Indian Strategic Studies: 03/02/25

2 March 2025

Origin And Diversity Of Hun Empire Populations

Eurasia Review

The Huns suddenly appeared in Europe in the 370s, establishing one of the most influential although short-lived empires in Europe. Scholars have long debated whether the Huns were descended from the Xiongnu. In fact, the Xiongnu Empire dissolved around 100 CE, leaving a 300-year gap before the Huns appeared in Europe. Can DNA lineages that bridge these three centuries be found?

To address this question, researchers analyzed the DNA of 370 individuals that lived in historical periods spanning around 800 years, from 2nd century BCE to 6th century CE, encompassing sites in the Mongolian steppe, Central Asia, and the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe. In particular, they examined 35 newly sequenced genomes ranging from: a 3rd-4th century site in Kazakhstan and 5th-6th century contexts in the Carpathian Basin, including exceptional Hun-period burials that exhibit Eastern or “steppe” traits often linked to nomadic traditions (i.e. “eastern-type” burials).

The study was carried out as part of the ERC Synergy Grant project HistoGenes (No. 856453), by a multidisciplinary research team of geneticists, archaeologists and historians, including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The results showed that there was not a large Asian- or steppe-descended community living in the Carpathian Basin after the Huns’ arrival. However, they identified a small but distinct set of individuals – often belonging to the “eastern-type” burials – who did carry significant East Asian genetic signatures. Advanced comparisons of genealogical connections (the analysis of shared DNA segments known as identical-by-descent, or IBD) led to a remarkable discovery.

Co-first author Guido Alberto Gnecchi-Ruscone of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology adds: “It came as a surprise to discover that few of these Hun-period individuals in Europe share IBD links with some of the highest-ranking imperial elite individuals from the late Xiongnu Empire”. These connections also include an individual from the largest terrace tomb ever discovered in a Xiongnu context.

A little-known Chinese company made a drug that beat the world’s biggest-selling medicine

Wayne Chang, Will Ripley and Eric Cheung

China’s DeepSeek shocked the world by delivering unexpected innovation at an unbelievable price. But this disruptive trend isn’t confined to Big Tech: it has been quietly happening in the pharmaceutical sector.

In September, Akeso, a little-known Chinese biotech company founded nearly a decade ago shook up the biotech sector with its new lung cancer drug.

Ivonescimab, the new drug, was found in a trial conducted in China to have bested Keytruda, the blockbuster medication developed by Merck that has raked in more than $130 billion in sales for the American behemoth that has dominated cancer treatment.

Patients treated with Akeso’s new drug went 11.1 months before their tumors began to grow again, compared with 5.8 months for Keytruda, according to clinical data released at the World Conference on Lung Cancer, a top medical forum.

Over the course of several days in early September, shares in California-based Summit Therapeutics, Akeso’s US partner, more than doubled to a record high, according to data from Refinitiv. The firm had licensed the right to commercialize the new drug in North America and Europe.

At the time, though experts said it was a watershed moment for Chinese pharmaceutical companies, it was little noticed outside the industry. All that changed following DeepSeek’s exploits earlier this year, which put international attention on pockets of innovation in China — with growing global implications.

“I do believe the Chinese biotech industry will play an important role globally. And we [will] participate more and more,” Michelle Xia, the CEO of Akeso, said in an interview last month with BiotechTV.

China’s War for Indo-Pacific Dominance Is Already Underway

Thérèse Shaheen

Akey driver of U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific is the set of security arrangements necessary to prevent the PRC from taking Taiwan by military force. The former commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Phil Davidson, helpfully defined in 2021 what he and Pentagon planners saw as a six-year timeframe (by 2027) that reflected Xi Jinping’s thinking about taking control of Taiwan. Davidson also warned that the U.S. should acknowledge Xi’s directives to his own planners about Taiwan as a critical step on the road to Xi’s objective “to supplant the United States and our leadership role in the rules-based international order” by 2050. Xi turns 72 this year. While he is unlikely to be in power in 2050, his legacy depends on this vision. That vision depends on Xi achieving the absorption of Taiwan before it is too late for him to accomplish.

Xi’s designs on Taiwan have become known in strategic planning circles as the “Davidson window,” and focused U.S. and allied planners on shortfalls in shipbuilding, weapons procurement, and the range of priorities that would be needed in the U.S., Taiwan, and our other allies in the region to counter Chinese ambition to displace the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific. But Beijing does not intend kinetic military confrontation if it can achieve its objectives without it. It isn’t clear that Xi has much confidence in his military leadership, which he has purged and continues to do — for corruption and incompetence, and to eliminate potential rivals. Xi knows that, as with all military conflict, a hot war with Taiwan would proceed quite differently than anyone can know (see Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.) This also is contrary to Xi’s ideology, which is informed by traditional Chinese philosophers, including Sun Tzu, who argued, in effect, that armed conflict is for suckers; the last preference for achieving strategic objectives.

Trump’s Gaza Plan: A Test for Arab Leaders

Hilal Khashan

Earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump announced during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu his plan to take over the Gaza Strip and resettle its residents in Egypt and Jordan. A week later, he reiterated his intention during a press briefing in Washington with Jordanian King Abdullah II, who appeared uncomfortable listening to Trump’s proposal but avoided challenging the president on the matter. Fearing a similarly embarrassing situation, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi canceled his own visit to Washington set for Feb. 18.

The Palestinian question was the focal point of Arab foreign policy until the 1967 Six-Day War. Since then, Arab countries have sought various peace treaties with Israel and grown dependent on U.S. protection for their survival. Though they cannot endorse Trump’s plan to evict Palestinians from Gaza and transform the strip into a “Riviera of the Middle East,” neither can they simply dismiss his assertions. Trump has challenged Arab leaders to come up with an alternative plan for Gaza, knowing they likely cannot.

Resettlement Revisited

Many observers have compared Trump’s proposal to resettle Palestinians in neighboring countries to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s willingness to host them in Sinai in the early 1950s. But the conditions that led Nasser to favor the resettlement of Gazan refugees differ fundamentally from the situation in the region today. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, it was the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) that proposed resettling refugees who had fled to Gaza during the conflict, in accordance with U.N. General Assembly resolution 194. The initiative would not have affected the 80,000 Gaza residents who were living there before the war. Arabs generally viewed it as a humanitarian endeavor, given the wide range of relief services the agency provided, rather than a liquidation plan, as opponents of Trump’s proposal see it.

Hegseth says he fired the top military lawyers because they weren’t well suited for the jobs

LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that he was replacing the top lawyers for the military services because he didn’t think they were “well-suited” to provide recommendations when lawful orders are given.

Speaking at the start of a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, Hegseth refused to answer a question about why the Trump administration has selected a retired general to be the next Joint Chiefs chairman, when he doesn’t meet the legal qualifications for the job.

President Donald Trump on Friday abruptly fired the chairman, Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., and Hegseth followed that by firing Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the chief of naval operations, and Air Force Gen. James Slife, the vice chief of the Air Force. He also said he was “requesting nominations” for the jobs of judge advocate general, or JAG, for the Army, Navy and Air Force.

He did not identify the lawyers by name. The Navy JAG, Vice Adm. Christopher French, retired about two months ago, and there was already an ongoing effort to seek a replacement. The Army JAG, Lt. Gen. Joseph B. Berger III, and Air Force JAG, Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer, were fired.

Reflecting on three years of cyber warfare in Ukraine

Charl Van Der Walt, Orange Cyberdefense

As we mark the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it is essential to reflect on the profound impact this conflict has had on the global cyber security landscape. The war has not only reshaped geopolitical dynamics but has also significantly influenced the nature and frequency of cyber threats, cyber crime, operational technology (OT) attacks, and hacktivism.

In the early stages of the conflict, we observed a disruption in cyber extortion operations by actors based in the region, as the chaos of war created instability for these criminal enterprises as much as for regular citizens. However, as the situation stabilised, cyber extortion surged once again, with actors bouncing back to new levels of activity. The Security Navigator 2025 report highlights that while growth in cyber extortion incidents has since “stabilised,” the tactics employed by cyber criminals have evolved, for example with AI tools being utilised to enhances attackers' operational performance and makes it relatively easy to produce phishing and other social engineering techniques.

The war has also catalysed a rise in targeted cyber threats against critical infrastructure, particularly in Ukraine. The report emphasises that “targeted Operational Technology (OT) threats” have surged, with state-sponsored actors leveraging cyber capabilities to disrupt essential services. Russian Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups like Sandworm have been linked to several destructive malware campaigns, including the deployment of ‘HermeticWiper’ and ‘CaddyWiper,’ which aim to erase critical data and disrupt operations within Ukrainian organisations. These attacks have been characterised by their sophistication and sometimes coordination with kinetic military operations, demonstrating a clear strategy to undermine Ukraine's resilience.

Intelligence reports also detail the activities of the Gamaredon group, a Russian state-sponsored actor responsible for extensive cyber espionage campaigns against Ukrainian entities. This group has been active since 2014 and has been exceptionally busy of late, primarily targeting government systems to exfiltrate sensitive information. Its recent campaigns have involved spear-phishing attacks and the deployment of custom malware.

Yes, America Is Europe’s Enemy Now

Stephen M. Walt

A few weeks ago, I warned that the second Trump administration might be squandering the tolerance and good will that Washington had long received from the world’s major democracies. Instead of seeing the United States as a mostly positive force in world affairs, these states might now “have to worry that the United States is actively malevolent.” That column was written before Vice President J.D. Vance gave his confrontational speech at the Munich Security Conference, before President Donald Trump blamed Ukraine for starting the war with Russia, and before U.S. officials appeared to preemptively offer Russia almost everything it wants before negotiations on Ukraine were even underway. The reaction of mainstream European observers was neatly summed up by Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times: “[T]he Trump administration’s political ambitions for Europe mean that, for now, America is also an adversary.”

Is this view correct? A skeptic might recall that there have been serious rifts in the transatlantic partnership on many prior occasions: over Suez in 1956, over nuclear strategy and Vietnam in the 1960s, over the Euromissiles issue in the 1980s, and during the Kosovo war in 1999. The Iraq war in 2003 was yet another low-water mark between Washington and much of Europe. The United States did not hesitate to act unilaterally on numerous occasions, even when its allies’ interests were adversely affected, as Richard Nixon did when he took the United States off the gold standard in 1971 or as Joe Biden did when he signed the protectionist Inflation Reduction Act and the United States forced European firms to stop some high-tech exports to China. But few Europeans or Canadians believed the United States was deliberately trying to harm them; they believed that Washington was genuinely committed to their security and understood that its own security and prosperity was tied to their own. They were right, which made it much easier for the United States to win their support when necessary.

What the U.K. Wants from Apple Will Make Our Phones Less Safe

Bruce Schneier

Last month, the U.K. government demanded that Apple weaken the security of iCloud for users worldwide. On Friday, Apple took steps to comply for users in the United Kingdom. But the British law is written in a way that requires Apple to give its government access to anyone, anywhere in the world. If the government demands Apple weaken its security worldwide, it would increase everyone’s cyber-risk in an already dangerous world.

If you’re an iCloud user, you have the option of turning on something called “advanced data protection,” or ADP. In that mode, a majority of your data is end-to-end encrypted. This means that no one, not even anyone at Apple, can read that data. It’s a restriction enforced by mathematics—cryptography—and not policy. Even if someone successfully hacks iCloud, they can’t read ADP-protected data.

America’s Global Presence Isn’t ‘Soft Power.’ It’s a Superpower

Kat Duffy

Imagine that it is May 2025. U.S. President Donald Trump has just finished bulldozing the entire U.S. interstate system, because Elon Musk decreed that highways are wasteful and the country should run on hyperloops. No hyperloops currently exist, and the entire nation requires the interstate system to function, but that is deemed irrelevant. For months prior, Deep Interstate tried desperately to draw attention to the range of public needs that roads fill, how critical highways are to national security, and how rash it would be to squander the decades of bipartisan work—and the billions of taxpayer dollars—that went into constructing them. But Deep Interstate has been labeled untrustworthy, existing only to protect its own interests and undermine the administration.

By July, hyperloop construction is facing years of delays. Construction supplies are stuck in warehouses while workers are consistently late or absent: The local roads have become too congested to allow the efficient passage of even critical materials or employees. To transport supplies long distances, beleaguered investors discover that they will need to build a giant system of high-speed roadways connecting localities.

Trump’s New Map

Robert D. Kaplan

In a prophetic speech delivered in Brussels in June 2011, then-U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned Washington’s European allies that if they did not start paying substantially more for their own security, NATO might one day be a thing of the past. Gates noted that he was only “the latest in a string of U.S. defense secretaries who have urged allies privately and publicly, often with exasperation, to meet agreed-upon NATO benchmarks for defense spending.”

At the time, only five of the 28 members of NATO—Albania, Britain, France, Greece, and the United States—were spending at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense annually, as they had pledged to do in 2006. Unless that situation changed dramatically, Gates said, there would be a “dwindling appetite” to defend Europe among the “American body politic writ large.”

Musk's "move fast, break things" ethos threatens U.S. security

Sam Sabin

Silicon Valley's speed-over-safety mindset is colliding with Washington's reality that messing with government IT can open the door for China, Russia, and other adversaries to infiltrate critical U.S. systems.

Why it matters: On-the-fly overhauls of government IT systems are putting Americans at risk, lawmakers and former officials tell Axios.

Driving the news: Media reports continue to emerge that suggest the employees on Musk's team are unqualified and can become national security vulnerabilities themselves.Wired reported that one member has connections to a Telegram-based cyberattack-for-hire service. That same person was also fired from a cybersecurity internship for disclosing company secrets to a competitor, Bloomberg reported Friday.

State of play: DOGE has reportedly either already gained access or is eyeing access to sensitive federal systems, including those handling Social Security, Medicare, and national infrastructure. Agencies affected include the Treasury Department, Energy Department and the Office of Personnel Management — and others that handle classified and highly sensitive data.DOGE is also reportedly building a custom chatbot called GSAi for the U.S. General Services Administration that would analyze procurement documents and government contracts, per Wired.

Some reports say a DOGE staffer has at one point used personal Gmail accounts to access government meetings and AI tools hosted on commercial cloud services.

Between the lines: Government agencies move cautiously on IT for a reason: one mistake can cost lives, said Jake Braun, a former White House deputy national cyber director."If you're creating a dating app, you can move fast and break things," Braun said. "If you have a badge, a gun, nuclear weapons and things like that, maybe moving fast and breaking things isn't the most prudent approach."

We got it wrong: The real crisis in the U.S. military

Mara Karlin and Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Paula Thornhill

We’ve written for years about civil-military relations and raised concern about potential crises in the delicate American system of civilian control. The crisis has occurred, but it didn’t ride in as a general on horseback launching a military coup. Instead, it came in the form of a Friday night bureaucratic massacre when the commander in chief fired—for no apparent cause— the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of Naval Operations, and the vice chief of staff of the Air Force. Because President Donald Trump did not give a reason for their removal, one can only look at their gender, their race, and their comments on diversity to conclude that was the cause. Less noticed is the similarly historic firing of the senior lawyers in the U.S. military, known as the Judge Advocate General of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. We’re now in a civil-military crisis, but it is a very different one than we expected.

In a democracy, the trust between the military and the nation it serves is inviolate. Military members must have faith in the civilian leadership’s ability to develop and use the institution responsibly. When the political leaders fire, for no apparent cause, senior leaders and, as important, the lawyers who embody the protection of the military members under the law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the relationship between the military and the nation has been fundamentally altered.

To be sure, presidents and secretaries of defense have fired senior military leaders throughout history. From exercising poor judgement with the press to obstinately ignoring civilian priorities, generals and admirals have been removed from their positions by civilian leaders, who have the prerogative to do so. However, there are no examples of firings at this level without any reason or evident failure to perform. The military is now in uncharted territory. And so is the nation.

First, there is the question of loyalty. At every level, officers will have to determine if they are being assessed for their competence or their loyalty. That will undermine unit cohesion in a very coercive way as members start to question personal or partisan motives rather than focusing on building their unit’s competence and unity.

The Pentagon has been learning the wrong lessons for three decades

JOHN FERRARI

The lightning-fast victory of the U.S. military over the Iraqi Army in the early 1990s marked a generational turning point for warfare, with the predominant lesson being that exquisite and precise munitions were the key to winning future conflicts. This fit a narrative that many desperately wanted at that time: namely, that we could spend less money, have fewer forces, and turn warfare into a targeting exercise by overwhelming the enemy with precise, short-burst barrages driven by top-down decision-making, all enabled by the digital revolution.

The lessons our senior officials learned from the conflict encapsulated this narrative: spend more to get less, wars can be short with limited casualties, and policymakers can use technology to control from afar. These lessons made their way into military parlance, neatly tied up into concepts like revolution in military affairs, shock and awe, and effects-based operations.

Recent wars have provided, to borrow a phrase from former Vice President Gore, an “inconvenient truth”: the United States military establishment may have fallen into the victor’s trap and assumed away the problems and challenges of future warfare. From Somalia in 1993, to nearly twenty years in Iraq and Afghanistan, to today’s wars in Ukraine and Israel, it’s becoming apparent that the United States may have built the entirely wrong war machine needed for the 21st century.

With a thirty-year, all-in bet on smaller, exquisite, and expensive forces whose flaws have been concealed by rosy policy assumptions such as we would only fight one short, high-tech war, now may be the time to reevaluate three key characteristics of force design. The uniformed military leadership, led by the official who by statute has the authority to set requirements for the military—the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—should act now to embed these three key reforms into the Joint Requirements Process.

Trump’s Foreign Policy Revolution

Matthew Continetti

When Marco Rubio appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 15, his former colleagues received him with collegial deference as the media hunted elsewhere for controversy. Yet the vote that confirmed Rubio as secretary of state was noteworthy not just for its unanimity, but for its tacit rejection of decades of U.S. foreign policy.

Just listen to what Rubio told the Senate. America, he said, won the Cold War 30 years ago, but promptly succumbed to triumphalism. We sought to retain our superpower status through open immigration, free trade, and foreign intervention. The results? A border crisis, deindustrialization, endless wars, and a rising China.

“The postwar global order is not just obsolete,” Rubio said. “It is now a weapon being used against us.” Under President Trump, Rubio continued, U.S. foreign policy will prioritize the national interest. The quest for world order will be abandoned. America will secure its borders, its power, its wealth.

Rubio’s transformation from Jeb Bush’s protégé to Donald Trump’s secretary of state is one of the great political stories of our time. But his confirmation statement was not a lark. His message was a preview of what was to come.

The dramatic foreign policy reversals began with Trump’s pledges to acquire Greenland, absorb Canada, name the Gulf of America, retake the Panama Canal, and own the Gaza Strip. Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on global trade, mused over cutting the defense budget in half and stopping nuclear weapons production, and signaled his openness to a “verified nuclear peace agreement with Iran.” Trump called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator without elections,” suggested that Ukraine provoked Russia’s invasion, and bypassed Kyiv and Brussels for direct peace talks with Moscow. On February 24, the third anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine war, the United States voted with Russia to kill a UN resolution condemning Russian aggression. And it’s only been a month.

Could Artificial General Intelligence Adoption Start a Civil War in America?

Timothy R. Heath

With indicators already pointing to a volatile level of political stress in the United States, a large-scale displacement of educated elites by artificial general intelligence (AGI) could spark a convulsive breakdown of the state.

Technological innovation has been a major driver of productivity and economic growth since the start of the industrial age. However, gains have almost invariably come at the expense of workers with lower skill and education levels. As but one example, automation from 1990-2007 resulted in the loss of an estimated 400,000 jobs in the United States, primarily among non-college educated workers.

Educated elites often avoided large-scale job displacement from technological innovation in part by possessing difficult to automate skills. But their vulnerability could increase if the most visionary ideals of artificial intelligence (AI) come to pass. Already, analysts warn that white collar jobs could be threatened by generative AI technologies, which have shown an impressive ability to carry out tasks involving images, video, and text. A Pew study concluded that one in five American jobs have a “high exposure” to artificial intelligence, with high earners and the college educated most exposed. The situation for educated elites could worsen significantly. Some experts have predicted that “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) may soon be available. Although prospects for and definitions of this potential technology remain hotly debated, AGI may be generally understood as a versatile, reliable general intelligence that is comparable or superior to human intelligence.[1] A report by Goldman Sachs assessed that AGI capable of carrying out work “indistinguishable” from human output could wipe out a fourth of current jobs and 300 million jobs worldwide.

America’s strategic diplomatic surrender

Nigel Gould-Davies

Ten days of diplomacy in Brussels, Munich and Riyadh have laid bare President Donald Trump’s approach to the Russia–Ukraine war. It is a policy of rapid, unilateral concession of long-held positions on fundamental interests to persuade the aggressor to stop fighting. The established name for such a policy – not a polemical but a well-established one – is ‘strategic surrender’. In the classic study commissioned by the United States intelligence community in 1957, this is defined as ‘orderly capitulation … to obtain some political concession’.

This term captures, far better than ‘negotiations’, the dynamics of the US–Russia talks that began last week in Riyadh and are expected to continue in Moscow and Washington. Genuine negotiations involve carrots and sticks: offers that will benefit the other side if it agrees to a desired outcome and threats to impose costs if it does not.

America is using little of either. It is instead accepting a series of escalating Russian demands without extracting any quid pro quo except the promise of an end to the war on terms that Russia dictates. In doing so, America has reversed a series of fundamental positions. Having isolated and constrained Russia, it is normalising their relations and exploring new trade and investment opportunities. Having given Ukraine military and financial help to defend itself, it has announced the end of aid, and reportedly threatened to cut the essential Starlink satellite link while demanding access to mineral wealth on onerous terms. Having pledged to protect Europe for eighty years, it is scaling back its protection to a smaller, unspecified and increasingly doubtful commitment. Vice President J.D. Vance has raised the possibility of troop withdrawals from the continent – a demand that Russia has reportedly already made.

Russia, by contrast, has ignored the few requests that America is known to have made. When US officials asked Russia to suspend attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities before talks began, their counterparts claimed that no such attacks were taking place. Russia has also categorically rejected the deployment of foreign forces in Ukraine, despite Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s suggestion that ‘European and non-European troops’ could be deployed as ‘peacekeepers to Ukraine’.

Trump’s Russia Strategy: Breaking The Sino-Russian Alliance Or Strengthening It? – Analysis

Dr. Hasim Turker

The return of Donald Trump to the White House has marked a departure from the conventional trajectory of US foreign policy. His administration’s approach to Russia signals a recalibration of priorities, reflecting an underlying strategy aimed at reshaping global alignments in Washington’s favor. Rather than maintaining the confrontational stance of previous administrations, Trump appears to favor a more conciliatory approach toward Moscow, a shift largely dictated by the imperative of countering China’s rise. This shift, however, raises critical questions about its broader consequences, particularly for the transatlantic alliance and global stability.

Russia and China: The New Strategic Equation

For decades, US foreign policy has been characterized by a dual containment approach toward both Russia and China. However, Trump’s return to power suggests a shift in focus, prioritizing China as the primary geopolitical challenger while seeking to ease tensions with Russia. This change underscores a belief that continued antagonism toward Moscow only serves to push Russia further into China’s strategic orbit. The assumption behind this approach is that an entrenched Sino-Russian partnership presents the most formidable challenge to US hegemony. If the two powers deepen their military, economic, and diplomatic coordination, Washington faces a significantly more complex threat environment. By offering diplomatic and economic incentives to Russia, the Trump administration aims to weaken this partnership and prevent Beijing from leveraging Moscow’s resources in a future confrontation with the United States.

The urgency of countering China stems from its growing economic and military power. China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest trading nation and advanced significantly in AI, semiconductor manufacturing, and quantum computing. The modernization of the People’s Liberation Army and its growing naval power challenge US strategic superiority in the Indo-Pacific. Meanwhile, Beijing’s global outreach through initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative has significantly expanded its influence across Africa, Latin America, and even Europe. Against this backdrop, Trump’s foreign policy team views Russia as a secondary concern. While Moscow remains a geopolitical competitor, its ambitions are seen as more regionally focused, making engagement with Russia a strategic move to free up resources for the broader confrontation with China.

The Party Is Over – OpEd

Jeffrey A. Tucker

The Trump administration, pushed by the Department of Government Efficiency and deployed by the Office of Personnel Management, has sent another email to all federal employees with a normal request to present five tasks accomplished in the last week.

It’s an easy task. It takes 5 minutes. In the service industry, this is entirely normal, even routine. Taking inventory of the workforce is standard for any new management in the private sector.

Oddly, absolute mania broke out among the pundit class. Government unions are preparing lawsuits. The panic and frenzy is palpable. As it turns out, no new president has ever done anything like this before, no Democrat who believes in good government and no Republican who supposedly distrusts bureaucracy.

Something dramatic has hit Washington. It’s about more than Trump.

The party now in control of the US executive branch is a third party built out of the corpses of two existing parties. It goes by the name Republican but this is nearly a historical accident. The GOP was a vessel that was least protected against invasion and occupation. It has now been nearly taken over by outsiders who had little or no influence within the party a decade ago.

Nearly all the top people now in power – including Trump of course but also Musk, Gabbard, Kennedy, Lutnick, and so many more, to say nothing of the voters themselves – are refugees from the Democratic Party. Coalitions have dramatically changed. Voting blocs have migrated. And policy debates and priorities are nothing like they have been in any period since the end of the Great War.

Musk’s ‘Super Government’ And The ‘New Elites’ – Analysis

Zhao Zhijiang

Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are shaking revamping the U.S. federal government. This is done through applying corporate strategies like cost reduction and efficiency improvement to government agencies, with the goal of building a super-government that no other country can match.

As its name suggests, the DOGE is truly efficient. Within less than a month of its establishment, it has pushed through a series of reforms across multiple fronts. These include eliminating agencies, making personnel changes, limiting the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s foreign payments, and cutting the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) departments. Every day, the DOGE shakes up the power structures in Washington. The department’s current goal is to cut USD 3 billion per day, and this pace may increase in the future. Recent reports show that Musk and his government efficiency team have already reached at least 19 American government departments and gained internal system access in some of them, further expanding their power. In response to external criticism and attacks, President Donald Trump defended Musk’s team, claiming that the federal government is too bloated and that waste and fraud have caused excessive financial losses.

Now, Musk continues pushing toward the creation of a “super-government”, focusing on those who profit from politics, particularly Democratic senators. Recently, a video circulating on social media showed Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who usually appears composed, rudely elbowing a reporter who kept challenging her. In the video, the reporter first asks why Warren is bothered by transparency and opposes Musk exposing fraudulent government spending. Then, he asks, “How did you get a 12 million dollar net worth on a 200,000 dollar salary?” Throughout the exchange, Warren remains silent, smiling as she walks and greets others. Her staff tries to escort the reporter away. When Warren approached her vehicle, she visibly got angry and elbowed the reporter. The video sparked a flood of outraged comments online, with many criticizing Warren as hypocritical and demanding she release her financial and tax records. Some even suggested the reporter should sue Warren for the assault.

The Dangers Lurking in the U.K.’s Plan for Electronic Eavesdropping

Susan Landau

In particular, since users only rarely supply their own cryptographic systems, this means that Apple’s Advanced Data Protection for iCloud (ADP), which provides end-to-end encryption with user-supplied keys, must be breakable by Apple. This is a contradiction in terms; end-to-end encrypted communications are designed so that only the sender and the receiver can read them. ADP is set up so that the user’s devices—and only the user’s devices—have access to data stored in the iCloud. It’s a terrific form of security. But that’s not how His Majesty’s government sees it. The order, issued in the name of national security, requires that Apple provide access to iCloud data no matter where in the world the data resides.

Were Apple to accede to the U.K.government’s requirements, we would all be less secure. Sophisticated criminals would take the extra steps necessary to secure their data; after all, there is nothing that any government can do to prevent that. Instead, it would be the general public—those for whom data security isn’t a top priority in their daily lives—who would be at risk.

This would set a terrible precedent for cybersecurity. It is, however, the U.K. law. So Apple has responded in the only sensible way it could: new U.K. users no longer have access to ADP protection and current ones will lose ADP protections soon. This doesn’t necessarily satisfy the U.K. requirements, which is access to iCloud data for any user in the world. But if the U.K. government is able to receive the data with the electronic protections stripped off, then so is any other nation in the world. History shows that if a backdoor is put into a “secured” communications system, then adversaries can find a way in. Two instances are wiretap-compliant switches in Greece and a commercial firewall—but there are many, many more. Our partners across the pond appear not to have taken to heart those lessons or that of Salt Typhoon.

The United States Must Become the AI Arsenal of Democracy

Jack Burnham

The United States confronts an adversary far more technologically savvy than any of those that came before. As with the Cold War, both Washington and Beijing view dominance over science and technology as the surest way to win in their ongoing rivalry. In both capitals, science and technology are perceived as a proxy for each nation’s capacity to translate their latent economic potential into lasting military supremacy.

The link between the laboratory and global leadership has never been stronger. The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) promises to transform the stakes of the Sino-American rivalry, supercharging the relationship between science, technology, and national power. Not since the advent of nuclear weapons has the United States confronted both a profound technological revolution and a near-peer adversary.

Facing this generational challenge will require generational leadership. To ensure military supremacy and economic prosperity for the long term, Washington must return to its earlier roots as an arsenal of democracy, working to reinforce its still-leading position as a technological power by sharing crucial computing resources while preparing its own industrial base to harness AI. This transition will require both defensive measures, such as more adroit export controls, and offensive actions, such as mobilizing Washington’s unsurpassed network of allies and partners and developing its domestic AI industrial base.

Israel’s Merkava Tanks Are Back In The West Bank

Peter Suciu

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) deployed tanks to the occupied West Bank on Sunday as part of its expanded counter-terrorism efforts. Images posted online showed at least three Merkava main battle tanks (MBTs) near the city of Jenin. It marks the first time in more than two decades that tanks have been sent to the territory.

According to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, the IDF will maintain a presence for at least a year, and will not allow upwards of 40,000 displaced Palestinians to return as part of the efforts to root out terror operatives.

“We will not return to the reality that was in the past. We will continue to clear refugee camps and other terror centers to dismantle the battalions and terror infrastructure of the extreme Islam that was built, armed, funded, and supported by the Iranian evil axis, in an attempt to establish an eastern terror front,” Katz added.

IDF tanks last deployed to the West Bank during 2002’s Operation Defensive Shield—a military incursion launched in response to the “Second Intifada” uprising from 2000 to 2005.

Build Allied AI or Risk Fighting Alone

Becca Wasser

Half a dozen people mill about onstage in front of a massive blue screen that shows an image of a soldier in profile wearing combat gear. One of the people onstage wears a formal military uniform and a general's uniform hat, who speaks to a man who has a hand raised to wave at the image onscreen.Participants chat in front of an electronic image of a soldier before the closing session of the Responsible AI in the Military Domain summit in Seoul on Sept. 10, 2024.

It’s 2029. From wildfires in California to catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, natural disasters are more common than ever—and hit harder. But amid fire and flood, advances in artificial intelligence enable the United States and other countries to deploy self-flying drones to find and rescue survivors, use machine-learning algorithms to streamline the delivery of lifesaving aid, and automate translation in real time to aid multinational coordination. This future vision of more efficient, collaborative, and effective military cooperation is attainable, but only if we act now.

The United States and its allies are increasingly incorporating rapidly advancing AI-enabled technology into their militaries to solve key operational problems, speed up responses, save lives, and even deter threats. But each nation is developing its own capabilities; incorporating these systems into military activities at different paces; and creating its own policies to dictate when, where, and how military AI can be employed.

Avoiding the Fate of Goliath: A Digital-First Approach to Modern Warfare

Greg Little; Lieutenant Artem Sherbinin, U.S. Navy; and Lieutenant Colonel Jack Long, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve

The story of David and Goliath is one of hubris and innovation. The Philistines’ mighty warrior, Goliath, faces off against the smaller David of the Israelites. Goliath towers over David in what seems to be a wildly lopsided fight. But the match ends with an upset—Goliath’s arrogance leaves him unprepared for David’s fighting style, while David’s cunning use of his sling allows him to win by avoiding Goliath’s strengths. This is an early example of a weaker side innovating in war to defeat a dominant power.

The Search for Asymmetry

For 80 years, the Department of Defense (DoD) has positioned the U.S. military as the world’s most formidable military force—a modern-day Goliath. But the United States’ overwhelming prowess in conventional military capabilities is driving today’s Davids to look for asymmetric weaknesses to exploit. And like Goliath, the DoD’s hubris plays right into their hands. U.S. overconfidence in traditional methods of warfare causes it to eschew the need to innovate and adapt, especially in the realm of artificial intelligence and digital capabilities. The United States risks being blindsided by more agile adversaries possessing smarter weapons, better awareness, and the ability to act faster. The United States risks suffering the same fate as Goliath. To avoid this, it is critical that the DoD shift its perspective and embrace digital technologies where they can have the best warfighting impact.

For more than 100 years, the U.S. strategy to win wars has been to outproduce the enemy. In World War II, America was the “arsenal of democracy”—producing the means to wage war not only for the U.S. military, but for its allies as well. The unmatched U.S. industrial base was crucial for the Allied military victory, as it churned out ships, tanks, planes, and ammunition at a rate that far outstripped Germany and Japan combined.

Former NSA, Cyber Command chief Paul Nakasone says U.S. falling behind its enemies in cyberspace

Tim Starks

Then-National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone arrives for a closed-door hearing in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center in 2023. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The United States is falling “increasingly behind” its adversaries in cyberspace, a former Cyber Command and National Security Agency boss said Saturday.

Speaking at the DistrictCon cybersecurity conference in Washington, D.C., retired Gen. Paul Nakasone said that “our adversaries are continuing to be able to broaden the spectrum of what they’re able to do to us.”

Nakasone said incidents like Chinese government-backed breaches of U.S. telecommunications companies and other critical infrastructure — as well as a steady drumbeat of ransomware attacks against U.S. targets — illustrate “the fact that we’re unable to secure our networks, the fact that we’re unable to leverage the software that’s being provided today, the fact that we have adversaries that continue to maintain this capability.”

Nakasone, who led NSA and CYBERCOM from 2018 until early last year and is now founding director of Vanderbilt University’s Institute of National Security, said he fears the threats of the future are only going to get more dangerous.

One example is “we are starting to see the beginnings of the bleed from the non-kinetic to the kinetic for cyber operations,” he said, referring to actual physical damage.

“What’s next is that we are going to see cyberattacks against a series of platforms being able to actually down platforms with ones and zeros,” Nakasone said.

A board member for OpenAI, Nakasone also talked about how artificial intelligence could make cyber offense more potent. Specifically, he mentioned the notion of generative targeting, such as the idea of physical drones choosing their targets powered by AI.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)