Here’s What Happened When India Banned TikTok in 2020

Andrew R. Chow

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When Congress passed a bill in April 2024 ordering ByteDance to either sell TikTok or face a ban, many speculated that ByteDance would opt to sell, because the American market was too valuable to relinquish freely. But TikTok actually faced an even bigger exodus of users in 2020, when India banned the app.

At the time, India was TikTok’s biggest foreign market outside of China, with 200 million users. (For comparison, the U.S. currently has over 170 million TikTok users.) Following military clashes along the disputed border between India and China, the Indian government banned TikTok along with over 50 other Chinese apps, citing national security concerns.

Despite the ban, TikTok did just fine in expanding around the world, while national and international tech companies rushed to fill the Indian void, in the process transforming their global approaches to social media. At the same time, digital rights activists tell TIME that the Indian government used the ban as precedent to crack down upon other digital platforms they deemed to be a threat. The way that users, tech giants, the government, and TikTok all adapted to the ban offer clues about what could unfold in the U.S. in the coming months.

The South China Sea Comes to a Boil

Raymond Powell

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Over the past two years, an increasingly confident and belligerent China has thrust its South China Sea aggression into overdrive, fixating on the Philippines as its primary target. Manila now faces what amounts to a large-scale maritime occupation of its internationally recognized exclusive economic zone by a hostile imperial power.

China has repeatedly swarmed, blocked, and rammed Philippine ships while also deploying nonlethal but dangerous weapons such as lasers, water cannons, and long-range acoustic devices in a brazen attempt to stamp out Manila’s spirited resistance.

While China has become more obviously belligerent over the past two years, the roots of its ambition date back more than a century. Chinese maritime capabilities have improved to the point that pushing the U.S. out of the strategically important “first island chain”—the strategic line of islands stretching from the Japanese archipelago through Taiwan, the Philippines, and Borneo, serving as a natural barrier between the East Asian mainland and the Pacific Ocean—is no longer just the fever dream of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) blowhards, but an ominously plausible outcome.

Jake Sullivan urges Trump team to focus on China cyber threats, warns of ‘consequences’

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National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said China would face severe consequences if it launches a cyberattack that causes physical destruction in the US, and deterring such a move should be a priority for the incoming Trump administration.

Sullivan said the US has evidence that China is pre-positioning for just such an attack at some point in the future, underscoring past concerns from US officials. He spoke in an interview at the Bloomberg News bureau in Washington on Monday.

“We’ve sent a clear message to China’s leaders that if they did that – if they actually took a physically destructive cyberattack in the United States – that there would be severe consequences,” Sullivan said.

“We’re going to have to continue to deter China from doing that because we have seen them setting up or positioning to be able to do that in the future. That’s something the new team will have to continue to work on internally.”

Sullivan’s warning follows a series of high-profile attacks by Chinese hackers against US agencies and companies, including a breach reported in recent weeks into the computers of senior US Treasury Department leaders.

Before that, US officials had blamed a series of other espionage campaigns on China, including one targeting US telecommunications companies.

How China Dominates Global Shipbuilding

Robert Kuttner

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China’s massive subsidy program to take over the world’s shipbuilding industry is laid out in great detail, in a new report by the U.S. Trade Representative. The report was written in response to a formal complaint filed by five unions under Section 301 of the Trade Act. Now it’s up to President-elect Trump to decide what kinds of sanctions to apply.

The unions, led by the Steelworkers, include the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers—all active in shipbuilding.

The USTR report explicitly finds China’s policies “actionable” under Section 301, meaning that the president can choose from a large menu of possible retaliations. It depicts, in one industry, the China challenge writ large—and the folly of the U.S. free-trade policy pursued since Reagan, with the complicity of Democratic presidents until Biden.

China extensively subsidizes its domestic industry, and restricts competition from non-Chinese shipbuilders. This “displaces foreign firms, deprives market-oriented businesses and their workers of commercial opportunities, and lessens competition and creates dependencies on the PRC, increasing risk and reducing supply chain resilience,” the report found.

The Impact And Complexity Of Saudi Funding On Dissemination Of Wahhabism And Salafism In Indonesia – Analysis

A’an Suryana

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Saudi Arabia has undergone significant social and political transformations under the new de facto ruler, Muhammad bin Salman, who started governing the country in 2017. Under his rule, the country has been much more open socially and culturally. For example, in 2018, he lifted the 35-year ban on cinemas. In 2019, tourists were welcome as part of the “white-oil” drive, and he took further steps to loosen men’s total authority over women by allowing women to travel without a male “guardian”.[1] These policies marked a shift in the country’s conservative outlook, signalling its embrace of a more “moderate” form of Islam.

The overall policy on religious moderation is part of Muhammad bin Salman’s efforts to promote Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 initiative. Realising that the country can no longer rely solely on oil profit to sustain its social and economic development, the Vision 2030 initiative aims to open Saudi Arabia to foreign investment and tourism, which may prospectively be key drivers of growth in the post-oil era.

One of the social aspects that needs scrutiny in this seismic shift in Saudi Arabia’s policies is the government’s funding programmes and its Wahhabisation project. Saudi funding in this article refers to the money the Saudi government and its people have spent in spreading Wahhabism and Salafism across the world. Salafism is a religious ideology that advocates returning to the practices of Islam as performed by the Prophet Muhammad and Muslims who lived two generations after him. Wahhabism, on the other hand, is an increasingly entrenched global religious movement initiated by Abdul Wahhab in the 18th century to spread his version of Salafi ideology.

The Kurds In Syria’s Future – OpEd

Neville Teller

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What is to become of the Kurds, by far Syria’s largest minority at some two million people?

The Syrian civil war, starting in 2011, brought the Kurds to the forefront of the region’s politics. In face of the all-conquering military advance of Islamic State (ISIS), Syrian government forces abandoned many Kurdish occupied areas in the north-east of the country, leaving the Kurds to administer them. A US-led coalition, bent on defeating ISIS, allied itself with the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga militia, which proved remarkably successful. It look less than two years to reconquer ISIS-held territory, and in the process the Kurdish occupied area of north-east Syria, known as Rojava, gained de facto autonomy.

The capture by Kurdish forces of the township of Manbij from ISIS on 12 August 2016 produced along Turkey’s southern border a swath of territory largely controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – an alliance of Arab and Kurdish militias. This area was closely adjacent to Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, the Kurdish populated area granted autonomy in Iraq’s 2005 constitution. So, much to the distaste of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the possibility of a united autonomous Kurdistan stretching across the northern reaches of Syria and Iraq seemed to be emerging.

Europe Wasn’t Built to Be Like This

Isaac Stanley-Becker

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When I crossed a bridge spanning the Rhine last year, a checkpoint blocked the route between France and Germany, on the Pont de l’Europe.

Borders are closing in Europe, for reasons ranging from ongoing crises in Eastern Europe and the Middle East to increasing migratory pressures and the risk of terrorist infiltration. France cites “threats to public policy, public order.” Germany names “the global security situation.” Austria and the Netherlands point to “irregular migration” and Italy to the influx “along the Mediterranean route and the Balkan route.”

It wasn’t meant to be this way. European integration promised the abolition of borders, an ever closer union allowing the free movement of people, goods and capital in a single market. That promise was embodied in the Schengen zone, an area of open borders formed in the twilight of the Cold War — by a treaty among France, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands — and now encompassing 29 European countries. But the fear of immigrants freely traversing Europe made Schengen a fragile project from the outset.

Schengen once symbolized liberal internationalism, a landmark of the European unity built after World War II. Today it’s a symbol of Europe’s migration crisis — a crisis driving the backlash against globalization and the ascendance of illiberalism.

Europe could be torn apart by new divisions

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Europe’s divisions were once simple. Fiscal policy and sunshine? That was a north-south carve-up: grey, abstemious north; sparkling, spendthrift south. Migration and wealth? Newcomers were mostly tolerated in the rich west and despised in the poor east. Only the wine-beer-vodka spectrum, which produced a twice-diagonal split, was more complex. When crisis struck, these familiar dividing lines helped. Predictable splits are easier to manage.

It’s Not Clear Who Will Lead the Pentagon When Trump Takes Office. What Happens Then?

LOLITA C. BALDOR

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It is unclear who will take over at the Pentagon and the military services when the top leaders all step down Monday as President-elect Donald Trump is sworn into office.

As of Friday, officials said they had not yet heard who will become the acting defense secretary. Officials said the military chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force were getting ready to step in as acting service secretaries — a rare move — because no civilians had been named or, in some cases, had turned down the opportunity.

As is customary, all current political appointees will step down as of noon EST on Inauguration Day, leaving hundreds of key defense posts open, including dozens that require Senate confirmation. In addition to the top job and all three service secretaries, all of their deputies and senior policy staff will leave.

The Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to vote Monday on Trump's choice to head the Defense Department, Pete Hegseth, but the full Senate vote may not happen until days later. As a result someone from the Biden administration would have to take over temporarily.

Russia's war on Ukraine. 16.01.25

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On the Kursk direction, Russian troops are fighting for Makhnovka and Cherkasskoe Porechie. Fighting took place near the northwestern outskirts of Sudzha, in the areas of Kruglenkoe, Nikolaevka, Nikolaevo-Daryino, Pogrebki, Staraya Sorochina, and Novaya Sorochina.

On the Kharkiv direction, Russian troops unsuccessfully attacked in the vicinity of Vovchansk and Tykhe.

On the Kupyansk direction, Russian troops unsuccessfully attacked near Topoli, Petropavlivka, Tabaiivka, Nova Kruhlyakivka, Bohuslavka, near Kopanky by Makiivka, Hrekivka, Novoserhiyivka, and Tverdokhlibove. They advanced to the north and northwest of Vyshneve and to the west of Makiivka.

On the Lyman direction, Russian troops advanced near Terny, Kolodyazi, Zarichne, but without success.

On the Siversk direction, Russian troops advanced in the area of Bilohorivka, Verkhnokamianske, Vyimka, and Ivano-Dariivka.

On the Kramatorsk direction, Russian troops advanced at the refractory materials plant, attacked near Chasiv Yar, Predtechyne, Stupochky, and Oleksandro-Shultyne.

Appeasement will only fuel Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions in Ukraine

 Anastasiia Marushevska

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When US President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House next week, his foreign policy priority will be ending the war in Ukraine. As he seeks to engage with the Kremlin, however, Trump is likely to discover that Moscow’s war aims extend far beyond limited territorial gains and leave little room for any meaningful compromise.

If Trump’s peace initiative fails to make progress, it should come as no surprise. After all, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not a simple land grab that can be resolved with some kind of compromise deal. Instead, it is an old-fashioned war of colonial conquest that forms the latest chapter in an historic campaign of Russian imperial aggression against Ukraine stretching back hundreds of years.

Russian rulers have been attempting to suppress Ukraine’s statehood aspirations and subjugate the country ever since the seventeenth century and the days of the Ukrainian Cossack Hetmanate. Throughout the Tsarist and Soviet eras, successive generations of Russian rulers sought to dominate Ukraine and extinguish the very idea of a separate Ukrainian nation. This led to a vast array of crimes and atrocities including as the Holodomor, an artificial famine engineered by the Stalin regime in the 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians in their own homes.

Cost and Value in Air and Missile Defense Intercepts

Wes Rumbaugh

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With numerous missile defense engagements in the Red Sea, a common framing for news reporting has been the relative cost of the interceptor and the missile or drone it intercepts. These data points are frequently used to illustrate the gap between the two costs, which can lead to the impression that defenses are too expensive to sustain. Multiple media outlets have, for instance, highlighted the U.S. Navy’s use of a $2 million Standard Missile-2 to intercept $2,000 Houthi drones. It makes for a good headline, but the simplistic comparison can be misleading. While analysis of these adverse cost exchange ratios is a tempting and sometimes useful framework, it obscures both the complexity of air and missile defense engagements and the complicated value of air and missile defense.

The Insufficiency of the Cost Exchange Ratio

The “cost exchange ratio” framework is attractive because it is rooted in some truth: air and missile defense interceptors are relatively expensive. Budget documents for FY2024 suggest that U.S. defensive missiles are, overall, roughly twice as expensive as offensive missiles (see table below), when averaging all-up-round unit costs. Highly capable U.S. offensive missiles are also likely more expensive than less sophisticated missiles provided to the Houthis by Iran, though there is some evidence of underestimating the cost of these systems.

Three nuclear policy challenges for the second Trump administration

Stephen J. Cimbala & Lawrence J. Korb

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The incoming Trump administration will have to deal with many challenges in domestic and foreign policy, including threats and dangers related to nuclear weapons, deterrence, and arms control. Three nuclear challenges will prove particularly difficult to address: Russia’s repeated threats of nuclear first use in Ukraine and their relationship to viable endgames for that conflict; Iran’s status as a threshold nuclear weapons state and its implications for regional stability; and the emergence of a Chinese nuclear superpower and its implications for global security.

The policies adopted and decisions made during the second Trump administration will involve the fate of the war in Europe, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and China’s nuclear arsenal. If they incorporate military and diplomatic tools properly, those policies and decisions could open the door to a more peaceful and stable world. But in the absence of a balanced and thoughtful approach, the door may open wide to a world of continued war, nuclear weapons proliferation, and worldwide arms racing.

Russia’s nuclear threats. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly reminded Ukraine, the United States, and the other NATO members of Russia’s large inventory of nuclear weapons. He also warned them that, under certain circumstances, Russia would not hesitate to use these weapons.

The Four Main Groups Challenging Xi Jinping

Willy Wo-Lap Lam

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Xi Jinping is in political trouble. The supreme leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) faces challenges from multiple groups, including from retired politburo standing committee members, fellow princelings, some of the military top brass, and even from some in the country’s middle class. As a result, his ability to shape policy in the financial, foreign affairs, and other arenas has been truncated. It might be far-fetched to speculate that Xi, the so-called “eternal core of the Party (永远党的核心),” might be driven out of office this year, but it is crucial to understand who his enemies are and how they challenge the commander-in-chief.

The PLA Daily, the official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), recently have championed the virtues of “collective leadership (集体领导).” This could be interpreted as a slap in the face of Xi’s insistence since he came to power in 2012 on the dictum that all decisions should “rely on a single voice of authority (定于一尊)” (PLA Daily, December 9, 2024; Radio Free Asia, December 18, 2024).

Xi’s clout over economic decision-making appears to have been reduced. The Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission and the Central Comprehensively Deepening Reforms Commission, which are the two major high-level party platforms for promulgating economic and financial policies that Xi leads, have ceased to meet regularly (Fitch Ratings, December 16, 2024; State Council, January 5; (Radio Free Asia, January 10). This could be due to the underwhelming results of the massive program of monetary and fiscal quantitative easing—known to Chinese officials as “using ample water to undertake massive irrigation (大水漫灌)”—that has been executed since September (China Brief, October 11, 2024).

Microsoft Warns: WhatsApp Becomes New Target in Russian Cyber Warfare

Camilla Jessen

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The Russian hacker group known as Star Blizzard launched a new spear phishing campaign in November 2024, utilizing the messaging platform WhatsApp in a departure from their usual methods, Microsoft revealed in a blog post on January 16.

The hackers sent invitations to join WhatsApp groups to individuals involved in government, diplomacy, defense research, and organizations supporting Ukraine.

The messages often impersonated U.S. government officials and included QR codes to join groups claiming to focus on "the latest non-governmental initiatives aimed at supporting Ukrainian NGOs."

The purpose of the campaign was to trick targets into giving the hackers access to their WhatsApp accounts and sensitive data.

Microsoft suggested that this shift to WhatsApp might be a response to stronger cybersecurity efforts that have made Star Blizzard’s older methods less effective.

While the campaign seemed to wind down by late November, Microsoft warned that the group’s use of WhatsApp shows their ability to adapt and continue phishing efforts.

The 20th Century’s Lessons for Our New Era of War

Hal Brands

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America must “pay the price for peace,” said President Harry Truman in 1948, or it would “pay the price of war.” The ghastliest moments of the 20th century came when autocratic aggressors ruptured the Eurasian balance of power. Standards of morality went by the wayside in conquered regions. Autocratic spheres of influence became platforms for further predation. Countervailing coalitions, thrown together under dire circumstances, had to claw their way back into hostile continents at horrid cost. This is why Truman’s America, having paid the price of war twice in a quarter century, chose to continuously bolster the peace after 1945.

There was nothing simple about this. Preventing global war was arduous, morally troubling work. It required learning the apocalyptic absurdities of nuclear deterrence. It involved fighting bloody “limited” conflicts, going to the brink over Cuba and Berlin, and preparing incessantly for a confrontation the United States and its allies hoped never to fight. The long great-power peace of the postwar era didn’t just happen; it was the payoff of a decades-long effort to make the military balance favor the free world. An important lesson, then, is that a cold war is the reward for deterring a hot one.

The Mindboggling Truth About American Power

Monte Erfourth

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Introduction

The "people" in Clausewitz's trinity represent war's emotional and social foundation, embodying the collective passions, cultural values, and public opinion that drive and sustain a nation's involvement in conflict. This element emphasizes that war is not solely a matter of military strategy or political calculation but also deeply rooted in the population's will and sentiment. The people provide the moral and material support necessary for waging war, influencing recruitment, resource allocation, and overall national resolve. When the population is united in purpose and motivation, they can bolster a state's ability to endure prolonged struggles and support policies that align with their values and interests.

However, the role of the people also introduces volatility and unpredictability. Public opinion can shift rapidly due to battlefield successes or failures, casualties, economic hardships, or propaganda. If popular support wanes, it can undermine the state's political leadership and the military's effectiveness, potentially forcing premature negotiations or withdrawal. Clausewitz highlights the necessity of maintaining alignment between the people's passions and the political and military components of the trinity, as their disunity can destabilize the overall war effort. In the current American application, the scenario is not war; rather, great power competition that parallels war. This underscores the complex interplay between the populace's emotional energy and the state's and military leadership's more calculated actions.

Trump claiming new world order in first 100 days

Stefan Wolff

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Donald Trump’s return to the White House on January 20, 2025, is widely seen as ushering in a period of significant upheaval for US foreign policy and a change in the way diplomacy is done.

Trump’s favored style – bluster and threats against foreign leaders – already seems to have paid off in helping to craft a peace deal, however shaky, in Gaza. The deal was negotiated by Joe Biden and his team in coordination with Trump’s incoming administration.

But analysts suggest Trump’s fierce comments on January 7 that “all hell would break lose” if the hostages weren’t soon released were actually a threat to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, to get something done quickly. And this forced the Israeli government to commit to a deal.

Trump used this abrasive style in his first term. And his recent threats to buy Greenland, annex Canada and resume control of the Panama Canal suggest it will happen again. That may not bode well, especially for traditional allies of the US.

Not only that but Elon Musk, one of Trump’s close confidants, is openly bragging about his attempts to change governments in the UK and Germany – in an apparent move to shore up a global alliance of populist leaders.

Our Prewar Era: America and the Dilemmas of Global Defense

Hal Brands

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That conviction, the product of Britain’s oceanic moat and Enlightenment traditions, had brought the country—and much of humanity—to the edge of the abyss in the worst moments of World War II. Were he alive, Orwell might see parallels in the American mindset today.

Most Americans alive now have known only a world structured, pacified, and made prosperous by unrivaled US power. For most Americans, then, it probably seems unthinkable that the international system could buckle under assault by revisionist states, much less that the next great-power war could end in a US defeat. That confidence is a testament to the world-altering success of US foreign policy since 1945. And it risks blinding Americans to their situation’s precariousness.

In every key region of Eurasia, revisionist states are aggressively contesting the status quo. They are gathering into an autocratic bloc more cohesive than anything the United States has faced in generations. But even as our moment increasingly resembles a prewar era, America is trapped in a post–Cold War mentality that risks leaving the nation overstretched and under-armed if a graver crisis strikes.

As a result, an alarming gap has emerged between America’s global commitments and ability to vindicate those commitments if they are tested. The world is becoming less stable. International affairs are becoming more violent. And the United States is running out of time to avoid its own geopolitical nightmare.2

Israel’s Prisoner’s Dilemma

Matti Friedman

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In Israel, news of an imminent hostage deal with Hamas grips the country. Fifteen months after the attack of October 7, 2023, when Palestinian terrorists seized 250 civilians and soldiers from Israeli territory, nearly 100 hostages remain in Gaza. The oldest is 86. The youngest is 2. Most seem to be dead, murdered by their captors, or killed inadvertently by Israeli forces, but Hamas refuses to divulge how many. The hostages’ faces have become familiar to everyone in Israel. They’re on posters in bus stops, on telephone poles, hanging from highway bridges. We all feel we know them.

Even though not all details of the deal are clear, Israelis are broadly behind it—a poll on January 15 put the number at 69 percent, with 21 percent unsure and only 10 percent opposed. The mainstream Israeli position is that the government must make every reasonable effort to save the lives of captives, whether that means military operations if possible, or freeing jailed terrorists in exchange for hostages if necessary. Opponents of the deal, even if they’re tortured by the suffering of their fellow citizens in brutal conditions in tunnels under Gaza, see the deal as a form of surrender that rewards the tactic of hostage-taking and invites future attacks, saving people in the present while sacrificing people in the future. In my experience, most people actually hold parts of both positions, but when forced to choose, they tend to choose the first.

For external observers trying to understand the current debate here in Israel, the key is to realize that this is an argument that didn’t start with the current deal—or even with the current war. It’s impossible to understand the debate of 2025 without going back 40 years, to 1985. The debate is less about the details of this deal than about a basic question forced on us by the tactics of our enemies, namely: Does our willingness to assume grave risk to save individuals constitute an Israeli strength or weakness?

Blurring Conventional–Nuclear Boundaries: Nordic Developments, Global Implications – Analysis

Dr Wilfred Wan and Dr Gitte du Plessis

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In July 2024 Norway’s Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace signed a contract with the Norwegian Defence Materiel Agency (NDMA) for the development of a next-generation ‘supersonic strike missile’, as part of a collaborative project between Norway and Germany first announced in November 2023. The plan is for the new manoeuvrable naval strike missile, dubbed the Tyrfing, to be operational in 2035.

This is just one of several recent high-profile efforts involving Nordic states that aim to enhance European conventional capabilities in order to deter aggression and maintain strategic stability. Others include Finland’s announcement, in May 2024, that it is acquiring Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) weapons from the United States, which comes on top of its 2021 order of US F-35 combat aircraft. Around the same time, Sweden announced that it would provide Ukraine with early warning and control aircraft equipped with its Erieye radar system. This is expected to represent a ‘big force multiplier’ for Ukraine’s F-16 combat aircraft.

These moves in the Nordic region reflect broader European trends in the development and deployment of advanced conventional precision-strike capabilities. Investments in longer-range, manoeuvrable missiles and delivery systems—including the Tyrfing and the planned deployment on German soil of US hypersonic systems and ground-launched missiles that would have been prohibited under the now-defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty)—contribute to the spectre of a ‘new missile crisis’ in Europe. Planned upgrades to European global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) will further bolster the ability of these weapon systems to rapidly locate, target and ultimately destroy targets.

Achieving Peace In A Warmonger’s World – OpEd

George Ford Smith

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Peace on earth is a wish that gets extra emphasis this time of year. We’re told to pray for it, wish for it, keep it forever in our minds. So why don’t we have it?

The short answer is money. War is profitable to some. It’s profitable enough that profiteers in private industries influence government, which stays home and orders others to do the fighting. War costs money. Where does the government get it? Visible taxes (income, corporate, and payroll) cover about two-thirds of government revenue. The rest comes from borrowing and inflation.

In the US, the central banking cartel known as the Fed stands ready to fund almost anything the government wants, especially wars. The Fed does this by creating money from nothing and buys government debt instruments, the accounting name for which is “assets.” The destruction of the dollar is the residue from the “asset”-buying sprees of the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee, an operation which its members and most of the economics profession insist is necessary for a prosperous economy—and to keep the bad guys at bay in obscure places on the planet.

Government can’t supply bombs to proxy warlords using tax money alone. Outlays in the hundreds of billions must be stolen surreptitiously, which is why government created a central bank and a bought-and-paid-for economics profession. No matter the propaganda spewed by its lapdog media, taxpayers will eventually make the connection between war and a cheaper dollar.

Why Aircraft Carriers Are Becoming Obsolete

Philip Pilkington

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When Russia’s Oreshnik missile delivered its multiple payloads to Ukraine’s PA Pivdenmash plant in Dnipro, the guardian angels of aircraft carriers around the world wept. While some defenders of the use of aircraft carriers will no doubt claim that the jury is still out on whether advanced missile technology has rendered them militarily redundant, this is becoming an increasingly difficult position to maintain.

The PA Pivdenmash plant is approximately 1,834 acres (744 hectares), or 2.87 square miles, in size, and while we do not know how much of this area was hit by the multiple warheads of the Oreshnik, the video evidence suggests that it was quite spread out. An Oreshnik loaded with a MIRV (Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicle) containing conventional munitions is the hypersonic missile equivalent of a shotgun: point it in the general direction of a target, and the target gets sprayed with shot.

Considering that the Oreshnik seems able to achieve a high degree of accuracy—it hit the PA Pivdenmash plant, after all—this “saturation effect” by a hypersonic ballistic missile loaded with conventional warheads surely means that these weapons could be fired at the general area of an aircraft carrier and achieve a hit. The top speed of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is approximately thirty knots (34.5 mph), while the top speed of an Oreshnik missile is anywhere between Mach 10 and Mach 11 (7,610–8,450 mph). The idea that an aircraft carrier could outrun such a missile is laughable – and since the saturation effect of the multiple warheads means that it does not need to be perfectly accurate, it is very difficult to make the case that an aircraft carrier would be operational after such an encounter. The missile would not need to sink the aircraft carrier, only damage it enough to render it operationally useless, after which it would be forced to limp back to base.

What Does Trump Want in Greenland?

Regin Winther Poulsen

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When the airport in Nuuk, Greenland, opened last November, it was celebrated as a milestone in the island’s plans to grow its tourism industry. Greenlandic and Danish ministers and business executives delivered a series of upbeat speeches before the inaugural flight on the new route between Nuuk and Copenhagen took off. The last speaker was the chairman of Copenhagen Airport’s board, who ended by quoting the famous Greenlandic Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen: “Adventure awaits those who are ready to seize it.”

Few would have imagined that just over one month later, Trump Force One, the private family airplane of the soon-to-be most powerful man in the world, would take off from West Palm Beach, Florida, and head to Nuuk’s new 2,200-meter runway. On board was Donald Trump Jr., who was on what seemed to be a public relations trip following his father’s stated desire to gain “ownership and control of Greenland.”

2025 cyber threats: The new battlefield for organizations - opinion

DR. NIMROD KOZLOVSKI

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As 2025 begins, the cyber threat landscape is becoming more ubiquitous and dangerous than ever before. Global conflicts, artificial intelligence, and the increasing interconnectedness of our digital and physical infrastructure have created the perfect storm for unprecedented incidents.

As someone who has spent years handling cyber threats, first as a crisis manager and later as founder and CEO of a cyber crisis management and readiness platform, I can say with certainty that we're entering a new era of cyber attacks and mega cyber events.

The ongoing political and military conflicts across the globe - The Middle East, Russia-Ukraine, and the Koreas, to name a few, have fundamentally transformed how we think about cyber warfare.

Commercial entities now regularly find themselves in the crossfire as tactical and strategic targets. Traditional boundaries between military and civilian targets have blurred, with nations increasingly viewing the business sector as a legitimate battlefield for their cyber operations.

The sophistication of modern attacks is a broad concern. We're witnessing the emergence of multi- layered extortion schemes - moving beyond single extortion ransomware to double, triple, and even quadruple extortion schemes.