Indian Strategic Studies: 01/11/25

11 January 2025

From friends to sworn enemies: Why Taliban are turning against Pakistan

Abhinav Pandya

Over the past 18 months, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has significantly increased its terror attacks on Pakistan’s armed forces, reportedly killing three to four SSG commandos daily. In recent weeks, however, these attacks have intensified. This escalation began after Pakistani air raids targeted suspected TTP hideouts deep within Afghan territory in Paktika province, killing 46 civilians. These airstrikes were carried out in response to a series of Taliban attacks launched to avenge the killing of their minister, Khaleel Haqqani, on 11 December, allegedly by the ISKP (Islamic State Khorasan Province). The ongoing turbulence and conflict along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border is likely to dominate regional geopolitics for at least the next ten to twelve years.

Ties Gone Sour

Pakistan’s ISI has nurtured and strengthened the Taliban as a robust proxy over the past 30 years. During the previous 20 years, while fighting against US forces, the Taliban found sanctuaries, ideological and logistical support, and favourable jihadist networks in Pakistan. The Taliban also strengthened its presence in several prominent Pakistani cities, such as Karachi, Quetta, and Peshawar. Pakistan-sponsored terrorist groups like Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba fought alongside the Taliban against US forces.

How ISIS May Respond to HTS’s Takeover: Rivalries, Strategy, and Future Challenges in Syria

Mahmut Cengiz

This article explores the growing influence of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria and the potential responses of ISIS, a longstanding rival, to HTS’s expanding control. HTS is seeking legitimacy and has garnered tacit approval from Western governments and regional actors, including the European Union, which is engaged in pragmatic relationships with the group due to the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis. The United States also closely monitors the situation as dynamics shift in the region. According to the Global Terrorism and Trends Analysis Center (GTTAC) database, which recorded nearly 8,000 attacks in Syria by 88 different terrorist groups from January 2018 to October 2024, ISIS remains the most dominant actor in terms of attack frequency, group size, and global reach. Despite some speculation about whether ISIS might withdraw from the region, its increasing operational capabilities and well-established presence suggest it will continue to challenge HTS’s leadership. The historical rivalry between ISIS and HTS raises the likelihood of ongoing conflict. While temporary ceasefires may occur, ISIS is expected to exploit any weaknesses in HTS’s governance, posing a significant challenge to long-term regional stability. Ultimately, ISIS’s resilience and strategic adaptability may undermine HTS’s attempts to consolidate power, further destabilizing Syria’s future trajectory.

Local Governance Under Taliban Rule, 2021-2023

Dr. Antonio Giustozzi

Introduction

Local governance relations in Afghanistan have recently come to constitute the epicentre of interventions by an array of (sometimes) contradictory intervening actors and institutions. For instance, over the last two decades, the central government has used and exploited local government resources in pursuit of an over-centralized governing structure. At the same time, however, international military forces have worked to bolster local government institutions for two purposes: force protection and winning the hearts and minds of local populations (see Nemat, 2015). Some international development institutions (e.g., World Bank, UNDP) have focused their interventions on state-building efforts, democratization, and institutional development. Other countries in the region as well as religious networks, such Salafi and Shi’a groups, have targeted Afghan communities for spreading their own influence by building madrasas or mosques and mobilizing people around them. The Taliban, too, had its own way of maintaining a more substantial presence at the sub-national level through the use of shadow provincial and district governors alongside military courts focused on the fast delivery of “justice.”[1] Hence, a clear understanding current local governance relations requires an in-depth picture of broader Afghan government relations and the interventions that preceded the Taliban’s return to power in mid-2021. This report’s aim is to unpack local and (especially) village-level government relations under Taliban rule by, for example, looking at the influence of different religious actors at the local level.

Ark Analysis: China's Critical Mineral Crackdown

Situation

On Dec. 3, 2024, the Chinese Commerce Ministry announced sweeping regulations to curb the export of materials to the United States that have potential military applications. Notably, the crackdown will stop or slow the export of several critical minerals to the U.S., including antimony, gallium, and germanium—all of which are used for the development of modern technology.

‍

Insights

Antimony, gallium, and germanium are critical for the creation of a range of both military and civilian products, including bullets, cables, infrared technology, EV batteries, and more. More than 20,000 individual parts used by DoD (plus the U.S. Coast Guard) are impacted by the regulations, affecting more than 1,000 weapons systems across all branches of the military.

DoD Parts Requiring:

Antimony: 6,335

Gallium: 11,351

Germanium: 12,777

Key Strategic Forces Takeaways from the 2024 China Military Power Repor

Rebeccah L. Heinrichs

China’s Nuclear Buildup

The Department of Defense has released its annual report to Congress on Chinese military developments. The report confirms that China is accelerating its strategic nuclear breakout. China now has over 600 fully operational nuclear warheads in its arsenal, up from the estimate of 500 in last year’s report. This supports the DoD’s assessment that China is on track to have 1,000 fully operational nuclear warheads by 2030. Official assessments expect China to complete its buildup and modernization efforts by 2035. However, Xi Jinping’s aim to replace the United States as the preeminent geopolitical power—and his attendant ambitions to undermine US security alliances—raises doubts that China will be satisfied with peer nuclear status rather than nuclear superiority.

The New START Treaty between the US and Russia is the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement. Yet Moscow is not complying with its verification requirements. The treaty limits each nation to 1,550 total deployed nuclear weapons between intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments (with each bomber counted as one warhead). The treaty is expected to expire in February 2027.

The New Great Game in the Middle East

Leon Hadar

Arab nationalism is, for all practical purposes, dead. The so-called “Arab World” has lost its unifying concern, Israel, and its outside support. It has disintegrated into geopolitical blocs, with three major non-Arab powers, Turkey, Iran, and Israel, competing for domination of the Levant region. Indeed, the heyday of twentieth-century Arab nationalism, when Egypt sought to unite the Arab people and Arab nationalist movements dominated the politics of the region, has been long over.

Egypt gave up its role as the leader of the Arab World after the signing of the Camp David Accords with Israel in 1978, just before Iran emerged as the prime revolutionary force in the region. In 1991, the radical Arab regimes lost their key global backer, the Soviet Union, and the region came under American hegemony.

In the aftermath of the disastrous U.S.-led Iraq War, today’s Middle East looks very different, including in terms of its place in the international system. The United States has begun to disengage from the region in the aftermath of the Iraq War, and Russia has ceased to be a Middle Eastern power after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Regional powers are now in charge,

U.S. Central Command Launches First 2025 Strikes Against Houthis

Heather Mongilio

U.S. Central Command forces launched the first strikes of 2025 against the Houthis on Wednesday.

The forces, which were not identified, struck two Houthi underground Advanced Conventional Weapon storage facilities in Yemen, according to the Wednesday news release.

The strikes come eight days into the new year and are the first strikes since Dec. 31.

They also come two days after Houthi spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Sare’e posted on X that the Houthis attacked USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75), preventing the carrier and its aircraft from attacking Yemen on Jan. 6. Central Command did not acknowledge the Houthi claims, although it did post pictures of flight operations aboard Truman on Jan. 7. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Wednesday that the Houthis did not strike Truman.

“We never said we were going to take every capability off the map,” Singh said. “What we did say is we’re going to continue to work to degrade capabilities and to ensure upholding the international rules-based order and the free flow of commerce through that region. So we continue to be successful in our strikes. Again, we’re not going to be able to take off the map every single capability, but every single time that we conduct a dynamic strike or do the strikes that you saw CENTCOM announce earlier this morning that further degrades their capabilities and takes things off the map that they can use again merchant ships or our own Navy ships.”

Yes, US generals should be fired

Steve Deal

In October 1939, just one month after he took over as Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall famously winnowed the ranks of hidebound senior officers to prepare for war. “Most of them have their minds set in outmoded patterns,” Marshall told his leadership team, “and can’t change to meet the new conditions they may face if we become involved in the war that started in Europe.”

Every democracy since a defeated Athens has pruned its senior leaders proven inadequate to the demands of their respective era – often more painful than mere public shame. Ours may be the only era when an entire general and admiralty class — more than 80% of which gain employment in the defense sector after retirement — has been consistently rewarded with lucre and prestige for losing.

With two failed wars and scores of weapons acquisition fiascoes now secured in history’s dustbin, many may fear that virtue itself has been swept from the floor. Mainstream deference to “self-serving delusion” has sustained an unearned and stunting faith in a senior leadership selection system made hollow by long-past assumptions.

How to Win the New Cold War

Niall Ferguson

Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign very deliberately echoed the one that Ronald Reagan ran in 1980. “Peace through strength” and “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” are the two Reagan slogans that are best remembered today. Less well known is that in 1980, Reagan used the slogan “Make America great again,” including in his convention acceptance speech.

Few commentators have paid much attention to these parallels, partly because the two presidents’ personalities are so different, partly because paying tribute to Reagan has long been a vacuous ritual for Republican candidates. But the analogy is instructive—and Trump should use it to his political and strategic advantage, remembering (as others have forgotten) what exactly “peace through strength” turned out to mean in the 1980s. Although it has become fashionable to credit the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev with ending the Cold War, in truth it was the Reagan administration that forced Moscow down a path of reform that ultimately led to drastic disarmament and the end of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe.

Reagan opened with strength. He boldly reasserted the American rejection of communism as an ideology and Soviet expansionism as a strategy. At the same time, he initiated a major increase in defense spending that sought to exploit U.S. technological superiority. When the right time came, however, he pivoted to a series of summit meetings with Gorbachev that ultimately produced stunning breakthroughs in both disarmament and European security.

Who pays for Zelensky's gas cut-off gamble?

Mike Fredenburg

President Zelensky’s decision not to renew a five-year contract allowing Russian gas to flow through Ukraine by pipeline to Europe joins a long list of actions by Europe and the U.S that have greatly reduced Europe’s energy security, and badly damaged its economy.

And because Ukraine is now dependent on Europe and the United States for its electricity and fossil fuel needs, including Slovakia for electricity, Zelensky’s decision will likely hurt Ukraine more than it hurts Russia.

A large and increasing amount of Russian petroleum products are being sold into Turkey and India, and then being processed and sold to the EU, so the loss of $5 billion in annual revenues (0.22 percent of Russia’s 2024 $2.184 trillion GDP) from natural gas passing through Ukrainian via pipelines will have little impact on Russia’s $240 billion per year in petroleum revenues. And given that Ukraine will lose about a billion USD (0.56 percent of Ukraine’s 2024 $189.83 billion GDP) in annual transit fees, and that the loss of gas to Europe has caused natural gas prices to soar, the question that comes to mind is whether Zelensky’s decision was more about punishing EU countries, such as Slovakia and Hungary who oppose NATO membership for Ukraine, than hurting Russia?

How Ukraine’s New Push in Kursk Can Change the War

Glenn Corn

Ukrainian forces launched a fresh offensive into Russia’s western Kursk region over the weekend, trying to surprise Russian forces – and the North Korean troops fighting alongside them – and carve out more territory. Five months ago, Ukrainian troops entered Kursk in a stunning move that marked the first time a foreign military had occupied Russian territory since World War II. Since then, Russian and North Korean have been slowly retaking territory in Kursk seized by the Ukrainian side. In this sense, the current Ukrainian operation is really a counter-counteroffensive, aimed at turning the tide once more. And it’s clearly aimed at doing so before Donald Trump returns to the White House, and to gain some territorial leverage before Trump begins his much-promised effort to negotiate an end to the war.

“We continue to maintain a buffer zone on Russian territory, actively destroying Russian military potential there,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday. “Since the beginning of the Kursk operation, the enemy has already lost over 38,000 troops in this area alone, including approximately 15,000 irrecoverable losses.”

How to Exorcise Russia’s Ghost Fleet

Benjamin Jensen

Recent revelations that Moscow’s “ghost fleet” of oil tankers is loaded with spy gear and prone to undersea cable cutting indicate a pressing need to counter the Kremlin’s sabotage campaign in a manner that further undermines Russia’s wartime economy. For too long, the United States and Europe have turned a blind eye, relying on often late and feckless sanctions to counter Moscow’s illicit economic lifeline. The new Trump administration must target this ghost fleet with more than sanctions as part of its larger plan to bring Moscow to the negotiating table.

Russia’s Ghost Fleet Explained

Russia’s ghost fleet has become a pivotal instrument in sustaining its oil exports in defiance of Western sanctions. By mid-2024, this clandestine armada was responsible for transporting over 70 percent of Russia’s oil and its by-products, effectively undermining the imposed price cap. The fleet comprises more than 400 crude carriers and approximately 200 oil product carriers, representing about 20 percent of the world’s crude vessel fleet and 7 percent of oil product tankers. The revenue generated through these covert operations is substantial. In the first half of 2024, Russia’s oil and gas revenues surged by 41 percent, indicating the fleet’s significant role in financing the Kremlin’s endeavors.

Space Force Eyes New Jam-Resistant Tactical SATCOM Options

Greg Hadley

Two competing prototype payloads, developed by Northrop Grumman and Boeing and both set to launch in 2025, aim to open a new era of secure, jam-resistant tactical communications.

Northrop has finished assembly and testing of its payload for the Protected Tactical SATCOM-Prototype (PTS-P) program and is now working on integrating the system onto one of its ESPAStar buses, the company said Jan. 6. Boeing is in the advanced stages of integrating its PTS-P payload with its new Wideband Global SATCOM satellite, WGS-11, a spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The Space Force has sought more secure communications solutions for several years and sought to ramp up the effort in its fiscal 2025 budget request. PTS-P seeks to develop a secure communications system impervious to adversary jamming. The prototypes will employ new cryptography, signals, and more. How the variants perform will influence how USSF proceeds with a program projected to cost some $2 billion over the next five years, according to budget documents.

Top Risks 2025

Ian Bremmer, Cliff Kupchan,

Risk 1: The G-Zero wins

We’re entering a uniquely dangerous period of world history on par with the 1930s and the early Cold War.

Risk 2: Rule of Don

The erosion of independent checks on executive power and the rule of law will increase the extent to which the US policy landscape depends on the decisions of one powerful man.

Risk 3: US-China breakdown

Trump's return to office will unleash an unmanaged decoupling in the world’s most important geopolitical relationship.

Risk 4: Trumponomics

Donald Trump is about to inherit a robust US economy, but his policies will undermine its strength this year through higher inflation and reduced growth.

Trump is starting an oil warHow can the US compete with foreign companies?

Michael Lind

Has Donald Trump been reading Don Quixote? Last week, the incoming President warned the UK that it was making “a very big mistake” by raising tax on North Sea oil. His solution? “Get rid of windmills.”

It was classic Trump, the Presidential candidate who fashioned himself as a friend of Big Oil, promising to free up the nation’s stores of liquid gold and secure America’s “energy dominance”. Thanks to Biden’s pause, which yesterday crescendoed into a ban, on new oil and gas leases, along with his restrictive environmentalist agenda, America’s stocks have been kept in reserve. And Trump wants to exploit them.

But does this mean the US can expect another oil boom? Not so fast.

In America, the oil business is identified in the public mind with individual Texas oil men and their families. Think Hollywood movies like Giant (1956), starring Rock Hudson and James Dean, and the Eighties TV soap opera Dallas, whose Machiavellian antihero, J.R. Ewing, was portrayed by the late Larry Hagman (who happens to be my cousin twice removed). Today, the hybridisation of pop culture and petroculture continues with Landman, starring Billy Bob Thornton as a jack-of-all-trades working for an oil company.

New protagonists: Why the EU’s future will be decided in central Europe

Piotr Buras

As Austrian diplomats Emil Brix and Erhard Busek wrote in Central Europe Revisited, “the future of Europe depends on central Europe.” They point out that the European Union must take into account “central European traditions and initiatives, and not just Brussels, Paris or Berlin as it is now.” If the EU continues to develop only around its Carolingian core, they say, this will end the European “peace and prosperity project.”

The war in Ukraine proved Brix and Busek right. But that Europe’s future is now indeed being decided in its centre is also due to the EU’s fate being at the mercy of a fundamental political dispute.

On 1 January 2025, Hungary, under president Viktor Orban, handed over presidency of the Council of the EU to Poland and its prime minister, Donald Tusk. Both leaders are already clashing, with Europe as their political battleground—Orban and Tusk best symbolise the competing values, interests and approaches at the centre of the conflict for the continent’s soul. But with Poland taking over the council presidency, the battle is gaining new momentum.

Competing visions

The Russo-Ukraine War in 2025

Mark Temnycky

Three years on, the Russian Federation still seems keen on waging its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since launching the military incursion into Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the Russians have been embarrassed.

According to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, the Russians have sustained nearly 800,000 casualties since the start of the war, half of which came in 2024. In addition, the Russians lost tens of billions in military equipment. Despite these tremendous losses, the Russian Federation will continue to wage its war in Ukraine.

To date, over 70% of Russian citizens continue to support Russia’s full-scale invasion. Most Russians still believe that their military can win the war. In addition, over 70% of Russian citizens continue to favor Russian President Vladimir Putin and his actions. As a result, Putin will continue to wage his war, claiming he is seeking to please his citizens and voters.

He will also continue to push for a forced victory in 2025. After enlisting Serbian, Indian, and Yemeni mercenaries to fight in his war, Putin welcomed thousands of North Korean soldiers to help him in his invasion of Ukraine. Their inclusion, however, has not been successful. Several Indian and Yemeni mercenaries have opted to terminate their contracts after seeing the horrors of war. Meanwhile, the North Korean troops have struggled to assimilate with their Russian counterparts, and hundreds of North Korean soldiers have been killed.

In 2025, Israel’s Gaza Campaign Is Not Over

Seth J. Frantzman

As the new year begins, Israel will need to find a strategy for the war in Gaza. Several factors are at play in this decision. First, the war has gone on for more than fifteen months since it began with the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Although Israel has fought long conflicts in the past, such as the Second Intifada and the war in Lebanon that began in 1982 and lasted for eighteen years, the war in Gaza has been of greater intensity and complexity than those other wars. This is because the war in Gaza also set off Iranian-backed attacks on Israel from multiple fronts. It is also due to the fact Hamas still holds 100 hostages captive in Gaza.

The conflict in Gaza is challenging because there is evidence Hamas continues to recruit and also controls a large swath of the area. “We are not yet at the point of defeating Hamas entirely,” Brigadier General (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser told ILTV in December 2024. A separate report at The Jerusalem Post noted that Hamas is recruiting more members.

Taken together, these assessments point to a recurring trend. The IDF has operated in Gaza primarily by going into areas, clearing them of Hamas and other terrorist groups, and then leaving the area. In some cases, the IDF has stayed for the long term, such as in the border area in southern Gaza called the Philadelphi Route along the border with Egypt. The IDF has also carved out another corridor south of Gaza City. However, in many urban areas, the IDF withdraws after weeks or months of combat. This was the case in Khan Younis, where an IDF division spent several months fighting between December and April 2024. Today, in Jabaliya and several areas in northern Gaza, the IDF spent three months trying to remove Hamas members, detaining and eliminating thousands of enemy fighters, and yet combat continues.

The fall of Justin Trudeau

MARIEKE WALSH

Justin Trudeau rose to power promising to unite the country under his leadership after growing public mistrust of the sitting government. He leaves office nine years later with an even angrier public and the majority of Canadians – including his own party – increasingly united against him.

Despite plummeting polling, a spate of by-election losses and the exit of a quarter of his front bench, he had been adamant that he was still the one best placed to lead the Liberals into the next election. Now, with just months before the campaign, he has left his party little time to regroup.

Still, for many Liberals, this was the preferred option to what a growing number believed was a near-certain massive defeat had Mr. Trudeau stayed at the helm. Neither the Liberal Party’s polling numbers nor the Prime Minister’s personal popularity ever recovered from his decision to call a snap election in 2021 – two years early and in the midst of a global pandemic. But the Liberal government’s standing came under the greatest pressure as inflation spiked and Mr. Trudeau was accused of ignoring the resulting cost-of-living crisis.

Why Integrated Deterrence is Lame - OPINION

Rogue One

Integrated deterrence, the latest darling of defense strategists, is a misguided and overly complex strategy that promised much but has delivered little. Traditional deterrence is simple—project overwhelming military power to dissuade adversaries from taking aggressive actions. Integrated deterrence, however, overcomplicates decision-making. The NDS outlines a vision where everything functions seamlessly across all services and domains, while being perfectly synchronized with all our allied partners and interagency stakeholders. In essence, it suggests achieving flawless coordination and execution in all areas simultaneously. Such an expectation, however, is highly ambitious and will only work in fantasyland.

At its core, effective deterrence depends on the credible threat of hard power. Integrated deterrence undermines this by shifting focus to softer tools like diplomacy and sanctions, which DoD has almost no control over and which simply don't carry the same weight with hard actors that only respect hard power. Adversaries are more likely to test the resolve of a country that mixes military threats with economic actions because they know that integrated deterrence weakens the military's hand. This dilution sends a mixed message of hesitation rather than strength. Our enemies understand that if we’re preoccupied with diplomacy and economic measures, the likelihood of swift military retaliation is diminished. This mixed messaging is disastrous when it comes to deterring aggression.

Facebook and Instagram get rid of fact checkers

Liv McMahon, Zoe Kleinman & Courtney Subramanian

Meta is abandoning the use of independent fact checkers on Facebook and Instagram, replacing them with X-style "community notes" where commenting on the accuracy of posts is left to users.

In a video posted alongside a blog post by the company on Tuesday, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said third-party moderators were "too politically biased" and it was "time to get back to our roots around free expression".

The move comes as Zuckerberg and other tech executives seek to improve relations with US President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office later this month.

Trump and his Republican allies have criticised Meta for its fact-checking policy, calling it censorship of right-wing voices.

Speaking after the changes were announced, Trump told a news conference he was impressed by Zuckerberg's decision and that Meta had "come a long way".

Asked whether Zuckerberg was "directly responding" to threats Trump had made to him in the past, the incoming US president responded: "Probably".

7 Lessons From A Year Of Unprecedented Cyber Attacks

Bernard Marr

From the boardroom to the battlefield, the past 12 months will go down as a year that society came under attack from an unprecedented wave of digital threats.

Sophisticated ransomware, deepfake phishing scams and state-sponsored cyber-attacks highlighted just how pervasive the danger has become. At the same time, businesses and governments accelerated efforts to develop new defenses– actions which, while vital, sparked debates around privacy and the ethics of cybersecurity.

So, here I’ll overview the year's most significant developments, incidents and breakthroughs in cyber security and explore what these mean for individuals and organizations navigating an increasingly connected, online and digital world.

Escalating Onslaught: Cyber Attacks Surge

The frequency and scale of cyber-attacks have reached unprecedented levels over the past 12 months, with businesses, governments, and critical infrastructure all coming under sustained attacks. Notable incidents included the breach of telecom and internet service providers by the cybercrime group Salt Typhoon, believed to be linked to the Chinese military, infiltration of western corporate IT departments by North Korean agents, unauthorized access to US water supply infrastructure and, perhaps most shocking to donut lovers, the disruption of Krispy Kreme’s delivery network.

The Price To Be Paid for Security – CMMC 2.0

Larry Caschette

For top tier-related contract manufacturers, 2025 is set to usher in a new security provision mandated by the DoD for all who supply the millions of precision-machined parts that keep our tanks rolling and military aircraft flying. CMMC 2.0 is the revised version of the Cybersecurity Maturation Model Certification, which establishes a baseline cybersecurity protocol designed to safeguard what we in the industry refer to as controlled unclassified information (CUI).

With the final compliance regulations yet to be ironed out, the industry expects the new rules to go into effect by late spring or early summer. There is also a three-year phase-in period, which seems necessary at this point considering the level of disparity among the cybersecurity and procurement departments collaborating to ensure non-prime contractors like us get it right.

Sticker Shock and Higher Prices

As the owner of a top tier-level metal manufacturing company that supplies prime DoD contractors, I can share firsthand that there is a significant expense involved in meeting the CMMC requirements. We first became aware of the impact after acquiring a small machine shop that was supplying parts to a DoD prime contractor. Prime DoD contractors like General Dynamics, Lockheed-Martin, and Boeing can easily absorb the elevated costs but it appears we will have no choice but to raise prices to continue supplying our defense-related partners.

Military Service Did Not Cause Recent Attacks

Gary Anderson

When we learned the New Orleans attack was committed by a veteran, the usual mainstream media speculation surfaced. It always does when a veteran commits a violent crime.

Was Shamsud-Din Jabbar radicalized while in the Army?

Did he have special weapons skills that enabled him to build the IEDs found near Bourbon Street?

Are vets more prone to lashing out violently?

In the ensuing days, we found the answer to the first two questions was no, and the answer to the third was that vets are not any more prone to violence than radical leftists. As a matter of fact, the most recent attempts at political assassinations – two on Trump and one at the Congressional baseball shooting – have been committed by leftists against Republican officials and candidates.

Reports suggest that Jabbar became radicalized fairly recently, long after his military service ended. Before becoming a radical, he expressed pride in his service for giving him a degree of purpose and discipline that he appears to have lost as a civilian. Further, he apparently learned to make IEDs online from ISIS web sites, not in the military. It appears, perhaps, that the Islamic State offered him a mission focus – however misguided – that he lost after mustering out of the Army.

War and the future of war

Sarah Williams & Simon Brawley

Challenges and opportunities

Rapid technological change can bring benefits to the economy, society and improve infrastructure, but can also lead to new challenges.[2] UK Governments have sought good governance, shared rules and regulation in artificial intelligence, space and cyberspace, but competitive nations may not share the same values and ethics.[1],[13],[14]

AI is changing how war is fought, and the conflict in Ukraine has seen the use of military AI.[15] For instance, Ukraine analysts use AI to help determine the most likely locations of enemy positions.[15]

AI can also make use of data from a variety of sources, such as drone footage and satellite and thermal imagery, as well as open-source intelligence, for example soldiers’ social media posts. This information can be pieced together to detect targets in a digital ‘kill chain’, the stages in a cyber attack.[16] The ‘targeting cycle’, from locating a target and transmitting co-ordinates, to engagement by an artillery system, can take as little as three to four minutes.[17]

AI can be used by drones to evade electronic warfare, such as jamming, and navigate in environments with no GPS using pre-loaded maps.[18] Some drones do not need an operator, and can work together as a coordinated swarm.[19]

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)