Pakistan, Balochistan and the India angle - Opinion

Vivek Katju

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A week after the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)’s attack on the Jaffar Express, Pakistan’s Parliamentary Committee on National Security met under the chairmanship of the country’s National Assembly’s Speaker, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, on March 18. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, leading cabinet members, Chief Ministers, leaders of political parties and the Army brass led by its chief, Gen Asim Munir, took part in the Committee’s deliberations.

Significantly, former Prime Minister and currently in prison Imran Khan’s party—Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI)—leaders refused to attend the Committee meeting because their leader was in jail and they claimed that they were not allowed to fully consult him. This indicates that even as the country is in the midst of a grave security challenge posed by terrorist forces (ironically some it raised itself) Pakistan’s political class remains divided. In view of the constants of Pakistan’s political reality, its army is both the creator and sustainer of these divisions as well as its beneficiary.

Modern Slavery And Cyber Fraud: The Growing Crisis In Myanmar – Analysis

Windia Soe

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The Explosive Rise of Cyber Scam Syndicates in Myanmar

In recent years, in 2021, China has intensified efforts to combat cybercrime by enacting the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) and Data Security Law (DSL) to reinforce China’s commitment to data security. Additionally, the Chinese government banned cryptocurrency trading, mining, and advertisements while implementing stricter anti-money laundering measures and crackdowns on telecom and online fraud. These regulatory shifts have made it increasingly difficult for cybercriminals to operate within China.

As a result, many cybercriminal syndicates adapted new methods and relocated their operations abroad to exploit stolen personal data for fraudulent schemes. Among their top destinations, Myanmar—already grappling with post-coup instability—emerged as a prime hub for cyber fraud and organized crime. Using lawlessness, economic turmoil, and the country’s strategic location, transnational crime syndicates have established large-scale scam operations. These operations not only cause significant financial damage but also involve human trafficking.

The Kokang Region and Myawaddy, located on Myanmar’s borders with China and Thailand, have historically been hotspots for illicit activities due to their strategic locations, ethnic armed conflicts, and weak central government control. From 1950-1990, Kokang was central to the Golden Triangle’s opium trade, while Myawaddy facilitated drug trafficking. By 2000-2020, both areas shifted toward gambling and underground financial schemes, fueled by cross-border investments and Special Economic Zones. Since 2020, they have become centers for large-scale online scams, supported by SEZ infrastructure and armed group protection.

Fujian’s Unveils Incentives for Militia Training for a Cross-Strait Campaign

Ryan D. Martinson

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If the People’s Republic of China (PRC) decides to attack Taiwan, it will need to leverage the capabilities of all of its armed forces. This not only includes the land, sea, air, and rocket forces of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) or the relevant units of the People’s Armed Police, such as the China Coast Guard. It also includes the third component of the country’s armed forces—its militia.

The PRC’s militia comprises part-time soldiers who, aside from their military duties, typically hold jobs in civilian industries. As members of the militia, they can be mobilized to conduct military operations in both war and peace. Militia members belong to units that are managed by local PLA entities called People’s Armed Forces Departments (人民武装部). Individual militia units often specialize in a skill that is valuable to the PLA, such as cyber warfare or equipment repair.

Ensuring the competence of militia forces has always been a challenge. Militia members do not receive adequate compensation for their work, causing malaise and apathy on the training field and, ultimately, poor performance on the battlefield. This presents a serious risk for Beijing, which may need to rely on its militia forces in the event of a major conflict. In January 2025, Fujian Province, the province opposite Taiwan, took a significant step toward professionalizing its militia units by issuing a document called “Measures for Guaranteeing Militia Rights and Interests” (福建省民兵权益保障办法) (Fujian Government, January 26). If faithfully implemented, it could help ensure that Fujian militia show up for a cross-strait campaign both willing and able to do their duty.

Securing Cyber and Space: How the United States Can Disrupt China’s Blockade Plans

Benjamin Jensen, Erica Lonergan, and Kathleen McInnis

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Recent military exercises and doctrine suggest the leading war plan for Beijing to compel Taiwan is a joint blockade. This plan envisions operations ranging from gray zone quarantines to more traditional protracted blockades that isolate Taipei and shift the balance of risk to U.S. and Japanese forces while setting conditions for follow-on military operations ranging from coercive firepower strikes to full-scale invasion.

A critical element of China’s strategy will be implemented in the cyber and space domains in peacetime. This demands sustained U.S. efforts to constrain China’s ability to harness commercial cyber and space resources before conflict begins. By targeting these networks—both physical and virtual—on which China depends for intelligence, communications, and operational reach, the United States and its allies can blunt Beijing’s coercive potential before a crisis erupts through implementing a deterrence-by-denial strategy.

Cyber and Space Capabilities in a Joint Blockade

A blockade is an age-old military concept for coordinating operations in military domains with diplomacy and economic statecraft to strangle an adversary. We use the term blockade in a broad sense, rather than the international legal definition. By isolating the enemy, including disrupting supply chains needed to generate combat power, a state can shape the strategic environment before and during protracted conflict. 

The Increasing Insignificance of the Two Sessions

Arran Hope

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On Tuesday, March 11, the “Two Sessions” (两会) wrapped up in Beijing. These are the annual meetings of the National People’s Congress—the unicameral legislature of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that comprises nearly 3,000 delegates from across the country—and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body of a similar size. The headline event is the delivery and approval of the “Government Work Report” (政府工作报告), which summarizes the legislature’s work over the previous year and sets the agenda for the year ahead. The Two Sessions are also an opportunity for a host of other meetings. For instance, President Xi Jinping met with the delegation from Jiangsu Province, various government leaders held press conferences, and groups from different policy constituencies held plenary sessions (Xinhua, March 7, March 8).

Holes in the Process of Democracy

If this year’s keystone political event was notable for one thing, it was the absence, for the most part, of politics. The Two Sessions have long been characterized in Western media as a vehicle for “rubber stamping” the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda with a show of what the Party terms “whole process democracy” (全过程人民民主). This label has been increasingly apposite in Xi’s so-called new era, leading to a waning in the importance of the Two Sessions. The meetings in Beijing have largely ceased to be a platform for major policy announcements, instead becoming avenues for confirming a pre-agreed trajectory. For instance, in this year’s government work report, Premier Li Qiang (李强) begins laying out economic plans for 2025 by encouraging officials to “comprehensively implement the spirit” (全面贯彻落实党的 … 三中全会精神) of the Third Plenum last July and to deploy policies in accordance with December’s Central Economic Work Conference (GWR, March 11). In other words, to continue on the course outlined in previous months.

China is waging cognitive warfare. Fighting back starts by defining it.

JAKE BEBBER

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War has shifted far beyond the realm of traditional kinetic operations. We now face an era defined by what experts call cognitive warfare, an insidious form of conflict aimed at influencing how people think and act, destabilizing the very bedrock of democratic institutions and national security.

Unlike information warfare, which manipulates what we think, cognitive warfare disrupts the way we think—rationality itself. It uses neuroscience, data analytics, and algorithm-based strategies to achieve strategic advantage. Developing a framework to counter this threat is not just essential; it is urgent.

Potential adversaries are working hard to extend their advantage in this relatively new domain. China’s military thinkers talk openly about the pursuit of “biological dominance” and “cognitive control.” They deploy sophisticated strategies that fuse their traditional information operations with cognitive warfare capabilities, all aimed at achieving strategic victories without direct conflict. Their integrated use of cyber tools, brain science, and algorithm-driven propaganda creates a toolkit designed to sow doubt, fracture cohesion within societies and alliances, and erode the U.S.’s strategic position. Meanwhile, Russia has a long history of using “active measures” and disinformation to disrupt democratic processes, refining its methods to incorporate the digital tools and tactics of modern cognitive warfare.

Russia is Looking to Increase Arms Exports After Ukraine War Ends

Peter Suciu

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Russia has been seeking an “ironclad” guarantee that would permanently exclude Ukraine from NATO members and require Kyiv to maintain a policy of neutrality as peace talks continue.

“We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement,” Alexander Grushko told Russian media outlet Izvestia. These guarantees should include Ukraine’s neutral status and NATO countries’ refusal to accept it into the alliance.”

It is unclear and unlikely that Ukrainian officials will accept Russia’s terms. However, the Kremlin may be looking beyond the war and is set on regaining the second-to-top spot in global arms sales. The Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Global Arms Trade (TsAMTO) estimates that the annual Russian arms exports could grow to $17 billion once the conflict ends.

The “independent” defense analyst company estimates that current arms sales from Russia total around $13.75 billion.

“TsAMTO estimates that in four years after the end of the special military operation, the Russian military exports may reach $17 to 19 billion a year and maybe more. The forecast considers that all Russian weapons have been tested in battle and are adapted to the realities of modern highly technological war and have been modified and upgraded according to real combat experience of fighting modern arms supplied to Ukraine,” the Russian research firm said in a statement to Tass.

Ukraine’s Shrinking Foothold In Kursk – Analysis

Can Kasapoğlu

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1. Battlefield Assessment

The Ukrainian Armed Forces have withdrawn from Sudzha, a town in the Russian region of Kursk. Thus far no open-source intelligence has indicated that Russian or North Korean units have enveloped Ukrainian formations. Still, this makes sustaining a presence in Kursk even more difficult for Ukraine.

A joint offensive by North Korean and Russian combat formations repelled Ukraine’s incursion. Evidence shows that fighters from the former Wagnerprivate military company also played a role in the Russian offensive. As Russian and North Korean troops breached Ukraine’s lines of defense, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Russian military headquarters for the Kursk region. After months of downplaying the significance of Ukraine’s incursion, the Kremlin capitalized on the moment to emphasize this operation as an important success.

Beyond being a defeat in the ongoing war for the narrative, losing Kursk could have three major consequences for Ukraine. First, with ceasefire negotiations looming, the loss would deprive Ukraine of precious diplomatic leverage in a territory swap. Second, removing Ukraine from Kursk could allow the Russian military to move the tens of thousands of troops it has fielded there to other fronts. Third, the loss of Kursk increases the likelihood that the Kremlin could invade Ukraine’s neighboring Sumy Oblast.

British Software Will Protect Ukrainian Drones From Cyber Attack

David Hambling

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Cyber attacks are now targeting drones in Ukraine. British company Periphery, specializing in military-grade threat management for Internet of Things devices, is providing expertise and software to protect Ukrainian drones from such threats,

Drone software is constantly updated. “Firmware 1001” which enables DJI quadcopters to operate in war conditions has been through more than 40 versions in two years. Any update could contain dangerous malware for which there was previously no defence -- but Periphery have the technology to stop it.

Software Sabotage

“We provide an easy-to-install, military-grade, lightweight software agent that can be embedded before or after production,” Toby Wilmington, Cofounder and CEO of Periphery, told me.

The technology monitors, understands, and adapts to new and emerging threats, communicating with central servers.

“Our technology uses our proprietary machine learning models to detect suspicious or confirmed malicious activity happening within a device,” says Wilmington.

Trump Has Launched a Second American Revolution. This Time, It’s Against the World.

Stewart Patrick

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Carnegie’s Global Order and Institutions Program identifies promising new multilateral initiatives and frameworks to realize a more peaceful, prosperous, just, and sustainable world. That mission has never been more important, or more challenging. Geopolitical competition, populist nationalism, economic inequality, technological innovation, and a planetary ecological emergency are testing the rules-based international order and complicating collective responses to shared threats. Our mission is to design global solutions to global problems.Learn More

Just two months into his second presidency, Donald Trump is revolutionizing U.S. foreign policy. His policies will upend world order by destabilizing and ultimately destroying established institutions and patterns of international cooperation. Since 1945, the United States has been the leading champion, underwriter, and guarantor of an open, rule-bound global system under international law. Now, it rejects the logic of multilateralism, including any self-restraints on the exercise of U.S. power and any responsibilities for global leadership and stability.

2 West Point grads think it’s time for a military academy for cyber, space, and robotics

Patty Nieberg

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Does the U.S. military need another service academy? Two former graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point think so.

Michael LaValle, a former infantry soldier who now works in finance and retired Army Lt. Col. DeVan Shannon, who teaches at the Joint Special Operations University, envision a full-size military academy — akin to West Point or the U.S. Air Force Academy — dedicated to the military’s use of space, cyber, and robotics. The two believe those subjects will be vital to the military in the future but are given short shrift at current schools.

The two told Task & Purpose that a new approach to academy education would embrace officers learning simultaneously from the public and private sector, where innovation in space, cyber and robotics is moving rapidly.

“The academies aren’t moving fast enough in these directions or at large enough scale, and finally, they’re not recruiting the kids and the talent that are necessary to succeed,” LaValle told Task & Purpose.

The pair started to think about a whole new academy during business trips to Israel and Ukraine. LaValle was in Ukraine last week when he spoke to Task & Purpose.

Conquest Is Back

Tanisha M. Fazal

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The norm against territorial conquest is a pillar of the post-1945 international order, but that pillar is now crumbling. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is certainly the most egregious recent violation of this prohibition—an outlier, as an attempt to capture an entire sovereign country. Yet if Moscow gets to walk away with pieces of Ukrainian territory, and particularly if that transfer wins international recognition, other powers may be more tempted to wage wars of conquest.

States have never consistently complied with the rule, enshrined in the UN Charter in response to Nazi Germany’s swallowing other countries whole during World War II, that proscribed the forcible seizure of another state’s territory. But it was broadly observed until fairly recently. Argentina was swiftly ejected from the Falkland Islands after its invasion in 1982 by the combined force of the British military and a UN Security Council resolution. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, a U.S.-led and UN-approved coalition stepped in to restore Kuwait’s sovereignty. When Russia attacked Crimea in 2014, however, outside powers failed to fully enforce the norm. Many countries protested, but Crimea’s transfer to Russia has become a de facto reality. And this time, after Russia’s full-scale invasion, the world’s increasingly mixed reaction to such a blatant assault has clearly signaled the degrading strength of the norm.

No more soldiers: European big debt for defence, yet young men are vanishing

Ralph Schoellhammer

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One of the biggest problems in today’s politics (at least in the West) is the tendency by politicians to compartmentalise everything. Now the optimist could say this is clear evidence that they are not totalitarian. That is at least partially true: Hitler and Stalin did not accept the idea that there is a private sphere separated from the state, that whatever the individual does must be evaluated in light of what this would mean for the Volkskoerper. They took an organic view on all societal matters, meaning that there was no true individual choice, only options that the state would offer – or revoke.

There is a telling anecdote from the last months of the war, when Hitler proposed to switch the Wehrmacht onto a vegetarian diet plus supplements. He only relented from this idea after one of his general staff officers conducted these new dietary guidelines in a self-experiment, leading to such an obvious health deterioration that even the Fuehrer abandoned his original plan. A few years earlier he also proposed a smoking ban in the army, another proposal that took a lot of convincing from his generals to be discarded. For the totalitarian mind, everything is connected and therefore – at some point – everything will become an issue for the state. Or, as Benito Mussolini once said: “”Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”

Joint force design is still a service-centric mission

Steven Wills

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A recent Defense News opinion piece suggests that the only way to achieve joint force design is to move force acquisition out of the hands of the military services and instead, “structuring the budget around the joint force design rather than just service-specific priorities.”

This is not a new concept and has been around since the 1960s when Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara sought to base force design around a common set of joint missions rather than the armed services. McNamara’s proposal at least accepted the idea that different geographies, adversaries and missions around the world should govern force design.

Taken at face value, that line of thinking would turn force design over to regional, competing combatant commanders (COCOMs), each with different requirements.

Regional commanders were once components in global deterrence and potential conflict with the Soviet Union, but after the Cold War became competing, regional proconsuls for power and military assets. Only centralized authority in the form of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the service chiefs and secretaries have the global view necessary to make force design choices suitable to the entire force and not just one geographic area.

Pete Hegseth Is Closing a Pentagon Office That Wins Wars

Hal Brands

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Amid the institutional carnage of the first two months of the Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, few Americans will notice the demise of the Office of Net Assessment. That small outfit occupied a nearly windowless space in the Pentagon. Its work was known only to the nerdiest parts of the national security community.

Yet ONA played a large role in helping the US win the Cold War, by sharpening its strategic instincts and making its behavior more lethally competitive. Shuttering the office is an act of self-harm at a moment when hot wars rage in the Europe and the Middle East and a new cold war, against China, is well underway.

Net assessment is the study of military balances, or, more broadly, of the comparative strengths and weaknesses of rival nations. In the US, the institutionalized practice of net assessment was a child of the Cold War. During the 1950s, the Net Evaluation Subcommittee of the National Security Council had the unenviable task of estimating how much damage the US and the Soviet Union might suffer in a nuclear exchange.

Chairman Wicker, Chairman Rogers Joint Statement on Reports of Potential Combatant Command Changes

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U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and U.S. Representative Mike Rogers, R-Ala., Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, today responded to press reports suggesting that the United States might soon change its entire combatant command structure, withdraw from NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) command structure, and cancel modernization plans for U.S. Forces Japan:

“U.S. combatant commands are the tip of the American warfighting spear. Therefore, we are very concerned about reports that claim DoD is considering unilateral changes on major strategic issues, including significant reductions to U.S. forces stationed abroad, absent coordination with the White House and Congress. We support President Trump’s efforts to ensure our allies and partners increase their contributions to strengthen our alliance structure, and we support continuing America’s leadership abroad. As such, we will not accept significant changes to our warfighting structure that are made without a rigorous interagency process, coordination with combatant commanders and the Joint Staff, and collaboration with Congress. Such moves risk undermining American deterrence around the globe and detracting from our negotiating positions with America’s adversaries.”

Arsonist, Killer, Saboteur, Spy

Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

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In late January, barely a week into Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. president, a senior NATO official told members of the European Parliament that Russia’s intensifying use of hybrid warfare poses a major threat to the West. In the hearing, James Appathurai, NATO deputy assistant secretary-general for innovation, hybrid, and cyber, described “incidents of sabotage taking place across NATO countries over a period of the last couple of years,” including train derailments, arson, attacks on infrastructure, and even assassination plots against leading industrialists. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022, sabotage operations linked to Russian intelligence have been recorded in 15 countries. Speaking to the press after the January hearing, Appathurai said it was time for NATO to move to a “war footing” to deal with these escalating attacks.

In the weeks since then, Trump’s dramatic overtures to Putin have pushed the sabotage campaign into the background. Instead, in aiming to quickly secure a deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, the Trump administration has talked of a new era of relations between Washington and Moscow. At the same time, the White House has taken steps to dismantle efforts within the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to counter cyberwarfare, disinformation, and election interference against the United States—all of which have previously been tied to Moscow. Indeed, Trump has suggested that Russia can be trusted to uphold any peace deal and that Putin is “going to be more generous than he has to be.”

Pentagon weighs major cuts to top of US military

Natasha Bertrand

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The Pentagon is considering making significant cuts to the top of the US military as the Trump administration seeks to shrink the federal government, according to a briefing document obtained by CNN and a US defense official.

The plans under consideration include consolidating combatant commands, possibly eliminating a directorate that oversees development, training and education for the joint force, and halting the expansion of US Forces Japan.

Among the eye-catching measures being considered are merging European Command and Africa Command into a single command based in Stuttgart, Germany, and combining US Northern and Southern commands into a single AMERICOM command, according to the document obtained by CNN.

The document was prepared this month by US defense officials for senior leaders, as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has pushed the Pentagon and other federal agencies to make sweeping cuts to save money.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a video last month that DoD would be leaning on DOGE to help the department “find fraud, waste and abuse in the largest discretionary budget in the federal government.”

The Ukraine War After Three Years: Roads Not Taken

Marcus Stanley

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Costs of the war

The Ukraine War is inarguably the bloodiest and costliest war in Europe since World War II. While accurate casualty figures are difficult to come by, in September 2024, The Wall Street Journal estimated that the war had already resulted in more than one million casualties, with more than 250,000 dead and some 800,000 wounded. The carnage has only increased since then.

The war has also been a demographic and economic disaster for Ukraine — a smaller and more vulnerable country than Russia. Due to invasion and refugee flight, the resident population of Ukraine has declined to some 28–30 million, a population loss of one quarter when compared to the prewar figure of some 42 million. The nation faces a long-term demographic crisis. In 2024, Ukraine had the world’s highest death rate and lowest birth rate. Estimates are that its population size will continue to decline in the future, absent a return to peace.

Ukraine was already one of the poorest countries in Europe before the invasion, with the second-lowest gross domestic product, GDP, per person (ranking above only Kosovo) and a pre-invasion GDP of only about $200 billion. By the end of 2025, estimates suggest that the economic cost of the war to Ukraine will be a $120 billion cumulative loss in GDP and $1 trillion in damage to infrastructure and capital stock. When compared to the size of Ukraine’s already relatively poor prewar economy, these figures are staggering.

MARS ATTACKS: How Elon Musk's plans for Mars threaten Earth

Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith

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Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is intent on creating a one-million-person colony on Mars. As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk also seems content to break anything that stands in his way—including potentially a Cold War era treaty that has kept humanity safe for over 50 years, the Outer Space Treaty (OST). Musk’s rejection of international governance could have lasting implications for life on earth, and could augur a new era of geopolitical conflict.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1, ushering in the age of spacefaring as geopolitics.

Just a decade later the two sides of the Cold War joined the international community to ratify the main international treaty that still governs space today: The 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty. How were nations able to come together and create a regulatory framework for lands none of them had yet visited?

Pentagon CIO calls for more offensive cyber capability

Mark Pomerleau

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The status quo will no longer be accepted as the Trump administration moves to combat adversaries in the digital world, the Defense Department’s acting chief information officer said Thursday.

“We are at war in a non-kinetic sense … You have a president, what the message has been very clearly is the way we’ve been doing things isn’t working. It’s broken. This is your time. Come out of your shells. The art of the possible is before you now,” Katie Arrington said at the DOD Cyber Workforce Summit. “You have time to say this regulation, this policy, has been handcuffing you from doing what is needed and necessary to protect the United States … Our adversaries are not waiting for us to pass a new policy.”

Arrington — who was selected as the Pentagon’s chief information security officer, reprising that role from the first Trump administration, and is now serving as the acting DOD CIO — warned that not only have many Americans become complacent about cybersecurity, but adversaries know U.S. networks and will exploit them.

Emerging Technology and Risk Analysis

Daniel M. Gerstein & Erin N. Leidy

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Ensuring critical access to space is an eco nomic and national security imperative. As the December 2021 United States Space Priorities Framework states, “Space activi ties are essential to our way of life. They advance our understanding of the Earth, the universe, and humanity; enable U.S. national security; create good jobs and economic opportunity; enhance our health and well-being; and inspire us to pursue our dreams. Space capabilities provide critical data, products, and services that drive innovation in the United States and around the world. Access to and use of space is a vital national interest.”1

Given the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's (DHS’s) broad homeland security responsibilities and authority as the largest law enforcement agency in the U.S. government, the department has important equities for a wide variety of activities that depend on assured access to space, particularly in or related to the 16 criti cal infrastructure sectors. As described in “DHS Space Policy,” these responsibilities and authority extend to assuring future access to vital space assets for accomplishing DHS missions in addition to protecting and supporting the growth of unfet tered commercial access to space.2 This requires collaboration across a broad stakeholder commu nity that includes the U.S. interagency, industry, the private sector, allies, and partners.

A New Military-Industrial Complex Arises: The Secret War Within The Pentagon – Analysis

Michael T. Klare

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Last April, in a move generating scant media attention, the Air Force announced that it had chosen two little-known drone manufacturers — Anduril Industries of Costa Mesa, California, and General Atomics of San Diego — to build prototype versions of its proposed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), a future unmanned plane intended to accompany piloted aircraft on high-risk combat missions. The lack of coverage was surprising, given that the Air Force expects to acquire at least 1,000 CCAs over the coming decade at around $30 million each, making this one of the Pentagon’s costliest new projects. But consider that the least of what the media failed to note. In winning the CCA contract, Anduril and General Atomics beat out three of the country’s largest and most powerful defense contractors — Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman — posing a severe threat to the continued dominance of the existing military-industrial complex, or MIC.

For decades, a handful of giant firms like those three have garnered the lion’s share of Pentagon arms contracts, producing the same planes, ships, and missiles year after year while generating huge profits for their owners. But an assortment of new firms, born in Silicon Valley or incorporating its disruptive ethos, have begun to challenge the older ones for access to lucrative Pentagon awards. In the process, something groundbreaking, though barely covered in the mainstream media, is underway: a new MIC is being born, one that potentially will have very different goals and profit-takers than the existing one. How the inevitable battles between the old and the new MICs play out can’t be foreseen, but count on one thing: they are sure to generate significant political turbulence in the years to come.

The Effects of High-Altitude Nuclear Explosions on Non-Military Satellites

Don Snyder, Angela Putney, Erin N. Leidy, Gavin S. Hartnett & James Bonomo

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Introduction

Many modern services are provided in part or in whole by satellites. The number of active satellites has increased considerably in the past few years, and the public’s daily dependence on satellites increased along with it. So, too, has the possibility of the detonation of a nuclear weapon in space. Concurrently, in the past few years, multiple adversarial countries have emphasized the capabilities of nuclear weapons and forces. During the war in Ukraine, Russia has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons. China has been building up its nuclear forces. And North Korea has performed underground nuclear tests and multiple tests of missiles it claims can carry nuclear weapons.

Historically, during high-altitude nuclear tests performed from 1958 to 1962, nuclear tests damaged and destroyed some satellites (Conrad et al., 2010; Gombosi et al., 2017; Wenaas, 1978). During this early period of the space age, the number of satellites in orbit was few, and very few functions on the ground depended on space capabilities. Today, satellite-provided services permeate nearly every aspect of government and civilian life. They provide global communications, weather monitoring, navigation, remote sensing, and many other capabilities underpinning modern life. Even the timing used for the cryptography of bank transactions often uses space-based assets. A loss of a significant fraction of satellites could have significant disruptive effects on the day-to-day life of the public.

A Tool to Conduct Risk Assessment, Develop Critical Thinking, and Challenge SOF Strategic Planning Assumptions

Luke Bellocchi, JD, LLM, MSSI, MBA and Ilaria De Santis, PhD

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Introduction

Development of critical thinking is often touted as an important part of Joint Professional Military Education (JPME)-II education (1) and risk assessment an essential part of strategy development. Both are major components of most JPME-II senior staff college programs. However, experience demonstrates that risk assessment (including challenging assumptions) is often the tacked-on portion of strategy development, which means it is given short-shrift in the simplified ends-ways-means strategy construct that is core curriculum. In other words, after spending enormous amounts of time and effort building a strategy, planners naturally feel defensive about any process that attacks their hard work. As a result, the assessment becomes at most about what risks are inherent in the environment rather than a deep critique of whether the strategy itself contains flaws. SOF planners should take note of how best to counteract this potentially fatal flaw.

Moreover, military officers are not inclined to criticize work that has senior officer support and may be trained to be more doctrinal rather than critical in thinking. Consequently, methodologies for assessing risk and suitability such as red teaming can easily be given check-the-box treatment. Red teaming, a process that involves critical thinking and the ability to challenge authority, must involve vastly varied cognitive and cultural perspectives and is indispensable in challenging the underlying types of assumptions pervading every level of strategy (See Figure 1). Planners should take the process seriously to reduce risk to and from a strategy through expansion of formal planning guidance.