A Donald Trump presidency threatens Indian economy. Just see his record - Opinion

Amitabh Dubey

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Indian Americans are reportedly voting for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by a margin of 2 to 1. Some Indians, though, are dizzy with admiration for Trump. After all, his White supremacist appeal is the mirror-image of their majoritarian drive in India.

But Trump is bad news for New Delhi, especially in his second coming. He will likely initiate a trade war — primarily with China but also with India, whom he described on 17 September as a “very big abuser” of bilateral trade. The consequences for India of his promised 10-20 per cent global import tariffs will very likely be rupee volatility, tighter monetary policy and therefore slower economic growth in India. Notably, Harris is proposing nothing of this kind — her main economic quibble will be India’s record trade with Russia in the context of the Ukraine war.

Theoretically, a trade war between the United States and China could help India. Trump has promised a higher 60 per cent tariff on imports from China. This could encourage companies pursuing “China+1” policies — offsetting their dependence on Beijing by investing more in other emerging markets — to diversify toward India. However, supply chains are difficult to build in high-tariff environments. High tariffs on imported parts make it less attractive to build products for export. And Trump or not, India has taken a far more protectionist turn under Prime Minister Narendra Modi — something we will discuss below.

India’s Canada Policy Is a Strategic Mistake

Dr. Muqtedar Khan and Shivani Pandey

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India is embroiled in a steadily escalating diplomatic spat with Canada. Over a year ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Indian officials of being involved in the assassination of a Sikh community leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in June 2023 and demanded that the Indian government cooperate with Canada in its investigations of the Nijjar murder and other similar attempts.

India rejected the allegations as absurd and accused Canada of harboring Khalistani separatists wanted for terrorism in India. The first iteration of the spat led to the expulsion of diplomats and a reduction in the size of their respective diplomatic presence.

Escalating Crisis

The crisis has continued with periodic flare-ups and has now metastasized into a diplomatic disaster with no easy pathways to early resolution and normalization. For over a year Canada has been demanding that the Indian government cooperate with it in its investigation. The Modi government has responded by insisting that Canada had provided no evidence to substantiate its claims and so there was nothing that the Indian government could do to help.

In the past few weeks the Canadian investigative agencies claimed that they have presented the Indian government with the evidence they have and still India rejected it outright. The Canadians first announced that Indian High Commissioner Sanjay Verma (the highest Indian diplomat in Canada) was a person of interest along with several other diplomats who have since returned to India. According to media reports, Canadian officials met with India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval in Singapore and shared with him the evidence they had gathered.

Trouble Among the Chin of Myanmar

Michael Martin

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Trouble is brewing within the Chin resistance movement. Two rival factions have emerged, contending for control of Chin State and the nature of a post-revolutionary government for a future State of Chinland. The rivalry manifests itself in several ways, including conflicting claims over territory, disagreements over governmental representation, and allegations of collaboration with perceived enemies. Underlying the rivalry are long-standing tensions between the various Chin tribes.

The Chin has a long history of opposition to military dictatorships in Myanmar. The Chin National Front (CNF) and its militia, the Chin National Army (CNA), were formed in March 1988 to wage armed resistance against Myanmar’s military junta. Following the military coup in February 2021, the people in dozens of towns and villages in Chin State formed local militias, commonly referred to as People’s Defense Forces (PDFs). Many of these PDFs subsequently consolidated into township-based military units known as the Chinland Defense Forces (CDFs). Some of the CDFs received military training and supplies from the CNF and CNA.

All That Glitters May Not Be Gold For Japan’s Semiconductor Revival – Analysis

Joseph Negrine

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In the new age of industrial policy, advanced economies are driving public–private partnerships and abandoning notions of laissez-faire competition. As of September 2024, the Japanese government has spent over US$25 billion on subsidising semiconductors, the ‘new oil’ integral to civilian and military technologies. While the potential economic gains from Japan’s semiconductor manufacturing revival are colossal, Japan must not overlook the potential negative economic and security externalities.

Semiconductor dominance is a crucial aspect of geopolitical and economic superiority in the US–China ‘technological cold war’. Global disruptions like the Russia–Ukraine war and the COVID-19 pandemic have underscored the need for resilient supply chains. In 2021, chip shortages that increased semiconductor lead times cost the global automotive industry over US$200 million. The United States is attempting to stifle China’s semiconductor industry through coordinated export controls with the Netherlands and Japan. Both countries are crucial because they specialise in producing lithography equipment and associated materials that are chokepoints in China’s chip supply chain.

The United States and the Democracy Question in South Asia

S. D. Muni

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Ideologically, the United States is a self-proclaimed promoter and protector of democracy in the world. Its democracy policy has evolved over the past century. The U.S. fought World War II, in part, to defend democracy against fascism and waged a three-decade-long struggle during the Cold War against communism.

Soon after the Cold War, U.S. President George H. W. Bush proposed a “New World Order” based on “freedom, peace and democracy.” His successor, President Bill Clinton, said at the United Nations on September 27, 1993, that the “overriding purpose” of U.S. foreign policy was to “expand and strengthen the world’s community of market based democracies.”

In order to advance this purpose, Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright took the initiative of establishing a Community of Democracies (CoD). At the first meeting of the CoD in Warsaw in 2000, 106 countries promised to advance democratic norms and institutions. The United Nations endorsed this intergovernmental organization and later raised a “U.N. Fund for Democracy,” with contributions from members.

In more recent years, President Joe Biden convened the “Summit for Democracy.” The first such summit was convened in a virtual form on December 9-10, 2021. Its objectives were “defending against authoritarianism, addressing and fighting corruption, and advancing respect for human rights.” The second summit was hosted by the United States in collaboration with Costa Rica, Zambia, the Netherlands, and South Korea in March 2023, and the third summit was hosted by South Korea in March 2024, in a hybrid format.

Narrative Intelligence: Detecting Chinese and Russian Information Operations to Disrupt NATO Unity

Joe Stradinger

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Introduction

As geopolitical conflicts are increasingly shaped by misleading and deceptive information, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) has become an indispensable tool in understanding adversarial information operations and being able to compete in the information environment. Noting the value of OSINT, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) recently published a framework for the intelligence community to leverage commercially available information. Competition in the information environment among major powers is not new or unique. Today, Russia and China strategically employ information operations as part of their attempts to undermine US interests. China has actively used information operations to generate favorable strategic outcomes in Africa. Russian and Chinese messaging is also aligned in exploiting how the Israel-Hamas conflict is characterized. In this competition space, the distinction between signal and noise is more heightened than ever. As the volume of data increases, so does the challenge of identifying what matters — the relevant information that can be synthesized into actionable intelligence. This makes OSINT crucial for tracking and analyzing security threats as well as for monitoring the ebb and flow of online narratives that can influence public opinion and shape national security policy.

China develops new satellite-wrecking Death Star-like microwave weapon

Christopher McFadden

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Chinese scientists have reportedly developed a new kind of multi-beam converging microwave weapon. Designed to combine several beams in one location with ultra-precise timing, this weapon could be used to target a single object.

Similar in concept to the super laser from the Death Star battle station of Star Wars fame, the new Chinese weapon has allegedly completed experimental military trials. In Star Wars lore, the Death Star’s main weapon uses kyber crystals (the same used in lightsabers) to generate power.

This is then directed through several laser cannons, that merge at a single point to generate a beam so powerful it can destroy entire planets. While impressive cinematically, this kind of weapon has long been considered a complete fantasy.

According to reports, the new Chinese weapon consists of multiple independent microwave-transmitting vehicles that can be deployed in different locations.

HarmonyOS NEXT: Beijing’s Bid for Operating System Independence

W.Y. Kwok

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On October 22, Huawei’s Executive Director Yu Chengdong (余承东) introduced HarmonyOS NEXT, an updated operating system that has been wholly indigenously developed (The Paper, October 22). This milestone marks the culmination of a strategic initiative launched in 2012 when CEO Ren Zhengfei (任正非) first highlighted the risk associated with relying on foreign operating systems (Tencent News, October 22).

HarmonyOS NEXT is the closest the world has come to an operating system that excludes technology from the United States. As such, it is yet another indicator of the further fracturing of international standards at the level of both software and hardware that began over two decades ago with Beijing’s initial forays into building the “great firewall.”

The launch of the new operating system has been well-received within the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Yu Chengdong noted triumphantly that “in just one short year, [Huawei] has opened up a whole new world that foreign operating systems took over a decade to achieve (用短短的一年时间，开辟了一片新天地，走过了国外操作系统十几年生态发展的道路)” (STCN, October 22). State broadcaster CCTV hailed the launch as “another landmark achievement in breaking the constraints of ‘lacking a core and a soul’ and the technology monopoly of the West (打破“缺芯少魂”掣肘和欧美技术垄断的又一标志性成果)” (Tencent News, October 24). The phrase “lacking a core and a soul (缺芯少魂)” refers to a speech made by Xu Guanhua, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Minister of Science and Technology in 1999, who noted that the domestic industry lacked its own chip sector (the “core”) and its own operating system (the “soul”) (Xueqiu, December 7, 2022).

Joint Sword-2024B: Quarantining Key Ports and Seizing Comprehensive Superiority

Cheng-kun Ma & K. Tristan Tang

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From 5:01 a.m. local time onward on October 14, information releases emerged from state media outlets in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) concerning the “Joint Sword-2024B (联合利剑-2024B)” exercise. These asserted that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Theater Command had organized forces from the army, navy, air force, and rocket force to conduct operations in the Taiwan Strait, as well as in the northern, southern, and eastern waters surrounding Taiwan. The key areas of focus for the exercise, according to the reports, included “sea-air combat-readiness patrol, a blockade on important ports and areas, an assault on maritime and ground targets, and joint seizure of comprehensive superiority (海空战备警巡、要港要域封控、对海对陆打击、夺取综合制权),” all aimed at testing the joint operational capabilities of theater forces (Xinhua, October 14; China Military Online, October 14).

A 8:00 a.m. on the same day, the China Coast Guard (CCG; 中国海警局) simultaneously released information on its official website and Weibo account, indicating that four groups of CCG vessels conducted patrol operations around Taiwan (China Coast Guard, October 14; Weibo/China Coast Guard, October 14). At 6:06 p.m. that evening, Xinhua News Agency announced that the PLA Eastern Theater Command had successfully concluded the exercise (Xinhua, October 14).

The Art of War: PRC Weaponizes Culture to Galvanize the People

Arran Hope

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In his 2003 book From War To Nationalism: China’s Turning Point 1924–5, the historian Arthur Waldron noted that military modernization has been perhaps the single most important engine of change in China since the nineteenth century. [1] Two decades on, this observation seems truer than ever. Today, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is attempting to mobilize the population of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in preparation for battle, while pushing forward an ambitious agenda under the rubric of “modernization.” Underpinning these two interrelated programs is the Party’s ideology, a prominent aspect of which is the place of culture and history—both that of the CCP itself and that of “Chinese civilization” more broadly. The clearest articulation of this in recent years has been the formal introduction of Xi Jinping Thought on Culture at last year’s National Conference on Propaganda, Ideology, and Cultural Work (People’s Daily, October 9, 2023; China Brief, October 20, 2023)

The last month has seen an effusion of writings and events by the Party on this very topic. Issue 20 of this year’s volume of Qiushi (求实), the Party’s flagship theory journal, was published on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the “Symposium on Literary and Artistic Work (文艺工作座谈会),” and includes Party General Secretary Xi Jinping’s speech from that event (Qiushi, October 15).

PRC Adapts Meta’s Llama for Military and Security AI Applications

Sunny Cheung

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In September, the former deputy director of the Academy of Military Sciences (AMS), Lieutenant General He Lei (何雷), called for the United Nations to establish restrictions on the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in warfare (Sina Finance, September 13). This would suggest that Beijing has an interest in mitigating the risks associated with military AI. Instead, the opposite is true. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is currently leveraging AI to enhance its own military capabilities and strategic advantages and is using Western technology to do so.

The military and security sectors within the PRC are increasingly focused on integrating advanced AI technologies into operational capabilities. Meta’s open-source model Llama (Large Language Model Meta AI) has emerged as a preferred model on which to build out features tailored for military and security applications. In this way, US and US-derived technology is being deployed as a tool to enhance the PRC’s military modernization and domestic innovation efforts, with direct consequences for the United States and its allies and partners.

How Do We Know What’s Happening in China?

Jeremy Wallace

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In the early 1980s, the Chinese leadership promised that the country was going through a period of “reform and opening up.” Gathering information in China was never transparent or without risks, but people were increasingly willing to speak up, and archives and government data slowly became more available.

But since 2013, when President Xi Jinping took control, that opening has gone into reverse—a process accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, while observing China has become increasingly difficult, information and resources are out there to use to do good, careful work and analysis—if you know where to look.

War Without Decision: In the Context of the Middle East – Part 1

George Friedman

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The Middle East is in disarray, and it’s unclear if it can stabilize itself on its own. In many cases, a nation’s military can serve this function if it’s strong enough. But this is not one of those cases. Nations fighting for their lives require, have or crave that kind of power. The situation is such in the Middle East that it’s hard to see this happening, and it’s harder still to see the lesser powers involved acquiring the requisite influence to lay things to rest.

When I speak of military power, I do not mean the ability to launch airstrikes like the ones recently conducted by Israel. In the history of modern warfare, air power has been a valuable adjunct to combat but not a decisive one. The Japanese naval air force devastated Pearl Harbor and lost the war. The German Blitz on the United Kingdom killed many, as did the U.S. bombing of German cities. Whereas the Germans could not follow their strikes with an invasion, the Americans won the war with tanks. In Vietnam, Washington hammered Hanoi, but the light infantry of the Viet Cong ultimately won the day. Air power has many virtues, but it does not by itself win a war.

Trouble Ahead for Military Radars at S-Band

Rebecca Grant

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The U.S. military is heading for a big, new problem with its radars. To meet soaring demand for TikTok videos and other apps running on 5G, Congress is under pressure to sell off prime slices of the radio wave spectrum at a frequency location called S-band – thereby forcing military defense systems to cozy up and “share” with commercial wireless companies.

S-band radars are already part of the missile warning for Alaska and the new system in Hawaii. Guam’s enhanced 360-degree defense, now under construction, also depends on S-band. As threats grow, S-band radars will be integral to protecting the continental United States, too.

If Congress authorizes the FCC to sell licenses for the segments of S-band used by the military, the results could be catastrophic – and very costly to remedy.

Military radars have been integral to operations since early in World War II, and they’ve gotten better with each decade. Major types of military equipment use different frequency bands on the electromagnetic spectrum. High-power, low-frequency radars track distant objects. Shorter waves at higher frequencies take over for finesse tasks like fire control. All bands have their functions. C-Band is medium range, X-Band is for short range, Ku-Band is for close-in support, and so on.

Necropolitics in Modern Warfare

Matthew P. Arsenault

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In Ukraine, as paramilitaries and private military forces wreak havoc on civilian areas, the horror of modern conflict once again confronts the global community. The role of death squads and paramilitary groups has become disturbingly prominent in today’s wars, revealing how certain states wield power through violent, irregular forces. These groups, with ambiguous ties to their sponsoring governments, execute a shadowy form of power known as necropolitics, where the authority to decide who lives and who dies is outsourced to irregular forces. This dark and often overlooked dimension of contemporary war sheds light on how some governments strategically use paramilitaries and death squads to control populations, sow fear, and skirt accountability.

What is Necropolitics?

Necropolitics, coined by philosopher Achille Mbembe, goes beyond the traditional notion of state power. Rather than focusing on governance through institutions and laws, necropolitics looks at how certain governments assert control by dictating the terms of life and death. Building on Michel Foucault’s ideas of biopolitics—the regulation of populations through state power—necropolitics turns this on its head, revealing a political order based on the active marginalization, suffering, or outright elimination of targeted populations.

Anti-Strategy in Ukraine

Jahara Matisek, Michael Miklaucic & Will Reno

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NATO has an Anti-Strategy problem, good intentions for Ukraine but highly flawed planning. Translated into practice: Washington outsources escalation management to Moscow. It allows Russia to dictate the actions and reactions to its invasion and occupation of Ukraine on its own terms. Moreover, NATO’s support for Ukraine in its war with Russia exhibits loose threads, critical asymmetries, and gaping holes in the NATO fabric. Of the loose threads the most errant is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the “illiberal democrat” who empathizes with Vladimir Putin, obstructs Ukraine support, and supports Russia’s war effort through Hungary’s continued dependence on Russian oil and gas. The most jarring asymmetry juxtaposes the assertiveness of the frontline states such as Poland, the Baltics, and new NATO members Finland and Sweden, against the hesitant caution of the core NATO powers including the United States, France, and especially Germany. Among the gaping holes none is more glaringly self-evident than the hole where a unified strategy for victory in Ukraine should be.

We attended the Warsaw Security Forum (WSF) 2024, which convened in early October with over 2,600 participants from 90 countries and 30 governmental delegations. NATO’s self-admiring unity in supporting Ukraine was on exuberant display, though the specter of Orban and his pro-Russian colleagues throughout right-wing Europe was notable by their non-presence. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is another loose thread whose government halted military aid to Ukraine and sought to open communications channels with Moscow. A menagerie of populist parties including Germany’s Alternative for Deutschland party (AfD), Slovakia’s neo-fascist Republika, Orban’s Fidesz party in Hungary, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians Party, the Revival party in Bulgaria, and France’s Rassemblement National party sympathize with Russia. And perennial NATO bad boy Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he trusts Russia “just as much as I trust the West.” Türkiye has become the biggest buyer of Russian fossil fuels, purchasing over $45 billion worth in 2023. These are just some of the loose threads.

Space Integration and Adaptability to Maintain Warfighting Advantage

Kari A. Bingen

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This line from the 2018 National Defense Strategy remains especially relevant to the domain of space. The convergence of massive data collection, advanced computing, and global distribution networks enables unprecedented insights about activities on the Earth and in the space environment. But in a world where both the United States and China have access to the same cutting-edge technologies—each aiming to create “kill chains” of space sensors networked with weapon systems—the advantage will favor the nation that can more quickly integrate these technologies and adapt its way of fighting while disrupting the adversary’s ability to do the same.

Although technological solutions are within reach, the more significant barriers to integration and adaptation lie in policy, culture, and institutional divisions. U.S. government organizations are not incentivized to integrate, share data, or invest in the infrastructure necessary to enable data interoperability across disparate systems. These less visible, yet vexing, challenges will demand attention from senior leadership in the next administration to keep space capabilities a warfighting advantage for the military forces who rely on them.

To Reduce Violent Conflict, Support Non-Violent Resistance Movements – Analysis

Dr Bryan Sims

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It is unsurprising that as the world entered its 18th consecutive year of democratic decline, it was also experiencing a record number of conflicts, with 2023 being among the most violent years since the end of the cold war. This year’s Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development successfully unpacked the complex intersectionality among factors driving instability and violence throughout the globe. Yet while the topic of authoritarianism was raised over and over again during the Forum, it was treated primarily as a governance problem. In fact, authoritarianism is a cross-cutting and fundamental threat to peace and security.

The authoritarianism–kleptocracy–conflict nexus

Addressing authoritarianism is integral to addressing peace and security challenges. A recent policy paper by the Atlantic Council and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict reminds us that a more authoritarian world is likely to lead to more interstate warfare. In contrast, research finds that the more democratic states are, the less likely they are to wage wars against each other. But that is not the only security risk of rising authoritarianism; autocratic governments are also more likely to harbour violent extremists than are democracies.

Delegitimizing the Messenger: the Assault on Fact-Checkers

Allie Funk, Kian Vesteinsson and Grant Baker, Guest Contributors

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In one of the most consequential elections in U.S. history, information researchers and fact checkers whose work proved crucial to identifying false information during the 2020 U.S. campaign have been under attack. They have faced a wave of lawsuits, subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee, and online vitriol from actors on the right, driven by false characterizations of their work. Changes by key companies like Meta and X, formerly known as Twitter, reduced their ability to study the information space. As a result, disinformation experts in the US now have fewer resources, institutional support, and access to platform data, all of which are necessary to provide the same type of analysis in 2024 that was possible in 2020.

This chilling effect on information research is not an aberration. In a recently released report, Freedom House documented similar attacks across the globe that seek to delegitimize the work of independent researchers and fact-checkers, spelling serious consequences for democracy in the digital age.

Victory in 21st century conflict

Mick Ryan

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Over the past few weeks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has travelled through Europe and America to brief political leaders on his Victory Plan, designed to end the war on acceptable terms for Ukraine. Zelenskyy has also given speeches to the European Council and, on 16 October, his own parliament.

Zelenskyy made the following critical point about his plan: “we must implement the Victory Plan to force Russia to attend the Peace Summit and be willing to end the war.” The Victory Plan is thus a means to an end. Zelenskyy and his advisors understand that even if a military victory is achieved, it is politics that will determine the outcome of this war. For Ukraine, the desired outcome of the Victory Plan is forcing Russia to the table for negotiations to achieve Zelenskyy’s Peace Formula.

Thus, victory in war is about more than military success. In The Evolution of Strategy, Beatrice Heuser proposes that military victory may not result in the lasting achievement of war aims, and that “the most important aim in any war must be to make a just and durable peace. Victory is nothing if it does not lead to such a peace.”

Humanoid Robots

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Humanoid robots are undergoing rapid development, led by firms in the United States and China.1 Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have improved the degree of autonomy in humanoid robots, allowing them to handle more complex interactions with humans and their environment.* 2 These improvements are accelerating as robots use generative AI to learn new tasks, replacing what was previously accomplished through manual programming.3 China has set a series of goals relating to the development of its humanoid robots sector, including having two to three humanoid robot firms that are global leaders by 2025.4 Many other aspects of its stated goals, however, are vague and susceptible to multiple interpretations. While China’s capacity to achieve these goals in the stated time frames may be doubtful, if their overall efforts are successful, humanoid robots could have transformative implications across commercial industries, including manufacturing, agriculture, and healthcare, and potentially for military and law enforcement as well.5 The Chinese government has thrown its weight behind developing humanoid robots, as it has previously for other critical emerging technologies, with the aim of expanding its role in the global market.6 

Humanoid robots are improving at navigating complex terrain and interacting with everyday objects. 7 Some humanoid robots have also been equipped with speech and reasoning capabilities to enhance communication options and help complete basic daily tasks.8 Humanoid robot firms globally face technical obstacles, however, including the limited storage capacity of batteries that power the robots and the current technical limitations of components like actuators that allow the robot to move itself and manipulate other objects.9 Far more progress is needed before humanoid robots will be able to reason through an unexpected situation and then act on it.

Protecting the Force from Uncrewed Aerial Systems

Dr Jack Watling and Professor Justin Bronk

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The impact of uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) on land operations has been a subject of extensive discussion, from the war in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine beginning in 2022. The corollary to the importance of armies fielding UAS is that effective, layered and efficient counter-UAS (C-UAS) capabilities are neither a luxury nor a concept to be explored as part of an abstract ‘future force’. They are a basic requirement for a land force to be suitable for operations on the modern battlefield. Without C-UAS capabilities, a force will be seen first, engaged more accurately, and ultimately defeated by an opposing force that successfully fields UAS and C-UAS capabilities at scale. For NATO members, the aiming mark set by the Alliance’s senior leadership is to be ready to deter Russia by 2028. Fielding C-UAS capabilities, which are absent in any structured sense from the British Army and from most other NATO land force elements, is therefore an urgent operational requirement.

There is a risk that in attempting to fill this critical gap, NATO members purchase a range of C-UAS capabilities that are overly specialised in dealing with specific threat systems, are not integrated effectively across the force, and cannot keep pace with the threat as UAS continue to rapidly evolve. This paper outlines the core tasks and capabilities required to provide coherent, layered C-UAS protection. The paper then explores how to integrate layered C-UAS protection across land forces without overburdening units and thus preventing them from performing their primary tasks.

State Permissive Behaviours and Commercial Offensive-Cyber Proliferation

Dr Gareth Mott, James Shires, Jen Ellis, James Sullivan and Jamie MacColl

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Commercial cyber tools and services have many legitimate applications, from corporate penetration testing (an authorised simulated cyber attack on an IT system) to law enforcement and national security operations. But they are also subject to misuse and abuse, when they are used in ways that are contrary to national or international law, violate the human rights of their targets, or pose risks to international security. Some states are currently grappling with this policy challenge. Meanwhile, collective international initiatives for action are underway.

For example, there is the US’s 2023 Joint Statement on Efforts to Counter the Proliferation and Misuse of Commercial Spyware and the UK- and France-led Pall Mall Process of 2024. Ultimately, one aim of these initiatives is to enable states to harmonise their policy interventions where possible.

To inform principles and policies for intervention at national and international levels, it is necessary to understand the dynamics that encourage or facilitate offensive-cyber proliferation. This paper identifies a range of ‘non-state proliferating factors’ (NPFs) and ‘state permissive behaviours’ (SPBs), and its findings draw on desk-based research on the international commercial offensive-cyber market. These findings were supplemented by a data validation and consultative workshop with industry stakeholders held in person at Chatham House in March 2024. This half-day validation workshop drew on the expertise and insights of 44 participants predominantly based in the UK, the US and Western Europe. To facilitate candid discussion, remarks made at the workshop are not attributable, and the identities of participants are not referenced here.

The Military Use of AI: Challenges and Opportunities for Taiwan

Cheng-Hung Hsu

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Increasing cross-strait tensions between mainland China and Taiwan suggest the need for the latter to take a fresh look at the advantages offered by new defence approaches. With a defence budget vastly outpaced by China, Taiwan’s Overall Defense Concept recognises a need to look to cutting-edge technologies to offset scale imbalances. This paper examines the challenges and opportunities Taiwan will need to consider for the military application of one such emerging technology: AI.

Key challenges in the use of AI include: data-security concerns; ethical implications of autonomous weapons; unpredictability and unreliability of systems; high costs of implementation and maintenance; potential for increased use of armed force; issues of accountability and responsibility; risks associated with deepfake technology; and the danger of over-reliance on AI systems leading to a loss of traditional human military skills.

In terms of opportunities, the paper discusses the potential benefits of AI in enhancing situational awareness, improving command-and-control capabilities, and enabling advanced simulations for military training and strategy development. AI-powered systems can process vast amounts of data quickly, providing comprehensive battlefield intelligence and enabling faster, more accurate decision-making.

Unleashing Solar Power’s Bright Future

FATIH BIROL and AJAY MATHUR

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PARIS – Solar power has been the star of the clean-energy transition, delivering major benefits for the climate, the cost of living, and energy security. With an average annual growth rate of almost 30% over the last decade, the market for solar power has undergone a rapid transformation. What was once a heavily subsidized renewable-energy technology is now a readily available mainstream solution – whether one needs to power skyscrapers in large cities or deliver electricity to small businesses in rural areas.

Solar has become an increasingly attractive option for electricity producers and consumers alike. In 2023, additions to the world’s renewable power capacity grew by 50%, and most of that was solar PV. With supportive policies already in place in more than 130 countries, solar power looks set to continue playing its starring role for the rest of this decade. Compared with the previous five years, solar PV deployment through 2030 is expected to more than double in major economies such as the United States, China, the European Union, India, and Brazil.

Falling costs have been a key driver of this growth, with solar-panel prices declining by almost 50% in 2023. The combination of lower costs, scalable manufacturing, and quick installation means that solar PV is cheaper than new fossil-fuel power plants in most markets. Moreover, the benefits of solar can be amplified when paired with energy storage such as batteries or connected to larger, flexible systems via grids to deliver reliable power supplies.

Still, despite the unprecedented growth of solar power in recent years, the world needs to triple its renewable-energy capacity by 2030. At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai (COP28) last year, all countries agreed that meeting this goal is necessary to keep the 1.5º Celsius target for global warming within reach. The task for policymakers is to provide regulatory certainty for the private sector; ramp up investments in solar and other renewables, electricity storage, and grid infrastructure; cut red tape and remove administrative barriers; and improve access to finance, particularly for projects in emerging and developing economies.