Trump Takes Credit for Defeating ISIS; Now He Must Fight Its Comeback

Tom O'Connor

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President-elect Donald Trump has frequently counted the U.S.-led coalition victory over the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria as one of the most consequential achievements of his previous administration.

Yet ISIS today has found fertile ground to spread beyond its initial homeland and accelerate operations abroad. The group is tied to daily attacks across Asia and Africa, as well as plots throughout Europe and even a deadly New Year's rampage in the United States.

Now the next U.S. leader, set to be inaugurated Monday amid ramped-up security following at least two recent assassination attempts, must again grapple with the international jihadi militants considered to be one of the greatest threats to global peace.

"The past few years, we've seen an ISIS surge around the world: not just in its traditional heartland of Syria and Iraq, but also from its increasingly deadly and capable affiliates in West Africa and Afghanistan," Nathan Sales, who previously served as the White House's counterterrorism envoy during Trump's first term, told Newsweek.

A Must Strategy For Bangladesh – OpEd

Dr. Shah Yunus and Dr. Habib Siddiqui

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Arguably, all human evolution has been driven by IP (Intellectual Property) and OS (Operating System). When IP touches masses it morphs into OS in a transformative way – OS changes and touches lives in global scale. OS opens the door for many new IP and fosters innovations and creativity for the masses improving quality of life and creating assets.

The earliest of IP and related OS emerged from “Stone Tools”, “Creating and Managing Fire”, “Creation of Language”, “mastering various metals”, “organized agriculture”, “domesticated animals” and the lists continue. These early IPs and transcendental OS shaped the early humanity and created the foundation of the modern world. Those early human successes helped bringing about the key world changing transcendental IP and OS as Industry 1.0 (Steam Engine), Industry 2.0 (Electricity), Industry 3.0 (Transistor, Microelectronics), Industry 4.0 (Digital/Network) and now Industry 5.0 (AI/Cognitive).

Each of those revolutions began with proprietary innovations that spread through standardization and became essential infrastructure, transforming into societal OSs, and creating winners and losers, highlighting the technological and economic inequalities resulting multi-tier world.

Bangladesh: The Eye Of A Storm – Analysis

Sanchita Bhattacharya

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2024 was a watershed year for Bangladesh, as an elected Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, within seven months of taking oath for her fifth term (and fourth consecutive term) as Prime Minister, was forced not only to resign, but to flee Bangladesh, on August 5, 2024. Later, on August 8, an Interim Government led by Muhammad Yunus, was formed under the aegis of the Bangladesh Army and various Islamic radical elements.

Before Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, Bangladesh experienced violence and vandalism. The protests against the Quota System eventually became fierce in nature. The turmoil started after a High Court decision (June 5, 2024) reinstated a 30 per cent quota for family members of freedom fighters, who had fought during the Liberation movement of 1971. According to the High Court, the Government was free to reform the quota if it saw fit.

However, on July 10, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court’s order for a month, and was set to hear the Government’s challenge on August 7. Nevertheless, commencing on July 14, the protests took a dark turn after a statement by Hasina on television in which she refused to accept any demands of the protestors, referred to them as razakars (members of an East Pakistan paramilitary force that opposed the freedom struggle of 1971 and collaborated with the Pakistan Army in its genocide). Violence intensified as the BTV building was torched on July 18; protestors attacked the former Mayor of Ghazipur, Jahangir Alam, and killed his bodyguard on July 19; and in Narsingdi District, protestors stormed a jail and freed hundreds of inmates before setting the building on fire.

Religious Persecution in Burma Is Becoming a Regional Crisis | Opinion

Sasa and Sam Brownback

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Around the world, conflicts, repression, and persecution continue to cause human suffering on a tragic scale. In the headlines are the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. But there is one crisis which has been largely ignored, and urgently needs attention: the one unfolding in Burma, or Myanmar.

Ever since the military coup on February 1, 2021, which overthrew the elected civilian government and established an illegal junta, Burma has spiraled into a severe humanitarian and political crisis, threatening the rights, freedoms, and lives of its diverse ethnic and religious communities.

Four years on, Burma is at a pivotal moment. The military regime is on the back foot, suffering significant losses of troops and territory as pro-democracy forces have pushed back. Thousands have defected from the regime, and it now controls less than 20 percent of the country's territory and only 33 percent of the population. There is a real possibility that it could collapse—but only if the international community acts to support democracy.

Burma's future hinges on the establishment of a genuine federal democracy. Federalism is essential for national reconciliation and sustainable peace. Only when the country's ethnic communities are given an equal stake in the country's future will there be any chance of peace after decades of civil war. Only a federal democracy that celebrates and protects Burma's diversity can put the country on the path to peace.

‘Now It’s Our Turn’

Andrew Nachemson

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Htoo Naw was a commando in the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) for 20 years before retiring due to his health. But when the 51-year-old heard that his old unit was preparing to storm the Myanmar military’s tactical command base in the town of Kyaikdon, he left his rice farm to return to the battlefield.

Kyaikdon, in Myanmar’s southern Kayin state, is nestled in the foothills of a mountain range that extends to the Thai border, some 12 miles east. The state is home to many members of the Karen ethnic minority. Armed groups have fought for political autonomy for the Karen since 1949, soon after Myanmar gained independence from Britain, while other ethnic groups in the borderlands followed suit in the decades afterward.

China’s EV Success Faces A Battery Recycling Problem – Analysis

Yifei Li

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China’s electric vehicle (EV) industry has experienced an unprecedented surge in production and global dominance. But a new challenge looms — the growing wave of decommissioned vehicles as EV batteries reach the end of their lifecycle.

This emerging trend is spawning a burgeoning sub-market for recycling and repurposing used batteries. The critical question is whether China is prepared to extend its EV leadership into the post-consumer segment of the supply chain.

When record-keeping began in 2012, China produced just 13,000 EVs. By 2018, that figure grew nearly tenfold to 115,000 and expanded another tenfold to 1.2 million in 2024. This meteoric rise is widely attributed to state-backed policies, including investments in research and development, tax rebates and infrastructural subsidies. As of October 2024, Chinese firms dominate 76 per cent of the global EV market, making China the undisputed leader in the sector.

At first glance, China appears well-positioned to lead in battery recycling. Yet the very factors that drove its rapid ascent in EV manufacturing — speed, scale, competitiveness and technological sophistication — are also introducing unique hurdles to its expansion into this market segment.

Is China’s GDP Growth Only 2%? Donald Trump Might Want To Find Out

William Pesek

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If you think you’re having a bad spell at work, spare a thought for economist Gao Shanwen.

A month ago, he was the high-profile chief economist at state-owned SDIC Securities, and a serious player in mainland financial circles. Today, he’s arguably as high-profile an economic villain as you’ll find in President Xi Jinping’s orbit. And he’s since been silenced, according to the Wall Street Journal and South China Morning Post.

Gao’s sin? Saying that China may have grown just 2% over the last two or three years, less than half the rate Xi’s government claims. The reason Gao is allegedly being silenced is for shining a brighter-than-usual spotlight on one of the biggest perception problems facing Xi’s Communist Party: that China routinely cooks the GDP books.

Claims on Friday that China grew 5% in 2024, exactly as Xi’s government said it would, probably had many economists thinking about Gao’s warnings.

Beijing’s statisticians point to rising exports and private-sector investments in new sectors, factories and equipment. But the giant headwinds slammed the economy — especially a property crisis fueling deflation — can make China’s official growth data seem fanciful.

China’s Soft Power Play: How Video Games Are Boosting Beijing’s Global Influence

Shaoyu Yuan

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China’s global ambitions are no longer confined to infrastructure megaprojects or its booming trade networks. The country has found an unlikely but effective tool for soft power: video games. At the heart of this strategy lies Chinese tech giant Tencent, whose dominance in the gaming world has turned digital entertainment into a powerful vehicle for projecting China’s culture and influence globally.

For decades, soft power – a country’s ability to attract and persuade others through cultural appeal rather than coercion – has been shaped by Western forces. Hollywood movies, American music, and Japanese anime have long been the main cultural exports dominating global pop culture. But China, too, is now stepping into this space with a surprising contender: its rapidly growing gaming industry.

Tencent’s Global Gaming Empire

Tencent, China’s largest tech conglomerate, has quietly established itself as a global leader in the gaming industry over the past decade. Through acquisitions and investments, the company has built a gaming empire that spans the globe. Tencent owns Riot Games, the developer behind “League of Legends,” one of the most popular e-sports titles in the world. It holds a 40 percent stake in Epic Games, creators of “Fortnite,” a cultural juggernaut with a player base exceeding 400 million worldwide.

Why China probably isn’t panicking over Trump

William Pesek

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As Donald Trump returns for a second round of shaking up the global economy — especially China — he may end up doing far more damage at home than abroad.

Though this argument has been made here and there since the US president-elect’s win on November 5, the picture the International Monetary Fund is painting about the next four years is worth considering.

On the eve of Trump’s January 20 inauguration, the IMF’s chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, counts the ways tariffs, trade curbs and blunt force responses to waning US competitiveness could backfire on the biggest economy.

The bottom line: the next wave of tariffs Trump 2.0 threatens could make trade dislocations worse, reduce investment, distort market pricing mechanics, disrupt supply chains and spook global markets in chaotic and unproductive ways.

The tariffs alone, Gourinchas worries, “are likely to push inflation higher in the near term.”

Huge tax cuts in an economy at or near full employment could hasten America’s path toward overheating. Trump’s mass deportation hopes would cause even greater disruptions for restaurants, construction and myriad other businesses already short of workers. Labor costs could surge as a result, intensifying inflation pressures.

TikTok, RedNote and the Crushed Promise of the Chinese Internet

Li Yuan

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The Chinese social media app RedNote is full of cute, heartwarming moments after about 500,000 American users fled to it last week to protest the looming U.S. government ban on TikTok.

Calling themselves “TikTok refugees,” these users paid the “cat tax” to join RedNote by posting cat photos and videos. They answered so many questions from their new Chinese friends: Is it true that in rural America every family has a large farm, a huge house, at least three children and several big dogs? That Americans have to work two jobs to support themselves? That Americans are terrible at geography and many believe that Africa is a country? That most Americans have two days off every week?

Americans also posed questions to their new friends. “I heard that every Chinese has a giant panda,” an American RedNote user wrote. “Can you tell me how can I get it?” An answer came from someone in the eastern province of Jiangsu: “Believe me, it’s true,” the person deadpanned, posting a photo of a panda doing the laundry.

I spent hours scrolling those so-called cat tax photos and chuckled at the cute and earnest responses. This is what the internet is supposed to do: connect people. More important, RedNote demonstrated how competitive a random Chinese social media app can be from a purely product point of view.

The Pentagon says AI is speeding up its ‘kill chain’

Maxwell Zeff

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Leading AI developers, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, are threading a delicate needle to sell software to the United States military: make the Pentagon more efficient, without letting their AI kill people.

Today, their tools are not being used as weapons, but AI is giving the Department of Defense a “significant advantage” in identifying, tracking, and assessing threats, the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Officer, Dr. Radha Plumb, told TechCrunch in a phone interview.

“We obviously are increasing the ways in which we can speed up the execution of kill chain so that our commanders can respond in the right time to protect our forces,” said Plumb.

The “kill chain” refers to the military’s process of identifying, tracking, and eliminating threats, involving a complex system of sensors, platforms, and weapons. Generative AI is proving helpful during the planning and strategizing phases of the kill chain, according to Plumb.

The relationship between the Pentagon and AI developers is a relatively new one. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta walked back their usage policies in 2024 to let U.S. intelligence and defense agencies use their AI systems. However, they still don’t allow their AI to harm humans.

Ukraine And Russia Battle To Defeat “Un-jammable” Fiber-Optic Drones

Vikram Mittal

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In the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, innovation in drone and counter-drone technology has become a defining feature of the battlefield. Since many counter-drone systems work by jamming the radio signals controlling the drones, both Russia and Ukraine are increasingly using “jam-proof” drones that communicate over lightweight fiber-optic cables. The lightweight cable is wrapped onto a spool mounted to the drone. It unspools as the drone flies, allowing the drone operator to maintain a communication connection even in the presence of jamming. Regardless, in the cat-and-mouse game of drone and counter-drone technology, even these drones have inherent vulnerabilities that both countries will soon exploit.

The challenge of countering these tethered drones goes beyond their immunity to jamming. Since jamming is ineffective, Ukrainian and Russian forces have to use kinetic methods to counter them. However, many kinetic counter-drone systems rely on the radio signal from the drone, which includes the video feed, for detection. This signal is then triangulated to determine the drone's precise position. With fiber-optic drones, these feeds are transmitted to the operator over the cable, leaving no detectable signal.

Although these fiber-optic controlled drones cannot be detected through their radio signature, there are other methods for detection. A recent article by Business Insider indicated that Kara Dag, a Ukrainian technology company, has proposed using acoustic and visual signatures, combined with advanced processing techniques, to detect these tethered drones. Once detected, the Ukrainians can counter the drone through a series of kinetic methods. Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Radioelectronic Industry is soliciting information from the defense community on how to detect and potentially defeat these drones. Many of their proposals are similarly focusing on acoustic and visual detection of these drones.

The State Of The Economy: What Is Donald Trump Inheriting? – Analysis

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Voters prioritized the economy in the 2024 election, sending Donald Trump back to the White House. But what economic legacy is Joe Biden passing on to the new administration?

“It’s the economy, stupid.” Coined by political strategist James Carville, these famous words have become synonymous with U.S. election success since 1992.

Despite the growing influence of issues like immigration, climate change and foreign policy, many voters still prioritize economic factors when casting their ballots.

President-elect Donald Trump claimed he made “the greatest economy in U.S. history” during his first term and vows to do so again in 2025. But a lot depends on what a president inherits from his predecessors.

Low unemployment rates and a soaring stock market built under former President Barack Obama’s administration following the 2008 financial crisis gave Trump a strong foundation the first time around.

So, what economic legacy will Trump inherit from Biden?

Simply put, high employment rates, strong GDP growth and low inflation often characterize a healthy economy.

The U.S. Needs Soldiers, Not Warriors - Opinion

Eliot A. Cohen

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In his contentious confirmation hearing, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed that his mission is “to bring the warrior culture back to the Department of Defense.” It is a terrible idea.

The archetype of the Western warrior is Homer’s Achilles. Superbly fit, the “swift runner” Achilles is magnificent in battle. He is an individualist, with dazzling armor and a troop of admiring Myrmidons who would follow him anywhere. His prowess in combat is unsurpassable. He is brought down only by a poisoned arrow (a sneaky weapon if ever there was one) fired by the wimpy Paris, whose seduction of Helen had started the Trojan War.

He is also the man who comes close to killing his boss, Agamemnon, over a favorite concubine; sulks in his tent; and weeps when he feels dishonored until his mother (a goddess) comforts him. In a rage over the death of his friend Patroclus in a fair fight, Achilles not only kills the Trojan prince Hector but then drags his body around Troy for his horrified parents and widow to see. An intervention by the gods is all that prevents the body from being ripped apart by this treatment, although Achilles’s initial hope (snarled at the dying Hector) was that dog packs and birds would rend the corpse of the man who fought to defend his city from the horrors of a sacking.

Is Ukraine Losing the War?

Alina Frolova

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Western public discourse is increasingly dominated by the idea that Ukraine is losing the war and should pursue a peace deal to avoid further losses. This perception likely arises from a disproportionate focus on visible land domain operations, which tend to dominate media coverage and are easier to follow.

Yet wars are won with strategies, not tactics. And in this area, Ukraine can demonstrate a clear path to holding Russia on the battlefield while inflicting what will ultimately prove to be unbearable losses. If that sounds questionable, remember that 12 days before Bashar al-Assad’s fall his regime looked absolutely secure.

Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has passed through several stages over the last 11 years. Contrary to the common belief that the conflict began in 2022, its origins trace back to 2014. It started with initial Ukrainian losses on the battlefield (and in Western public opinion, where few recognized the possibilities for pan-European destabilization) followed by a low-intensity, almost frozen conflict after the Minsk Agreements of September 2014.

Since the all-out war was launched in February 2022, despite evolving battlefield dynamics and changing tactics on both sides, the conflict remains attritional at the strategic level. This is not surprising, as most conventional wars oscillate between attrition, maneuver, and reconstitution. Both Ukraine and Russia have faced severe blows to manpower and equipment, with neither side capable of executing large-scale combined-arms maneuvers to mitigate them. In other words, even when Russia does pass through Ukrainian lines, it lacks the forces to exploit its advantage to decisive, war-winning effect.

Make Europe Great Again? What Trump 2.0 Can Do for Europe

Rod Dreher

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What will it mean for Europe when the new Trump regime takes power next week in Washington? The question brings to mind something that happened to me recently on Mount Athos, the isolated Orthodox monastic republic in Greece. The driver of our van stopped to pick up an elderly Russian hermit walking along the dirt path. When the hermit learned that several of us were American, he said, in thickly accented English, “Trump is hope!”

Traveling on the continent since the November U.S. election, I have met ordinary Europeans who all say, in one way or another, that the Trump victory gives them hope, at last, for real change in Europe.

Whatever happens in America eventually comes to Europe. Even in Budapest, a staunch holdout against globalist liberalism, in 2021, the left-wing mayor of one district erected a temporary statue of the criminal George Floyd. When asked by journalists what the purpose is, given that Hungary has almost no black people, she replied, as only a Western leftist can, that we all must be united against racism.

The late Czech novelist Milan Kundera, in his great novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, said that what makes a leftist a leftist is the ability to corral anything into the narrative of the Grand March—a parade through history towards ultimate liberation from oppression. This is the messianism of the Marxists, of course, but it is also a utopian creed believed by Western liberals, both of the Left and the Right. After all, what drove George W. Bush’s insane crusade against Iraq was, in large part, a sincere belief that liberal democracy is the final destination of all humankind.

Ending War Is Hard to Do

Gideon Rose

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Ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are at the top of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy agenda, and many expect the new administration to change American policy in both. It may well try to. But unless Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu play along, Trump could easily find himself shifting back toward the Biden administration’s approach in both theaters—because U.S. interests and geopolitical realities don’t change with the election returns.

Popular discussion often approaches war through the prisms of morality or law or justice. Beneath all of these, however, lie interest and power. Every war begins with differing views on the belligerents’ relative power, as each side thinks itself strong enough to achieve important goals by fighting. As the battlefield tests their relative strength, the situation becomes clearer and views converge. When both sides agree on their relative power, having marked their ambitions to market, the war’s endgame begins.

In both Ukraine and Gaza, many things have become clearer over time: how much military and economic potential the belligerent coalitions have, how easily that potential can be transformed into usable power, how likely that power is to be deployed in the field, and what it can and can’t accomplish there. This new clarity could help produce settlements of both wars in the coming year, based on realistic assessments of which objectives each side cares most about and can afford. Whether the settlements last, however—whether they produce peace rather than merely a pause in fighting—will depend on the details.

The US Pivot to Asia Depends on Peace in Ukraine

Martijn van Ette and Andrew Gawthorpe

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We don’t yet know the precise approach that the incoming Trump administration will take to negotiating peace in Ukraine, but we do know that an attempt by Washington to force an end to the conflict is almost definitely coming. Underlining the strategic challenge in the Pacific, the president-elect has consistently called for an end to the conflict and the significant drain on U.S. military resources that it represents. And although there is much to criticize in Trump’s rhetoric about the war, he is responding to a genuine problem: Washington needs peace in Ukraine in order to focus on other global challenges, particularly the rise of China.

But if American policymakers are hoping to cut a deal to end the war and promptly pivot their attention to the Pacific, they may be disappointed. If a peace or ceasefire agreement can be reached in Ukraine, it will almost definitely be based on the current line of de facto territorial control. This is unlikely to satisfy either party. Russia’s significant but failed attacks on Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Odessa at the outset of the conflict indicate that Vladimir Putin’s objectives were larger than solely creating a land bridge between Donbass and the Crimea. In his statements about the war, Putin has also frequently questioned the validity of Ukrainian sovereignty and the separate identity of its people. This indicates that he has goals that are unlikely to be satisfied by an occupation of a mere 20 percent of Ukraine’s land.

Adapting to Big Change: The New Challenges of Modern Warfare

Wallace Gregson

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“Big Change” is upon us, and the rate is accelerating. We must adapt quickly and comprehensively throughout our national security enterprise, including the defense industrial sector. We must learn to be comfortable with continuous change by leading it.

The Challenges in Asia

Asia is home to the biggest challenge to US national defense policy, strategy, and operational concepts.

Our allies primarily form the First Island Chain fronting on the East and South China Seas.

War with China or Russia is not unlikely; it can happen at any time and includes the potential for a near-term major war.

We are in a period of rapid, accelerating, profound changes in geopolitics, economics, and technology, mainly with weapons technology.

We have work to do in our defense industrial base. We are no longer the arsenal of democracy. We had to appeal to our allies to supply Ukraine with artillery ammunition because we could not produce it in the quantities needed.

Ukraine's Strategic Interdiction Campaign Begins to Take Shape

Fabian Hoffmann

Source LInk

This week witnessed some of the most intense Ukrainian drone and missile operations to date. Ukraine conducted several larger-scale attacks against critical infrastructure and military targets deep inside Russian territory, as far as 1,100 km behind the frontlines.

The largest attack occurred during the night of 13 to 14 January, with well over 100 drones and missiles targeting Russian industrial sites, oil depots, refineries, and ammunition storage facilities across several regions, including Voronezh, Saratov, Tatarstan, and Orel. Additional smaller-scale attacks were carried out in the days before and after. Just last night, Ukraine appears to have struck more oil depots in the Kaluga and Tula regions.

It is still unclear which weapon systems Ukraine employed in these operations. Following the large-scale attack of 13 to 14 January, Russian media alleged that U.S.-supplied MGM-140 ATACMS short-range ballistic missiles and British/French-supplied Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG missiles were involved, including in the strike on a chemical plant in Bryansk.

Transformation Under Fire – An Analysis of Ukraine’s Security Sector Since 1991

Lea Ellmanns, Oleksiy Melnyk & Wolf-Christian Paes

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On 24 February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, significantly escalating the lower-intensity conflict ongoing in the country’s east since February 2014. The resilience Ukraine displayed during the first months of the invasion surprised many: Kyiv had been expected to fall within days. To understand why Ukraine was able to defend its territory against overwhelming material odds, it is instructive to look back at the development of Ukraine’s security sector. Since 1991, Ukraine’s security sector has undergone a profound transformation in response to transitions, crises and, finally, full-fledged armed conflict. This report, which was finalised as the third year of full-scale Russian aggression draws to a close, discusses the changes to Ukraine’s security sector since its independence from the Soviet Union, specifically examining military and paramilitary forces.

From the Archives: Donald Trump’s Greenland Affair

Dana Allin

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Where to begin on the subject of Donald Trump’s decision to call off a state visit to Denmark? He cancelled in one of last night’s tweets, ‘based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland…’

I might start by noting that there were other subjects I wanted to tackle in writing this week: the turmoil in American politics after Jerusalem barred two US Congresswomen from entering Israel; the conceptual place of racist mass murder, in El Paso and elsewhere, for defining terrorism as a threat to US national security; and the under-reported declaration from US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the Trump administration’s promotion of a hard Brexit with promises of a US–UK trade agreement should be considered void, because trade deals must be approved by Congress and Congress will not participate in damaging the Good Friday Agreement.

The Greenland affair, by contrast, may be considered trivial. I’m not so sure. Since well before January 2017, our big problem of epistemology and analysis is that, by neglecting the daily dose of farce, we would ignore much of what is going on – and what’s going on is significant. The president of the United States indicated to aides that he would like to buy Greenland. They weren’t sure if this was a joke. Among his tweets on the subject was a photo of a golden Trump Tower superimposed on a Greenland village, with the helpful promise that he did not actually intend to build it. Prime Minister Frederiksen reacted with some measure of incredulity. So, the president of the United States pulled out. The Danish Royal House, official host for Trump’s planned visit, expressed ‘surprise’.

Argentina: Democracy in a Bain-marie - Opinion

Matías Bianchi & María Esperanza Casullo

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It has been one year since Javier Milei took office in Argentina. As he warned during his campaign, his administration has been plagued by authoritarian practices, verbal and institutional violence, and policies that openly curtail citizens’ rights. Argentina currently possesses significant democratic capital. We must now ask how long this capital will last in resisting the libertarian wave.

During the 2023 election campaign, the Argentinian think tank Asuntos del Sur published a study assessing the levels of authoritarianism among presidential candidates. The analysis was grounded in the theoretical framework developed by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in their book How Democracies Die, which explores a disturbing paradox: nowadays, democracies are eroded not ‘from the outside,’ but rather, from within, by democratically elected leaderships. In Asuntos del Sur’s study, Milei’s candidacy sounded alarm bells across every dimension put forward by the authors.

In its 2024 issue, Asuntos del Sur picked up the research by assessing what had happened in the first year of government. If there is one thing that Javier Milei cannot be accused of, it is failing to keep his promises. The study, Democratic Alert: Critical Markers of Authoritarian Risk in Javier Milei’s First Year in Office, analyzed the president’s speeches, social media images, and policies. What it found is a vision of Argentine and global politics as a Manichean and moralizing conflict, without nuance, between a figure with messianic characteristics and a series of supposedly immoral and evil adversaries. Milei characterizes entire social sectors as communists, socialists, collectivists, criminals, parasites, or indoctrinators of youth. This Manichean antagonism is central to the denial of the legitimacy of his political opponents, one of the criteria for authoritarian risk identified by Levitsky and Ziblatt.

Security News This Week: US Names One of the Hackers Allegedly Behind Massive Salt Typhoon Breaches

Lily Hay Newman & Andy Greenberg

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As the Biden administration comes to a close, the White House released a 40-page executive order on Thursday aimed at shoring up federal cybersecurity protections and placing guardrails on the US government’s use of AI. WIRED also spoke with outgoing US ambassador for cyberspace and digital policy, Nathaniel Fick, about the urgency that the Trump administration not cow to Russia and China in the global race for technical dominance. Outgoing FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel details to WIRED the threats facing US telecoms, at least nine of which were recently breached by China’s Salt Typhoon hackers. Meanwhile, US officials are still scrambling to get a handle on multiple espionage campaigns and other data breaches, with new revelations this week that a breach of AT&T disclosed last summer compromised FBI call and text logs that could reveal the identity of anonymous sources.

Huione Guarantee, the massive online marketplace that researchers say provides an array of services to online scammers, is expanding its offerings to include a messaging app, stablecoin, and crypto exchange and has facilitated a whopping $24 billion in transactions, according to new research. New findings indicate that GitHub’s efforts to crack down on the use of deepfake porn software are falling short. And WIRED did a deep dive into the opaque world of predictive travel surveillance and the companies and governments that are pumping data about international travelers into AI tools meant to detect people who might be a “threat.”

Warfare's New Equation

Andy Yakulis

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Modern Warfare has become a battle of numbers. Yet no longer is the main data point the number of troops but rather the number of systems and their cost. Reporting from the modern battlefields in Ukraine, the Red Sea, and Gaza, and Northern Israel frequently comes with a cost analysis. What was the cost of the missile to shoot down one drone? Or how much did a drone cost to destroy a tank? Mass matters now more than ever because warfare has become democratized. Small, one-way drones - which have effectively become piloted munitions, are relevantly cheap yet extremely effective.

The U.S. military industrial complex has created incredibly complex, expensive, exquisite products for the last half-century. The USS Ford Aircraft Carrier takes the number 1 spot at $13 billion, with other platforms, such as the F35, costing between $80m to $100m per aircraft. While The U.S. was building such systems, China has been focused on cheaper systems that, in mass, can destroy these large systems. Sure, the USS Ford has defenses, but if the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fires five DF-21 missiles that cost $25m each at the U.S. Navy's crown jewel, only one needs to get through. The cost of the PLAN to destroy a $13 billion asset could be only $125 million. Or about 1% of the cost of its target.

In the Red Sea, the U.S. Navy has been shooting down Houthi attack drones that cost around $40,000 with two $ 1 million missiles. The targeted drone is 2% of the cost of the U.S. missiles required to shoot it down.