New Delhi’s Optimism Over Trump 2.0 Belies Underlying Fault Lines in India-US Relations

Chietigj Bajpaee

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first world leaders to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory in the U.S. presidential election. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Modi shared photos of their previous interactions while congratulating “my friend” Trump on his “historic” victory.

New Delhi always seemed somewhat more comfortable with a second Trump term than a Kamala Harris presidency, which would have entailed a more value-driven foreign policy with greater emphasis (and scrutiny) on India’s democratic credentials. Not even Harris’ Indian ancestry could match the bromance of the “Howdy, Modi!” and “Namaste Trump” gatherings during Trump’s first term.

This initial optimism has been complemented by the ongoing announcement of Trump’s picks for foreign policy posts. Several key positions in the second Trump administration are going to people with a pro-India tilt, including Representative Mike Waltz – Trump’s pick for national security adviser – who previously served as head of the India Caucus, and Senator Marco Rubio – a potential candidate for secretary of state – who has pushed for deepening India-U.S. defense cooperation: Earlier this year he introduced the U.S.-India Defense Cooperation Act in the Senate.

Trump 2.0 and the Future of the Taiwan Strait Conflict

Juan Alberto Ruiz Casado

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As the world braces for the return of Donald Trump to the White House, the geopolitical landscape is set for a seismic shift. Nowhere will this be more keenly felt than in the delicate and contentious relationship between the United States and China over Taiwan. With Trump’s transactional approach to foreign policy and his administration’s expected hawkish stance on China, the future of the island hangs in the balance.

Three key factors set up the potential consequences of Trump’s second term on Taiwan. First, we can expect a significant shift in U.S. discourse, from a values-based defense of democracy to a more strategic and business-driven approach. Second, Trump’s inner circle, filled with China hawks, is likely to push for increased militarization of the region and even for a proxy war in Taiwan. Finally, Beijing is certain that a “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) administration will move in this direction, prompting Chinese authorities to ramp up their own preparations for conflict.

Trump’s Transactional Approach to International Relations

After Trump’s re-election, Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te, extended his congratulations, highlighting “the longstanding Taiwan-U.S. partnership, built on shared values and interests.” But what exactly are these “shared values”? Values are often portrayed as timeless, fundamental principles that define a nation’s spirit. Yet, values are not static; they evolve.

The Predicament of Taiwan’s Military Developmen

Jeremy Chen

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In recent years, Taiwan’s military procurement and indigenous defense development have encountered multiple challenges that significantly impact their implementation and effectiveness. These challenges span across various dimensions: such as local community resistance to military construction projects, escalating material and labor costs in an inflationary environment, intense media scrutiny of procurement processes, and the complex dynamics of military modernization objectives. This analysis examines how these interconnected challenges affect Taiwan’s defense capabilities, while also highlighting how democratic institutions both complicate and safeguard the procurement process.

The Intersection of Military Development and Local Interests: Balancing National Defense with Community Needs

Military construction is often a contentious issue for local communities, as it potentially disrupts local life and economic activity. Even when proposed military facilities have a minimal environmental impact, their establishment frequently triggers protests and petitions from residents. In Taiwan, several cases illustrate this dynamic. First, the Navy’s decision to construct a missile base within the existing military bases at Jiupeng (九鵬) in southwestern Taiwan faced delays due to conflicts with the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law. Similarly, the planned Second Naval Harbor Project at Zouying (左營第二港口擴建工程) has encountered ongoing protests despite multiple public hearings, as local fishermen have worried about their livelihoods. In Taitung (台東), a proposed Air Force emergency runway project drew criticism from legislative representatives in local courts because it required the acquisition of productive farmland.

US expresses concern over extremism in Bangladesh, praises Hasina's control

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There are serious concerns in the US over growing extremism in Bangladesh, a former White House official has said, observing that deposed former Prime Minister Sheikh did a good job in controlling it.

Lisa Curtis, who served as President-elect Donald Trump's South Asia point-person in his first term, has said there is concern about the future and what it could bring to Bangladesh.

We are at a critical juncture in Bangladesh. With the overthrow of Sheikh Hasina and efforts to reform the political system, there is a lot of hope. People are hopeful that the democratic process will get stronger," she said on Thursday.

The Awami League regime led by Hasian was toppled on August 5 in the face of a mass upsurge originating from a quota reform campaign by the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement. Three days later Nobel laureate Muhammad assumed office as the chief adviser of the interim government.

Major Chinese Cyberespionage Targeting US Telecom Networks Uncovered by FBI

Amir Daftari

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The FBI has announced that its investigation into Chinese government-sponsored cyber activities has revealed an extensive cyberespionage campaign targeting multiple U.S. telecommunications networks.

Hackers linked to Beijing have compromised the systems of telecommunications firms to access call records and intercept private communications of several U.S. individuals, particularly those engaged in government and political activities.

The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) jointly reported these findings, underscoring the campaign's broad scope. Although specific targets were not disclosed, officials noted that many individuals affected are closely tied to government and political spheres.

Attempts to Compromise Surveillance Programs

Further investigation has revealed that the hackers sought access to data managed under U.S. law enforcement programs, including those governed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

How Obama Failed to Anticipate and Respond to ISIS: Review of Michael Gordon’s “Degrade and Destroy”

Garrett Exner

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In 2016 Robert Ford, U.S. Ambassador to Syria from 2011-2014, said the Obama Administration held a “myopic view of ISIS.” In his book, Degrade and Destroy (2022), Michael Gordon goes further, exposing just how persistent the myopathy around ISIS and counterterrorism was under Obama’s leadership. And with the same cast of characters back at the helm under Biden, it’s no wonder why chaos has once again enveloped the Middle East. Besides Gordon’s fascinating history of the American policy failures that contributed to the rise of ISIS, his book also provides insightful guidance for an impending second Trump Administration, describing important lessons that can be gleaned from the Obama-Biden team’s mistakes.

Gordon’s thorough accounting begins with the initial failure to counter ISIS in 2012, followed by a desire to minimize and obfuscate the magnitude of the threat through 2013 and 2014. As Obama’s second term went on, the genesis of ISIS revealed an absence of any coherent foreign policy strategy in conjunction with the suffocating micromanagement of the military by Obama and his staff. Of note, nearly all of Obama’s advisors described in the book returned under Biden, having been promoted to new heights in response to their failures.

Houthi arsenal shocks the Pentagon's top weapons buyer

Colin Demarest

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Houthi rebels are brandishing increasingly sophisticated weapons, including missiles that "can do things that are just amazing," the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer said at an Axios event.

The big picture: The militant group has for a year used drones and missiles to strangle waters off Yemen, disrupting international shipping.

• Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante on Wednesday said the Houthis "are getting scary."
• "I'm an engineer and a physicist, and I've been around missiles my whole career," he said at the Future of Defense summit in Washington, DC. "What I've seen of what the Houthis have done in the last six months is something that — I'm just shocked."

State of play: The group's forces menace almost every ship passing by — civilian or military — and have even sent some to the seafloor.

• Two U.S. Navy destroyers were attacked days ago as they slipped through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
• At least eight attack drones, five anti-ship ballistic missiles and four anti-ship cruise missiles were intercepted, according to U.S. Central Command. No injuries or damage to the warships were reported.
• The barrages are said to be in retaliation to Israel's war in Gaza. But many targets have no obvious affiliation.

NASA Satellites Reveal Abrupt Drop In Global Freshwater Levels

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An international team of scientists using observations from NASA-German satellites found evidence that Earth’s total amount of freshwater dropped abruptly starting in May 2014 and has remained low ever since. Reporting in Surveys in Geophysics, the researchers suggested the shift could indicate Earth’s continents have entered a persistently drier phase.

From 2015 through 2023, satellite measurements showed that the average amount of freshwater stored on land — that includes liquid surface water like lakes and rivers, plus water in aquifers underground — was 290 cubic miles (1,200 cubic km) lower than the average levels from 2002 through 2014, said Matthew Rodell, one of the study authors and a hydrologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “That’s two and a half times the volume of Lake Erie lost.”

During times of drought, along with the modern expansion of irrigated agriculture, farms and cities must rely more heavily on groundwater, which can lead to a cycle of declining underground water supplies: freshwater supplies become depleted, rain and snow fail to replenish them, and more groundwater is pumped. The reduction in available water puts a strain on farmers and communities, potentially leading to famine, conflicts, poverty, and an increased risk of disease when people turn to contaminated water sources, according to a UN report on water stress published in 2024.

Pentagon's Software Approval Process Is Crushing Innovation

Aiden Buzzetti

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Pentagon's Software Approval Process Is Crushing Innovation When We Need It Most

The Department of Defense is actively undermining our national security, and most Americans don't even know it's happening. It isn’t happening because of any nefarious plot or external threat, but through a bureaucratic approval process that's choking competition while holding technological innovation within our military.

The current Authority to Operate (ATO) process – the system for certifying new software for military use – is one of the most antiquated in government. It's too slow, too expensive, and ultimately serves to create a monopoly that benefits a handful of large defense contractors while shutting out new and innovative solutions from startups our warfighters desperately need.

Here's what this means in practical terms: Imagine you're a small tech company that has developed breakthrough artificial intelligence software that could save soldiers' lives by detecting threats before they become lethal. Under the current system, you would need to spend millions of dollars and wait years just to get your software approved for military use. Most small companies simply can't afford this waiting game, and it’s possible that the barriers push our best innovators away from defense work entirely.

Europe not enough if US pulls the plug on Ukraine

Stephen Bryen

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InsideOver is a popular Italian online news channel. On November 14, journalist Roberto Vivaldelli asked me some questions about US policy and Ukraine. Readers will find the original article in Italian here. This English-language version is republished with the permission of Stephen Bryen.

Robert Vivaldelli: Jake Sullivan recently announced that President Biden plans to request additional funding from Congress for Ukraine. How would you interpret this decision at this point?

Stephen Bryen: In the United States we would call Biden’s request for more Ukraine funding a “Hail Mary Pass” (a term used in American football). It means he is making the request to show his solidarity with Ukraine and to try and squeeze the Republicans to somehow support Ukraine in future. My own opinion is that Congress will not take up the Biden proposal, instead waiting for Trump to take office. I don’t think Biden believes the measure has any chance.

Conditions have changed since the last, massive supplemental for Ukraine. Huge expenditures have not improved Ukraine’s situation. In fact, the Russians continue to make significant gains against Ukraine’s army and continue to devastate the Ukrainian critical infrastructure, especially the power grid.

Ramaswamy previews ‘deep cuts’ coming to US government agencies

Asher Notheis

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Tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy previewed the “sweeping change” he and fellow billionaire Elon Musk will be making to the United States government, which they will do together through the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency.

Ramaswamy explained that both he and Musk are businessmen, not politicians, allowing them to rework the system from “the outside” as they aim to make “quick wins” in the first few months of President-elect Donald Trump’s administration. He added that they will lay the work for Congress to continue D.O.G.E.’s work in the future. He added that while members of Congress are only focused on what they can achieve within two years, D.O.G.E. is focused on the next 250 years, which is why “deep cuts” are needed within the nation.

“We expect mass reductions, we expect certain agencies to be deleted outright,” Ramaswamy said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. “We expect mass reductions enforced in areas of the federal government that are bloated; we expect massive cuts of federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government, so, yes, we expect all of the above. And I think people will be surprised by, I think, how quickly we’re able to move with some of those changes given the legal backdrop the Supreme Court has given us.”

No, It’s Not Too Late to Save the Planet

Paul Hockenos

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Climate denial may be on the decline, but a phenomenon at least as injurious to the cause of climate protection has blossomed beside it: doomism, or the belief that there’s no way to halt the Earth’s ascendant temperatures. Burgeoning ranks of doomers throw up their hands, crying that it’s too late, too hard, too costly to save humanity from near-future extinction.

There are numerous strands of doomism. The followers of ecologist Guy McPherson, for example, gravitate to wild conspiracy theories that claim humanity won’t last another decade. Many young people, understandably overwhelmed by negative climate headlines and TikTok videos, are convinced that all engagement is for naught. Even the Guardian, which boasts superlative climate coverage, sometimes publishes alarmist articles and headlines that exaggerate grim climate projections.

How to Force Capitalism to Stop Climate Change

Jason Hickel and Charles Stevenson

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It is clear to everyone that decarbonization is happening far too slowly. Even the best-performing high-income countries are not reducing their emissions fast enough to achieve the Paris Agreement objectives—not even close. And one big reason is that even though renewables are now routinely cheaper than fossil fuels, they are still not nearly as profitable. Returns on fossil fuel investments are around three times higher than returns on renewables, largely because fossil fuels are more conducive to monopoly power while the renewable sector is highly competitive.

Commercial banks allocate capital on the basis of profitability, not social and ecological objectives. The result is that we get massive investment in sectors such as SUVs, fast fashion, industrial animal farming, private jets, and advertising—even though we know they are ecologically destructive and must be reduced—but we suffer critical underinvestment in areas that are clearly necessary for the ecological transition, such as public transit, agroecology, or building retrofits, because they tend to be less profitable.

Billionaires Must Help Fix the Planet

Ban Ki-moon

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The climate crisis is a ticking time bomb, and those with the greatest power, wealth, and influence must take responsibility for their role in it. While millions of the world’s most marginalized people are paying the ultimate price with their lives, their homes, or their livelihoods, billionaires and fossil fuel giants continue to profit. The time has come to hold decision-makers and the wealthiest accountable.

The consequences of climate chaos have become increasingly frequent and devastating. Recent droughts in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, for instance, have caused millions of people who live in poverty in rural areas to lose their main economic asset: their livestock. Between 2021 and 2023, nearly 13 million livestock worth around $7.4 billion died in those countries. The people bearing the brunt of these impacts contributed little to the problem, while major fossil fuel corporations have continued to pollute with impunity, reaping enormous profits, paying far too little in taxes, and using their influence to shape policies in their favor.

Former Air Force commander Amir Eshel: "Israel does not have an exit strategy from the war"

Meir Orbach

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"Israel does not have an exit strategy from the war, and therefore all its military achievements, both in the north and the south, could be undermined. Israeli politics is in disarray."

This is what Amir Eshel, the former commander of the Israeli Air Force, stated at the Calcalist and Bank Leumi conference in Miami.

In a conversation with Sophie Shulman of Calcalist, Eshel observed: "This is a war being waged without an exit strategy, which could nullify any military achievements. Reaching a political solution will be extremely difficult. The American president-elect Trump wants to end wars and there is political momentum to resolve conflicts with both Hamas and Hezbollah. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that once these wars conclude, our focus must shift back to Iran—its nuclear ambitions, its export of terrorism, and other related threats. Now is the time to conclude this war."

When asked about the use of new technologies in the current conflicts—both Israel's and the Russia-Ukraine war—and their impact on defense budgets, Eshel replied:

"There is a new global opportunity for commercial defense technologies. With multiple wars, rising global threats, increased defense budgets, and a wave of breakthrough technologies, we are witnessing a surge in commercial initiatives for defense solutions."

NATO and Its Defense Industrial Base

Krystyna Marcinek

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This summer's NATO summit marked 75 years of the transatlantic alliance, and ten years of its return to NATO's core business: deterring and defending against Russia, “the most significant and direct threat to Allies' security.” The summit was certainly a display of political unity, but to maintain such cohesion, NATO needs to increase its defense industrial base (DIB) capacity, as well as adopt an acquisition strategy that meets the growing demand for weapons and ammunition. And it needs to do both things in a way that navigates political sensitivities.

NATO's defense industrial base was one of the key topics of the summit, and its problems are well known. Years of falling demand and increases in technological sophistication of Western arms have led to a weakening of competition (PDF) and an increase in per-unit cost. Now, the United States (PDF), the European Union, and NATO have launched efforts to increase defense production. However, such an increase requires investment in facilities and workforce throughout the supply chain, which will take time and money. Both things are in short supply given the immediate needs in Ukraine, demands of rearming Europe, and domestic economic priorities.

Trump II: Challenges Ahead

Amir Taheri

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What will Donald Trump's foreign policy look like in his second term?

This is the question currently making the buzz in the commentariat around the world.

Western European pundits claim that Trump will abandon the Ukrainian lamb to the Russian wolf or, at least, force the European shepherd to foot the bill for keeping it half alive.

Indian oped-writers hope that Trump will cut China down to size, thus elevating India as Asia's new indispensable giant. Progressive Davos collectivists warn that unless checked, Trump will go through the globalist ideology like a bull in a china shop.

In the past few days, I have run into even more interesting speculations regarding Trump II foreign policy -- from Iran and Israel.

From Iran comes a lengthy editorial in the daily Kayhan claiming that, keen to maintain friendly ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump will also refrain from attempts at toppling the Islamic Republic of Iran, which Moscow has adopted as its "faithful Ruslan."

Moscow Prescribes Own Terms For Talks With Trump On Ukraine – Analysis

Vladimir Socor

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Moscow is in no hurry to hold talks with US President-elect Donald Trump on halting Russia’s war in Ukraine. The Kremlin expects its forces to continue, slowly but steadily, seizing more Ukrainian territory, grinding down the country’s infrastructure and housing stock with air strikes, setting preconditions for a social crisis in Ukraine this coming winter, and depleting the national morale. Trump shows himself eager to substantiate his “deal-maker” reputation by brokering a peace deal between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents even before his own presidential inauguration.

From Moscow’s perspective, however, holding such talks at this time could stymie its military operations in Ukraine before they attained their objectives. It would be entirely out of character with the Kremlin to enter negotiations with a major foreign leader who has not yet taken office. Moscow will, however, be ready to engage with Trump following his January 20 inauguration. By then, Russia also expects its military position to have grown stronger in Ukraine. The Kremlin could then turn Trump’s manifest eagerness for a deal into leverage against the US president.

Fear and Loathing in the Leviathan - Trump Assembling a General Officer 'Review Board'

Beege Welborn

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Heh.

This tickles me to death.

I've written about Gen Mark Milley a million times. He is only the biggest, ugliest, most obvious public face of what's wrong with our military and its senior "leadership."

Former Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen David Berger, wrote a piece for Proceedings two years ago that identified his candidates as the main reasons in public perception why military recruiting was in the toilet and I included it in that post.

It is still relevant today.

Gen Berger correctly believed that most of the blame could be laid at the feet of military officers, specifically senior leadership.

Generals like Berger (author of the highly controversial Force Design 2030, essentially a redesign of the entire USMC mission) and the perniciously woke Milley are only two names in a general officer cast of hundreds who have systematically moved our once feared and lethal American military from a war-fighting posture to a corporate structure.

Europe Must Unlock Its Geoeconomic Power

Agathe Demarais and Abraham Newman

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Geoeconomics—the interplay between trade, finance, technology, and national security—has become the new buzzword in Brussels. Europe’s ability to remain relevant on the global scene depends on its ability to tackle geoeconomic challenges, including Russia’s war against Ukraine and China’s mounting economic coercion. It will also matter for handling the United States’ new leader. President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to ramp up tariffs against European partners, could upend transatlantic cooperation to curb Russia’s financial resources used to wage war against Ukraine, and may even lift sanctions on Moscow.

Hypersonic Horizons: The Next Generation of Air Superiority

Joshua Thibert

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The development of hypersonic technology is poised to redefine the landscape of military airpower. Hypersonic vehicles, capable of reaching speeds greater than Mach 5, offer unprecedented speed and agility, making them a game-changer in modern warfare. This article delves into the advancements, challenges, and strategic implications of hypersonic technology, highlighting how it is set to transform air superiority in the twenty-first century.

Hypersonic technology encompasses both aircraft and missiles that travel at speeds exceeding five times the speed of sound. These vehicles leverage advanced propulsion systems, such as scramjets (supersonic combustion ramjets), to achieve and sustain such high velocities. The potential applications of hypersonic technology are vast, ranging from rapid global strike capabilities to enhanced missile defense systems.

However, interest in hypersonic technology is not new. Scientific research began during the Cold War, but only in recent years have significant breakthroughs been made towards advancing hypersonic technology from theory to practicality. The primary drivers of this renewed focus include advancements in materials science, computational fluid dynamics, and propulsion technology. Nations such as the United States, China, and Russia are at the forefront of hypersonic research, each vying for technological supremacy, with China and Russia attempting to challenge the status quo.

The New Hatred of Technology

Jason Kehe

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People have never been better, here in the Year of Our Simulation 2024, at hating the very forces underlying that simulation—at hating, in other words, digital technology itself. And good for them. These everywhere-active tech critics don’t just rely, for their on-trend position-taking, on vague, nostalgist, technophobic feelings anymore. Now they have research papers to back them up. They have bestsellers by the likes of Harari and Haidt. They have—picture their smugness—statistics. The kids, I don’t know if you’ve heard, are killing themselves by the classroomful.

None of this bothers me. Well, teen suicide obviously does, it's horrible, but it’s not hard to debunk arguments blaming technology. What is hard to debunk, and what does bother me, is the one exception, in my estimation, to this rule: the anti-tech argument offered by the modern-day philosopher.

By philosopher, I don’t mean some stats-spouting writer of glorified self-help. I mean a deepest-level, ridiculously learned overanalyzer, someone who breaks down problems into their relevant bits so that, when those bits are put back together, nothing looks quite the same. Descartes didn’t just blurt out “I think, therefore I am” off the top of his head. He had to go as far into his head as he humanly could, stripping away everything else, before he could arrive at his classic one-liner. (Plus God. People always seem to forget that Descartes, inventor of the so-called rational mind, couldn’t strip away God.)

The AI Detection Arms Race Is On

Christopher Beam

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Edward Tian didn’t think of himself as a writer. As a computer science major at Princeton, he’d taken a couple of journalism classes, where he learned the basics of reporting, and his sunny affect and tinkerer’s curiosity endeared him to his teachers and classmates. But he describes his writing style at the time as “pretty bad”—formulaic and clunky. One of his journalism professors said that Tian was good at “pattern recognition,” which was helpful when producing news copy. So Tian was surprised when, sophomore year, he managed to secure a spot in John McPhee’s exclusive non-fiction writing seminar.

Every week, 16 students gathered to hear the legendary New Yorker writer dissect his craft. McPhee assigned exercises that forced them to think rigorously about words: Describe a piece of modern art on campus, or prune the Gettysburg Address for length. Using a projector and slides, McPhee shared hand-drawn diagrams that illustrated different ways he structured his own essays: a straight line, a triangle, a spiral. Tian remembers McPhee saying he couldn’t tell his students how to write, but he could at least help them find their own unique voice.

If McPhee stoked a romantic view of language in Tian, computer science offered a different perspective: language as statistics. During the pandemic, he’d taken a year off to work at the BBC and intern at Bellingcat, an open source journalism project, where he’d written code to detect Twitter bots. As a junior, he’d taken classes on machine learning and natural language processing. And in the fall of 2022, he began to work on his senior thesis about detecting the differences between AI-generated and human-written text.

Some of Substack’s Biggest Newsletters Rely on AI Writing Tools

Kate Knibbs

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The most popular writers on Substack earn up to seven figures each year primarily by persuading readers to pay for their work. The newsletter platform’s subscription-driven business model offers creators different incentives than platforms like Facebook or YouTube, where traffic and engagement are king. In theory, that should help shield Substack from the wave of click-courting AI content that’s flooding the internet. But a new analysis shared exclusively with WIRED indicates that Substack hosts plenty of AI-generated writing, some of which is published in newsletters with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

The AI-detection startup GPTZero scanned 25 to 30 recent posts published by the 100 most popular newsletters on Substack to see whether they contained AI-generated content. It estimated that 10 of the publications likely use AI in some capacity, while seven “significantly rely” on it in their written output. (GPTZero paid for subscriptions to Substack newsletters that are heavily paywalled.) Four of the newsletters that GPTZero identified as using AI extensively confirmed to WIRED that artificial intelligence tools are part of their writing process, while the remaining three did not respond to requests for comment.

Many of the newsletters GPTZero flagged as publishing AI-generated writing focus on sharing investment news and personal finance advice. While no AI-detection service is perfect—many, including GPTZero, can produce false positives—the analysis suggests that hundreds of thousands of people are now regularly consuming AI-generated or AI-assisted content that they are specifically subscribing to read. In some cases, they’re even paying for it.

Military services need more training, better feedback on officer evaluations critical for promotions, watchdog says

COREY DICKSTEIN

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The U.S. military services should routinely train their officers about the intricacies of their officer evaluation systems and provide detailed feedback after each evaluation cycle, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a new report. 

The government watchdog agency found each of the Defense Department’s military services — the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Space Force — could improve their officer evaluation systems with some adjustments after a roughly 22-month review. While the GAO found the services were all using some “key practices,” they failed to incorporate others that could help them ensure their systems that evaluate commissioned officers produce accurate and unbiased results from which promotions boards can decide who should advance. 

Among the recommended changes, GAO suggested the services could better align how they evaluate commissioned officers with their overarching goals for their service, conduct regularly scheduled and detailed reviews of their officer evaluation systems, and provide officers “timely and actionable feedback” on their performance. 

By adopting such practices, according to the GAO report released Wednesday, “the services will have better assurance that their performance evaluation systems are designed, implemented, and regularly evaluated to ensure effectiveness.”