India Faces High Stakes in U.S. Trade Talks

Michael Kugelman

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The highlights this week: U.S. and Indian officials conclude a first round of trade talks as U.S. President Donald Trump announces new global tariffs, India quickly dispatches humanitarian aid to Myanmar in the wake of a devastating earthquake, and comments from Bangladeshi leader Muhammad Yunus in Beijing stir controversy in New Delhi.

What “the Global South” Really Means

Zachariah Mampilly

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In October 2024, at the most recent BRICS summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the countries of the “global South” to build an alternative to the existing global order. Chinese President Xi Jinping, in his speech, called for “strengthening solidarity and cooperation among global South nations,” positioning BRICS—the grouping that was founded by Brazil, Russia, India, and China in 2009 but has grown considerably in the last decade—“as a vanguard for advancing global governance reform.” This was not the first time both leaders have hailed the global South. 

Trump's tariffs and what they mean for Asia

Davina Tham

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United States President Donald Trump called Wednesday (Apr 2) “one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history” as he unveiled a raft of tariffs for the rest of the world.

It's part of the president's plan to address trade imbalances, and will lead to Asian economies contending with sharply higher tariffs.

What are “reciprocal" tariffs?

First, tariffs are taxes placed on foreign-made imports.

With reciprocal tariffs, the US aims to mirror import duties placed by other economies on American-made goods.

The world’s largest economy generally has lower tariffs than those it trades with.

Under Trump, the White House has criticised this lack of reciprocity.

For example, it cited a 2.7 per cent tariff on unhusked rice versus 80 per cent by India, 40 per cent by Malaysia and 31 per cent by Turkey on the same.

But it's not as simple as matching numbers.

The Evolving Landscape of Cyber and Electronic Warfare in Geopolitical Conflicts

Jeremy Makowski 

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As the 2020s advance, the nature of warfare is undergoing a profound transformation. Cyber and electronic warfare have emerged as indispensable elements in modern geopolitical confrontations. Nations, armed forces, paramilitary groups, and even non-state actors, including terrorist organizations, are leveraging cutting-edge technologies to secure tactical advantages without resorting to conventional combat. By targeting communications networks, critical infrastructure, and strategic systems, these adversaries are redefining the battlefield where digital operations intersect with physical conflict.

Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, we anticipate a further expansion in the deployment of cyber and electronic warfare tools ranging from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to signal jammers and advanced sensors complemented by increasingly sophisticated intelligence gathering methods.

The Rise of Cyber Warfare Operations

Cyber warfare has firmly established itself as a cornerstone of contemporary geopolitical strategy. The heightened reliance on digital infrastructure for communication, defense, and commerce makes these systems prime targets for disruption. Both state and non-state actors engage in cyberattacks, espionage, and sabotage to undermine critical systems and alter the dynamics of conflict. For example, Russia’s systematic use of cyber tools to compromise Ukrainian government networks, energy grids, and military operations since 2014 illustrates the potent impact of these strategies.

Exclusive: Gen. Paul Nakasone says China is now our biggest cyber threat

Dina Temple-Raston

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PAUL NAKASONE: Well, I have a portfolio approach to life. Right now I'm spending about half my time with the Vanderbilt Institute of National Security. I'm also on the board of directors for OpenAI. I do public speaking and I also do some consulting work for various businesses.

CH: And do you still have a relationship with the government?

PN: I don't. I'm on a cooling-off period right now and I think after 37 years that’s good.

CH: You've said you worry that the United States is falling behind in cyberspace. … Is it the sheer prevalence of attacks that makes you say that? Is it that adversaries are stepping up with nation-state hacking groups like Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon? What are you seeing?

PN: In the year since I've left government, I would tell you that my focus is truly on The Chinese Communist Party, the People's Republic of China. They have separated themselves from other countries in terms of their capabilities.

Two years ago, we talked about [hacking groups like] Volt Typhoon and this idea of Chinese implanting malicious code in our critical infrastructure and key resources. This past year, we discovered them in our telecommunications companies.

Recently, I talked to the general manager of the Littleton Electric Water and Power District, right outside of Boston. He's a general manager there of a town of 10,000 and they just discovered the Chinese in their critical infrastructure.

Israel Enters 'Stage 3' of Cyber Wars With Iran Proxies

Nate Nelson

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Reported cybersecurity incidents in Israel rose 24% in 2024, largely thanks to Iran and its proxy militias. But the trajectory of this cyber conflict has not followed a straight path, as recent signals suggest it might be slowing and evolving.

Any simple comparison of cyber threat data before and after Oct. 7, 2023, tells a seemingly straightforward story. In 2023, the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) released 367 alerts about vulnerabilities, attacks, and threats. In 2024, that number doubled to 736, with 518 of them being "red alerts" directed to specific organizations. Calls to Israel's 119 cyberattack hotline rose 24% year-over-year, with 17,078 reports in only 365 days.

In a closed door briefing at INCD headquarters last week, government representatives reported even more significant figures. In the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, calls and alerts to Israel's national security operations center (SoC) multiplied 10 times over — from an average of 50 per day to 500-plus. The number of known APTs targeting the country has reportedly doubled as well, though Dark Reading hasn't received specific figures to confirm this.

Despite the metrics, cyber threats to Israel haven't risen in some sort of consistent pattern over the past year and a half. Instead, INCD defense division executive director Tom Alexandrovich tells Dark Reading that the cyber war against Israel has progressed roughly in three phases. Today — during what he deems phase three — attacks aren't coming quite so hard and fast, but they have matured significantly.

For Israel, Peace in Ukraine Means Opportunity To Stop Iran | Opinion

Yaakov Katz

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Over the past year, as Israel's ground offensive against Hezbollah ramped up along the Israel-Lebanon border, one disturbing pattern repeatedly emerged from the field: the overwhelming presence of Russian-made weaponry inside southern Lebanon.

Time and again, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops operating in Hezbollah-controlled territory uncovered homes converted into makeshift arsenals, packed with advanced Russian arms. Crates filled with anti-tank missiles, mortars, and rockets—many marked with Russian export codes—provided evidence of a pipeline stretching from Moscow through Damascus, and directly into Hezbollah's hands.

Among the most concerning finds were sophisticated Kornet anti-tank guided missiles, capable of penetrating even the most heavily armored Israeli vehicles. Some of these missiles were manufactured as recently as 2020, indicating a supply line that has remained active well into recent years. Alongside them were older but still lethal systems—Fagot, Konkurs, and even Soviet-era Sagger missiles. The IDF uncovered weapons stores in civilian homes, schools, and mosques, embedded in the very communities Hezbollah claims to defend.

Trump’s Tariffs Could Reshape the US Tech Industry

Lauren Goode

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Sweeping tariffs unveiled by US president Donald Trump on Wednesday will have ripple effects across the tech industry, according to experts who study global trade. The measures, which include a minimum 10 percent tariff on most countries and steep new import duties on key US trading allies like Europe, China, Vietnam, India, and South Korea, sent stocks nosediving in after-hours trading.

Meta and Nvidia stock prices each fell by around 5 percent, CNBC reported, while Apple and Amazon fell around 6 percent. The iPhone maker earns roughly half its revenue by selling phones that are manufactured in China and India, while some of its other products are manufactured in Vietnam. Amazon’s online shopping marketplace is similarly heavily dependent on goods sold by third-party merchants in China.

These market dips may be just the beginning. Many economists warn that the White House has set in motion one of the largest shifts in global trade in decades, and among the results could be higher prices for US consumers and more inflation. Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs raised the probability of a US recession in the next 12 months to 35 percent, up from 20 percent.

A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System

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Introduction 

Americans’ opinion of how well the international trade and financial systems serve them has deteriorated substantially over the last decade. Among voters if not among economists, the consensus underpinning the international trading system has frayed, and both major parties have taken policies that aim at boosting America’s position within it. With President Trump winning reelection with a strong democratic mandate, it is reasonable to expect the Trump Administration to undertake a substantial overhaul of the international trade and financial systems. This essay surveys some tools available for doing so. In contrast to much Wall Street and academic discourse, there are powerful tools that can be used by an Administration for affecting the terms of trade, currency values, and the structure of international economic relations. 

During his campaign, President Trump proposed to raise tariffs to 60% on China and 10% or higher on the rest of the world, and intertwined national security with international trade. Many argue that tariffs are highly inflationary and can cause significant economic and market volatility, but that need not be the case. Indeed, the 2018-2019 tariffs, a material increase in effective rates, passed with little discernible macroeconomic consequence. The dollar rose by almost the same amount as the effective tariff rate, nullifying much of the macroeconomic impact but resulting in significant revenue. Because Chinese consumers’ purchasing power declined with their weakening currency, China effectively paid for the tariff revenue. Having just seen a major escalation in tariff rates, that experience should inform analysis of future trade conflicts.

Reciprocity and discrimination: When are tariffs useful remedies?

Kimberly Clausing 

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The Trump administration has marked April 2 for its next big tariff announcement, one that it says is centered on countering unfair trade practices abroad and imposing reciprocal trade protection. The administration may invoke "reciprocity" in at least four areas: value-added taxes, corporate income taxes, digital sales taxes, and foreign trade barriers. In each case, US tariffs would not be a wise policy response.

The Trump administration has said it plans to counter each trading partner’s allegedly “nonreciprocal trading arrangements," including its tariffs, taxes, subsidies, and regulations. One possible reason for this approach is that it might provide a legal basis for the president to use congressionally delegated authorities to act against trading partners individually. The president has greater authority to levy tariffs under exceptional circumstances such as emergencies, national security, or unfair trading practices abroad. Otherwise, Congress has clear authority over the power of the purse, according to the US Constitution (Article 1, Section 8).

Stock markets fall around the world after Trump unveils news tariffs

Anna Cooban and John Liu

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Stock markets across Asia-Pacific and Europe fell Thursday and US markets were also set to open lower after US President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on trading partners around the world.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index closed 2.8% down, while South Korea’s Kospi index closed less than 1% lower. Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index closed 1.5% down.

In Europe, the region’s benchmark Stoxx 600 index was trading 1.3% lower at 5.22 a.m. ET, while France’s CAC was 2.1% down. London’s FTSE 100 had fallen 1.3% by the same time.

Falling US stock futures also pointed to a difficult day ahead.

Dow futures were 2.5% down and S&P 500 futures 3% lower. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was set to open 3.3% lower.

Anti-Western Rhetoric Intensifying in Russian Media

Ksenia Kirillova

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Amid talks to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, the Kremlin appears interested in restoring normal relations with the West, and the demand for this normalization has become one of Putin’s key negotiating conditions (see EDM, March 28, April 1; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, April 1). One example of this is that Germany, Russia, and the United States are discussing the resumption of oil supply via the “Friendship” (Druzhba) pipeline to Germany. According to independent journalists’ investigations, U.S. firms are planning to acquire Rosneft’s stake in the RSK oil refinery in Schwedt from its German subsidiary Rosneft Deutschland. Journalists also report that the Donald Trump administration wants to invest in restarting the gas pipeline as a “strategic asset” that might be used to establish peace (Istories.media, March 13). Russian military analysts do not hide their joy at the prospect of foreign brands returning to collaborating with Russia (Military Review, March 16). Aggressive rhetoric against Europe, now referred to as “Russia’s main enemy,” however, is increasing in Kremlin propaganda (Voennoedelo.com, February 3). Pro-Kremlin analysts hope the United States will, willingly or unwillingly, help Moscow weaken Europe.

Writers at the website “Military Review,” which is close to the Russian Ministry of Defense, write that the U.S. plans to “cleanse the rotten blood out of the heads of European state leaders.” They say that “by pushing European governments into an arms race, U.S. President [Donald Trump] is deliberately creating financial problems for these countries” and is pushing Europeans to send peacekeepers to Ukraine. The authors at “Military Review” are certain that Moscow will immediately destroy such a peacekeeping corps, and the residents of European countries will overthrow their governments over a “stream of coffins into Europe” (Military Review, March 11).

Russia Uses Educational Institutions to Bolster Future Mobilization Capacity

Hlib Parfonov

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On March 30, Russian riot police and military enlistment officers conducted a raid on a Spirit Fitness club in Moscow to search for people evading military registration. Officers forced those in the club to put their faces to the floor and separated them by ethnicity while checking their passports to verify their military registration. This raid occurred just days before Russia’s spring draft held on April 1 (Telegram/msk1_news, March 30; The Moscow Times, March 31). The Kremlin is directing its efforts toward the full-fledged militarization of society by expanding its military training programs for universities in a way that ensures the long-term competence of its fighting forces (see EDM, November 8, 2023, September 19, 2024). Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been undergoing “reverse industrialization,” which has led to limited, if any, access to higher education for a substantial portion of the population. The Kremlin is actively limiting access to higher education, instead promoting vocational training, factory work, and, crucially, military service. Those who do access Russian higher education institutions encounter new mobilization and military training programs promoted by the Kremlin (see EDM, March 4).

One key aspect of this strategy is the expansion of military training programs within civilian educational institutions. Russia inherited the concept of military training programs within civilian educational institutions from the Soviet Union’s “military departments,” where university students could undergo military training as a means of avoiding conscription (Armyhelp.ru, September 13, 2023). In 2019, however, the Russian government issued a resolution that consolidated all military departments and faculties into Military Training Centers (Военно-учебный центр, Voenno-uchebnyi tsentr, or VUC) (Government of the Russian Federation, July 3, 2019). According to the resolution, the consolidation would increase the efficiency of higher education institutions in supporting Russia’s defense and security.

Qatargate Roils a War-Weary Israel

Matti Friedman

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Even those accustomed to the roiling wrestling ring that is Israeli politics can’t remember a week like the last one.

Multiple aides to Israel’s own prime minister, people operating in the most rarefied sanctuary of our leadership and state security, are accused of doing paid side jobs for Qatar, an enemy state. Two have been arrested.

The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has not been urging law enforcement to get to the bottom of the case, as one might expect. Instead, he’s been releasing TikTok videos calling his arrested aides “hostages” and accusing Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, along with the police and legal system, of running a “deep state” conspiracy to bring him down.

The US has many chip vulnerabilities

Edoardo Campanella and John Haigh

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Although semiconductor chips are ubiquitous nowadays, their production is concentrated in just a few countries, and this has left the US economy and military highly vulnerable at a time of rising geopolitical tensions. While the United States commands a leading position in designing and providing the software for the high-end chips used in AI technologies, production of the chips themselves occurs elsewhere. To head off the risk of catastrophic supply disruptions, the US needs a coherent strategy that embraces all nodes of the semiconductor industry.

That is why the CHIPS and Science Act, signed by President Joe Biden in 2022, provided funding to reshore manufacturing capacity for high-end chips. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, the impact has been significant: currently planned investments should give the US control of almost 30 percent of global wafer fabrication capacity for chips below ten nanometres by 2032. Only Taiwan and South Korea currently have foundries to produce such chips. China, by contrast, will control only 2 percent of manufacturing capacity, while Europe and Japan’s share will rise to about 12 percent.

But US President Donald Trump is now trying to roll back this strategy, describing the CHIPS Act—one of his predecessor’s signature achievements—as a waste of money. His administration is instead seeking to tighten the export restrictions that Biden introduced to frustrate China’s AI ambitions.

Washington: Declare Success and Lead

Keith B. Payne

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NATO faces its most consequential internal test in decades. President Trump has insisted that European members must do more if the Alliance is to remain an American priority. Some allies have responded with fear and loathing as they interpret his intentions and guess what steps Washington will take next. Their expectations range from the ending of America’s extended nuclear deterrent “umbrella” for allies, to U.S. withdrawal from the Alliance. Some of this speculation clearly is meant for shock value, but there understandably is renewed discussion in Europe of a European Defense Community outside of NATO, including some form of a “Europeanized” nuclear deterrent. These are not new ideas, but they are once again taken seriously. Some allies seem enthusiastic about a new model of European security; others are much more skeptical.

Before much energy and emotion is invested in speculation about a post-NATO form of security, it is reasonable to coolly consider U.S. intentions and goals. For all the uncertainty and fear in Europe, the general contours of Washington’s intentions and goals are not mysterious, unreasonable, or unprecedented.

How the US Forced Russia’s Failure

George Friedman

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On Sunday, The New York Times published an article so long and so significant that it merits unpacking here. Its author, Times investigative reporter Adam Entous, claims to have interviewed many sources in various countries who revealed the extent of Washington’s involvement in the Ukraine war and, in doing so, provides an answer to the question of how Russia was unable to win it. Entous had to have spoken with people with a high clearance to obtain this information. It was published in the NYT because it was the one newspaper the Russians would certainly check. The story was quickly translated into Russian and published in a Russian newspaper, essentially acknowledging its receipt. Details, after all, can redefine the understanding of a war.

There are plenty of examples to choose from. One section of the story explains that the U.S. sent intelligence to Ukrainian forces to target Russian positions and attacks, via a U.S. base in Germany. Another section details why Russia’s various offensives failed and why it was forced to abandon its assault on Kyiv.

The Age of Economic Warfare

Robert Bellafiore Jr.

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Asked which candidate he supported in the 2008 presidential election, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan responded, “National security aside, it hardly makes any difference who will be the next president. The world is governed by market forces.” With globalization replacing U.S. policy action, he explained, there wasn’t much for statesmen to do anymore. Now we could just watch the neutral pipework of the world economy do its thing, without interference from politics.

Greenspan didn’t know what was coming. As international relations scholar Edward Fishman shows in Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare, economic and political matters are now fundamentally intertwined. In our “age of economic warfare,” international trade is important not just for consumer welfare and growth, but also for geopolitical competition and national security. Policymakers have even developed a new vocabulary to make sense of this convergence of statecraft and market craft, inventing phrases like “de-risking,” “decoupling,” and “friendshoring.”

Is The West About To Implode?

Frank Furedi

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Suddenly it is all too clear. There is very little that binds together the different sections of what used to be called the Western world. The ascendancy of the 2025 Trump Presidency has crystallised the trend towards the fragmentation of global westernism. America looks inward and an all too ignored Europe knows that its fragility and weakness stands exposed.

The current conflict between Europe and America is not reducible to contrasting approaches towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Nor is this simply a conflict over tariffs and trade. Yes, we see the forceful assertion of American national interest but the dynamic set in play is not merely the latest version of the usual competitive positioning between different powers.

The recent revelation of the supposedly secret conversation between senior American top administration officials on Signal showed that what was at issue was not merely an ordinary security breach. The manner of the revelation and the attitudes expressed by the participants in the conversation indicated that what used to be known as the West, or the Western Alliance, has become emptied of any substantive content. The tone of contempt that the participants directed towards Europe and Europeans served as testimony to a serious cultural rupture between the two continents. No doubt sections of the European elites feel similarly towards their ‘uncouth’ American cousins in the Trump Administration.

Francis Fukuyama warns Trump is not a realist

Francis Fukuyama & Charlie Barnett

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Charlie Barnett: You famously wrote in The End of History that liberalism normatively satisfies the most basic human longings and, therefore, can be expected to be more universal and durable than other principles. Is this still a fair characterisation of your position today?

Professor Francis Fukuyama: Just to state the obvious, we're in a very different period than when my original article and book came out. Democracy at that point was expanding very rapidly, and it's been in retreat over the last, I would say, almost 20 years now; really, since about 2008. I think that this retreat has been accelerating, especially with Donald Trump taking office in the United States. I would say, of all the unexpected things that have happened, the fact that you could get this much regression and that Americans could vote for a demagogue like Trump is something I really wouldn't have anticipated. The concept of the end of history was not mine. It was really the philosopher Georg Hegel who articulated it, and it was used then by Karl Marx. Both of them believed that history was directional, that there was progress, and that societies evolved and changed over time. The question of the end of history was: To what sort of society were they progressing? Hegel's was basically a liberal society coming out of the French Revolution, and Karl Marx's answer was a communist utopia. My point back in 1989 was that the Marxist version of the end of history did not look like it was going to happen. If anything, we were going to end up with a liberal state. I think there's still a lot to be said for this because you need to step back a little bit from current events. Since the Hegelian declaration, we've had a lot of things happening in the world, but over the past couple of hundred years, since the French and American revolutions, the fundamental idea that a modern society needs to be based on an equality of recognition has really been accepted by you know, virtually everybody. There are very few people that say, systematically, this race or this particular group is superior to every other one.

Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ puts Asia in its line of fire

William Pesek

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As Donald Trump panics stock markets from New York to Singapore with widening threats of new tariffs, officials in Washington might want to study what just happened in Seoul. Over the weekend, South Korea, China and Japan met for their first high-level economic dialogue in five years.

Ukraine's Transformation Into A Military Powerhouse

Ellie Cook

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"Thanks to its defense industries," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky remarked back in October, "Ukraine is set to become one of the key global contributors to security and a very strong player in the global arms and defense technology market."

That is certainly Kyiv's vision for its future. "We can be one of the biggest producers of sophisticated weaponry," Oleksandr Merezhko, the chair of Ukraine's parliamentary foreign affairs and a member of Zelensky's party, told Newsweek.

"Ukrainian technologies are going to be required by the world," Kyiv's strategic industries minister, Herman Smetanin, told Newsweek on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany in mid-February.

There are many unknowns about what post-war Ukraine will look like, with much depending on how U.S.-backed ceasefire negotiations play out.

One of Russia's conditions for considering inking an agreement is a limit on Ukraine's military might. The Kremlin said in March that Russia wanted to stop military mobilization in Ukraine, and the re-equipping of Kyiv's military.

Netanyahu Takes On Israel’s Deep State

Gadi Taub

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The fight against what Prime Minister Netanyahu has taken to calling Israel’s “deep state” is now in full swing. It reached a climax on Thursday, March 20, late in the evening, when the cabinet unanimously voted to dismiss Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet—the country’s domestic security service. The termination is to take effect on the earlier of two dates: April 10, or when a replacement is found. Bar is not going down without a fight, however, and has retaliated by stepping up an investigation against the prime minister’s staff.

Bar’s removal is long overdue. For starters, he is probably the person most directly responsible for the disaster of Oct. 7. Gaza is the Shin Bet’s intelligence turf, and so Bar’s advice to refrain from raising the level of alert on the night before the massacre was naturally accepted by the IDF. All remained quiet on the Gaza front as dawn broke on that Sabbath. So quiet, says former Shin Bet operative Yizhar David, who was privy to some of the relevant information, that Mohammed Deif, who commanded the invasion, postponed the attack for fear that Israel’s apparent total lack of preparation might well be a trap.

But there was no trap. Despite the accumulating signs of an impending assault nobody alerted the soldiers, sleeping soundly in their beds, or the party goers still dancing as the sun was rising at the Nova Festival, or those on guard duty at the nearby kibbutzim. The handful of tanks at the theater, the soldiers stationed in bases around the fence, and the volunteers on security duty in the adjoining kibbutzim could have stopped or at least drastically curtailed the invasion had they only been told to stay put. Bar’s advice excluded any such preparations. The theater was sedated, rather than alert.

Defense Industry Winners and Losers Amid Trump Tariffs

Ronan Wordsworth

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For years, Europe has been notoriously slow in developing a coherent strategy for its defense industry. And it never really had a reason to formulate such a plan, so long as the United States guaranteed its safety. But the second Trump administration – specifically, its transactional approach to international affairs and its eagerness to end the Ukraine war – has convinced Europe that it may no longer be able to rely on the United States for its defense needs. Other U.S. allies, including Canada, South Korea, Japan and Australia, are asking themselves the same question, especially in light of the seemingly punitive measures such as tariffs the Trump administration has imposed on them. In this context, many policy changes are underway, perhaps none so important as those in the defense industry.

Through NATO, the U.S. has been Europe’s security guarantor since 1949, a position that has been a boon to the U.S. defense industry. In addition to run-of-the-mill global arms sales, companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman have become leading defense manufacturers because the weapons systems they produce have become NATO standard. The pressure Washington exerted on European allies to buy American often hampered domestic research and development. When the F-35 and F-16 fighter aircraft, for example, became NATO standards, they depressed demand for European alternatives such as the Eurofighter or Rafale. U.S. firms were thus able to achieve technological superiority through Pentagon R&D funding and, critically, were able to ensure that U.S. makers continuously filled order sheets.

UK sets out new cyber reporting requirements for critical infrastructure

Alexander Martin

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In a policy statement published Tuesday, the British government set out what its forthcoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill will include when it is introduced to parliament later this year.

The belated reworking of the country’s cybersecurity regulations comes three years after the previous government had prematurely described those laws as “updated” while failing to actually introduce the legislation.

“For too long, successive governments have failed to properly address the growing risk posed by cyber criminals and hostile states. Our people have paid the price,” said Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State, in a foreword to the policy document.

Britain’s cybersecurity laws were passed in 2018 and are based on the European Union’s Network and Information Systems (NIS) Directive. They were not reworked following the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union in 2020, even though the EU itself did so through the NIS2 update in 2022.

The original law introduced duties for organizations in critical sectors to report cyber incidents to their regulators, but the thresholds for reportable incidents were based on the “interruption to the continuity of the essential or digital service” meaning that organizations had no duty to report compromises that involved pre-positioning or reconnaissance so long as the attacker didn’t disrupt the target system.