Indian Strategic Studies: 01/30/25

30 January 2025

A Decade of Belt and Road Initiative: China’s Motivations and India’s Suspicions

Nitin Menon

Inspired by the ancient Silk Road of the Han dynasty, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ in September 2013 in Kazakhstan.[1] It aimed at creating a logistical corridor with roads, railways, and aerial links along the historic trade route linking China with Europe via Central Asia. A month later, during a visit to Indonesia, Xi unveiled a complementary maritime venture called the ‘21st-century Maritime Silk Road’ to link China’s eastern ports to Europe.[2] The combination of these two projects led to the One Belt One Road strategy, later rebranded as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2015.[3] Over the past decade, the BRI has evolved into one of the most ambitious global infrastructure, trade, and connectivity projects ever undertaken, with China already investing an estimated $1 trillion.[4] By December 2023, nearly 150 countries, representing two-thirds of the global population and more than half of the world’s GDP, have either signed on to BRI projects or shown strong interest in joining.[5] The BRI has captured the attention of countless analysts and has been hailed as “one of the grandest and most ambitious schemes floated by any country in modern times that . . . will have a very substantial impact on the strategies and politics of the entire world”.[6]

The inaugural international conference on the BRI in May 2017 was a resounding success, drawing participation from 29 heads of states and representatives from nearly 130 states.[7] However, the absence of India, a country that holds a strategic position at the intersection of the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and the Maritime Silk Road (MSR), was conspicuous.[8] Though unequal in scale, the concurrent rise of China and India is a critical force shaping 21st-century global politics.[9] Yet their bilateral relationship is characterized not by ‘cooperation’ but by ‘conflict’, ‘competition,’ and ‘confrontation’ over not only the disputed boundary but also their influence over the shared neighbourhood, as well as in the global order.[10] It is this context that leads to a critical question: What are the underlying motivations driving China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and why does India vehemently oppose the project and its implementation?

Rethinking the Precarity of the Hindu Minority in Bangladesh - Opinion

Sazzad Siddiqui

The Hindu minority in Bangladesh experiences a precarious socio-political landscape shaped by structural violence and partisan dynamics. While their alignment with the Awami League (AL) demonstrates agency and strategic decision-making, it also exposes them to greater risks during periods of political upheaval. For instance, A total of 1,068 houses and business establishments belonging to minorities, mostly Hindus, were attacked following the fall of Sheikh Hasina on August 5, 2024, until August 20, 2024. Among these, at least 506 properties were owned by individuals affiliated with Awami League politics.

Robert Ted Gurr’s seminal works, Why Men Rebel and Minorities at Risk, offer valuable insights into how systemic deprivation, perceived threats, and grievances drive marginalized communities into cycles of vulnerability. However, Gurr’s framework often portrays minorities as passive victims of structural oppression, overlooking their agency and active roles in shaping their socio-political realities. For example, the experiences of the Hindu minority in Bangladesh illustrate a subtle narrative. Historically, the Hindu community has largely aligned itself politically with the AL, perceiving it as a secular alternative to Islamist ideologies. The AL’s rhetoric and policies often create a sense of security for Hindus which reinforces their loyalty. Yet, this alignment also exposes them to significant risks which can be noted as a paradox that reflects the complex ‘politics of minority’ identities. During political transitions or crises, Hindus in Bangladesh frequently face disproportionate violence, land dispossession, and social ostracism. Such acts are allegedly carried out by groups across the political spectrum, irrespective of their secular or religious tendencies. This recurring pattern highlights the precarious position of minorities, caught between opposing ideological forces – like being trapped between a crocodile and a snake.

Review – Spying in South Asia

Dhruv Gadhavi

Contributing significantly to the literature focusing on the functioning of intelligence outside the Anglosphere and shedding light on the ‘missing dimension’ of the Cold War as it had played out in the Indian subcontinent, Paul M. McGarr’s new book is solidly grounded in primary resources from archives in the United States, United Kingdom and India. An experienced intelligence historian, McGarr traces the characters, events, institutions, policies, publications as well as the perceptions spread across continents, which shaped the contours of covert intervention by British and American intelligence and security agencies, in the face of looming shades of red (Soviet and Indian communism), and the covert cooperation with Indian agencies. At a time when there is domestic scrutiny and global curiosity regarding Indian intelligence agencies, this book essentially explores the historical experiences in their own sovereign territory with British and American intelligence and security agencies as well as its lasting influence.

The core argument which cuts through McGarr’s book is that the interventions undertaken during the Cold War by the British and American intelligence and security agencies in India proved to be ‘misguided’ and ‘largely self-defeating’ (p.3). This argument is situated in the context, and McGarr’s question: why do South Asians associate intelligence with covert action, grand conspiracy and justifications for repression, as opposed to the Western notions about surveillance? While the first half of the book reflects how such associations and notions were the making of the activities of foreign intelligence agencies, the latter half of the book highlights how such notions were reinforced by Indian politicians for electoral gains. It is towards the conclusion that one would realise that the chapterization of the book follows not just a sequential timeline but also a consequential one. Even today, the effects of using the preserved mystique and the secrecy hold much sway in the domestic political discourse. Those currently amused by allegations of the ‘malevolent foreign hand’ meddling in domestic politics would find it interesting to note that such smearing dates back to the Nehruvian era and has endured through a number of succeeding governments. Similar nuances situate the book in a welcome shift from the conventional East-West binary of Cold War intelligence studies and offer a fresh North-South perspective.

Digging Deep: Tunnel Boring Machines and India’s China Challenge

Amit Kumar & Pranay Kotasthane

Multiple reports have confirmed China’s restrictions on the export of tunnel boring machines (TBMs) to India despite the two countries having concluded a deal on the disengagement of troops in Depsang and Demchok. This has led observers and experts to underline China’s increasing willingness and capabilities to halt India’s growth story.

As India frames a response to counter China’s economic coercion, it’s useful to assess the strategic impact of China’s economic restrictions. Our study of trade in TBMs indicates that India’s ecosystem is not as vulnerable to China’s actions as some of these reports suggest. We should respond to China from a position of strength. Here’s why.

The data sourced from India’s Ministry of Commerce shows India’s import dependence on China for TBMs (standard and self-propelling) by value and volume over the last six years. The graphs show that for the self-propelled TBMs, India hardly exhibits any dependence on imports from China, except for by value in 2021 and 2022. Even in these years, the dependence doesn’t appear too concerning. Secondly, 2021 and 2022 witnessed a huge uptick in India’s import of self-propelled TBMs, with the majority sourced from outside China.

How a top Chinese AI model overcame US sanctions

Caiwei Chen

The AI community is abuzz over DeepSeek R1, a new open-source reasoning model.

The model was developed by the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which claims that R1 matches or even surpasses OpenAI’s ChatGPT o1 on multiple key benchmarks but operates at a fraction of the cost.

“This could be a truly equalizing breakthrough that is great for researchers and developers with limited resources, especially those from the Global South,” says Hancheng Cao, an assistant professor in information systems at Emory University.

DeepSeek’s success is even more remarkable given the constraints facing Chinese AI companies in the form of increasing US export controls on cutting-edge chips. But early evidence shows that these measures are not working as intended. Rather than weakening China’s AI capabilities, the sanctions appear to be driving startups like DeepSeek to innovate in ways that prioritize efficiency, resource-pooling, and collaboration.

To create R1, DeepSeek had to rework its training process to reduce the strain on its GPUs, a variety released by Nvidia for the Chinese market that have their performance capped at half the speed of its top products, according to Zihan Wang, a former DeepSeek employee and current PhD student in computer science at Northwestern University.

DeepSeek’s New AI Model Sparks Shock, Awe, and Questions From US Competitors

Will Knight

A powerful new open-source artificial intelligence model created by Chinese startup DeepSeek has shaken Silicon Valley over the past few days. Packed with cutting-edge capabilities and developed on a seemingly tiny budget, DeepSeek’s R1 is prompting talk of an impending upheaval in the tech industry.

To some people, DeepSeek’s rise signals that the US has lost its edge in AI. But a number of experts, including executives at companies that build and customize some of the world’s most powerful frontier AI models, say it's a sign of a different kind of technological transition underway.

Instead of trying to create larger and larger models that require increasingly exorbitant amounts of computing resources, AI companies are now focusing more on developing advanced capabilities, like reasoning. That has created an opening for smaller, innovative startups such as DeepSeek that haven’t received billions of dollars in outside investment. “It’s a paradigm shift towards reasoning, and that will be much more democratized,” says Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks, a company that specializes in building and hosting custom AI models.

DeepSeek’s Popular AI App Is Explicitly Sending US Data to China

Matt Burgess & Lily Hay Newman

The United States’ recent regulatory action against the Chinese-owned social video platform TikTok prompted mass migration to another Chinese app, the social platform “Rednote.” Now, a generative artificial intelligence platform from the Chinese developer DeepSeek is exploding in popularity, posing a potential threat to US AI dominance and offering the latest evidence that moratoriums like the TikTok ban will not stop Americans from using Chinese-owned digital services.

DeepSeek, an AI research lab created by a prominent Chinese hedge fund, recently gained popularity after releasing its latest open source generative AI model that easily competes with top US platforms like those developed by OpenAI. However, to help avoid US sanctions on hardware and software, DeepSeek created some clever workarounds when building its models. On Monday, DeepSeek’s creators limited new sign-ups after claiming the app had been overrun with a “large-scale malicious attack.”

While DeepSeek has several AI models, some of which can be downloaded and run locally on your laptop, the majority of people will likely access the service through its iOS or Android apps or its web chat interface. Like with other generative AI models, you can ask it questions and get answers; it can search the web; or it can alternatively use a reasoning model to elaborate on answers.

China’s DeepSeek Surprise

Matteo Wong

One week ago, a new and formidable challenger for OpenAI’s throne emerged. A Chinese AI start-up, DeepSeek, launched a model that appeared to match the most powerful version of ChatGPT but, at least according to its creator, was a fraction of the cost to build. The program, called DeepSeek-R1, has incited plenty of concern: Ultrapowerful Chinese AI models are exactly what many leaders of American AI companies feared when they, and more recently President Donald Trump, have sounded alarms about a technological race between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. This is a “wake up call for America,” Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, commented on social media.

But at the same time, many Americans—including much of the tech industry—appear to be lauding this Chinese AI. As of this morning, DeepSeek had overtaken ChatGPT as the top free application on Apple’s mobile-app store in the United States. Researchers, executives, and investors have been heaping on praise. The new DeepSeek model “is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen,” the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, an outspoken supporter of Trump, wrote on X. The program shows “the power of open research,” Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, wrote online.

Why DeepSeek Could Change What Silicon Valley Believes About A.I.

Kevin Roose

The artificial intelligence breakthrough that is sending shock waves through stock markets, spooking Silicon Valley giants, and generating breathless takes about the end of America’s technological dominance arrived with an unassuming, wonky title: “Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning.”

The 22-page paper, released last week by a scrappy Chinese A.I. start-up called DeepSeek, didn’t immediately set off alarm bells. It took a few days for researchers to digest the paper’s claims, and the implications of what it described. The company had created a new A.I. model called DeepSeek-R1, built by a team of researchers who claimed to have used a modest number of second-rate A.I. chips to match the performance of leading American A.I. models at a fraction of the cost.

DeepSeek said it had done this by using clever engineering to substitute for raw computing horsepower. And it had done it in China, a country many experts thought was in a distant second place in the global A.I. race.

Some industry watchers initially reacted to DeepSeek’s breakthrough with disbelief. Surely, they thought, DeepSeek had cheated to achieve R1’s results, or fudged their numbers to make their model look more impressive than it was. Maybe the Chinese government was promoting propaganda to undermine the narrative of American A.I. dominance. Maybe DeepSeek was hiding a stash of illicit Nvidia H100 chips, banned under U.S. export controls, and lying about it. Maybe R1 was actually just a clever re-skinning of American A.I. models that didn’t represent much in the way of real progress.

To limit Chinese influence on commercial tech partners, Pentagon plans big changes

PATRICK TUCKER

New rules aimed at exposing foreign influence over companies the Pentagon does business with are at odds with Defense Department efforts to work with more startups, but there could be a way to do both—if the DOD changes the way it approaches risk, security experts say.

U.S. efforts to secure classified weapons information have worked so well that China is devoting more and more time to scouring unclassified information to gather intelligence on new potential capabilities, Matthew Redding, the assistant director for industrial security at the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, said last week at a Potomac Officers' Club event in Virginia.

“They're moving away from [searching for intelligence] behind the classified castle walls, which are very secure under the National Industrial Security Program. While the classified world is very secure, what about that unclassified storefront? What about that unclassified research outside of your classified research areas, right?” he said. His office will collect information on defense contractors in order to evaluate whether some issue related to foreign influence might prohibit that contractor from doing classified work.

The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act mandated a lot more vetting and scrutiny of defense contractors to detect possible Chinese influence. Any Defense Department contract over $5 million will be subject to increased vetting by Redding’s agency, once the policy is reviewed thoroughly.

China’s A.I. Advances Spook Big Tech Investors on Wall Street

Jason Karaian and Joe Rennison

Advances in artificial intelligence by Chinese upstarts rattled U.S. markets on Monday, with the threat of greater competition prompting a slide in shares of the biggest technology companies.

The Chinese A.I. company DeepSeek has said it can match the abilities of cutting-edge chatbots while using a fraction of the specialized computer chips that leading A.I. companies rely on. That’s prompted investors to rethink the heady valuations of companies like Nvidia, whose equipment powers the most advanced A.I. systems, as well as the enormous investments that companies like Alphabet, Meta and OpenAI are making to build their businesses.

On Monday, the S&P 500 index fell 1.5 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 3.1 percent. Nvidia was hit hard, plunging 16.9 percent and losing roughly $600 billion in market value. Falling tech stocks also dented market indexes in Europe and Japan.

Excitement over the prospects for A.I. had helped send technology stocks soaring over the past year, but concerns have been rising, too. Investors have become increasingly worried that the small cohort of tech companies that drove the broader market’s gains won’t live up to the lofty expectations that their sky-high prices suggest.

How Chinese AI Startup DeepSeek Made a Model that Rivals OpenAI

Zeyi Yang

On January 20, DeepSeek, a relatively unknown AI research lab from China, released an open source model that’s quickly become the talk of the town in Silicon Valley. According to a paper authored by the company, DeepSeek-R1 beats the industry’s leading models like OpenAI o1 on several math and reasoning benchmarks. In fact, on many metrics that matter—capability, cost, openness—DeepSeek is giving Western AI giants a run for their money.

DeepSeek’s success points to an unintended outcome of the tech cold war between the US and China. US export controls have severely curtailed the ability of Chinese tech firms to compete on AI in the Western way—that is, infinitely scaling up by buying more chips and training for a longer period of time. As a result, most Chinese companies have focused on downstream applications rather than building their own models. But with its latest release, DeepSeek proves that there’s another way to win: by revamping the foundational structure of AI models and using limited resources more efficiently.

“Unlike many Chinese AI firms that rely heavily on access to advanced hardware, DeepSeek has focused on maximizing software-driven resource optimization,” explains Marina Zhang, an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney, who studies Chinese innovations. “DeepSeek has embraced open source methods, pooling collective expertise and fostering collaborative innovation. This approach not only mitigates resource constraints but also accelerates the development of cutting-edge technologies, setting DeepSeek apart from more insular competitors.”

Hope Won in Syria

Oz Katerji

I spent 13 years of my life closely monitoring the M5 highway, a long Syrian motorway that travels north to south, linking the country’s second city, Aleppo, with Hama, Homs, and Damascus, before continuing down toward the Jordanian border.

Territorial control over this stretch of road was one of the best ways to mark the winners and losers in the long, brutal civil war. Syrian rebels spent years trying to regain control of the road after losing it to the regime during Russia and Iran’s assault on Aleppo in 2016. While territory frequently changed hands, gains and losses were often measured in meters—and mostly went in favor of the regime.

What to Know About the New Trump Administration Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence

Michael C. Horowitz

Yesterday, the Trump administration debuted its broad approach to artificial intelligence (AI) with a short executive order (EO) titled “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence.” The policy goal, as described in Section 2 of the document is clear: “[T]o sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.” It directs a series of actions that build on the day-one repeal of Biden Administration Executive Order 14110, titled “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence,” which the Trump administration argues excessively burdened American AI companies in ways that would undermine U.S. AI technology leadership, or reflected ideological bias or social agendas. The multiple AI actions by the White House during the first week of the administration reinforces the centrality that AI, as a general-purpose technology rapidly advancing and impacting the lives of every American, will play across the Trump administration. Here are key takeaways.

First, the Trump EO directs a 180-day review of all implementing actions that occurred due to the Biden administration EO. The tasks outlined in the Biden administration EO were essentially completed prior to the end of the administration, so the repeal of the EO itself had little substantive impact. Now, the Trump administration will review the implementing actions that occurred due to the EO.

Introducing the Major International Relations Theories

Stephen McGlinchey, Rosie Walters and Dana Gold

International Relations theory allows us to ask questions of our history, our present, and even gain insights into our future. It gives us a toolkit that forms an essential part of International Relations as an academic discipline. This extract from Foundations of International Relations (McGlinchey 2022) is designed with three objectives. First, to show when and why each successive theory emerged. Second, to outline the central features of each theory so that you can understand the basics of how they work and get an appreciation of the insights they offer. Finally, to unpack certain elements of the theories to reveal some of their complexity. Due to its complexity and diversity, newcomers often have difficulty in grasping International Relations theory. So, in order to consider the field as a whole for beginners it is necessary to simplify International Relations theory. Here, we do so by splitting theory into three categories – ‘traditional’, ‘middle ground’ and ‘critical’. In order to simplify further, the various named theories will be presented as theory families. Much like real families, theory families have members who disagree on many things – but they still share core commonalities.

Theories allow us to understand and try to make sense of the world around us through different perspectives – each of which are ways to simplify a complicated world. Theories are like maps. Each map is made for a certain purpose and what is included in the map is based on what is necessary to direct the map’s user in a clear, and useful, manner. Embarking on the study of International Relations without an understanding of theory is like setting off on a journey without a map. You might arrive at your destination, or somewhere else very interesting, but you will have no idea where you are or how you got there. And you will have no response to someone who insists that their route would have been better or more direct. Each different theory puts different things on its map, based on what its theorists believe to be important. Variables to plot on an International Relations map would be such things as states, organisations, individuals, economics, history, class, power, gender and so on. Theorists then use their chosen variables, and omit the others, to construct a simplified view of the world that can be used to analyse events – and in some cases to have a degree of predictive ability.

2025’s Gas Crisis in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict - Opinion

Martin Duffy

The new year starts with another development in the Ukraine-Russia War, Europe’s war over gas. Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia was the EU’s biggest supplier of natural gas. The EU (and to a lesser extent, the wider European bloc) has thereby reduced Russia’s share of imports from over 40% in 2021 to 8% in 2023, according to the European Council. To fill the energy gap, Europe has imported more liquefied natural gas (LNG) — by sea tankers — from the USA and other countries, as well as pipeline-gas from countries like Norway. The EU has also ramped up temporary imports of Russian LNG but the EU has a self-imposed deadline of 2027 and envisages stoppage of all Russian fossil fuels.

As Ukraine has been the victim of so much of Putin’s energy-focused attack, it has forced a moral dilemma in Kyiv emerging from a Presidential decision on shutting off the Russian gas-pipes that flow through Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the move “one of Moscow’s greatest defeats…turning energy into a weapon and engaging in cynical energy-blackmail against its partners”. Ukrainian Energy Minister Halushchenko described the stop on Russian gas to Europe as a “historic event….Russia is losing its markets and will suffer financial losses…” But there are inevitable human consequences to this gas war.

Europe’s Lagging Position on Microprocessors - Opinion

Robert Palmer

Valued at over $3 trillion, Nvidia, the world’s largest market capitalisation, exemplifies the transformative power of the microprocessor sector, but Europe’s lagging position raises significant concerns about sovereignty and competitiveness. Some companies are stepping up, offering concrete responses to these challenges and heralding a new era for European innovation in microprocessors. European socio-economic stability depends on it. A new era is fast approaching, with the US authorities having decided to strike a major blow by making it very difficult to export certain semiconductors, even to allied countries, thereby depriving half of Europe’s countries of easy access to US technologies.

The global microprocessor market is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by unprecedented technological advances and intensifying geopolitical competition. Once considered a niche industry, microprocessors have become the backbone of modern economies, enabling everything from smartphones to artificial intelligence systems, from IoT to cloud computing. The rise of Nvidia, a global leader in AI, underscores this changing ecosystem. The company is set to replace Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), who stated that the update aims to ensure “a more representative exposure to the semiconductors industry and the materials sector, respectively”.

Do the Voices of Victims of Mass Atrocities Make a Difference?

Mukesh Kapila

The sombre speeches of foreign dignitaries including the UN Secretary General and heads of state were interrupted by sobs and screams from the thousands packed into Kigali’s Amahora stadium. It was 2014 and we were marking Kwibuka20, the Rwanda genocide’s 20th anniversary. Red Cross volunteers clambered along the stands to stretcher away the dozens fainting around us. I was back in the stadium I had first visited in 1994 to meet the failed UN peacekeeping mission headquartered there. What could I hope to learn by returning? The purpose of learning is to imbibe knowledge that creates understanding, generates insight, and triggers empathy. Ultimately, that aims to improve individual and societal attitudes and behaviours. That was the motivation, in this context, for listening to genocide survivors. The same objective has spurred the growth of Holocaust education in the aftermath of Nazi Germany’s progrom against Jews during the Second World War. But at a time that antisemitism and other hatreds and divisions are at record level, is it working?

Of course, it is inherent in the human condition to fail again and again. And so, the Holocaust was preceded by the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian genocide and German Southwest Africa’s Herero and Nama genocide. And succeeding it were the Rwanda, Srebrenica, Cambodia, Yazidi, and Darfur genocides. Not to mention genocide-like atrocities against the Uyghur in China and Rohingya in Myanmar, or in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and Gaza.

Israeli startups raise over $12 billion in 2024 despite war

Israeli startup companies succeeded in raising a whopping $12.2 billion in 2024, according to Start-Up Nation Central (SNC). This constituted a 31% increase in raised capital compared to 2023.

The report also revealed that 2024 marked a return to large-scale investments compared to more modest investments during the preceding year. Approximately 15 large business deals in 2024 generated around $4 billion in the Israeli tech sector.

The result is impressive as Israeli startups succeeded in accumulating larger amounts during a difficult wartime than startups in most countries raise during a more favorable peace time. Israeli cybersecurity startups, which constitute 7% of all local high-tech businesses, succeeded in accumulating $3.8 billion or approximately one third of the total capital.

Start-Up Nation Central is an organization that focuses on strengthening the Israeli tech sector. While the Israeli tech industry only employs around 10% of the total Israeli workforce, it constitutes a critical engine in the local economy and generates over half of Israel’s total annual export earnings.

Startup Nation Central CEO Avi Hasson praised the resilience and adaptability of the Israeli tech sector in such challenging times.

Wanted: A US Strategy for ‘Offense’ in Cybersecurity

The U.S. is facing an onslaught from adversaries in cyberspace, and while conversations about the response has focused on bolstering cybersecurity defenses, some have argued for an approach more geared to offense. That’s the view of many experts and of some officials in the new Trump administration, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who has said the U.S. should “start going on offense and start imposing… higher costs and consequences” for cyberattacks directed at U.S. targets.

The U.S. has already taken retaliatory action against bad cyber actors; in one of his final acts as president, Joe Biden issued an executive order on cybersecurity that grants expanded authorities for sanctions against those who launch cyberattacks against U.S. critical infrastructure. Soon after, the Treasury Department sanctioned an alleged hacker and companies in China linked to the recent Salt Typhoon hack of U.S. telecommunications firms. Washington has imposed similar sanctions and financial restrictions on entities linked to other recent China-linked attacks, and the Department of Defense’s most recent Cyber Strategy instructed the department to prepare responses to “destructive cyber attacks.” But many experts believe the U.S. still lacks a clear offensive cyber strategy.

Musk Plan for Retooling Government Takes Shape, but Big Questions Loom

Michael C. Bender, Madeleine Ngo and Theodore Schleifer

The initial plan for retooling the federal government under President Trump started with three loyal billionaires: the banker Howard Lutnick, the tech leader Elon Musk and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Now, it’s down to one.

Mr. Lutnick emerged as Mr. Trump’s pick to run the Commerce Department. Mr. Ramaswamy decided to step aside from the project just before Mr. Trump assumed office on Monday.

As a result, Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, now has full command of the federal cost-cutting effort, which Mr. Trump has hailed as “potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time.” How exactly Mr. Musk wields his consolidated power to set the tempo and targets of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency remains to be seen. But his first moves suggest he will oversee something closer to an I.T. project than the sweeping operation to slash at least $2 trillion from the federal budget that Mr. Musk had once predicted.

The Musk-led project debuted this week with a bit of bureaucratic jujitsu: the takeover of an existing arm of the White House that, for the past decade, had focused on improving government technology. The office, the United States Digital Service, now renamed United States DOGE Service, was created in 2014 to fix failing computer systems that threatened the success of President Barack Obama’s health insurance overhaul.

Israel: Life By the Sword

Yonatan Mendel

Toward the end of October 2023 I was taking a taxi home in Tel Aviv. Just after we entered Shapira neighborhood, near the central bus station, the driver turned on the radio to the ongoing terrible news from the south. The Israeli ground operation in Gaza had just begun; there were heavy fights around Beit Hanoun. The newscaster mentioned the Israelis and foreigners whom Hamas had, earlier that month, kidnapped to the Gaza Strip—at the time they numbered 251—before moving on to the next item: clashes were underway between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants in Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. “It is so hard to build, and so easy to destroy,” the driver said, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “So easy to destroy what?” I asked. “You know,” he said, “everything. The peace we had here. Now, they will get nothing, no work, no peace.”

I didn’t answer. Any conversation was bound to end in heavy silence, and I preferred skipping directly to the heavy silence part. Yet that nonconversation captured something essential about the way Israelis perceive “the conflict.” Many in Jewish Israeli society do not grasp, and do not want to grasp, that there is a connection between the eruption of violence on October 7 and the fact that the conflict’s core issues—occupation, settlements, borders, security, water, Jerusalem, refugees, sovereignty, freedom of movement, the existence of a Palestinian state—have never been settled. Many Israelis seem to think that the state’s deceitful formulas of “living with the conflict,” “managing the conflict,” or bypassing it with the illusion of peace (as did the Abraham Accords signed during the first Trump presidency), combined with military superiority, had created a tenable status quo that came to an end on October 7, 2023.

Trump vs. the Law

Sam Freedman

I’ll be back in the (relatively) calmer waters of British politics soon but I promised a part two to last week’s post on Trump, his key appointees, and the imminent battles between them.

The first week has gone largely as expected. We had an incoherent inauguration speech where the most notable spectacle was a shifty row of tech CEOs (I saw an “embarrassment of riches” suggested as the collective noun).

Then there was the inevitable slew of executive orders with varying degrees of significance and legality. Many were performative, others that sound serious will likely never happen, some will cause immense pain and difficulty – like the decision to abandon several thousand Afghan refugees or pause lifesaving treatment for 25 million people suffering with HIV around the world. Again, as expected, there has been more caution shown on high-risk economic measures like tariffs, alongside plenty of bluster.

I was planning on covering foreign affairs, justice and healthcare in this post but as Dad looked at Ukraine policy during the week I’ve decided to focus in on justice, democracy, the constitution and the courts, and come back to healthcare at some point in the future when it’s clearer what they want to do.

Israelis and Palestinians Both Lost Their Futures

Steven A. Cook

When the cease-fire in Gaza went into effect earlier this week, the joy across the conflict line was palpable from 6,000 miles away. Although it is unlikely that complicated three-phase deal will ever be fully implemented, it will save lives, bring hostages home, and provide Palestinians in Gaza with much-needed humanitarian aid. The initial hostage and prisoner release also provides a moment to reflect on the broader consequences of the war. Among the most striking is how the conflict has not just altered the trajectories of Israeli and Palestinian societies but in important ways forced them into reverse.

No doubt, Hamas has notched a number of notable achievements since it launched the onslaught it called Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7, 2023. The group drew the IDF into a ferocious fight in the Gaza Strip that has compromised the international legitimacy of Israel’s military and the state it defends. And not since the announcement of the Clinton Parameters and the effort to rescue the Oslo process at the Egyptian resort town of Taba in early 2001 has the Palestinian question been front and center in Middle Eastern and international politics.

The Less People Know About AI, the More They Like It

Chiara Longoni, Gil Appel & Stephanie Tully

The rapid spread of artificial intelligence has people wondering: Who’s most likely to embrace AI in their daily lives? Many assume it’s the tech-savvy—those who understand how AI works—who are most eager to adopt it.

Surprisingly, our new research, published in the Journal of Marketing, finds the opposite. People with less knowledge about AI are actually more open to using the technology. We call this difference in adoption propensity the “lower literacy-higher receptivity” link.

This link shows up across different groups, settings, and even countries. For instance, our analysis of data from market research company Ipsos spanning 27 countries reveals that people in nations with lower average AI literacy are more receptive toward AI adoption than those in nations with higher literacy.

Similarly, our survey of US undergraduate students finds that those with less understanding of AI are more likely to indicate using it for tasks like academic assignments.

The reason behind this link lies in how AI now performs tasks we once thought only humans could do. When AI creates a piece of art, writes a heartfelt response, or plays a musical instrument, it can feel almost magical—like it’s crossing into human territory.

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