The U.S. Needs a Strategic Shift in South Asia

Mustafa Chaudhry

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Pakistan is in trouble. A lackluster economy, endemic corruption, abysmal human development indicators, and terrorism are just some of the problems plaguing the country. Many Pakistanis have voted on the country’s perilous situation with their feet choosing to leave in large numbers, and in some cases at a tremendous risk to their own lives. It is high time that the U.S. also consider its complete exit from Pakistan.

Following the Afghan withdrawal, the U.S. no longer needs Pakistan for the critical supply of war material. Moreover, the U.S. should formulate any future Afghan policy by turning to countries in the Gulf and Central Asia that are drawing themselves closer to Afghanistan. Pakistan no longer enjoys the same influence that it once did with the Taliban in the 1990s. Relations between Islamabad and Kabul have soured considerably over the last few years.

One reason that has gained traction among policymakers and pundits alike for continued engagement with Pakistan is to forestall the country’s complete embrace of China. Those taking this stance seem to misunderstand the current state of affairs. Pakistan’s wholehearted embrace of China is a foregone conclusion.

Apple is well-positioned as DeepSeek threatens AI giants, analysts say

Jordan Hart

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Big Tech is reeling from the seemingly sudden popularity of a big new Chinese AI name, but Apple could benefit from a disruption to its competitors' efforts.

DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup, released the AI model R1 on January 20. Many in the tech industry believe DeepSeek's large language models could threaten some of the biggest AI players, including Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI.

DeepSeek has spooked markets because it appears to deliver models that are as effective as US versions but much cheaper to produce because they run on less powerful chips.

That undercuts Google, OpenAI, and others' ability to charge premium prices to access the best of their AI models. The Netherlands-based chipmaker ASML's shares fell by 7%, while the AI chip giant Nvidia's stock dropped by more than 17% on Monday.

Apple, however, is in a relatively good position, tech analysts told Business Insider. Its stock rose on Monday, while competitors Alphabet and Microsoft traded down.

"Apple would be a beneficiary if the cost of AI training declined," Gene Munster, the managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said.

One reason Apple stands to gain from cheaper AI training is that it "rightly focuses on how to integrate AI as a product, rather than building the most cutting-edge models," William Kerwin, a tech analyst at Morningstar, said.

Is the PLA Overestimating the Potential of Artificial Intelligence?

Koichiro Takagi

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The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is using artificial intelligence (AI) to build a world-class military. It describes the concept of using weapons systems based on AI as “intelligentization,” which has been the focus of China’s military reforms in recent years.1 At the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on October 16, 2022, Xi Jinping mentioned the word intelligentization three times and stated that he would more quickly raise the PLA to a world-class military.2 The concept of intelligentization was not mentioned at the 19th Congress in 2017. Chinese researchers argue that the PLA can overtake the U.S. military by using AI to intelligentize.

The argument for the high potential of AI is not necessarily unique to the PLA. In May 2017, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work stated that AI may change the nature of warfare.4 Does the PLA, like Work, believe that AI will fundamentally change even the nature of warfare? Or is the PLA overestimating the potential of AI? Does the PLA intend to use AI to strengthen its capability and is this reform even feasible. Indeed, some U.S. experts suggest that Chinese theorists overlook the inherent vulnerabilities of AI and autonomous systems and overestimate their capabilities.

This study reviews PLA Daily articles on the PLA’s use of AI and explores how they intend to use it. It then examines what the PLA thinks the possibilities and limitations of military use of AI are. Is the PLA overlooking the problems and vulnerabilities of AI? Or is it deeply aware of those vulnerabilities and still betting on AI’s potential? By looking at the breadth and depth of these perspectives, it’s possible to examine the viability of the PLA’s AI-focused military reforms.

Shocking inside account of Chinese spy balloon fiasco and what the government didn't tell you

ROB WAUGH 

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The shocking truth about a Chinese spy balloon that entered US airspace last year has finally been revealed.

Panic swept the nation when officials spotted a massive, white balloon float over the Canadian border in February 2023.

While the Chinese government insisted it was a civilian meteorological device that had blown off course, it floated near Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, home to some of America's intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

The mysterious trajectory led to officials ordering it be shot down, sending an Air Force F-22 Raptor over the Atlantic Ocean to get the job done.

Glen VanHerck, retired Air Force general who led the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) told the National Post that officials only contacted him when the balloon was nearly over Alaska - two weeks before it crossed into the Lower 48.

America’s Great Mistake: Pushing Russia and China Together

Doug Bandow

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The United States is the world’s most powerful nation, with the most advanced military and largest economy. It enjoys the most enviable geographic position of any great power in history, luxuriating in splendid near isolation with only two weak and pacific neighbors.

The US also is allied with most of the central industrial states. Even as the Trump administration seeks to curtail American trade with the world, other nations clamored for greater commercial relations with Americans. The US attracts immigrants worldwide and possesses enormous “soft power,” including a globe-spanning culture.

America Fears the New Axis…

Yet denizens of the imperial city of Washington, D.C. are uneasy.

The emergence of several adversary regimes, of late tagged as the Axis of Disruption, Axis of Upheaval, Axis of Autocracy, and even new Axis of Evil, has come as a terrible shock to the imperial wannabes in Washington, yielding much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The Carnegie Endowment’s Christopher S. Chivvis and Jack Keating warn: “Historical precedents from the 1930s and the early Cold War suggest that even deeper cooperation among them is possible and that a more coherent bloc determined to blunt and roll back U.S. power worldwide might develop.”

Pathways to a Durable Israeli-Palestinian Peace

Charles P. Ries, Daniel Egel, Shelly Culbertson, David E. Thaler, C. Ross Anthony, Robin Meili, Mark Christopher Schwartz, Amal Altwaijri, Raphael S. Cohen & Marzia Giambertoni

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CHAPTER 1

A Hinge Point?

In one form or another, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has vexed would-be peacemakers for more than 75 years. World leaders, experienced diplomats, and committed activists on all sides have tried unsuccessfully to find the right formulas to guarantee peace, security, and prosperity for both peoples and to embed the solution in institutions and ensure guarantors for the long term.

October 7, 2023, will go down in history for the ferocity and brutality of surprise attacks by terrorists from Gaza on civilian communities, a music festival, and security installations in Israel. Close to 1,200 mainly civilian Israelis were killed, many in horrific ways, and 251 were taken back to Gaza as hostages.

In response, Israel launched an air and land assault on Gaza that thus far has led to the deaths of approximately 40,000 people and as many as 90,000 wounded, according to Palestinian Health Ministry estimates.2 The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) estimate that perhaps 17,000 of those killed were Hamas fighters of various kinds.3 Much of Gaza’s infrastructure, including housing; hospitals; and power, water, and sewage facilities, has been destroyed. Food and medical care are now scarce, and disease is spreading.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says 'no more DEI at Department of Defense': 'No exceptions'

Stepheny Price

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The Department of Defense (DoD) is the latest agency that is disbanding all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs following President Donald Trump's executive order terminating all federal DEI programs.

"The President’s guidance (lawful orders) is clear: No more DEI at Dept. of Defense," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote in a post on X.

In a handwritten note shared along with the post on X, Hegseth wrote: "The Pentagon will comply, immediately. No exceptions, name-changes, or delays."

Hegseth added that "those who do not comply will no longer work here."

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., echoed Hegseth, writing: "The best way to stop discriminating against people on the basis of race or gender is to stop discriminating against people on the basis of race or gender," Kennedy wrote in a post on X. "Let DEI die."

Hegseth, 44, was sworn in on Saturday morning after he secured his confirmation to lead the Pentagon on Friday after weeks of intense political drama surrounding his nomination and public scrutiny into his personal life.

The Urgency of Warfighting Renewal: Five Principles for Today’s Professional Military Education

Christopher M. Marcell, Gaylon L. McAlpine, Reagan E. Schaupp, and Joseph L. Varuolo

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When Secretary of Defense General James Mattis published the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), one statement in the summary companion document garnered great attention—and reaction—among the professional military education (PME) community: “PME has stagnated, focused more on the accomplishment of mandatory credit at the expense of lethality and ingenuity.”1 Mattis’s remedy: “We will emphasize intellectual leadership and military professionalism in the art and science of warfighting, deepening our knowledge of history while embracing new technology and techniques to counter competitors.”2 Two crucial phrases in this prescription, art and science of warfighting and to counter competitors, certainly reflected rapidly growing U.S. awareness of the accelerating rise of the People’s Republic of China and the accompanying “return to Great Power competition.”3 Mattis’s “calling out” of PME ignited passionate debate at all levels, as institutions (with accompanying opinion pieces) evaluated curriculum, faculty, and purpose. These topics eventually became the focus of House Armed Services Committee testimony in 2022,4 and of four RAND reports.

Risk: A Weak Element in U.S. Strategy Formulation

Frank Hoffman

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Risk is an enduring reality in strategic decision making. The rigorous assessment of risk is—or should be—a critical step in strategy development. There is always risk in any strategy thanks to the unrelenting reality of uncertainty in human affairs.1 Yet it is often a weak link in U.S. strategy formulation and decisionmaking. Thus, this article is focused on the role of strategic risk, how we define risk and operationalize it, and how senior leaders employ risk analysis to improve strategic performance. 

The thesis for this article is simple: strategic risk is not well understood, and risk analysis should be a routine and continuous part of the strategy-formulation process. The central research question is How well do senior-level national security decision makers incorporate risk as an element in strategic decisions, and, if needed what risk management steps could improve strategic effectiveness? 

The article is organized into three parts. The background section covers the literature and joint doctrine, including a discussion about the definition of risk. The second section summarizes a few brief cases from recent experiences in the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. The final section offers recommendations to advance risk-management practices in the national security community. This effort builds on insights by numerous practitioners who considered this topic in pioneering studies.2 One contributor concluded that the understanding of this issue has been too often “ill-defined and misleading” and urges greater effort in understanding the issue of risk at the highest levels to improve effective strategy.

Pentagon looks to leverage AI in fight against drones

Brad Dress

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The Pentagon’s new strategy focused on countering drones aims to respond to the future of warfare as autonomous unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are set to dominate the battlefield in the years ahead, but the defense industry faces a long road ahead to field new and emerging technologies to meet the U.S. ambition.

The Replicator 2 initiative looks to counter-UAS and leverage next-generation technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), to defend against swarms of attack drones.

While the effort is still young and has time to evolve, industry players are just now exploring new technology and a vision for the new era has yet to fully emerge, including which technologies might shape the new drone defense landscape.

Set to lead this initiative are smaller defense tech firms that are testing a range of ways to counter these swarms, from lasers to portable guns and tracking systems.

Mary-Lou Smulders, chief marketing officer at Dedrone, said modern warfare “has been completely and irrevocably changed” by drones, underscoring the need to rise and meet the new threat.

Fearing US ‘hostility,’ Russia could ‘escalate early’ in a space conflict: RAND

Theresa Hitchens

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Russia’s “inflated” fears of a potential US first strike in space, as well as Moscow’s increasing “risk tolerance” present challenges to US efforts to keep the peace in the heavens, a new Space Force-commissioned think tank study finds.

The study published today by RAND, “Emerging Factors for U.S.-Russia Crisis Stability in Space” authored by summer associate Cheyenne Tretter, further warns US policymakers and diplomats that Russia’s “relative restraint” regarding the space domain in the conflict in the Ukraine war should not be expected in any future conflict in the West.

RAND’s research work was commissioned by the Space Force’s Chief Strategy & Resourcing Officer Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton, and was conducted within the RAND Project AIR FORCE Strategy and Doctrine Program as part of its fiscal year 2023 project, “Crisis Stability in Space.”

The key problem, the study finds, is that Moscow’s hyper-suspicious view of US military intentions in space are driving Russia’s military to a more aggressive and hair-trigger stance, but also raising barriers to bilateral communications aimed at ratcheting down conflict risks and/or finding ways to de-escalate once a crisis is underway.

OpenAI’s $500B ‘Stargate Project’ could aid Pentagon’s own AI efforts, official says

Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

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If OpenAI can actually implement its Stargate Project to build $500 billion-worth of AI infrastructure in the US, one of the major beneficiaries may be the US military.

“It depends on how much of that they devote to gov[ernment] cloud and AI cloud,” said Roy Campbell, chief strategist for the Pentagon’s High Performance Computing Modernization Program and deputy director for advanced computing in the undersecretariat for research & engineering. And if the Defense Department can get a slice of Stargate’s computing power, he told Breaking Defense, it could bypass a major bottleneck for its current high-tech ambitions.

“We really don’t have the footprint inside [DoD], the in-house capabilities, to answer all the questions, so we’re really going to have to ‘phone out’ to all these assets” that the private sector is building, Campbell told Breaking Defense on the sidelines of the Potomac Officers’ Club annual defense R&D conference.

What Stargate will build, precisely, is still a little vague. Announced in a high-profile press conference Tuesday at the White House, featuring newly elected President Trump, the Stargate Project will be a new company created to develop that “AI infrastructure” to train and operate ever-larger artificial intelligence models, including new data centers and the electrical power to run them.

Why Ukraine’s all-drone, multi-domain attack could be a ‘seminal’ moment in warfare

Andrew White

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Ukraine successfully pulled off an all-drone, multi-domain attack on Russian positions near Kharkiv in December, an official speaking at the International Armoured Vehicle (IAV) conference disclosed this week, in what they are calling the first-ever such operation.

Addressing delegates under the Chatham House Rule at Defence iQ’s IAV event here, the official described how the operation exclusively featured weaponized uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs) and first person view (FPV) attack drones and did not feature any crewed platforms or boots on the ground.

UGVs conducted the full spectrum of mission sets including surveillance, mine clearance and direct fire, supported by uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), the official stated before explaining how the “tactical air-land operation” represented the first instance of an “uncrewed battle fought by one side” in the ongoing war.

Reflecting on the attack, which appeared at the time as merely a “footnote in daily reporting,” the official went on to describe it as a “seminal moment in the changing character of conflict.”

Warning “Ukraine faces today what [NATO] could face tomorrow,” the speaker went onto describe how Ukraine’s military continues to place a premium on attritable technologies to create combat mass,” before adding: “Ukraine has made the most of turning industrial disadvantage into a furnace of innovation.”

ChatNC3: Can the US trust AI in nuclear command, control and communications?

Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

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As the US military experiments with AI for everything from streamlining contract documents to coordinating global operations, there’s one area that’s remained off-limits: nuclear command and control.

Perhaps that’s not surprising, given the obvious fears of a WarGames-like accidental apocalypse. But what if the Pentagon at least let AI help in nuclear crises, in a contained and limited way, by using algorithms to process incoming intelligence on a potential strike more quickly, giving the human beings involved — and ultimately President Donald Trump — precious additional time to make the most difficult decision imaginable?

Last fall, no less a figure than the four-star chief of nuclear forces, Gen. Anthony Cotton of US Strategic Command, argued publicly that “advanced AI and robust data analytics capabilities provide decision advantage and improve our deterrence posture.”

This morning, that question of even a limited use-case for AI was the dividing line in a public debate, hosted at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, between two experts on systems of military command.

Sanction-Proof? How Russia’s War Machine Stays Fueled

Robert Farley

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How is Russia keeping its industry and financial system afloat? By using the tools that terrorists, organized crime, and drug traffickers have perfected over decades to evade the surveillance of authorities in Europe and North America.

Russia’s Dirty Little Secret

A recent report from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) detailed the foreign contributions to the production of the Russian Orlan 10 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

The Orlan 10 is a basic surveillance UAV, designed to locate Ukrainian forces and relay their position to shooters (missile launchers, artillery, aircraft) who can respond quickly before the Ukrainians relocate.

The Orlan 10 also suppresses enemy air defense (SEAD) missions, using sensors and electronic countermeasures to locate and target surface-to-air missile systems.

While these missions are basic (in ways that would have been intelligible to an artillery officer on the Western Front in World War I), the technology that allows the aircraft to function is quite advanced.

Trump’s Colombia standoff: the end of post-nationalism

Mary Harrington

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Donald Trump has rounded off a dramatic first week in the White House by upending the consensus on migrant repatriation. America began using military aircraft to return migrants earlier in the week, and yesterday two US military planes took off for Colombia carrying returning migrants. But Colombian President Gustavo Petro blocked them from landing; in response, Trump threatened punitive tariffs and other retaliatory measures against Colombia. Petro swiftly backed down.

What was so shattering about Trump’s actions was their foundation in assumptions that have, at least officially, been long treated as obsolete: that nations have borders, and that national interest has primacy over the international kind. My first political memory was the fall of the Berlin Wall — a highly symbolic boundary — and the quarter-century that followed it only solidified a high-status public consensus that borders and boundaries were relics of the past. In their place, we’d have international rules concerning conflict resolution, human rights, trade, tax, and climate, and everything would become steadily more global and democratic.

The aspect of this post-national worldview which proved most contentious, from a non-elite perspective, was migration. Bodies such as the UN set out a post-national vision of migration simply as a fact of the coming borderless future, and something that must be accommodated by states and metabolised by their populations. But as international migration has accelerated, this view has come increasingly into tension with the preferences of local populations in destination countries.

Dispatch from Davos: Trump is both symptom and driver of our new geopolitical era

Frederick Kempe

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It’s well known that US President Donald Trump is the man of the moment. Less understood is that he’s both the product and the purveyor or our emerging era. It is one characterized by more government intervention, less common cause, more mercantilism, less free trade, and more big-power swagger.

That is my takeaway from the first week of Trump’s second presidency and my thirtieth visit to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. It remains the most consequential gathering of global political, business, and civil society elites, this year boasting more than three thousand participants from 130 countries.

In my three decades of attending the forum, never has a single individual dominated discussions like Trump did this past week.

That was true even before Trump arrived with a splash last Thursday, though only virtually, delivering his speech to a standing-room-only audience from a colossal screen. More than any of some fifty heads of state and government who spoke this week, he held the attention of his mostly skeptical audience with his self-congratulation, comic timing, derision of former US President Joe Biden, and audacious appeals to global elites for deals and deference.

Can The Israel-Hezbollah Ceasefire Hold?

Seth J. Frantzman

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Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire in late November 2024 to end more than a year of fighting. The ceasefire came after Israel launched a ground operation in Lebanon on October 1 and targeted Hezbollah leaders and missile depots across Lebanon. The ceasefire’s initial period was sixty days, beginning on November 27, 2025. Israel is supposed to withdraw from southern Lebanon by the end of the sixty days, and the Lebanese army is supposed to deploy to the border area, preventing Hezbollah’s return.

The ceasefire deal is supposed to lead to the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701. The resolution hasn’t been implemented since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Instead, Hezbollah increased its arsenal in Lebanon and built up its forces near the Israeli border. On October 8, 2023, following the Hamas attack a day earlier on Israel, Hezbollah began attacks on Israel. Throughout 2024, Hezbollah and Israel traded fire, with Hezbollah launching thousands of rockets and drone attacks on Israel. By August, Israeli authorities estimated 7,500 rockets and 200 drone attacks had occurred.

The two months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that began with Israel announcing Operation Northern Arrows on September 23 was the heaviest fighting since the 2006 war. Israel carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Beirut and the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and one of his likely successors.

Trump + Mass Deportation

Malcolm E. Whittaker

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Huge food price inflation? Immense food waste caused by crops rotting unharvested? Recession caused by labour shortages? President-Elect Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportation of illegal immigrants has provoked fears of all three. This article suggests that these problems can be solved and also an attack on the root cause of these problems is made by reducing the demand for human agricultural labour. At its most basic, illegal immigration is driven by demand for low-cost labor that is not met by those lawfully residing in the United States (the same is true in all developed nations). Unless and until that condition is addressed, illegal immigrants will continue to flood into the United States no matter how strictly border crossings are controlled or HB2-A visas are limited. As seen in the results of the 2024 general election in the United States, concerns over the United States loss of control of immigrant inflows is a political question that elected officials will have to address or face the electoral consequences. In short, the root cause of illegal immigration is the demand for low-cost workers in the United States. Until this situation is addressed, the related political and economic issues cannot be solved. In addition, in the near term, this technology is likely adaptable to defending the United States and its allies.

Meta is reportedly scrambling ‘war rooms’ of engineers to figure out how DeepSeek’s AI is beating everyone else at a fraction of the price

Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez

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Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta assembled four war rooms of engineers to determine how a Chinese hedge fund managed to release an AI game-changer that may already rival its own technology, The Information reported.

DeepSeek, an AI startup backed by hedge fund High-Flyer Capital Management, this month released a version of its AI chatbot, R1, that it says can perform just as well as competing models such as ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost.

The potentially groundbreaking, open-source tech has called into question the gargantuan AI investments made by American companies and has put Meta’s AI-dedicated team on high alert.

Meta AI infrastructure director Mathew Oldham has reportedly told colleagues that DeepSeek’s newest model could outperform even the next version of Meta’s Llama AI, which Zuckerberg said could be released in “early 2025,” The Information reported Sunday. The report cited two employees with direct knowledge of Meta’s efforts to catch up.

Of the four war rooms Meta has created to respond to DeepSeek’s potential breakthrough, two teams will try to decipher how High-Flyer lowered the cost of training and running DeepSeek with the goal of using those tactics for Llama, the outlet reported, citing one anonymous Meta employee.

Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is already using DeepSeek instead of OpenAI at his startup, Gloo

Julie Bort

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DeepSeek’s new open source AI reasoning model, R1, sparked a sell-off of Nvidia’s stock and caused its consumer app to soar to the top of the app stores.

Last month DeepSeek said it trained a model using a data center of some 2,000 of Nvidia’s H800 GPUs in just about two months at a cost of around $5.5 million. Last week, it published a paper showing that its latest model’s performance matched the most advanced reasoning models in the world. These models are being trained in data centers that are spending billions on Nvidia’s faster, very pricey AI chips.

The reaction across the tech industry to DeepSeek’s high-performance, lower-cost model has been wild. Pat Gelsinger, for instance, took to X with glee, posting, “Thank you DeepSeek team.”

Gelsinger is, of course, the recently former CEO of Intel, a hardware engineer, and current chairman of his own IPO-bound startup, Gloo, a messaging and engagement platform for churches. He left Intel in December after four years and an attempt at chasing Nvidia with Intel’s alternative AI GPUs, the Gaudi 3 AI.

Gelsinger wrote that DeepSeek should remind the tech industry of its three most important lessons: lower costs mean wider-spread adoption; ingenuity flourishes under constraints; and “Open Wins. DeepSeek will help reset the increasingly closed world of foundational AI model work,” he wrote. OpenAI and Anthropic are both closed source.

Adopting a Data-Centric Mindset for Operational Planning

Jeremiah Hurley and Morgan Greene

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The Department of Defense (DOD) and its Service components are investing in advanced technologies to gain and maintain a competitive advantage over adversaries and pacing threats such as China and Russia. From automated sensorshooter networks, artificial intelligence, and next-generation vehicles, helicopters, and weapons, as well as software factories and innovation centers, the breadth and depth of the DOD undertaking is growing by the day to meet the demands of advanced technological warfare.

Regardless of these advances, the DOD military advantage will come from an ability to understand the situation and then develop and execute courses of action faster than our adversaries. Critical to meeting this challenge is the DOD ability to collect, harness, and utilize data across these advanced platforms and systems. To do this, DOD must do two things. First, it must focus on data by embracing a data-first mindset, an aspect of organizational culture by which its members prioritize the use of data in their day-to-day operations, staffing actions, and decisionmaking. When faced with a question or challenge, organizations that possess a data-first mindset recognize that inventorying and comprehending relevant data lay the foundation for a timely, accurate, and effective solution

Second, DOD and its Service components must take concrete steps to operationalize this mindset. A natural place to begin is with operational planning because it serves as the connective tissue between military strategy and tactics. It is where most data converges to achieve theater-level and strategic objectives across multiple domains. Operational planning is the vehicle (ways) that Service and joint force headquarters use to employ assets and resources (means) to achieve their assigned mission and objectives (ends). It often makes nebulous or abstract strategy documents in terms of geography and American blood and treasure. Similarly, formalizing the use of data during operational planning for the Joint Staff and the Services will make the required data-first cultural shift a reality

Being Believed: Persuasion and the Narrative in Military Operations

Brent A. Lawniczak

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To the renowned scholar Thomas Schelling, the central aspect of nuclear deterrence is being believed. It is essential that an adversary believes the threat of force is real and that the threat will be carried out. Schelling makes an extremely important observation that “saying so, unfortunately, does not make it true; and if true, saying so does not always make it believed.”2 Of course, Schelling was talking about the threat of force with the intent to deter, but the statement may be applied to the use of the narrative form of communication across the competition continuum in terms of information being believed by various target audiences. A narrative does not merely convey truths. One may have a truthful narrative that is not persuasive. One need only examine current political rifts to ascertain that truth does not always prevail. While the joint force must always be truthful, the truth must also be put forward in a manner that increases its persuasiveness.

This article briefly defines the narrative form of communication; highlights the influence of narratives in military operations; provides and describes 10 variables that contribute to the persuasiveness of narratives; and concludes with several recommendations for the joint force to improve the persuasiveness of its narratives.

Defining the Narrative Form of Communication

Joint doctrine simply defines narrative as “a short story used to underpin operations and to provide greater understanding and context to an operation or situation.”4 Narratives create meaning and affect perceptions and subsequent actions. Joint doctrine also states that the “narrative can be thought of as a unifying story that acts as an information control measure to avoid conflicting messages and promote unity of effort.”

The Problem with Strategy as Problem-Solving

Jules J.S. Gaspard & M.L.R. Smith

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In the modern strategic landscape, particularly in Western military and political contexts, complex challenges are often approached as problems with concrete solutions. This perspective, a hallmark of the ‘problem-solving’ mindset, seeks to break down complex issues into solvable parts. This approach, however, has often led to suboptimal results in foreign policy, as demonstrated by interventionist failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, among others. When strategy is viewed through the problem-solving lens, complex geopolitical issues are frequently simplified and unique dynamics are often ignored.

A deeper, more effective foundational approach that has been dormant in Western strategic thinking is re-emerging: the idea of ‘problem framing’.[i] Rather than attempting to ‘solve’ challenges with predetermined solutions, problem framing encourages strategists to explore the broader context, recognising that some issues defy bounded solutions. Problem framing allows strategists to adapt their responses to changing environments and complex cultural contexts, fostering a mindset that emphasises exploration, understanding and flexibility. This paper articulates the need to shift from an exclusive, or primary, focus on problem-solving in strategy, to one where problem-framing is accentuated, arguing that the latter approach is better suited to address the complexities that are always ever-present in international affairs.

The Rise of Problem-Solving in Strategic Thought

The Arquebus Era of Information Operations

Jeffrey Hill

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In 1571, at the Battle of Lepanto, Ali Pasha, the commander of Ottoman forces, was struck in the head by an arquebusier’s bullet. When he died, his hands were still holding a composite bow. Nearly thirty thousand Ottomans were lost that day, compared to the Holy League’s roughly ten thousand. Historians give several reasons why the seemingly invincible Ottomans suffered such a lopsided defeat, but one reason stands above the rest. The Holy League brought 1,815 guns, the Ottomans 750. Ali Pasha still believed the composite bow would bring them victory, but instead his fleet was literally blown out of the water. The Ottomans had failed to capitalize on the firearm revolution that had started five hundred years before. The Ottoman Empire would never truly recover from Lepanto, and Western Europeans began their ascent into global hegemony that would last well into the twentieth century.

At the time of the battle, the composite bow had a longer range and faster firing rate than the arquebus. Did Ali Pasha believe the firearm had reached its zenith and therefore had no need to equip more of his troops with a capability whose future was very much in question, or did he think that the weapon could simply not replace the tried-and-true bow? Did his lack of creativity prevent him from seeing its potential uses? If so, his error resulted with his head on a pike and his fleet at the bottom of the Mediterranean.

Despite the passage of four and a half centuries, this episode carries lessons for the United States today—not in the decisions it must make between military capabilities, but in the way it conceptualizes, plans, and conducts information operations. The US government must not underestimate the potential of rapid and revolutionary change, exemplified by focused modern information operations supported by artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies, lest we too suffer a similarly disastrous fate as that of the Ottoman commander.