Indian Strategic Studies: 2025

9 December 2025

India's Supreme Court upholds rights of poorest - but language reveals 'bias', study says

Soutik Biswas

India's Supreme Court prides itself on defending the rights of Dalits - historically the country's most oppressed citizens.

But a new study argues that the court's own language has frequently reflected the caste hierarchies it aims to erase. About 160 million Indians are Dalits, once called "untouchables", yet many remain trapped in menial jobs and shut out of social and economic opportunity.

For much of independent India's history, the country's top judges have struggled to speak about Dalits in ways that recognise dignity rather than reinforce stigma, the study found. That tension - between progressive legal outcomes and regressive language - is the central paradox documented in a sweeping review of 75 years of judgments of the top court.

The University of Melbourne-funded research, conducted in partnership with the Supreme Court, offers a rare internal reckoning for one of the world's most powerful judiciaries.

The study examines "constitution bench" rulings - decided by five or more judges - from 1950 to 2025. These rulings are especially important because they set legal precedents, are taught in law schools, invoked in courtrooms and cited by later benches.

Anchoring The Indo–Pacific: How India’s Andaman Transhipment Hub Redefines Supply Chain

Ruben Nag

India’s journey toward supply-chain independence has always had a strange blind spot: the sea. For a country that stretches across 7,500 kilometres of coastline, far too much of its cargo still makes a courtesy call to someone else’s port.

A recent technical paper on Nicobar’s bunkering potential puts numbers to something everyone quietly knew — India has been sailing past its own advantage for decades. And when the government finally acknowledged the dormant potential of the islands in its official announcement, it wasn’t a revelation; it was an overdue admission. The real inflection point came earlier, when the Andamans were reimagined not as a distant archipelago but as an unclaimed economic orbit. The early blueprint from NITI Aayog treated the islands the way companies treat underperforming assets — underutilised, badly positioned in national priorities, yet sitting on a geography the world would kill for. Subsequent legal assessments, like those unpacked in policy analyses, merely confirmed what the map had always implied: India had left strategic value lying on the table.

Only when the plans for Galathea Bay surfaced did the conversation finally shift from “what if” to “why not.” Commentaries, including economic retrospectives, compared the scale to global mega-ports, while strategic columns such as naval-focused reports pointed out that its proximity to chokepoints wasn’t a coincidence it was the whole point. But the most important shift wasn’t in the analysis; it was in the attitude. As one sharp economic review in a national commentary observed indirectly, India has finally stopped looking at the Andamans as an obligation and started looking at them as leverage. That psychological shift matters more than any feasibility report. Sometimes, a nation doesn’t gain power by expanding outward — it gains power by noticing what was always under its feet.

The Great Energy Transformation in China

Ligang Song, Yixiao Zhou

In 2020, China started the drive to commence a reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2060, setting in motion a transition to a green, sustainable and clean economy. China has ambitiously developed clean energy alternatives to coal. This transformation encompasses multifaceted strategies ranging from investment in renewable energy and the development of low-emission technologies to more stringent policy regulations on emissions. Renewable energy sources like hydroelectric power, wind, solar and biomass have received substantial attention and investment, with China emerging as a global leader in renewable energy capacity.

In the technology space, China’s transitioning to electric vehicles (EVs) has catalysed the development of a robust EV market, fostering innovation in battery technology and charging infrastructure. China has now become the largest exporter of EVs in the world market. These developments have the potential to materially help curb the world’s carbon footprint and mitigate environmental degradation.

Nevertheless, challenges persist domestically, including the need for grid modernisation to accommodate intermittent renewable energy sources and addressing the socio-economic impacts on coal-dependent regions. In the international market, China’s efforts towards a cleaner and more sustainable energy landscape have helped position it as a leader in sustainable economic development. This could enhance trade of green products, the development of global renewable energy and international investments in energy transformation. However, global trade and investment in green technologies and products are faced with rising geopolitical tensions and trade protectionism. This book discusses China’s achievements in its transition towards renewable energies and identifies new opportunities and challenges for deepening energy transformation in China.

China vs. Korea: Who Is Winning the Battery Battle in Hungary?

Viktor Eszterhai and Zoltán Vörös

Hungary has become one of the clearest windows into the unstoppable advance of Chinese competitiveness in the global battery industry. What began as a Korean-led success story is now transforming into a live demonstration of how quickly – and how decisively – Chinese firms can reshape high-tech markets. Billions in new investments, massive gigafactory projects, and rapid technological expansion are redefining the balance of power in Europe’s EV sector.

For Hungary, this shift is both a monumental opportunity and a growing economic risk. The country set out to build a world-class battery hub, hoping the sector would become a new engine of growth. Instead, the landscape now shows a more complex reality: Chinese capacity is surging, while the Korean pioneers who first anchored the industry are seeing production fall, utilization drop, and orders slip away.

With a long-standing automotive industry accounting for a third of industrial output, the government views the shift to electric vehicles not as a challenge, but as an opportunity to secure and modernize its critical car manufacturing base. Batteries are seen as indispensable to this future, and Hungary aims to become a leading European hub for EV production and the full associated supply chain. To achieve this, the country is localizing every part of the battery ecosystem – cathodes, anodes, separators, and assembly lines – while actively inviting global technology leaders to establish operations on Hungarian soil.

5 Chinese Workers Killed in 2 Attacks in Tajikistan Along Afghan Border

Catherine Putz

China’s embassy in Tajikistan has urged Chinese businesses and workers to evacuate the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border areas where several Chinese citizens were killed in what Tajik authorities say were a pair of cross-border attacks in late November.

Three Chinese citizens were killed in an attack on November 26. According to Tajikistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the attack originated in Afghanistan and targeted a Shohin SM compound in the Shamsiddin Shohin district in Khatlon Region along the Afghan-Tajik border. Shohin SM is a private gold-mining company, one of many Chinese enterprises operating in Tajikistan.

The attack was carried out, the ministry said, “using firearms and a drone equipped with a missile.” The ministry blamed “criminal groups” located in Afghanistan, without naming any specific group.

Other reports, such as Reuters, referred to drones dropping grenades.

In Afghanistan, Taliban authorities condemned the attack. Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Hafiz Zia Ahmad Takal said that an initial assessment initiated that “this incident involves elements that are trying to create chaos, instability, and distrust between countries in the region,” according to the Associated Press.

Is China preparing for war in the Taiwan Strait?

Rafael Pinto Borges

Something may be afoot in the Far East. As tensions rise in the Taiwan Strait and Beijing launches an unprecedented media campaign against Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, of course the question is not whether China maintains an interest in achieving reunification with Formosa—this has been an explicit strategic aim of the People’s Republic since 1949, when, at the end of the country’s Civil War, Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek withdrew what was left of his battered forces across the strait. Instead, what has long mattered is whether the political and military developments in Beijing are shifting the likelihood, timing, or shape of a possible conflict. The internal changes unfolding within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) may offer in this regard important clues.

Over the past year, Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to have fired a large number of high-ranking generals and admirals, including figures responsible for the nation’s rocket forces, equipment procurement, and theatre-level operations. It is significant that these were not mid-tier officers; several sat at the uppermost levels of China’s military hierarchy. The current purge is exceptional in that it is targeting particularly big fish: He Weidong, China’s second-highest-ranking general was publicly expelled from the Communist Party; the same occurred to Admiral Miao Hua, until recently the People’s Liberation Army top political officer. His eviction marks the first time since the Cultural Revolution that a sitting commander of the Party’s Central Military Commission – China’s supreme military leadership organ – faces such opprobrium.

From crisis to recovery: managing the environmental impacts of armed conflict

James Dayani, Fruzsina Straus and Atila Uras

The environmental toll of armed conflict is neither insignificant nor fleeting: it contaminates water, soil, and air, erodes ecosystems, undermines livelihoods, and burdens public health long after the fighting stops. The damage both mirrors and magnifies humanitarian crises, from Gaza’s mountains of debris to Ukraine’s flood-borne pollutants, to Sudan’s industrial contamination. Compounded by the impacts of the climate crisis, these environmental challenges only deepen the vulnerabilities of those affected by conflict. Understanding and addressing the interwoven impacts of conflict and the environment is essential for global climate, nature, pollution and sustainable development efforts, and to ensure that people can live and thrive in a healthy, secure and resilient environment.

In this post, part of the War, Law and the Environment series, the UNEP Disasters and Conflicts Branch reflects on its decades of work helping countries address these challenges, charting a path from emergency response to long-term recovery. Through science-based assessments, practical guidance, and strategic partnerships, UNEP is equipping states to address the toxic legacies of war, restore ecosystems, and build resilience into the reconstruction process. Recent UN resolutions, including UNEA’s 2024 consensus decision, underscore growing political recognition that protecting the environment in armed conflict is integral to peace and recovery. What emerges is a vision of environmental response not as an afterthought to war, but as a cornerstone of recovery, and an entry point to build back greener, fairer, and stronger in the shadow of destruction.

The Legal Consequences of Pete Hegseth’s “Kill Them All” Order

Erika Santelices

Last week, the Washington Post reported that, in early September, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the military to kill everyone on board a boat in the Caribbean suspected of carrying drugs. After an initial strike on the boat, two men were still alive; a second missile was launched to comply with Hegseth’s order. In the past three months, similar strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and the Pacific have killed more than eighty people; the Post report was only the most disturbing example in a campaign that many legal experts and government officials believe to be unlawful. (On Sunday, President Trump said that Hegseth told him he had not given such an order.) This past weekend, the Republican heads of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, in a rare break from Trump, joined the ranking Democrats on the committees in calling for further investigation of the September attack.

To talk about the Trump Administration’s strikes, I called Todd Huntley, the director of the National Security Law program at Georgetown University Law Center. Huntley previously served as a judge advocate in the Navy for more than two decades. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the apparent illegality of what has been reported about this attack, the similarities and differences between this strike and the worst parts of America’s drone wars, and, more broadly, what the Trump Administration wants to do to the culture of the U.S. military.

Romania No Longer Turns Blind Eye to Russia’s Airspace Violations

George Visan

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has transformed Romania into an unintended victim of drone warfare. Russian and occasionally Ukrainian drones and aircraft have strayed into Romania’s airspace. On November 17, a drone incident involved a Russian drone hitting a liquified-natural gas (LNG) carrier anchored in the Ukrainian Danube port of Izmail during a nighttime raid, which led Romanian authorities to evacuate two villages close to the river to protect the local population from a potential catastrophic explosion (Mediafax, November 17). Previously, a Russian drone crashed in the Danube Delta, on Romanian territory (MApN.ro, November 11).

Russia is using these repeated violations of Romanian airspace and sovereignty to avoid Ukrainian air defenses and test Bucharest’s willingness to stand up for itself on the Eastern Flank and on the Black Sea. At stake are both Romania’s credibility on the Eastern Flank before its allies and Russia, and public perception of the country’s ability to defend itself. Romanian policymakers have slowly realized that Russian incursions must be stopped, which may involve the use of force.

Putin Puts Ethnic Russians at Center of Nationality Policy

Paul Goble

Moscow’s formal nationality policy has, up to now, focused on the non-Russians living within the borders of Russia rather than on the ethnic Russian majority. Some ethnic Russian nationalists have long complained about this policy, even when the Russian government pursued intensive linguistic Russianization and cultural and political Russification campaigns (see EDM, June 24). Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has changed this long-held policy. In the new nationality strategy paper he signed on November 25, which sets out his goals for the next decade, Putin has put ethnic Russians at the center of the country’s nationality policy (Government of Russia, November 25). The new strategy demands that non-Russians identify as civic Russians, a group Putin defines exclusively in terms of ethnic Russian values (Readovka; Vzglyad; Meduza, November 26). On the one hand, this will please many ethnic Russian nationalist groups and encourage them to become even more aggressive (see EDM, October 15, 2024). On the other hand, it will anger many non-Russians, who will view this as a further attack on their national institutions, leaving their cultures as little more than folkloric groups (The Moscow Times, May 11). This sets the stage for a new era of tension and clashes between the two groups, one that will ultimately threaten both ethnic Russians and non-Russians alike. Putin will be able to manage this tension only by increasing repression, and in the short term, he will need to create a new bureaucratic structure to manage the situation.

Bhutan's long-secluded 'hidden paradise'

Kelzang Dorjee

Bhutan only opened to the outside world in 1974. Yet, one region remained closed for decades afterwards, and is one of the Himalayas' best-kept secrets.

It's 05:00 and 100 people have gathered in the courtyard of Lhakhang Karpo, a 7th-Century monastery at the base of three sacred mountains in Bhutan's secluded Haa Valley.

Incense plumes swirl in the mist. Pink rice porridge with Sichuan pepper steams in vats. Low, thrumming chants hum through me. Then: drums. A blast of dungchen trumpets. Crackling, cawing victory calls and – pow!

This isn't your typical Buddhist festival. I'm at the Ap Chundu Lhapsoel, a 10km procession held every 1 November in honour of the valley's warrior deity who helped locals defeat invading Tibetans in the 17th Century. It's the nation's longest chipdrel (ceremonial procession) – and the only one where tourists are welcomed – yet few visitors have ever heard of it. In a way, the festival is a metaphor for Haa itself.

Electromagnetic Warfare: NATO's Blind Spot Could Decide the Next Conflict

Clara Le Gargasson and James Black

The war in Ukraine has exposed a critical front long neglected by Western militaries: electromagnetic warfare (EW). Control over this invisible battlespace, where communications are jammed, drones blinded, and precision weapons thrown off course, can decide the outcome of a conflict. Russia has understood this sooner than NATO, using EW to isolate Ukrainian units, disrupt command networks, and neutralize Western systems. Ukraine has adapted with ingenuity, but it is learning in combat what NATO should have learned in training. After decades focused on counterinsurgency, the Alliance now risks confronting its most capable adversary without mastery of a defining domain of modern warfare.

This is not to say that EW is a new phenomenon. The electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) has been an element of warfare since the early 1900s and the birth of signals intelligence (SIGINT), when the interception of naval radio transmissions helped Imperial Japan to defeat Tsarist Russia in 1905. The EMS was gradually instrumentalised in different ways: via radar and the interception and cracking of Enigma in World War 2, radio broadcast jamming in the Cold War, guidance systems jamming in the Yom Kippur War, and GPS jamming in the Gulf War. But despite periodic discoveries of new and varied ways to use EW, Western militaries deprioritised such technologies in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as part of a broader shift away from large-scale, state-on-state warfighting towards counterinsurgency.

MAGA’s Death Wish

STEPHEN HOLMES

NEW YORK – Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the federal government has slashed approximately $2.7 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health, including a proposed 37% cut to the National Cancer Institute. The Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium – a network that has spent 26 years developing experimental treatments for the leading cause of cancer death in children – learned in August that it would lose its federal funding.

Make Russia Pay for Its War on Ukraine

JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ & ANDREW KOSENKO explain why it is in Europe's interest to mobilize frozen Russian assets to ensure Ukraine's survival.

Clinical trials have stopped accepting new patients. Families whose children were weeks away from experimental treatments are scrambling for alternatives.

But much more than cancer research is on Trump’s chopping block, including the architecture of international peace. Trump has announced plans to halt security assistance programs for Europe’s eastern flank, even as Russian drones violate NATO airspace. His defense secretary, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, has called European NATO allies “pathetic” and dismissed them as “freeloaders.” Josep Borrell, the European Union’s former foreign policy chief, recently declared that the United States “can no longer be considered an ally of Europe.” After 80 years of leadership in the transatlantic alliance, America is walking away.

Your Questions, Complaints and Feedback for Our Editor, Joe Kahn

Patrick Healy

How does The New York Times cover the fire hose of news from the Trump administration? What journalistic principles drive that coverage? Why does The Times publish work that challenges our audience’s assumptions at a time when many people want their views validated? Where do we wish we had more reporters based? And who makes these decisions?

The “who” is Joe Kahn, the executive editor of The Times since June 2022, who leads our newsroom of more than 2,000 journalists. Joe has run our coverage of the turbulent American economy, the war in Ukraine, the Oct. 7 attacks, the Israel-Hamas war, President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s exit and now a second Trump administration that is challenging the rule of law, free speech and alliances — while becoming the most consequential presidency since Ronald Reagan’s.

Why America Is Removing Thousands Of Dams And Letting Rivers Run Free

Tara Lohan

After centuries of dam building, a nationwide movement to dismantle these aging barriers is showing how free-flowing rivers can restore ecosystems, improve safety, and reconnect people with nature.

With more than 550,000 dams in the United States, free-flowing rivers are an endangered species. We’ve dammed, diked, and diverted almost every major river in the country, straightening curves, pinching off floodplains, and blocking passage for fish and other aquatic animals. But this has come at a great cost. Freshwater biodiversity—all the organisms that hail from our rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands—is among the most threatened on the planet. Dams have played a big role in that demise, pushing fish, mussels, and other animals to the brink, and some over it. In North America, nearly 40 percent of fish are imperiled, and 61 species have blinked out since 1900.

A growing dam removal movement has led to some 2,200 dams being blasted and backhoed from U.S. rivers—most of them in the past 25 years. It’s an extraordinary turn of events for a dam-loving country. Europeans began erecting river barriers soon after they arrived in North America. Massachusetts’s Old Oaken Bucket Pond Dam, built in 1640, is one of the country’s oldest known dams. Thousands more followed across New England, then down the East Coast, and eventually westward. They powered mills that ground corn, cut lumber, forged tack, and produced textiles. As dams raised the height of the water behind them, they also smothered rapids and white water so that logs could be floated from upstream forests—where they were felled—to downstream industry, where they were processed. After hydroelectric power replaced mechanical power in the 1880s, the dams kept towns and cities alight.

After the Gaza War, Israel Faces a New Region

Eran Ortal

The battle lines in the Middle East have shifted to reveal three coalitions: the Turkey-Qatar bloc, the battered Iranian “Axis of Resistance,” and the “pro-stability” grouping of Israel and the Gulf States.As the Gaza war comes to a fragile (and possibly temporary) end, it’s prudent to take stock of the geostrategic environment Israel will have to face in the foreseeable future. At first glance, the picture is rosy. Although the regional conflict precipitated by the atrocities of October 7 ranks as Israel’s longest war, it has yielded major military achievements.

Through it, Israel has managed to mostly eliminate the immediate threat posed by Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israeli military’s Fall 2024 Lebanon campaign profoundly destabilized the group, eliminating thousands of its fighters and the bulk of its previously formidable missile arsenal. It also set the stage for a winter offensive by rebels in neighboring Syria that led to the overthrow of the Assad regime and the elimination of a key Iranian ally (as well as the Islamic Republic’s land bridge to Lebanon).

Huge Ukrainian Strike Destroys Key Russian Suicide Drone Hub

Stavros Atlamazoglou

In 2025, Russia has launched more than 44,000 one-way drone attacks against Ukraine. While peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia continue, the Ukrainian military conducted a large-scale attack against a major Russian suicide drone base. Attacking Russian Suicide Drone Bases On November 5, the Ukrainian military fired missiles and suicide drones against a Russian drone base close to the Donetsk airport. The Russian forces used the base to store, assemble, and launch suicide unmanned aerial systems (UAS).

“One building, reportedly used for warhead storage, was destroyed in Ukraine’s strike, two further buildings sustained damage, and a fourth sustained minimal damage to its roof. UAS pre-launch infrastructure, a fuel depot and an ammunition warehouse are reported to have been damaged in the strike,” the British Ministry of Defence assessed in its most recent operational update on the war in Ukraine. According to open source reporting, the Russian drone base housed over 1,000 Geran-2 suicide drones. The unmanned aerial system is a replica of the highly successful Iranian Shahed-136 suicide drone.

The OODAcon 2025 Annual Global Threat Brief

Daniel Pereira

OODAcon 2025’s Annual Global Threat Brief opened with an unflinching warning: the most dangerous disruptions reshaping the world are no longer confined to distant adversaries or geopolitical flashpoints: they are unfolding inside the systems we rely on every day.

In a fast-moving, scenario-driven session, intelligence expert Jen Hoar and former DIA Chief of Staff Johnny Sawyer reset the room’s situational awareness, outlining how internal polarization, AI-accelerated information warfare, and competing techno-economic models are redefining national security.

The message was unmistakable: in 2025, America’s greatest vulnerability is not an external foe, but the accelerating fracturing within its own society (a trend that technology is amplifying at unprecedented speed).

Saving Billions, Cynically: A Very Special Military Operation

Manucharian Grigoriy

According to World Prison Brief data, Russia held approximately 602,000 prisoners in 2018. By late 2023, this number plummeted to historic lows of roughly 249,000, as reported by SWP. While differences in reporting methodology account for some variance, the trend is undeniable: the system has been hollowed out. Ukrainian Intelligence attributes at least 180,000 people to inmate recruitment practices. The same intelligence source indicates payment withholding practices and a casualty rate of nearly 70-80%—with tens of thousands killed in action. Which, compounded, underlines an economic reality: Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) saved more than half a billion USD in 2022-2023, and the Russian Armed Forces gained soldiers who require minimal training and no veteran benefits, healthcare, or pension—a package that represents nearly $12 billion in avoided personnel expenditure. Since then, Ukraine has also implemented similar recruitment practices, with its Shkval Battalion.

“I can say with confidence: we’ve lowered crime in Russia tenfold, and we’ve trained former prisoners better than they trained Pioneers and Little Octobrists during Soviet times,” affirmed Prigozhin in 2023. His approach involved high-casualty, often suicidal, “human wave” tactics, which ensures that a significant portion of the most violent criminals are permanently removed from society. “It’s either them [the prisoners] or your children, decide for yourself,” he would say.

USAF Fighter Jets’ New Strategy on Isolated Island

Andy Wong Ming Jun

For the first time, the US Air Force is deploying fighter jets to the secretive, remote island military base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, a powerful signal to China about the survivability of US combat airpower in the Asia-Pacific.

The deployment, announced on November 18, is part of the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment (ACE) doctrine, a program that relies on dispersing aircraft to multiple, smaller locations instead of large, traditional bases to counter potential threats by aggressors seeking to deny strategic space to the US military.

The 7,000 km distance between Japan’s Kadena Air Base on Okinawa and Diego Garcia is significantly farther than those between American Pacific bases like Pearl Harbor or Guam, and with anticipated Chinese-contested battle spaces in the Western Pacific over Japan and the Taiwan Strait. The deployment on short notice, given the F-15E Strike Eagles’ maximum ferry range of about 4,450 km, is a demonstration of the ACE force’s agility, requiring midair refueling over the ocean in a complicated ballet involving tanker aircraft like the KC-135 Stratotanker or KC-46 Pegasus, allowing them to extend their range, transforming them from regional to global assets.

Unlawful Orders and Killing Shipwrecked Boat Strike Survivors: An Expert Backgrounder

Michael Schmitt, Ryan Goodman and Tess Bridgeman

The question of when it is lawful for U.S. military personnel to refuse an unlawful order has become a point of discussion in the political arena. Those conversations took a turn with the Washington Post and CNN reporting over Thanksgiving weekend that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had issued a verbal order to “kill everyone” in the initial U.S. military strike on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, resulting in U.S. special forces’ allegedly killing two shipwrecked survivors who were clinging to the wreckage of their vessel on Sept. 2, 2025.

In this article, we do not engage with the political discussion, but rather examine the law that applies to the alleged facts of the operation and Hegseth’s reported order. And with respect to the legal assessment of that operation, we will not be dealing with the broader question of whether the attack on the boat was unlawful as such, which it was (see articles published at Just Security by Marty Lederman, Michael Schmitt, and a podcast discussion with Tess Bridgeman, Brian Finucane, and Rebecca Ingber). Instead, we focus on a narrower aspect of the strike, the purported order to kill all aboard the vessel and the resulting second strike on the boat that killed the survivors.

As a matter of law, there are two central issues to address. The first concerns the circumstances in which military personnel have a duty to refuse to obey an order and, relatedly, whether a superior order can relieve them of criminal responsibility. The second is whether the orders in this case triggered that duty or provided those involved a defense. As both issues are context-dependent, we begin with the facts.

Embodied AI: China’s Big Bet on Smart Robots

Pavlo Zvenyhorodskyi and Scott Singer

On what at first glance appeared to be an ordinary workday in March this year at the factory of China’s leading EV manufacturer, Zeekr, a small team of workers went about their usual tasks: lifting boxes, assembling car parts, and performing quality checks. But unlike any typical shift, none of them paused to rest or even stopped for a drink of water. The reason—they were not human. These UBTech robots, powered by a multimodal reasoning model based on DeepSeek R1, were the first publicly known group of humanoid robots deployed as a coordinated team to carry out a wide range of tasks in a complex, real-world industrial setting.1 Just a few months later, UBTech unveiled the Walker S2, the world’s first humanoid robot capable of autonomously changing its own batteries—potentially enabling uninterrupted, twenty-four-hour operation on the factory floor without any human assistance.2

These demonstrations offer a glimpse into leading Chinese companies’ ability to translate frontier AI capabilities into useful real-world industrial applications. More significantly, these private sector achievements have become central to Beijing’s evolving national AI strategy, which seeks to leverage China’s combined strengths in AI software and robotics hardware to achieve a distinctive form of technological leadership. While Washington and most of Silicon Valley focus primarily on scaling large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and digital AI applications, Beijing has placed a fundamentally different bet. It believes that true AI dominance will come from systems capable of autonomous operation in the physical world—AI-powered robotics, commonly known as embodied AI.

The Robotification of Warfare: Strategic Imperatives for the Robotic Age

Richard Brennan III

The character of warfare has transformed with the rise of robotic and autonomous systems, which now define warfare rather than merely shaping it. Robotification—the integration of autonomous machines to replace human roles in combat and support functions—offers unprecedented flexibility, as seen in Ukraine’s drone mass-attacks and the U.S. Army’s Transformation in Contact initiative.[1] Unlike earlier technologies that enhanced human capabilities, robotic systems eliminate human presence, enabling low-cost assets to defeat advanced defenses with speed and scale. This shift demands a rethinking of doctrine, training and leadership to maintain U.S. dominance against adaptive adversaries like China. This transformation demands a massive course correction across the Department of War (DoW)—both culturally and technologically.

In The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy traces the arc of military history through technological revolutions that redefine the character of conflict, from the Macedonian sarissa to the rifle. An era is marked when innovations are not just realized but become incorporated into processes, doctrine and strategies. They are scaled when markets are created that support the innovation—especially when dual-use applications are viable. Each era, marked by innovations like gunpowder or the internal combustion engine, reshaped strategy, tactics and battlefield dynamics by enhancing lethality, mobility and operational flexibility. Dupuy’s paradox—that as weapons grow deadlier, casualty rates often decline—underscores the enduring principles of warfare despite technological shifts.[2] Major General Adna R. Chaffee’s “Mechanization in the Army” illustrates how tanks and aircraft restored mobility, breaking trench warfare’s stalemate and altering battlefield geometry.[3] Today, the rise of robotic and autonomous systems signals the dawn of a new era, extending Dupuy’s framework by introducing machines that operate independently, replacing humans on the battlefield and redefining warfare’s strategic landscape.

Digital Sovereignty Diplomacy: Structural Challenges For Small States In The Technological Era

Amb. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Arben Cici

In the past decade, the concept of digital sovereignty has become one of the most debated and contested themes in contemporary foreign policy, challenging classical models of state authority. In a world where power is no longer solely territorial but increasingly infrastructural, technological, and algorithmic, states face the paradox of a digital space that belongs simultaneously to everyone and to no one. While traditional diplomacy operates through well-defined borders, the internet and global data ecosystems evolve beyond jurisdiction, making national control an increasingly elusive objective.

Within this context, digital sovereignty is not merely an issue of domestic regulation; it is a strategic dimension of foreign policy in which states attempt to safeguard their technological autonomy in a global arena dominated by transnational corporations, international standards designed by major powers, and infrastructural architectures that often lie outside their direct control.

Australia’s National AI Plan Has Just Been Released. Who Exactly Will Benefit?

Jake Goldenfein, Christine Parke, and Kimberlee Weatherall

Today, the Albanese Labor government released the long-awaited National AI Plan, “a whole-of-government framework that ensures technology works for people, not the other way around.”

With this plan, the government promises an inclusive artificial intelligence (AI) economy that protects workers, fills service gaps, and supports local AI development.

In a major reversal, it also confirms Australia won’t implement mandatory guardrails for high-risk AI. Instead, it argues that the country’s existing legal regime is sufficient, and any minor changes for specific AI harms or risk can be managed with help from a new A$30 million AI Safety Institute within the Department of Industry.

Avoiding big changes to Australia’s legal system makes sense in light of the plan’s primary goal – making Australia an attractive location for international data center investment.

The Initial Caution Is Gone

After the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022 ushered in a generative AI boom, initial responses focused on existential risks posed by AI. Leading AI figures even called for a pause on all AI research. Governments outlined plans to regulate.

8 December 2025

Is Russia India’s Best Friend?

Raymond Vickery

Russian president Vladimir Putin arrives in New Delhi on December 4 for two days of talks in the 23rd annual India-Russia Summit. He will be greeted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a bear hug, and Russia will be hailed as India’s “best friend” or some equivalent verbiage. But this will be nothing new. When he first became prime minister in 2014, Modi remarked at a BRICS meeting with Putin that “Every child in India knows that Russia is our best friend.” Modi has continued to use various verbal formulations of this supposed superlative Russian relationship with India whenever he has met with Putin, and this meeting will be no different.

Modi’s “best friend” view of Russia has strong popular and, therefore, political support in India. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center study, “Indians stand out on overall favorability of Russia as the only place among the 24 countries surveyed this year where majorities say they have a favorable opinion of Russia and have confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin.” A recent report from the Center for Naval Analysis indicates that, in some aspects, Russia-India relations have actually improved since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In spite of President Donald Trump’s up-and-down relationship with Putin, Russia remains, at best, a strategic competitor of the United States. Further, Trump’s recent treatment of India is likely to have strengthened, not weakened, India-Russia ties. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s renewed confrontation with a liberal world order show that a “best friend” deference to Putin’s Russia constitutes a significant challenge to closer cooperation between the world’s two largest democracies.

China — The Real Winner From Russian Victory in Ukraine

Alina Polyakova and Christopher Walker

What might Europe look like if the fighting finally ends in Ukraine? Would we return to a pre-2022 continent of mutual suspicion but broad economic ties to Russia? Or something very different and even more concerning?

That, of course, depends on the exact terms agreed by the warring parties and their various backers. But any deal favorable to Vladimir Putin, a deal in which Ukraine effectively loses its sovereignty, would also be warmly welcomed by China as an endorsement of its efforts to tilt the outcome.

China has gambled on Putin and would expect to collect its winnings. And given the now-extraordinary mismatch in power between the two countries — China’s national wealth is more than eight times greater than Russia’s — Putin’s diminished and dependent country would have little choice but to agree.

The Ideological Security Dilemma in International Relations: The Case of US–China Ideological Competition

Sungmin Cho

Why does ideological competition between states intensify despite opportunities for coexistence? This article develops a theory of the ideological security dilemma to explain this puzzle. Like the military security dilemma, states may take defensive measures to safeguard the legitimacy of their own ideology, but these actions can be interpreted by others as ideological offensives aimed at weakening the legitimacy of rival ideologies. I test the theory through a process tracing of US–China ideological competition from 1991 to 2024. I find that although the United States initially hoped China would democratize voluntarily, democratizing China was not a central policy goal. Conversely, while China seeks global respect for its “China model,” actively exporting authoritarian ideology is not its goal either. Nevertheless, China perceives US efforts as aimed at regime change, prompting Beijing to promote the “China model” more assertively as a countermeasure to what it sees as a US ideological assault. This intensifies US fears of the global spread of authoritarianism and triggers further counteractions. This study integrates constructivist and realist approaches while drawing on insights from comparative politics on regime legitimacy and democratization.

China's military firms struggle as corruption purge bites, report says

Greg Torode

Item 1 of 4 A member of the People's Liberation Army stands as the strategic strike group displays YJ-21 missiles during a military parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, in Beijing, China, September 3, 2025. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang/File Photo

[1/4]A member of the People's Liberation Army stands as the strategic strike group displays YJ-21 missiles during a military parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, in Beijing, China, September 3, 2025. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

HONG KONG, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Revenues at China's giant military firms fell last year as corruption purges slowed arms contracts and procurement, according to a study released on Monday by a leading conflict think tank.

The Chinese declines contrast with strong revenue growth globally for big arms and military-services companies, fuelled by wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and global and regional tensions, the research by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found.

"A host of corruption allegations in Chinese arms procurement led to major arms contracts being postponed or cancelled in 2024," said Nan Tian, director of SIPRI's Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.

The rot eating at China's war machine

Gabriel Honrada

China’s drive to build a modern, high-tech military is increasingly undermined by a widening corruption crisis that is raising doubts about its true strength.

This month, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released a report mentioning that China’s major state-owned defense firms suffered the steepest downturn among the world’s top arms producers in 2024, as corruption scandals rippled through the sector and disrupted procurement.

According to the report, arms revenues of the eight Chinese companies on the list fell 10% to USD 88.3 billion, the sharpest decline of any country, dragging down overall regional performance. SIPRI researchers said six firms saw revenue losses after high-profile graft probes triggered postponements, cancellations and reviews of major military contracts.

Specifically, the report mentions that China North Industries Group Corporation Limited (NORINCO), China’s biggest land-systems maker, reported a 31% plunge in sales after the government removed its chairman and the head of its military division over corruption allegations, prompting delays to key projects.

Similarly, the report says that China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) recorded a 16% revenue drop as satellite and launch-vehicle programs were postponed following the corruption-linked dismissal of its president.

Tomorrow’s Wars, Today’s Problems

Larry Kay, Christopher Hanes

“To maintain our edge on the battlefield, our Army will transform to a leaner, more lethal force by adapting how we fight, train, organize, and buy equipment.”

The character of war is shifting faster than traditional defense institutions can adapt. Autonomous systems are proliferating, sensors are everywhere, and dual-use technologies evolve at a pace that continually threatens to outmatch U.S. forces. To remain dominant and decisive, the Army must transform not only how it fights, but also how it trains and develops Soldiers and leaders. The recent consolidation of Army Futures Command and Training and Doctrine Command into the Army Transformation and Training Command (T2COM) signals that transformation and training can no longer be treated as separate enterprises. Instead, transformation must be embedded in the way Soldiers are trained, units are organized, and leaders are educated. T2COM enables Transformation in Contact (TiC) by reshaping training at the tactical level, institutionalizing new capabilities, sustaining operational reach, blending innovation with competition, and cultivating data-literate leaders who can think and adapt in real time.

Winning the Tactical Reconnaissance-Strike Fight: Lessons from Centaur Squadron

George Pavlakis and Randall Towles

Picture kilometer-long columns of destroyed tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Drones fly overhead while electromagnetic sensors silently parse through frantic radio transmissions. Thousands of soldiers are massed for an attack, only to stall under pummeling indirect fires. This scene could easily describe contemporary combat as warfare’s changing character makes reconnaissance and strike platforms available to any potential US adversary. But rather than an anecdote from a distant conflict, this scenario is what the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment “Blackhorse”—the National Training Center’s (NTC) resident opposing force unit—has begun to inflict on rotational training units (RTUs). At NTC, the realities of reconnaissance-strike battle are painfully present, posing a challenge for RTUs that can prepare them to face the real threat on future battlefields.

Centaur Squadron, Blackhorse’s purpose-built reconnaissance-strike complex, organically combines wheeled antitank and armored transport vehicles, scouts, unmanned aircraft system (UAS) operators, and electronic warfare (EW) assets. These platforms offer a combination of high tactical mobility, long-range observation, and dense firepower that feeds directly into the regimental targeting and integration cell to complete the kill chain. Centaur can also expand depending on mission variables to include light infantry, mortar carriers, and engineers.

Under Attack at Home

Brandon Chappo

Too Many Military Families Are Sickened by Base Housing

Some meetings can profoundly change your life. Not long ago, I met with a passionate military Mom from Alabama whose family experienced devastating consequences from living in a water-damaged home in base housing. The conversation left me speechless. For 22 years, Erica Thompson’s family has lived an honorable life of service, moving when the military told them to move, settling into homes they didn’t get to choose, and trusting that the place they laid their heads each night was safe. That trust was broken after their experience.

Like thousands of other military families, Erica’s family learned the hard way that the biggest threat to their health and well-being wasn’t across an ocean or a threat from a foreign enemy. It was inside their own home.

The nonprofit Change the Air Foundation recently released an independently administered national survey and a 10-minute documentary, The Hidden Enemy, that puts data and real stories behind what too many in Washington continue to overlook: Military housing is still failing our families, harming their health, and threatening national security. The survey findings echo the experiences of Erica’s family and so many others stationed across the country.

Russian tanker struck off Turkiye as Ukraine targets ‘shadow fleet’

A Russian-flagged tanker in the Black Sea has reported being attacked off the Turkish coast, the third such vessel to have been targeted within a week.

The Turkish Directorate General of Maritime Affairs said on Tuesday that the Midvolga-2 had reported coming under attack about 130km (80 miles) from land.

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The tanker was reportedly carrying sunflower oil to Georgia. The attack follows strikes by Ukrainian naval drones on two Russian-flagged vessels that Kyiv said were part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” shipping crude exports in violation of international sanctions.

Friday’s strikes saw Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warn that attacks on commercial shipping in the Black Sea signalled a “worrying escalation” of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The 13 members of the Midvolga-2 crew were unharmed, the directorate said on X, adding that the vessel had not requested assistance and it was proceeding towards Turkiye’s Sinop port. It did not provide further details, but Turkish TV channel NTV reported that a kamikaze drone was used. A Turkish official told the Reuters news agency that in response to the incident, “the necessary messages were conveyed to the relevant parties, including Ukrainian authorities”.

Ten Years Later, Terror Goes Unnamed

Lloyd Billingsley

Ten years ago, on Dec. 2, 2015, Syed Farook arrived at his workplace—the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. As fellow employees prepared for a holiday party, the American-born Muslim slipped out the door. Just before 11 a.m., Farook returned in a black SUV with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, a Pakistan-born Muslim.

“Out of the blue, multiple popping sounds crackled outside,” first-hand accounts noted in a report by the Policing Institute. Inside, a door swung open and “a person clad in all black, with a mask shielding his or her face, stepped inside, wielding what appeared to be an automatic rifle.” It was Farook and Malik who “entered the room shooting.” One round hit a sprinkler pipe, causing water to pour from the ceiling as smoke filled the room. In the ensuing chaos:

The Nature of the Next American Cycle

George Friedman

The United States is in the middle of a storm, the tempest from which it will not emerge until the end of the decade. It’s part of a cycle that has defined the U.S. body politic since the American Revolution. The remaining question, from my point of view, is the nature of the next cycle, in terms of both institutional change and socio-economic change, that will usher in the next 50 or so years.

I wrote about these cyclical processes at length in my previous books and readers may recall I forecast that the next cycle will be determined largely by demography. The average life expectancy in the 18th century was 35 years. In the 19th century, it was 40 years. By the 21st, it has reached 78 years. Birth rates, meanwhile, have trended in the opposite direction. In the 19th century, the average fertility rate was 7.0 children per woman. In the early 20th century, it was 4.0. And today, it is roughly 1.7. Last week, The Washington Post published an article showing that, in some states, the number of total deaths outnumbered the number of total births.

Is the Ukraine War Over?

Jack Buckby

Australia is sending 49 of its retired M1A1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, a move that bolsters Kyiv's armored firepower but raises significant questions about survivability on the modern battlefield. While the donation is a welcome gesture, US officials have reportedly expressed private frustration, warning that Ukraine struggles to sustain the complex tanks and highlighting their vulnerability to cheap, top-attack FPV drones. The war in Ukraine has become a "drone war," where even advanced main battle tanks are at constant risk. The effectiveness of these donated Abrams will ultimately depend on Ukraine's ability to counter this pervasive threat.

Key Points and Summary: A renewed U.S.-led push to end the war in Ukraine has reached a critical, volatile phase as Washington officials shuttle between Kyiv and Moscow.

The Plan: Trump’s revised proposal aims to narrow differences on territory and security guarantees, but significant gaps remain.

Putin in 2025 Looking Stern. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The Sticking Points: Putin insists on retaining four annexed regions, while Zelenskyy refuses territorial concessions and demands NATO membership—positions both Trump and Putin oppose.

The Crisis: Complicating matters, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff and lead negotiator, Andrii Yermak, has resigned amid a corruption scandal, leaving the Ukrainian leadership to face international pressure in a weakened political state.

Why the Great Reset failed Technocrats are getting stupider

Mary Harrington

Only a Dadaist could enjoy the news headlines these days. Rachel Reeves faces accusations of lying about the national finances to justify raising taxes to buy votes, which she has done by penalising those trying to save for their own retirement. Her efforts have also set the graduate loan repayment threshold on track to converge with national minimum wage. The same government has also seen fit to cancel a popular commuter service on the nationalised London to Manchester line, only to admit the train will still run — just without passengers.

Every week is like this. Perhaps we should be used to it by now: the weirdness began in earnest six years ago, when the first Covid cases were reported in Wuhan, China. In short order, this triggered the worldwide lockdowns that forced everyone online, with economies in freefall and cultures into a pervasive state of low-level derangement.

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