Ransomware attack on Indian payment system traced back to Jenkins bug

Jonathan Greig

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Ransomware attack on Indian payment system traced back to Jenkins bug

Researchers have discovered that a damaging ransomware attack on a digital payment system used by many of India’s banks began with a vulnerability in Jenkins — a widely used open-source automation system for software developers.

Juniper Networks published a study this week analyzing how the attackers abused CVE-2024-23897, a vulnerability in the Jenkins Command Line Interface, which helps developers interact with the system.

On July 31 the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organization for all retail payment systems in India, said it was dealing with a disruption caused by a ransomware attack on a third-party tech provider.

The technology provider, C-Edge Technologies, caters to regional rural banks, and in an effort to contain the effects, NPCI isolated the company from accessing retail payment systems operated by NPCI. Customers of C-Edge were not able to access payment systems as restoration efforts began.

Services were restored one day later but the RansomEXX ransomware gang eventually took credit for the attack last week — writing on its leak site that it stole 142 GB from a digital payment platform connected to C-Edge.

Juniper Networks analyzed the report that NPCI submitted to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team. The researchers said the attack illustrated the need for organizations to apply security patches as soon as possible and resolve server misconfigurations to ensure security flaws cannot be exploited.

Hot-Launch Yoga: Cobra Pose Reveals Nuke Repose

Matt Korda

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The Indian Navy has integrated yoga into its training practices for decades, and in recent years it has conducted yoga sessions onboard its warships during port visits as a form of cultural diplomacy. These events, and the social media posts documenting them, occasionally offer fascinating data points about the status of specific military capabilities.

In particular, yoga-related social media posts and satellite imagery now indicate that one of India’s oldest naval missiles capable of launching nuclear weapons has likely been retired as the country continues to develop its sea-based nuclear deterrent.

For nearly 15 years, India’s naval nuclear forces solely consisted of two offshore patrol vessels that had been specially configured to launch nuclear-capable Dhanush missiles.

The Dhanush––a variant of India’s Prithvi short-range ballistic missile––had always been somewhat of an odd capability for India’s navy. Given its relatively short range and liquid-fuel design––meaning that it would need to be fueled immediately prior to launch––the Dhanush’s utility as a strategic deterrence weapon was severely limited. The ships carrying these missiles would have to sail dangerously close to the Pakistani or Chinese coasts to target facilities in those countries, making them highly vulnerable to counterattack.

After 3 years of Taliban rule, life continues to get worse in Afghanistan

Caitlin McFall

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Life in Afghanistan has gotten perpetually worse for Afghans living under Taliban rule for the last three years as the humanitarian crisis continues to escalate, rights for women have all but vanished and Kabul remains essentially shut off from the international community.

A quarter of Afghans face "acute" food insecurity, more than half the nation requires humanitarian assistance, and according to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), nearly 70% of the country is "subsistence insecure," meaning they do not have reliable access to basic resources like food, water, housing or health care.

After the Taliban takeover of Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, the nation’s economy "basically collapsed," according to the UNDP, in large part because international funding through government donor plans, like the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, were shut down.

The World Is Not About Us: Information and Power in the Current Strategic Environment

Will Reno and Jesse R. Humpal

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The Taj Mahal Guest House made a unique offer: Give us data, get beer.1 The Jalalabad, Afghanistan, café offered beer to anyone who brought video files, voice recordings, documents, and data dumps. The Taj shut down after Jalalabad became too hostile to outsiders, but not before its proprietors amassed extensive finegrained data on local political and economic matters and supported projects that set up communications networks for local people. At least as important was the Taj’s role in facilitating informal personal relationships across government (foreign and local), commercial, humanitarian, and ordinary social networks. While not overtly a U.S.-led information operation, the Taj provided valuable intelligence for U.S. operations in the region. It showed how networks can be set up and used for multiple aspects of information warfare and local influence, a critical skill the United States neglected after the Cold War.

The Taj was an impromptu reflection of a Cold War–era approach to information and networks that served the United States well in containing Soviet power. It was flexible and relatively free of complex oversight. It adapted to local conditions to shape how people received information and occupied a critical juncture in the local economy for collecting information. The Taj was peripheral to U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. It is instructive, however, for thinking about indirect strategies in a competitive landscape where state competitors use influence operations, predatory economics, subversion, and network capture in the space between peace and war.2 The problem with Taj-like operations is that they are unsustainable under current U.S. operational conditions. Laws and procedures crafted after the end of the Cold War addressed many negative aspects of this kind of operation—risk, engagement with human rights abusers, opportunities for corruption, weak civilian oversight—but at the cost of the speed and flexibility necessary to compete against strategic adversaries unhindered by such restrictions.

Where Is the Taliban Regime Three Years In?

William Byrd

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Three years after their rapid takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban have consolidated control over the country’s territory and key levers of power—military, administrative, financial, and political. There is no organized armed opposition that would threaten the regime internally, and neighboring countries as well as great powers appear to have decided that living with the regime is preferable to trying to topple it in yet another civil war. And the Taliban have remained cohesive and united—unlike most past Afghan regimes—despite some friction and internal differences. But the Taliban regime is presiding over a failing economy with a deeply suffering population, and no improvement is in sight. The current confluence of internal and external factors points to a continuation of the status quo, which would be unfortunate for the Afghan people—though at least the country would not fall back into widespread civil war. Threats to the Taliban regime seem remote, but relations with Pakistan and the continuing opium ban, if not well managed, are probably the most important risks.

What the Taliban Brought and Inherited

The Taliban movement that came into power in 2021 was different in important respects from the previous iteration of the Taliban that took Kabul in 1996, even though the movement’s core ideology was largely the same. And the country the Taliban took over was very different from Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Whereas in 1996 the Taliban movement was nascent, by 2021 it had survived, learned, and evolved as an insurgency while facing sustained military pressure from the U.S., its allies, and Afghan government forces. In addition to its increasing tactical effectiveness and territorial expansion over time, the Taliban built organizational structures beyond the military sphere, including for revenue collection and local administration. In parts of the country under the group’s control, and along major transport routes, the Taliban insurgency issued tax receipts, mining permissions, and other edicts and orders. The movement’s capacity should not be overstated, however, and it was focused on winning the war (by outlasting the enemy).

Moving Backwards: The Dissolution of Thailand’s Move Forward Party - Opinion

William J. Jones

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Constitutional Court Ruling Central Features

The Court ruling had at its core a few important thrusts. First is the obvious: the Move Forward Party is no more, its executives banned from politics and party leader Pita Limchareonlat, the Kingdom’s most popular politician, is banned from politics for 10 years.

Second, the court inserted its supremacy in the constitutional order of institutions with regard to the political party platforms and legislative processes. It ruled that the party platform of Article 112 reform constituted a threat to state security because it did not state clearly that any change would not touch on Articles 1 and 2 of the constitution, which states that Thailand is an indivisible Kingdom with a regime of democracy with King as Head of State. In essence, the Court laid down a clear precedence by ruling that there can be no talk of, policy stance, or legal process which in any way touches on the royal institution whatsoever. The ruling was also clear that any change to mechanisms or laws surrounding the royal institution constituted a threat to state security. Furthermore, the court ruled that the policy platform of 112 reform brought the monarchy and royal institution into disrepute and politics to which the royal institution is supposed to be above. Some commentators argue that the court did not rule out change or reform of Article 112 but the court’s vagueness on what constituted a legal change to the law is read by this author as an ‘invisible goalpost’ which

Defeating Deception: Outthinking Chinese Deception in a Taiwan Invasion

Major Thomas L. Haydock, PhD, U.S. Army

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Introduction

How could China use deception at the strategic and operational levels of war to support an amphibious invasion of Taiwan, and what are the indicators that the United States should look for to not fall victim to the deception? This paper aims to answer these questions, which requires three things. First, it requires an understanding of the problem of how monstrously hard an invasion would be (chapter 1). Second, it needs insight into how experts believe an invasion would occur, i.e., potential Chinese solutions to the invasion problem (chapter 2). Third, it needs an overview of deception history, theory and doctrine, with an emphasis on Chinese deception (chapter 3). Armed with this three-pronged understanding, we can then develop an operational approach (OA) for how China might employ deception to gain strategic and operational level advantages (chapter 4). Finally, in the Conclusion, we will analyze the indicators to distinguish potential Chinese approaches so that the United States does not fall victim.

Although predictions and wargame results are publicly available, this paper is necessary because those thought experiments do not account for particularly Chinese deception—and so those wargames miss one of the most dangerous elements in virtually every major operation.1 From Normandy’s 1944 D-Day landings to China’s 1950 Korean War intervention, and in Desert Storm in 1991, deception has provided incredible advantages. For example, the masterful Trojan Horse deception overcame what years of war could not. At almost no cost, and with minor risk, the Greeks triumphed by hiding their infiltration force inside a “gifted” wooden horse that the Trojans triumphantly brought into the city. At night, the infiltration force enabled the Greek assault force to enter unopposed and seize Troy. From its antiquity and current doctrine, it is clear that China also views deception as integral and highly valued and will almost certainly use it in any invasion.2

Bangladesh’s Accidental Revolutionaries Topple Sheikh Hasina — What’s Next?

Geoffrey Macdonald, Ph.D.

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Bangladesh has experienced its most consequential political event in at least two decades. On June 6, one day after Bangladesh’s high court reinstated the country’s job quota system that favored descendants of the 1971 liberation war, about 500 students gathered at Dhaka University to demand its repeal. Two months later, on August 5, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who had governed for 15 years, abdicated power and fled the country as a coalition of Bangladeshi students, political opponents and ordinary citizens marched on her residence to demand her resignation. As the prime minister departed for India, the head of the army announced his plan to form an interim government in a televised address.

USIP’s Geoffrey Macdonald explains how the protest movement toppled the government, what happens next and how this tumult could impact Bangladesh’s relations with India, China and the United States.

How did a student-led protest movement result in the collapse of Bangladesh’s government?

Macdonald: The Hasina government’s precipitous fall is a testament to its egregiously poor handling of the protest movement and her overall legacy of increasingly autocratic response to political dissent. Despite the government’s decision to appeal the quota verdict — effectively siding with the students — the prime minister demeaned the protest movement and her party sanctioned its student wing’s violence against protesters. When clashes between the police, ruling party supporters and protesters turned deadly, the government refused to take steps toward substantive accountability. The protester’s dissent and the subsequent repressive government response are emblematic of Hasina’s long rule, one that featured little space for political opposition and increasingly illiberal governance.

Myanmar’s Resistance Is Making Major Advances

Ye Myo Hein

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The resistance’s capture of the northern city of Lashio on August 3 marks a watershed moment in Myanmar’s conflict. After a month of fierce fighting, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and allied resistance forces captured this crucial stronghold in northern Shan State, dealing a severe blow to the beleaguered junta. This represents more than just the loss of a major city. It is the first time that a military regional command has been captured by resistance forces.

Even more, the prestigious Northeastern Regional Military Command (NERMC) is widely regarded as the strongest among the military’s 14 regional commands. The loss is another major setback that has provoked frustration within the military’s inner circles and among its key internal supporters.

Although the fall of Lashio and capture of the NERMC is historic, it is also the continuation of a sustained trend of resistance gains.

Despite possessing superior aerial power and weaponry, Myanmar’s military, known as the Sit-Tat, has deteriorated into just another of the many armed groups operating in the country, rather than a dominant national army. As the resistance continues its assault on junta forces across the country, it has only deepened its steadfast resolve to remove the Myanmar military from power and achieve a new political paradigm no longer dominated by the military.

Is China conducting ‘gray zone’ warfare for Russia?

Denny Roy

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In October 2023, damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia knocked it out for six months. Suspicion quickly fell upon a Chinese-owned, Hong Kong-flagged container ship called the Newnew Polar Bear.

Now the South China Morning Post has reported that the Chinese government agrees the anchor of the Newnew Polar Bear severed the pipeline. Chinese authorities add that the damage was accidental and resulted from stormy weather.

That Beijing is taking ownership of this incident is a significant and unambiguously good development. But its full significance may go deeper – and darker.

Beijing generally does not like to admit to its mistakes. The PRC often has preferred to stand on implausible counter-explanations rather than admit fault.

Why China’s and Russia’s Militaries Are Training Together

Becca Wasser

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China and Russia have pressed an informal political and economic alliance against the West. Now they are stepping up the cooperation between their militaries with increasingly provocative joint war games.

Chinese and Russian long-range bombers patrolled together near Alaska for the first time last month. Days earlier, the countries held live-fire naval drills in the hotly contested South China Sea for the first time in eight years. And they have more frequently buzzed the skies and sailed the waters together near Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, where America has strategic interests.

Such potential help might not necessarily entail joining a conflict in Asia. Becca Wasser, who runs war games at the Center for a New American Security, said a scenario that often comes up during the center’s simulations of a conflict with China is one in which Russia starts a war elsewhere that diverts American forces.

“China could look to Russia, which is increasingly becoming a junior partner in that relationship, to open a second theater to distract the United States and some of its allies,” Ms. Wasser said. “That could reduce the amount of resources and attention that are brought to bear on China.”

What the U.S. Can Learn from the Chinese Development Playbook

Leah Kieff

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In what has come to be referred to as the Great Power Competition (GPC), malign, revisionist powers, like the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia, challenge nations and institutions across the globe. As FBI Director Christopher Wray said in 2020, “China is engaged in a whole-of-state effort to become the world’s only superpower by any means necessary.” Extensive, well-documented, publicly available, year-over-year evidence exists, ranging from intellectual property theft to data-collection efforts to transnational repression, which together paint a clear picture that the PRC is a direct threat not only to the United States but to all liberal nations.

The GPC demands revisiting the way the United States engages with the world, including the way we deploy foreign aid. As of 2019, the United States was the largest donor of foreign aid in the world. Even though foreign aid accounts for approximately 1 percent of the U.S. federal budget as of 2019, it still represents a key component of the diplomatic and economic aspects of U.S. power. The United States should learn from the PRC’s effectively matrixed investments, leveraging of PRC firms, and security stipulation. By learning from these three key elements that the PRC does effectively, the U.S. can make the 1 percent go much further.

Aid Should Follow National Security Aims

In 2013, the PRC launched a global program called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This initiative, sometimes referred to as a “modern-day Silk Road,” weaves together policy, trade, people, and financial institutions with an emphasis on infrastructure development. But, although the BRI was marketed as an attempt to create secure trade routes and economic opportunities worldwide, it often involves China investing in foreign countries in ways that benefit China more than the host countries. The PRC’s link of economic and geopolitical goals in this effort is a reminder of the profit that can be captured through matrixed investment.

Implications of Continuing the War on Israel’s Economy—Three Scenarios

Tomer Fadlon, Esteban Klor & Ofer Shelah

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Israel stands at a crossroads regarding the continuation of the war in the Gaza Strip and the broader campaign against Iran and the “Axis of Resistance,” which are directly involved in the conflict. Every decision about the future will inevitably have major economic implications. This is especially critical given the starting point where the projected budget deficit for 2024 is expected to significantly exceed the forecast underlying the current state budget. This is further compounded by the war’s impact on defense spending, economic growth, direct foreign investment in Israel, its credit rating, and other critical parameters of economic resilience. This paper examines three scenarios:

1. Continuation of the Current Situation: Israel continues the war with varying intensity in the Gaza Strip while the fighting on the northern front continues in its current format—daily exchanges of fire, but without any major escalation.
2. Escalation in the North: This could lead to significant disruptions in the country. It is clear that it is difficult to predict where such an escalation, initiated by Israel, might lead. In a severe but plausible scenario, it could develop into a large-scale war on the northern front and even become multiple fronts, with involvement by Iran and other elements of the axis (proxy militias operating from Syria and Iraq, fire from Yemen, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, in addition to Hezbollah’s missile and rocket arsenal, and of course, continued fighting in Gaza and daily activity in Judea and Samaria). However, for the purpose of analysis in this document, we assume a limited Israeli operation in the north, resulting in a high-intensity campaign lasting about a month against Hezbollah alone.

The No-State Solution Could a ceasefire deal ever appease both sides?

Rajan Menon

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When the guns eventually fall silent in Gaza, Israelis and Palestinians will confront a decades-old reality that cannot be overcome by violence and political half-measures. Both Jews and Palestinians will continue to assert privileged ownership of Palestine, citing centuries of history, the merits of which will never be settled conclusively by historians, let alone by the two principals. The question, therefore, is not whether Jews and Palestinians will continue living cheek by jowl, but how. Will they do so amid endless spasms of bloodletting or a coexistence created by a negotiated settlement that reconciles Israel’s need for security with Palestinians’ desire for statehood?

Israeli leaders have long claimed that they cannot negotiate with Hamas, which regards the Jewish state as the culmination of a colonial-settler project produced by Zionism. Yet this insurmountable barrier to a political settlement does not exist in the West Bank — or, more precisely, has not since the Palestinian Liberation Organisation forsook terrorism in 1988, recognised Israel’s right to live in peace, and agreed to negotiate with Israel to create a Palestinian state encompassing the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO’s historic decision paved the way for its leadership’s return, first to Gaza and later to the West Bank, the formation of a governing body, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the quest for a political settlement that would yield a Palestinian state.

Ukraine’s extraordinary incursion into Kursk has changed the narrative of the war – but is a high-risk strategy

Jack Watling

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The immediate impact of Ukraine’s incursion into the Russian region of Kursk that began on 6 August has been a transformation in the morale of the Ukrainian public and even more so the narrative among Ukraine’s international partners.

The slow but inexorable loss of ground in Donbas that painted a grim picture of retreat has been replaced by images of a dynamic front. While deceptive, this new narrative is important in reminding Ukraine’s international partners that outcomes in war are not inevitable.

Politically, the purpose of the operation is to build leverage ahead of possible negotiations. If Donald Trump wins the US presidency in November, the threat of withdrawing military-technical assistance is likely to force Kyiv to negotiate. The Ukrainian government wants to make sure that if it has to enter that process, it has things that Russia wants to trade for concessions. The Ukrainian military, therefore, must take and hold a sizeable chunk of Russian land for the duration of potential negotiations.

Ukraine Defies the U.S. to Launch a Showy Offensive Into Russia

Vladislav Davidzon

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On Aug. 6, Ukrainian mechanized forces, likely a division strong, invaded Russia’s Kursk Oblast. In the process, Kyiv had recaptured the battlefield initiative, undermined the narrative that it was doomed to surrender, and caused the Kremlin obvious political embarrassment. The Ukrainian high command claims that the incursion has resulted in the capture of 74 settlements and the occupation of 390 square miles of Russian territory—more than double what the Russians concede. Moscow was forced to evacuate nearly 200,000 civilians from the Kursk and Belgorod regions, as it brought in reserves and heavy weaponry, while the Russian air force began striking the Ukrainian forces in Kursk and across the border in the Sumy Oblast. While the Ukrainian military claimed on Tuesday that it has gained an additional 15 square miles, the Russians said they have blocked any further advance.

Whatever its strategic significance turns out to be, the Ukrainians maintain they were sending a signal to the Kremlin as well as to the White House that Kyiv was finished operating under self-defeating constraints and that it would now probe red lines that had been set out by both powers. Kyiv has long been frustrated at being provided with just enough support from Washington in order to not lose—but not enough to overcome the numerically superior and better financed Russian army. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed that frustration publicly, stating that “our partners are afraid of Russia losing the war.”

The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine

Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko

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In the early hours of February 24, 2022, the Russian air force struck targets across Ukraine. At the same time, Moscow’s infantry and armor poured into the country from the north, east, and south. In the days that followed, the Russians attempted to encircle Kyiv.

These were the first days and weeks of an invasion that could well have resulted in Ukraine’s defeat and subjugation by Russia. In retrospect, it seems almost miraculous that it did not.

The Principles for the Future of Warfare and Stand-Off Warfare

LTC Amos C. Fox, USA

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Introduction

Writing about the principles of war in 1949, American military strategist Bernard Brodie posited, “The rules fathered by Jomini and Clausewitz may still be fundamental, but they will not tell one how to prepare for or fight a war.”1 Brodie’s comments in the wake of World War II meant to account for the vast amount of change experienced by all sides during that conflict. At the time, Brodie attributed the longevity of the principles of war, which had changed little since J.F.C. Fuller formalized them in the 1920s and 1930s, to three factors. First, the principles provided military practitioners “exceptional convenience,” and second, in their current form, they lent themselves well to “indoctrination.”2 Third, because of their convenience and ease for indoctrination, the existing principles of war remain ideally suited for professional military education, which is short and thus rewards lightweight material that can be learned quickly with simple mnemonics, acronyms and other heuristics.3 Brodie basically argues that the principles of war have not changed because it is simply easier to keep them as they are than it is to develop new principles more reflective of modern technology and methodologies of warfighting. Put another way, intellectual laziness often results in institutions shoehorning new technologies and seemingly novel techniques into extant language, taxonomies and doctrines.

In recent years, a few forward-thinking thought leaders have bravely pushed for reform in military thinking despite institutional recalcitrance quite similar to that which Brodie highlighted some 70 years ago. This advocacy is not limited to principles of war or warfare but also encourages new theories, methodologies and terminology that attempt to keep pace with or even set the pace for advances or general evolutions in military and dual-use technology. The emergence of formations like the Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF) and the theater fires command and new weapon systems therein, for instance, require a rebalance of how and why the Army organizes the battlefield the way it does. This is nothing new. In 1925 J.F.C. Fuller wrote, “Changes of weapons must be accompanied by a change in tactical ideas.”4

Owning Your Mistakes Aids in Professional Growth

Capt. Joe Werz

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Junior leaders undergo extensive schooling and training before leading soldiers. However, fear of failure still troubles even the most prepared. While most understand that learning from honest mistakes can lead to personal growth, the consequences of failure can feel exceptionally high in stressful environments like the U.S. Army, where performance evaluations are critical for career opportunities and advancement.

Fear of failure can be overcome, but it relies heavily on two individuals: the soldier and their first-line leader.

The most important person involved in coping with failure is the person making the mistake. The hardest part often is the most crucial step: acknowledging the mistake.

When afraid of feeling weak and vulnerable, most people prefer to deflect blame and produce excuses. Truly achieving personal growth requires us to put our ego aside and admit fault. It is often helpful not just to admit the mistake to yourself, but also to admit it to a peer or supervisor.

Cognitive Warfare: The Fight for Gray Matter in the Digital Gray Zone

Michael J. Cheatham, Angelique M. Geyer, Priscella A. Nohle & Jonathan E. Vazquez

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The United States is facing unprecedented challenges in the cognitive domain. While democracies struggle to develop frameworks that promote collective understanding, adversaries are employing gray zone tactics—those that never rise to the level of war—as a form of cognitive warfare against the United States and other democratic societies. François du Cluzel, head of innovative projects at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s Allied Command Transformation Innovation Hub, describes the key distinctions of the emerging cognitive domain: warfare is not limited to the military or institutional world. Since the early 1990s, this capability has tended to be applied to the political, economic, cultural, and societal fields.

Any user of modern information technologies is a potential target. It targets the whole of a nation’s human capital.

The use of cognitive warfare to target “a nation’s human capital” highlights a growing threat vector. Cognitive warfare aims to create cognitive-emotional conflict by influencing a target population’s thoughts and values using technical means and information. As a target, human capital is a weak point in a nation’s defense, particularly for nations that are highly connected and based on open systems. The brain’s tendency to accept disinformation exposes a risk that affects a nation’s defense and its broader society. The brain operates on the principle of survival. When individuals interpret inputs as threatening (actual or perceived), the brain’s fear centers activate, executive-function areas cloud, and rational decision cycles are interrupted.3

Ukraine’s Pivot Changes the Narrative in Russia’s war; Outcome Remains Unclear

Mary Glantz, Ph.D.

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Almost 30 months into Vladimir Putin’s brutalization of Ukraine with a full-scale invasion that has pulverized vast swaths of its farmlands, towns and cities, Ukrainians have surprised Putin and the world by driving the war back into Russia — a move that, if nothing else, has altered the current narrative around this conflict. Ukraine has again brandished its determination, initiative and innovation, effectively resetting assumptions in its defense against its much larger attacker. The possible outcomes of Ukraine’s strike remain varied and unpredictable — and its eventual implications will rest on the evolutions of several questions, both military and political.

Three Questions to Watch

Can Ukraine’s strike into Russia’s Kursk region force Russia to slow its attacks in Ukraine’s Donbas?

In recent weeks, Russia has made slow, steady advances in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, threatening the towns of Niu-York, Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar. As of Wednesday (August 14), U.S. officials reported initial indications that some Russian forces have been pulled off the front line in Ukraine’s east and redirected to halt the incursion into Kursk. If the Ukrainian offensive can redirect enough Russian forces from eastern Ukraine to the Kursk region, this could be an important win for Ukraine.

Six Observations—and Open Questions—on Ukraine’s Kursk Operation

Anastasiia Lapatina

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An unspecified number of Ukrainian troops crossed into Kursk Oblast, a Russian region that borders Ukraine to the southeast. Russia has been using the region to launch relentless missile attacks against Ukrainian cities. Now, the Ukrainian military says it controls more than 620 square miles of it.

The offensive comes amid a critically dire situation on the front line in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk Oblast, prompting some to question whether committing resources to an operation with unclear goals is a good move. It also stretches the limits of where and how Western weaponry can be used.

It is still too early to determine what the Kursk operation means—whether it’s a flash in the pan or a strategically important development in what had become a mostly positional war of attrition. With the operation now a week old, however, it is safe to say it is not simply a border incursion similar to previous Ukrainian incursions into Russia. The following are six observations on the situation, elaborating on points I made in a podcast conversation with Benjamin Wittes and Eric Ciaramella:

First, the Kursk attack is distinct in the scale of resources deployed across the border. Ukraine is using a not insignificant number of its regular military formations. In previous attacks, Ukraine relied mainly on small numbers of Russians fighting for Ukraine in units like “Russia Volunteers Corps” and “Freedom of Russia Legion.”

Second, Ukraine was extremely secretive about the operation, so much so that senior officers were left in the dark until three days before the incursion began. Previous raids were primarily public relations stunts, with photos, videos, and commentary coming out of Ukraine every day.

Both the committed resources and the secrecy suggest that the operation’s goals are likely much broader than a PR splash in the headlines, even if the goals weren’t initially clear.

After a week-long media blackout, one with no major leaks or substantive comments from the country’s leadership, Kyiv finally broke the silence on what it was doing: preventing Russia from sending reinforcements to the eastern front and stopping Russian cross-border strikes against Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast.

Information Advantage: Using Cyber Warfare and HMI to Seize the Initiative

LTC Amos C. Fox, USA, Ret., Ph.D.

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Introduction

The cyber domain and the information dimension are the most contested areas in today’s security environment. As information technology—including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)—continue to improve, the cyber domain and information will become increasingly more important. It is therefore prudent to thoroughly analyze these spheres and study how to obtain information advantage over our adversaries, enabling the U.S. Army to remain the world’s preeminent land force.

Joint Publication (JP) 3-04, Information in Joint Operations, is a good starting point. It defines information through the lens of relational value.1 That is, information in and of itself does not possess value, but rather is valuable based on its relevance to the individual actors operating within a specific situation.2 Further, it does not carry universally applicable values to each actor, nor does it carry the same value at each level of operation or interaction within that situation. Therefore, an important principle emerges: military operations should be anchored on how to gain, exploit and maintain relational advantage in the information dimension.

This report provides a primer on how to seize the advantage in the information dimension. It does not restate the existing joint or Army doctrinal approach to the subject; rather, it explores theoretical concepts, providing novel ways to incorporate cyber, AI and autonomous and semi-autonomous systems into the Army’s pursuit of information advantage. It provides an optimal method of operating, organizing and equipping for information advantage by offering an alternative way to think about doctrine, Army formations and arraying the battle.

New CNAS Report on AI and Biological National Security Risks

Bill Drexel and Caleb Withers.

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The report analyzes the evolving intersection between artificial intelligence (AI) and biological national security risks, highlighting the increasing concern among experts about the potential for AI advancements to enable bioterrorism, create unprecedented superviruses, and develop novel targeted bioweapons. If realized, such advancements could expose the United States to catastrophic threats far exceeding the impact of COVID-19.

The report underscores the history and current state of American biosecurity, emphasizing the diverse ways AI could alter existing risks. AI's potential to optimize bioweapons for targeted effects, such as pathogens tailored to specific genetic groups or geographies, could significantly shift states' incentives to use such weapons for strategic purposes. Moreover, AI tools could soon enable non-state actors, including terrorists and lone wolves, to accelerate the procurement of biological agents, posing new biosecurity challenges. While these capabilities remain speculative, if achieved, they would dramatically alter the landscape of national security.

To address these emerging threats, the report proposes several actionable recommendations. It calls for strengthening screening mechanisms for cloud labs and genetic synthesis providers, conducting rigorous assessments of foundation models' biological capabilities throughout the bioweapons lifecycle, and investing in technical safety mechanisms to curb threats posed by foundation models. Additionally, the report emphasizes the need to update government investments to prioritize agility and flexibility in biodefense systems and considers long-term measures such as a licensing regime for biological design tools with potentially catastrophic capabilities.

Three Cheers for the Military Industrial Complex

Arthur Herman

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As a crucial presidential election looms, with a world on fire and threats of multiple wars dotting the globe, we need to take stock of where America is and where it needs to go in the coming decades. Accordingly, it is time to celebrate one of the proudest American achievements: its “military-industrial complex.”

Spawned in a time of great distress during World War II, it won the greatest war in history and kept the Cold War from boiling over against a nuclear-armed peer rival, the Soviet Union. For over seventy years, it kept America and the free world stable, secure, and ready to confront any military challenge.

Today, it’s a shell of its former self. Thanks to shrinking funds, a changing industrial picture, and decades of vilification by critics on both the Left and Right, the American military-industrial complex’s decline has made us less safe, less secure, and more vulnerable to our enemies.

The most recent National Defense Strategy (NDS) report reveals that America is barely ready to fight a war against either Russia or China—let alone both. It concludes, “The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945.”

It’s the decline of that much-maligned military-industrial complex that’s made the once mighty America so vulnerable. At this current point, the U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding is at its lowest point in twenty-five years. Meanwhile, OSINT sources report that China has shipyards that can build thirteen naval vessels at the same time.

Now, Americans need to recreate a military-industrial complex, one fit for the challenges of the twenty-first century. In the meantime, it’s worth looking back in time to see what the first iteration did right.