to make up for it. What wasn’t expected was that the Myanmar military would seize power – a move that has broken the country’s fragile energy system. So what happens next, and how could we fix it?

First, let’s be clear: Myanmar’s energy crisis is a direct result of its political crisis. There is no energy solution without a political change. Foreign investors and local companies pulled out of the country’s energy sector because they lost confidence in the State Administration Council (SAC)’s ability to govern responsibly. This is reflected in the exchange rate: as assets were pulled out of the country, the kyat has dropped from 1,330 to the U.S. dollar on the eve of the coup to around 4,500 to the dollar today. One of the consequences for the energy sector is that importing gas from abroad to generate more electricity would now be prohibitively expensive. At this stage of the conflict, the success of any energy policy depends on a political solution.

Beijing Can Take the South China Sea Without Firing a Shot - OPINION

Oriana Skylar Mastro

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Over the past 15 years, China has expanded its once-minimal military presence in the South China Sea into a significant one.

Beijing has laid claim to nearly all of the strategic waterway, a vital shipping lifeline for the global economy that is rich in energy and fishery resources. China has used nonmilitary assets such as its Coast Guard, fishing vessels and maritime militia to bully its neighbors, blockade their ships and build Chinese military bases on disputed islands.

America is partly to blame. It has condemned China’s behavior, but, eager to avoid escalation, has consistently refrained from standing up militarily, which has only further emboldened Beijing. A new approach is needed. The United States must take real action to strengthen alliances and confront China before it eventually takes control of this hugely important body of water without firing a shot.

Like any unchallenged bully, China has become increasingly aggressive. Last month, Chinese Coast Guard personnel attacked a Philippine supply vessel with axes and other crude weapons — Manila says a Filipino sailor and several others were injured — in one of the worst acts of violence between China and its rivals in the South China Sea in years. The incident took place near the Sierra Madre, a rusting World War II-era ship that the Philippines had beached 25 years ago at Second Thomas Shoal to assert its territorial claim. The shoal lies about 120 miles off the Philippine island of Palawan and is well within the nation’s exclusive economic zone.

China Casts Itself as Peacemaker in First High-Level Talks With Ukraine Since Russia’s Invasion

Isabel Coles and Austin Ramzy

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Ukraine’s top diplomat met with his Chinese counterpart Wednesday for hours of talks in his first such high-level visit to the country since Russia’s full-scale invasion, as Kyiv seeks Beijing’s support to end the war on “just” terms.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reiterated Beijing’s calls for a diplomatic solution to the war during the meeting in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, who said his country would negotiate when Moscow was ready to engage “in good faith.”

“No such readiness is currently observed on the Russian side,” Kuleba said, according to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. A Kremlin spokesman said in response that Moscow “has always maintained its openness to the negotiation process.”

Efforts to kick-start dialogue between Russia and Ukraine have faltered during a war that has upended European security and triggered commodity price shocks worldwide. Several countries have attempted to broker peace talks, beginning with Turkey in the weeks after Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

Beijing’s Long Game: Gray Zone Tactics in the Pacific

Brandon Tran

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The expulsion of former Chinese defense ministers Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on June 27, 2024, is the latest development in a months-long series of personnel purges in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). As President Xi Jinping continuously reforms the PLA to make it a “world-class military” capable of achieving the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) national security objectives, these purges illustrate an underlying tension that stems from competing priorities. Because the PLA is the armed wing of the CCP, Xi Jinping must make tradeoffs in balancing regime loyalty and military competence when selecting PLA officers for senior positions. As a result of this and similar compromises, the PLA remains unprepared for direct confrontation with near-peer adversaries. To address this gap, China will continue leveraging irregular warfare activities to incrementally accomplish its strategic objectives while buying time to achieve the level of conventional force development it desires. This article will evaluate how China’s use of irregular warfare sets the stage for its conventional force development, given the context of the competing requirements for senior PLA officer promotion, the PLA’s guiding principles, and the role of the new defense minister, Dong Jun.

The Populist Revolt Against Climate Policy

Edoardo Campanella and Robert Z. Lawrence

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Few analysts studying the West’s political landscape saw a populist earthquake coming a decade ago. But then, with the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom in 2016 and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States later that year, the earthquake hit. Observers were quick to see the rise of a new “silent majority” in the West, one bent on repudiating an out-of-touch elite that was either oblivious to the suffering their policies had caused or entirely indifferent to it. The effects of globalization, deindustrialization, and the financial crisis fueled the discontent at the heart of the populist wave. But other forces drove upheaval in particular countries, including concerns relating to immigrants, tax increases, budget cuts, regulatory excesses, and the general view that government programs unfairly favored the ruling class.

Now, a new populist front is opening in Western politics. Anti-establishment leaders are singling out for scorn efforts to avert global warming. Attempts to curb climate change make an almost perfect target for populist rhetoric and conspiracy theories because policies to forcibly reduce carbon emissions rely on expert knowledge, raise costs for ordinary people, require multilateral cooperation, and rest on the hard-to-prove counterfactual that such policies would stave off disasters that would otherwise happen.

Funding A Rival: When the United States and Europe Invest in Chinese Tech

Mathilde Velliet

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Outbound investments into rival powers are receiving increasing political attention on both sides of the Atlantic, as competition between the United States and China intensifies. The concern lies with American and European investments in certain Chinese technologies - such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, semiconductors, or quantum computing - which could enable China to enhance its military capabilities and thus may pose risks to national and international security.

n recent years, the United States and the European Union (EU) have stepped up their controls on inbound foreign investment to guard against the risks it poses to sovereignty and the protection of intellectual property. Now, the focus has been extended to outward investment from the U.S. and Europe to certain "foreign countries of concern" - primarily China.

In the U.S., President Biden signed an executive order on August 9, 2023, targeting American investments in certain Chinese technologies. This order imposes notification requirements and prohibitions that are set to take effect in 2024. In light of these U.S. initiatives and encouragement, the EU has also been examining, over the past few months, whether additional control tools are necessary. The EU Commission published its first White Paper on Outbound Investments in January 2024. Unlike the Biden administration, the Commission does not explicitly target China.

Chinese Communist Party Plans To Raise Retirement Age To Deal With Aging Population

Hsia Hsiao-hwa

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The ruling Chinese Communist Party has announced plans to raise the retirement age as part of its response to falling births and a rapidly aging population.

Party leader Xi Jinping called on party and government at a recent top-level meeting in Beijing to “advance reform to gradually raise the statutory retirement age in a prudent and orderly manner in line with the principle of promoting voluntary participation while allowing appropriate flexibility.”

Xi also called for moves to “improve the systems for supporting population development and providing related services, refine the policy system and incentive mechanisms for boosting the birth rate, and refine the policies and mechanisms for developing elderly care programs and industries.”

China has one of the lowest statutory retirement ages in the world, currently set at 60 for men, at 55 for female officials and at 50 for female workers.

Retired teacher Gu Guoping, who currently lives in Shanghai, said the authorities are likely to change the mandatory retirement age to 65 for men and 55 for women, which is likely to be unpopular.

Sudan’s Forever War

Ronan Wordsworth

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As Sudan’s civil war enters its 15th month, peace seems as distant as ever. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) both lack international legitimacy and have been credibly accused of committing atrocities. Millions of Sudanese civilians have fled north into Egypt or west into Chad, neither of which is well-equipped to support so many refugees. Meanwhile, what started as a war for national control has grown into a proxy conflict among Middle Eastern and Eurasian powers.

Dreaming of a naval base on Sudan’s Red Sea coast, Iran and Russia are supplying advanced drones, missiles and other weapons to the SAF, which controls the coastline and much of the Nile River basin. The SAF’s Islamist fundamentalism appeals to Tehran, while Moscow has been working to revive a seven-year-old agreement it reached with Sudan’s former president for a permanent naval and logistics base, even at the risk of its multibillion-dollar gold mining operation. On the other side, the RSF’s greatest support comes from the United Arab Emirates, a staunch opponent of the spread of Iranian influence via violent Islamic extremist groups. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are determined to block Iran from securing a base on the Red Sea from which it could further threaten their territory and economic interests. Similar fears are prevalent in Europe and the United States, which worry at least as much about the prospect of a Russian base on the Red Sea, but they have been unable to develop a unified strategy.

Where Have All the Jihadists Gone?

Wolfram Lacher

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Issues and Conclusions

As in other Arab Spring countries, militant Islamist movements flourished in Libya in the first few years following the fall of the regime. After Muammar al‑Gaddafi’s rule ended in 2011, they were popular among many young Libyans and they benefited from an escalation in violent conflicts, which made them allies of other armed groups. But from 2016 onwards, these movements dramatically lost importance and appeal – as occurred in other regional countries at around the same time. There were obvious reasons for this: first and foremost the military defeats of militant Islamist groups and the demonisation of all Islamists by Libyan and regional media.

Nevertheless, the sudden fall of militant Islamists in Libya is puzzling. It is difficult to reconcile with the two leading explanations for jihadist mobilisation. One school of thought emphasises the role of ideological radicalisation in the spread of militant Islamist groups. It sees this radicalisation as the reason for the tenacity of such groups – a tenacity they apparently lacked in Libya. Moreover, the ques­tion arises as to why Islamist ideology suddenly lost its appeal. Another approach stresses that militant Islamists benefit from conflicts and grievances, which help them to gain followers who pursue non-ideo­logical objectives. In Libya, however, political divi­sions and armed conflicts persisted after 2016, even while militant Islamists became increasingly irrel­evant. When a third civil war erupted in 2019, it was widely expected that this would lead to a renewed mobilisation of jihadist groups. Nothing of the sort happened.

This study explores the question of how to explain the abrupt change of fortune of militant Islamists in Libya – and what it teaches us about the driving forces behind Islamist mobilisation. The approach chosen here is based on interviews with members and allies of militant Islamist groups, as well as with actors who observed these groups in their immediate social environment. Recurring patterns in these inter­views reveal three types of mechanisms at work in the rise and fall of militant Islamist movements in Libya.

Ukraine War Maps Reveal Russian Land Grabs Across Eastern Frontline

Brendan Cole

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Russian forces have made marginal gains in recent days in Ukraine's east, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), whose latest maps depict the state of play on the front line.

The Washington, D.C.-based think tank reported Wednesday that Russian forces had advanced north of Kharkiv City and continued fighting in the north of the region.

One of its maps marked Moscow's claims that it had captured the village of Hlyboke on Tuesday near the border and showed other reported Russian advances in the town of Starytsa, around 20 miles further east three days earlier.

Another map depicted Russian claims of gains in the Donetsk region, such as the seizure of the towns of Nevelske and Yurivka on July 21. Citing geolocated footage, the graph also marks Russian advances on July 22 toward Niu York, Maksymilianivka and, two days later, Kostiantynivka.

However, Ukrainian forces have boasted of their own successes. Soldiers from the 79th Tavrian Air Assault Brigade said they had repelled one of the largest Russian assaults since the start of the war, in the Kurakhove sector in Donetsk where Russia is trying to break through.

The Right Way to Quickly End the War in Ukraine

Jakub Grygiel

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The United States has hit a wall in Ukraine. President Joe Biden’s incrementalist approach is not working. Instead, it has led to a long and tragic war of attrition. Ukraine’s faltering performance in the past year has raised the grim prospect of a Russian victory, which would see Kyiv fall under Moscow’s imperial dominion.

Former President Donald Trump has promised to change the U.S. approach if he wins reelection in November, insisting he could end the war “in 24 hours.” And Trump’s running mate, U.S. Senator J. D. Vance, has written that Ukraine should limit itself to a “defensive strategy” to “preserve its precious military manpower, stop the bleeding and provide time for negotiations to commence.” The solution both Trump and Vance seem to favor is a negotiated settlement that would allow Washington to focus its attention and resources elsewhere.

The war does need to end—and end quickly. The answer is not to cut off all U.S. aid or rush into a lopsided deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The United States can still get out of an untenable situation and also avoid handing Russia a win. To halt open-ended U.S. expenditures and preserve Ukraine’s independence and security, the United States and its allies need to give Kyiv one last serious chance at victory—defined not as a return to Ukraine’s 2013 borders (as Kyiv would prefer) but as a sustainable restoration of roughly its 2021 borders.

Europe Is Pumping Billions Into New Military Tech

LUCA ZORLONI

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From €142 million to €1 billion ($1.1 billion) a year. The European Commission is pressing the accelerator on investment in weapons and defense technologies. From a total €590 million invested between 2017 and 2020, Brussels has moved to a €7.3 billion ($7.9 billion) package for the 2021 to 2027 period. This year alone, the European Defense Fund (EDF) has put €1.1 billion on the plate, divided into 34 calls for as many military-related research topics. From developing new drone models to sensors to increase radar capabilities. From systems to counter hypersonic missile attacks to enhancements in the analysis of images collected by satellites. From “smart weapons” to advanced communication technologies. The bidding process opened in late June, and there is time until November 5 to share a slice of the pie—and then a year to deliver the project.

The project for a common defense has distant origins and was formalized in 2015, but it was Russia's invasion of Ukraine that accelerated the European Commission's march to spend on arms, ammunition, and military technology. One only has to scroll through the list of projects vying for 2024 funding to get an idea of what Brussels is looking for. On the plate is €100 million to develop a new long-range, medium-altitude drone equipped with advanced intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and recognition systems (or Istar) and piloted remotely. On a similar project, the European Union has already invested, allocating €98 million of the total €290 million needed to develop a similar aircraft, dubbed Eurodrone, to a consortium consisting of France's Airbus and Dassault Aviation plus Italy's Leonardo. Another €11 million from the EDF goes to the prototype of a small, autonomously guided aerial drone.

The Financial Case for Ukraine

Jeremiah Monk

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Several politicians have recently claimed that the billions of dollars the US has given to support Ukraine are wasteful. Since the Russian invasion in February 2022, the US has contributed approximately $175 billion dollars to the defense of Ukraine.[i] $175 billion is a lot of money to just give away, especially at the expense of all the domestic needs that will go unfunded.

In defense spending terms, however, $175 may actually be a strategic bargain. For comparison note that the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, cost $13 billion to build, and has a total program price tag of $120 billion.[ii] Including the air wing the carrier will support, the Ford makes for a suitable yardstick for a rough comparison.

One can argue production and maintenance of the Ford equates to American jobs and is therefore an investment back into America. This is true. But the same goes for the vast majority of US investment in Ukraine. HIMARS missiles are built in Camden, Arkansas. 105mm shells are produced in Scranton, Pennsylvania and F-16s are made in Greenville, South Carolina. Of the nearly $70 billion of hardware given to Ukraine, approximately 90% actually goes to American companies and American jobs.[iii]

Biden’s Legacy: Major Accomplishments but Unfinished Business

Charles A. Kupchan

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President Joe Biden has faced a uniquely vexing task: navigating a fractured United States through a fractured world. Against this backdrop, his presidency has been one of remarkable accomplishment. Abroad, Biden restored the United States as the anchor of the free world while leading the successful effort to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression. At home, he healed an economy that had been distressed by the pandemic and put the nation on a path of sustainable growth.

Yet as made clear by the divisiveness of the 2024 presidential race, Biden fell short of achieving his most ambitious objective: winning “the battle for the soul of this nation.” He came into office focused on the home front, determined to build back the middle class and ease the partisan divide. To this end, he successfully guided through a divided legislature major domestic investments aimed at promoting economic growth and getting working Americans back on their feet. But his efforts to get even more resources into the economic bloodstream were blocked by a recalcitrant Congress. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine then distracted him from his domestic agenda. Biden wanted four more years to finish the job of healing the nation. But that task now falls on the shoulders of the new Democratic nominee— most likely, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Leader of Alliances

Biden reestablished the United States’ credentials as the world’s leading democracy and reclaimed the nation’s commitment to upholding a liberal international order. The United States’ image abroad, particularly among allies and partners, sharply rebounded almost overnight. Biden set about repairing relations with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies, an effort that paid off handsomely after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Even before Russia launched its attack, he was laying the groundwork for the flow of military and economic assistance that enabled Ukraine to rebuff Russian efforts to subjugate the country. A stalemate has settled in, with Kyiv still in control of some 80 percent of the country’s territory—a remarkable feat given Russia’s numerical superiority.

Arson attacks underscore the security and terror threats to the Paris Olympics

Joshua Keating

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It’s not as if no one was thinking about security issues when Paris was awarded this summer’s Olympics back in 2017. Just two years earlier, the French capital had been the scene of one of the worst terrorist attacks in European history, when Islamic State gunmen killed more than 130 people. That attack came only a few months after a massacre at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Then-French President François Hollande said that when he was lobbying for the Olympics in 2016, he was asked by International Olympic Committee officials “whether Paris would be able to organize safe Games.” He made the case that not only would Paris be ready, but an Olympics in the City of Light would be the “most beautiful answer we could give to fundamentalism.”

Seven years later, the Olympics are finally coming to Paris in a very different era with a very different landscape of security threats. While the attention of governments and the media has largely shifted away from terrorist groups like ISIS, the group and its affiliates have demonstrated they can continue to carry out major attacks, including a horrific recent one in Moscow with a death toll similar to what Paris suffered in 2015. The Olympics also take place against the backdrop of the October 7 attacks, Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, and a global surge in antisemitism, France very much included.

Advance Detection and Reporting Are Key to Preventing Attacks

John S. Hollywood

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The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13 raises concerns about possible copycat, opportunistic, or retaliatory attacks on public figures and, more broadly, on the public. The best way to defend against such attacks is to prevent them.

Shootings, bombings, and the like are most commonly prevented when members of the public report their suspicions. This is not always possible, of course. As of this writing, no advance warning signs about the would-be assassin's intentions are known to have been found. Nonetheless, when researchers at RAND examined data on 325 mass attacks that were prevented, almost two-thirds were foiled by a tip from the public.

What kinds of warning signs should we all be on the lookout for in the weeks and months ahead? Not hostile comments or even idle threats on social media. Instead, look for intentions and actions among those in your circle of acquaintance that reveal a commitment to carrying out an attack.

Once Hamas’s Sworn Enemy, a Palestinian Exile Rises as a Potential Postwar Strongman

Summer Said, Fatima AbdulKarim and Stephen Kalin

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The question of who will govern Gaza has plagued efforts to end Israel’s nine-month war to destroy Hamas. Some U.S., Israeli and Arab officials are pushing to empower a former Palestinian security chief who himself once tried to crush the militant group, was later exiled from the West Bank and now lives in luxury in Abu Dhabi.

Some negotiators are increasingly drawn to Mohammed Dahlan as a temporary solution to a dilemma facing postwar Gaza: Putting someone in charge of security in the strip that Israel, Hamas and foreign powers such as the U.S. and Arab Gulf states all find palatable. The discussions are picking up speed as cease-fire mediators try to revive stalled talks. Negotiators were planning to convene in Doha, Qatar, this week but are now likely to meet next week.

Dahlan is a rare Palestinian leader who is independent of both Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, and the Palestinian Authority that runs parts of the West Bank, making him someone the Israeli government could potentially work with, said Israeli political analysts. And in Washington, where the George W. Bush administration saw him at the time as a future Palestinian president, some officials have privately touted him as a key player since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, sparking the war.

Russian Strategic Culture and the War in Ukraine

Denys Yurchenko

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Introduction

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, shocked the world. Currently, the Russian-Ukrainian war is the biggest European war since the end of World War II.[1] The full-scale invasion was a continuation of unlawful actions in 2014 when Russia seized and temporarily occupied Crimea. Russia’s actions sparked heated debates between realists and liberals while every school of international relations tried to explain why Russia used force to change the internationally recognized borders of its neighbor—Ukraine. In September 2014, Professor John Mearsheimer published the article Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault.[2] His work tried to explain the causes of conflict from an offensive realism point of view.

Mearsheimer defined the core idea of offensive realism in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.[3] It is as follows: States—especially great powers—are always thinking about how to survive because there is no supranational institution to protect them. In other words, there is nothing to prevent predatory behavior at the international level. This anarchic system creates conditions for states to seek more power.[4] The best way for a state to survive is to become a hegemon. Although global hegemony is the goal, there are powerful forces mitigating any state from achieving it, so most great powers strive for regional hegemony. Through this lens, Russia’s seizure of Crimea and support for separatists in Eastern Ukraine was part of its attempt at regional hegemony.

Fortune favours the bold: Upgrading the EU’s geoeconomic strategy

Tobias Gehrke & Filip Medunic

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The EU’s geoeconomic awakening

The feeling of doom and gloom about the economy is palpable across much of Europe. Industry groups, CEOs, and politicians have been sounding the alarm for months, as the European Union appears to fall behind the United States and China on economic metrics ranging from productivity gains and innovation output to research and development investments and capital market scale. Former Italian prime ministers Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta have lent political weight to the idea that the EU’s cards in the global race for economic growth, industry, and transformation are much weaker than those of its rivals and that it needs – in Draghi’s words – a “radical change” if it is to keep up. In April, European leaders heeded those concerns at a special European Council and called for a new “competitiveness deal” to close the economic gap with their rivals. The next commission is set to make competitiveness one of its top priorities.

A strong economy is indeed the foundation of European prosperity, influence, and security. But making the EU “competitive” alone would not automatically improve its geoeconomic position. A truly geoeconomic EU will need to do more than offer better business opportunities for its companies or cut bureaucratic red tape. Europe’s geoeconomic position is equally co-determined by its ability to capture and defend technological leadership positions, maintain shock-resilient production capabilities, and restructure its most vital economic networks along new geoeconomic fragmentation lines. In this reality, even the most ardent European free traders are coming to terms with the fact that prosperity and security are complex privileges, the maintenance of which may require a more managed approach to certain economic and technological challenges.@TGehrke_ on X

War volunteers in the digital age: How new technologies transform conflict dynamics

Jethro Norman

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Participative warfare

War is changing through the use of personal digital devices. Ukraine, as the first conventional war to occur in an entirely connected information ecology, is an example of what experts are calling ‘participative warfare’. Participative warfare is characterised by the integration of various non-traditional actors into the conflict space, facilitated by advancements in technology and communication networks. Several national security smartphone apps launched by the Ukrainian government enable civilians to use their smartphones to report troop movements. The digital ecosystem has also enabled an increasingly prominent role played by Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) volunteers, including phenomena such as Ukraine's IT army, which is a globally dispersed online ‘army’ of volunteers who engage in cyber-attacks on Russian assets. By expanding the possibilities of engagement, however, participative warfare is blurring the lines between civilians and combatants, resulting in major gaps in the rules of war and raising concerns about the social and psychological effects of the abundance of graphic war footage easily accessible to smartphone users.

Digital technologies are not only changing how ordinary civilians can participate in war but also how foreign war volunteers travel to support the war in Ukraine, and what they do when they get there. Based on fieldwork in Ukraine, including interviews with volunteers for the International Legion (ILDU), humanitarian staff and officials, as well as private security and military contractors, this brief highlights how digital platforms have become important, outlines some of the emerging challenges that digital devices present and argues for regulation.

Who will control the future of AI? - Opinion

Sam Altman

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That is the urgent question of our time. The rapid progress being made on artificial intelligence means that we face a strategic choice about what kind of world we are going to live in: Will it be one in which the United States and allied nations advance a global AI that spreads the technology’s benefits and opens access to it, or an authoritarian one, in which nations or movements that don’t share our values use AI to cement and expand their power?

There is no third option — and it’s time to decide which path to take. The United States currently has a lead in AI development, but continued leadership is far from guaranteed. Authoritarian governments the world over are willing to spend enormous amounts of money to catch up and ultimately overtake us. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has darkly warned that the country that wins the AI race will “become the ruler of the world,” and the People’s Republic of China has said that it aims to become the global leader in AI by 2030.

These authoritarian regimes and movements will keep a close hold on the technology’s scientific, health, educational and other societal benefits to cement their own power. If they manage to take the lead on AI, they will force U.S. companies and those of other nations to share user data, leveraging the technology to develop new ways of spying on their own citizens or creating next-generation cyberweapons to use against other countries.

The Digital Weaponry of Radicalisation: AI and the Recruitment Nexus

Mariam Shah

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Introduction

Islamic State (IS) recently released a powerful recruitment message for ‘distracted Muslim youth’ to travel and join IS territories across the world. It highlights a disturbing trend in how terrorist organisations are using technology to recruit and mobilise members through a single message. It also shows that contemporary terror groups and extremist organisations are adapting fast to emerging technologies.

This Insight aims to highlight an alarming reality: the exploitation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology by terrorist and violent extremist groups to strengthen recruitment efforts. These groups proficiently manipulate online platforms, leveraging sophisticated AI tools to disseminate tailored propaganda content to exploit psychological vulnerabilities and amplify divisive narratives, thereby fostering radicalisation and recruitment. From using encrypted messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp to seeking refuge in the anonymity of the Dark Web, these groups employ various tactics to evade AI detection and exploit vulnerabilities. By leveraging AI tools, these groups engage in personalised messaging, rapid distribution, and exploitation of social media algorithms to amplify their reach and influence susceptible individuals.