US weapons left in Afghanistan sold to militant groups, sources tell BBC

Yasin Rasouli & Zia Shahreyar

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Half a million weapons obtained by the Taliban in Afghanistan have been lost, sold or smuggled to militant groups, sources have told the BBC - with the UN believing that some have fallen into the hands of al-Qaeda affiliates.

The Taliban took control of around one million weapons and pieces of military equipment - which had mostly been funded by the US - when it regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, according to a former Afghan official who spoke to the BBC anonymously.

As the Taliban advanced through Afghanistan in 2021, many Afghan soldiers surrendered or fled, abandoning their weapons and vehicles. Some equipment was simply left behind by US forces.

The cache included American-made firearms, such as M4 and M16 rifles, as well as other older weapons in Afghan possession that had been left behind from decades of conflict.

Trans-Afghan Railway: Will Uzbekistan Develop the Kandahar Route?

Nargiza Umarov

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On April 8, 2025, the Russian Ministry of Transport announced the start of the practical implementation of the Trans-Afghan Railway. The ministry’s release noted that specialists of both countries will soon begin preparing a feasibility study for the project.

Two routes have been agreed upon: Mazar-i-Sharif-Herat-Dilaram-Kandahar-Chaman and Termez-Naibabad-Logar-Kharlachi. Everything is very clear with the latter. This is the so-called Kabul Corridor (also called Termez-Mazar-i-Sharif-Kabul-Peshawar railway), initiated by Uzbekistan in 2018. Since then, the project has gone through many stages of development. According to the preliminary agreement of the parties, construction of the railway from the border of Uzbekistan to Pakistan was planned to begin in the fall of 2021. However, due to the seizure of power in Afghanistan by the Taliban, the process was postponed.

The Taliban quickly resumed dialogue with Tashkent on the launch of the Kabul Corridor, while simultaneously announcing the construction of the Mazar-i-Sharif-Herat-Kandahar railway (1,468 km), which is presented as the shortest route between Moscow and New Delhi. This would lead to the creation of an alternative rail corridor transiting through the predominantly western Afghan provinces of Farah, Nimroz, Helmand, and Kandahar to reach Pakistani ports on the Indian Ocean. In a recent news report by the Russian Ministry of Transport, the route is mentioned as Mazar-i-Sharif-Herat-Dilaram-Kandahar-Chaman.

Myanmar’s Earthquake Exposes Political Fault Lines

Kyaw Hsan Hlaing

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When the earth shook in central Myanmar on March 28, many in the Buddhist-majority country waited for the aftermath to undermine the military junta’s repressive rule—reflecting a belief that natural disasters can signal waning karmic merit for those in power. What they saw instead was a regime eager to leverage humanitarian aid for legitimacy amid an ongoing civil war.

In the hours after the deadly 7.7 magnitude earthquake, the streets of Mandalay and Sagaing—not far from the epicenter—resembled a war zone. Survivors clawed through debris to free loved ones, with virtually no sign of help from authorities. Myanmar’s capital, Naypyidaw, along with the Mandalay and Sagaing regions were the hardest hit. The death toll in Myanmar surpassed 3,600 people by April 7 and was still climbing as rescue efforts began winding down last week.

China’s Double Game in Myanmar

Ye Myo Hein

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Four years into Myanmar’s civil war, the conflict remains far from a resolution. The military regime, reeling from devastating losses, is in deep trouble. It has lost effective control of roughly three-quarters of the country’s territory; surrendered key strategic bases, including two regional military commands, to advancing resistance forces; and now faces a hollowing out of its ranks as defections and demoralization spread. But even though opposition forces have made significant gains nationwide, they have yet to penetrate the military’s stronghold in the center of the country. Opposition forces share the amorphous goal of making the country.

How the U.S.-China Trade War Could Derail the Energy Transition

Noah Gordon

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The trade war is a fast-moving and chaotic story. At the time of publication, the United States has imposed tariffs of 145 percent on most Chinese imports, and China has responded by slapping 125 percent tariffs on U.S. goods. But Washington has carved out exemptions for some items, such as copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, laptops, and smartphones. A Chinese-made lithium-ion battery now faces a tariff at the U.S. border, but putting that battery inside a Chinese-made laptop would exempt it. Washington has also put 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from all countries.

The exact rates for various countries and sectors could change quickly, as the White House has proven willing to delay tariffs or grant exemptions to suit the politics of the day. But despite the flux, the contours of the new U.S. economic landscape are becoming clear, especially for clean energy industries, where China is the dominant global supplier. Below, we address several key questions on how the trade war could affect the U.S. move toward clean energy.

Winning the Tech Race with China Requires More than Restrictions

Benjamin Jensen

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In the global race for technological dominance, the United States risks undermining its own advantage by focusing more on restrictions than renewal. The most recent example came this week when the Trump administration blocked Nvidia’s H20 chips—designed specifically to comply with earlier export rules—from being sold to China. These tactical actions might buy time, but they are not a grand strategy.

If America wants to maintain its edge over China, the answer isn’t more barriers—it’s building more bridges. The United States should seek to retain global talent, expand educational opportunity, develop research infrastructure, and enhance public understanding of how artificial intelligence (AI) actually works to maintain its lead in the ongoing technology competition with the Chinese Communist Party.

Export Controls Can’t Substitute for National Renewal

The new export restrictions on Nvidia’s H20 chips shut down one of the last legal channels for AI hardware exports to China. The H20, by design, limited interconnect bandwidth and processing power to remain beneath U.S. Department of Commerce’s thresholds targeting military-use AI accelerators.

How Might China Manage Trump’s Tariff War?

SHANG-JIN WEI

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China has taken a tough stance against US President Donald Trump, matching the last two rounds of US tariffs with tariffs of its own. The US tariff on goods from China is now 145%, while China’s is 125%. Why does China take such a position, and are there any off-ramps that would allow it to mitigate the costs of a prolonged trade war?

There are three plausible reasons why China has responded this way so far. First, Chinese leaders may believe that negotiation at this stage will not produce a satisfactory outcome. They regard the US approach as akin to a kidnapper: any concession could just invite more hostage taking. After all, China already abstained from responding in kind to two earlier rounds of incremental (10%) US tariffs, on February 1 and March 3, and that did not prevent Trump from adding another 34% levy on April 2.

The Chinese can see that Mexico and Canada are also being hit with new US tariffs, even though they agreed to Trump’s first-term demand to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. Similarly, following the first Trump administration’s tariffs on China in March 2018, the Chinese agreed to purchase more from the US, only to be met by even higher tariffs on a wider range of goods. Although they acceded to the unfavorable terms of the so-called Phase One Agreement in December 2019, the US retained 20% tariffs on Chinese goods.

Five Signs That the US and China Will Go to War

James Stavridis

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With the US and China announcing increasingly punitive tariffs against one another over the last week, we have zoomed past theorizing about a “new cold war” and into the opening rounds of a very real trade war. It could conclude with a “big, beautiful” deal with China, as President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised. Or it could lead to a prolonged and painful decoupling of the world’s two largest economies if both sides dig in, something China seems prepared to do. Time will tell.

Yet the question I am constantly asked is not about a trade war. It is: Are we headed toward a hot war with China? The short answer is that I hope not, of course, but I am increasingly concerned about the trends. I spent the majority of my Navy career in the Pacific, and I never felt we were as close to an actual shooting war with Beijing as we are today.

So, is actual conflict truly drawing closer? What are the best indicators to watch, so we could hopefully avoid a full-blown war? As I survey the scene of the Pacific, I see five warning lights that are blinking yellow, and need to be closely monitored in case they turn red.

Unholy War

Rachel Lu

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In 1908, a 13-year-old boy named Khorloogiin Dugar entered a Buddhist monastery in Achit Beysiyn, Mongolia, a region under the control of the Qing Dynasty. He took the religious name “Choibalsan” and began studying to be a lama, but spirituality, it would seem, was not his forte. In 1913, the boy fled from the monastery and found his way into the Russian education system. He marinated in Marxist ideology, made Russian friends, and, following the October Revolution, returned to his native Mongolia (now an independent Buddhist khanate) to help spread communism there. Mongolia was ultimately established as a supine Soviet surrogate, with Choibalsan ideally situated to befriend Stalin and rise through the ranks. In 1936, he became the Minister of Internal Affairs, then Prime Minister.

Dictatorial power enabled him to pursue a cherished goal: the eradication of his childhood faith in Mongolia. This turned out to be a formidable job, since Buddhism was deeply embedded in Mongolian culture. At the outset of the twentieth century, roughly a third of adult Mongolian men were lamas of some grade, while monasteries had enormous significance as cultural and economic centers, the mainstays of both spirituality and education. At first, the state tried to quash the influence of the lamas through government propaganda, heavy taxation of monasteries, and stringent restrictions on speech and religious education. However, Buddhist influence remained strong, and a frustrated Choibalsan resorted to an approach he openly described as “liquidation.” Of more than 82,000 lamas connected to monasteries in 1937, about 18,000 were murdered by the state, while the rest mostly fled or went to ground. Monasteries were razed, along with their sacred objects and religious texts, while the remaining few were re-outfitted for secular purposes. Buddhist rituals and festivals were banned, and dissenters rapidly executed. In the space of just a few years, a thriving Buddhist culture was all but eradicated.

China’s head-of-state and defence diplomacy

Erik Green & Meia Nouwens

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Since his inauguration in January, United States President Donald Trump’s controversial decisions to cut US Agency for International Development funding and, more recently, introduce 10% tariffs on over 180 countries have risked alienating many US allies. The United States’ standing in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa could be particularly damaged at a time when China continues to leverage narratives of a Western (and in particular US) decline in power to further its agenda. This has sparked questions over whether China can exploit this opportunity to strengthen relationships with states in these regions and fill the space vacated by the US under the Trump administration.

China has already made considerable efforts to cultivate support amongst those nations often labelled as part of the ‘Global South’, utilising a range of economic, political and socio-cultural approaches. Since 2017, it has outlined an alternative world order that can appeal to Global South countries. To promote this order, Beijing has drawn upon its decades of infrastructure investment and loans to much of the Global South, but diplomacy also plays a crucial part in Beijing’s efforts. From 2023 onwards, Beijing has engaged in an increasing number of bilateral meetings with heads of state from across these regions. This not only demonstrates the importance placed by China’s senior leadership on its Global South diplomacy but also the extent of the relationships and support that it has already cultivated. Notably, in addition to heads-of-state meetings, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Military Commission (CMC) also plays a significant defence-diplomacy role to bolster support for China’s Global Security Initiative, launched in 2022.

Trump Is About to Learn That Iran Is a Problem Without a Solution - Analysis

Aaron David Miller & Lauren Morganbesser

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As Steve Witkoff, U.S. President Donald Trump’s “envoy for everything,” sits down again with a top Iranian diplomat this weekend, he confronts one galactic diplomatic lift. In Rome, Witkoff will face off against Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, a skilled nuclear negotiator from a repressive authoritarian regime that has been badly weakened by Israel and is in no mood for dramatic concessions, let alone capitulation to Washington.

At home, Witkoff is surrounded by the president’s hard-line advisors—who don’t believe an agreement is possible—and an impatient, impulsive president who wants a quick deal and is threatening the use of force if he can’t get one. The first meeting, in which everyone seemed to abide by Emily Post’s guide to good table manners, will be unlikely to be repeated this coming weekend as the diplomatic bromides give way to much tougher positions.

Why Beijing Thinks It Can Beat Trump - Analysis

Scott Kennedy

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This may be the shortest-lasting revolution in history. Just one week after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed so-called reciprocal tariffs on the world as part of a plan to replace a global trading system based on most-favored-nation status and national treatment with individually negotiated bilateral arrangements, he has effectively called off the experiment. Yes, there are still 10 percent tariffs imposed on most everyone, along with higher tariffs on autos, steel, and aluminum, but these are likely ceilings, and the only direction for these barriers to move is down.

The one exception, of course, is China, which—we must now always emphasize, as of this writing—faces U.S. tariffs of roughly 150 percent, if one includes the standard tariffs on trading partners, the penal tariffs imposed during Trump’s first term and left in place by President Joe Biden, the 20 percent on fentanyl-related goods, and the duties announced on April 9.

The Russia That Putin Made

Alexander Gabuev

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine changed the course of history. It did so most directly, of course, for the Ukrainians subjected to this brutal act of aggression. But the war also changed Russia itself far more than most outsiders grasp. No cease-fire, not even one brokered by a U.S. president fond of his Russian counterpart, can reverse the degree to which Putin has made confrontation with the West the organizing principle of Russian life. And no cessation of hostilities in Ukraine can roll back the extent to which he has deepened his country’s relationship with China.

As a result of the war, Putin’s Russia has become much more repressive, and anti-Westernism has only become more pervasive throughout Russian society. Since 2022, the Kremlin has conducted a sweeping campaign to quash political dissent, spread pro-war and anti-Western propaganda domestically, and create broad classes of Russians that benefit materially from the war. Tens of millions of Russians, including senior officials and many of the country’s wealthiest people, now view the West as a mortal enemy.

For three years, U.S. and European officials showed remarkable resolve in countering Putin’s aggression. But they also, at times unwittingly, played into Putin’s narratives that the West resents Russia and that its conflict with the country is existential. Western leaders’ strategy was marred by an absence of a coherent, long-term approach to Russia paired with rhetoric that could suggest it had a grander design than it did. In 2024, for example, Kaja Kallas—then the prime minister of Estonia and now the EU’s top diplomat, as the vice president of the European Commission and the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy—stated that Western leaders should not worry that NATO’s commitment to a Ukrainian victory could cause Russia to break apart. The Kremlin’s propaganda machine eagerly circulated this statement to prove that dismembering Russia is the West’s endgame.

Addressing landmine pollution: how the ‘polluter pays’ principle can help

Goran Sandić 

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Imagine walking through a field once vibrant with life, now silent with hidden dangers. Long after the echoes of war have faded, landmines remain, waiting to claim their next victim. Landmines represent a significant and enduring means of warfare. These explosive devices, strategically buried underground, scattered on the surface, or even remotely delivered (e.g., via artillery), are designed to detonate upon being triggered, typically through pressure. As defined by Article 2 of the Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices as amended on 3 May 1996 (Amended CCW Protocol II), a mine “means a munition placed under, on or near the ground or other surface area and designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person or vehicle”.

One of the most troubling aspects of landmines is their potential to cause indiscriminate damage; they do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Post-conflict, landmines can remain dormant for years, even decades, until they are inadvertently triggered by a victim, or cleared through demining operations. During this time, landmines can contaminate the environment, affecting both soil and water, harming ecosystems and human health alike.

Gaps still remain – while the current framework clearly defines the identification and allocation of costs for landmine identification and clearance, expenses related to further environmental remediation remain undefined. This post proposes that the “polluter pays” principle, (PPP) drawn from international environmental law (IEL), can complement the existing international humanitarian law (IHL). Far from competing with or dismissing the substantial legal tools already in place, the PPP can serve as a complementary interpretive tool. While PPP could, in theory, be applicable to any environmental damage caused by warfare or other actions of a party to an armed conflict, this post focuses on landmine pollution.

Be Not Afraid - Opinion

Stanley McChrystal

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Fear defines us. Not by its presence, but by how we respond to it.

There are two kinds of fear. The first is primal. It grips us when lightning strikes too close or when the crack of a bullet signals imminent danger. In those moments, our bodies freeze, and our focus narrows. But with time, experience and discipline, we recover. We learn to navigate perilous situations, even to function in the face of fear.

The second kind of fear is more insidious. It seeps into our daily lives, lingers in the background and dictates our choices without us realizing it. America has always known fear — war, economic pain, uncertainty.

But today’s fear is different. It has been cultivated.

We live in a world of instability — jobs vanish, institutions falter, narratives shift by the hour. Every word we say, every action we take, is scrutinized, recorded and judged. The threat of digital mobs and public shaming doesn’t protect us; it paralyzes us. It breeds hesitation, then withdrawal, then division.

Fear isolates. It pushes us into ideological bunkers, surrounding us only with those who think like us. And when fear festers, it mutates. What begins as anxiety turns into resentment. Resentment hardens into hatred. Hatred strips away our ability to see others as people. The result is a society riven by suspicion and hostility.

The US Flip-flop Over H20 Chip Restrictions

Jennifer Lee

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Reporting on April 9 suggested that the Trump administration in the United States had reversed course on restricting the export to China of H20 chips – Nvidia’s most advanced offering to remain outside U.S. export controls. Reportedly, the White House’s change of heart followed President Donald Trump’s dinner with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. The news surprised the industry, especially as restricting the sale of high-end chips has been a part of Trump’s tech policy toward China.

But reports on April 15 revealed that the Trump administration had in fact told Nvidia on April 9 that the H20 chips would be subject to licensing for China. Nvidia was told to expect the license requirements “for the indefinite future.”

The administration, offering its usual response to what was likely a spur of the moment comment from the president, attributed the April 9 report to “fake news.”

The ultimate decision to restrict China’s access to the H20 chips should not come as a surprise. Since returning to the White House, the Trump administration had indicated that it would deepen tech restrictions in the context of China-U.S. competition. This included a move to restrict H20 exports. H20 chips, along with China’s access to a variety of other advanced chips purchased through third parties, may have contributed to Chinese companies’ ability to innovate and work around U.S. limitations.

Toward A Better Balanced And More Resilient World Economy – Speech

Kristalina Georgieva

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Good morning—and a very warm welcome to everyone! And thank you again, Maria, for your kind introduction.

Six months ago, in this very place, I spoke of low growth and high debt. But I also spoke of resilience—countries surviving large shocks thanks to strong fundamentals and agile policies.

This resilience is being tested again—by the reboot of the global trading system.

Financial market volatility is up. And trade policy uncertainty is literally off the charts.

As trade tensions flared, global stock prices dropped, even if many valuations remain high—here we have a snapshot of the market action.

This is a reminder that we live in a world of sudden and sweeping shifts.

And it is a call to respond wisely. A better balanced, more resilient world economy is within reach. We must act to secure it.

So let me lay out the story by addressing three basic questions. What is the context? What are the consequences? And most importantly, what can countries do?

US Trade Wars And Military Globalization Spark Complex Alignments – Analysis

Dan Steinbock

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Thanks to President Trump’s new round of international tariffs, global economy is now at the risk of unraveling. This is not just the result of plunging world trade and investment, but of soaring US military expenditures.

President Trump’s new round of reciprocal and universal tariffs will escalate trade tensions, lower investment, hit market pricing, distort trade flows, disrupt supply chains, and undermine consumer, business and investor confidence. It will certainly penalize global economic prospects.

As fears of a recession mount and mass protests in the US have begun, the loss of over $6 trillion on Wall Street in only two days is just a prelude of what’s to come. Along with China, the large trading economies in Europe, Japan and South Korea, India and Brazil and the rest of the world are positioned to counter the Trump tariffs.

Days before Trump’s new tariffs, China declared its trade minister had agreed with Japan and South Korea, Washington’s two treaty allies in Asia, on a common response to Trump’s actions. In Seoul and Tokyo, the statement was seen as overstated. Nonetheless, after the impeachment of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, the divided South Korea must cope with trade war amid a constitutional crisis, whereas Japan’s PM Shigeru Ishiba has declared it a “national crisis.” In South and Southeast Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, developing economies coping with natural disasters and external destabilization efforts are targeted by Trump tariffs as well.

Putin's spy chief names the 4 countries 'first to suffer' in new WW3 warning

Rebecca Robinson

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Russia has singled out four NATO member states it would retaliate against first in the event of an all-out conflict. Sergey Naryshkin, director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), named Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as "the first to suffer".

He warned: "In the event of aggression by the North Atlantic Alliance against the Union State, the damage will be done, of course, to the entire NATO bloc. But to a greater extent, the first to suffer will be the carriers of such ideas among the political circles of Poland and the Baltic countries." Naryshkin slammed Poland and the Baltics for their "high aggressiveness" and "rattling their weapons".

He added: "It's sad they cannot understand that it is the increase in military activity near the borders of Russia and Belarus that has become one of the reasons for the current large, acute and very dangerous crisis on the European continent."

An attack on Poland or one of the Baltic nations, all members of NATO, would likely trigger Article 5 and drag the rest of the military alliance into a direct conflict with Russia. This, in turn, could spark a third global conflict.

US Army Eyes Surge in 3D-Printed Drones That Imitate Enemy Forces

Joe Saballa
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The US Army is exploring a significant acceleration in the production of 3D-printed drones capable of replicating the capabilities and behaviors of enemy systems.

The push comes as the army anticipates the rollout of a program aimed at rapidly developing low-cost target drones for training exercises.

According to Gen. James Rainey, head of Army Futures Command, there is a critical need to simulate unmanned aerial system (UAS) threats, particularly for preparing platoons to counter drone swarms.

“We need to do it at a price point that is ridiculously low: We don’t need the Gucci cameras and everything else,” he said, as quoted by Breaking Defense.

At present, the army manufactures around 10 Group 1 drones weekly — platforms weighing under 20 pounds (4.5 kilograms) and reaching speeds of 100 knots (185 kilometers/115 miles per hour).

However, plans are underway to ramp up production to 10,000 drones per month to boost training efforts for modern warfare.

The Age of American Unilateralism

Michael Beckley

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Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has largely been expected to follow one of two foreign policy paths: preserve the country’s position as the leader of the liberal international order or withdraw and adjust to a post-American, multipolar world. But as I argued in Foreign Affairs in 2020, the most likely trajectory was always a third: become a rogue superpower, neither internationalist nor isolationist but aggressive, powerful, and increasingly out for itself.

U.S. President Donald Trump has given this vision sharp definition by raising tariffs to levels that echo the infamous Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, slashing foreign aid, snubbing allies, and proposing to seize foreign territory, including Greenland and the Panama Canal. Yet Trump is more accelerant than architect, channeling long-simmering frustrations with global leadership and deeper structural forces pulling U.S. strategy inward. The real question now is not whether the United States will continue to go its own way but how—and to what end.

Understanding the drivers of this shift is no longer a matter of academic debate. It’s essential for shaping what comes next. Left unchecked, Washington’s unilateral turn could destabilize the world and undermine its own long-term power. But if recognized and redirected, these forces could form the foundation of a more focused and sustainable strategy; one that sheds the overreach of liberal hegemony without surrendering the core strengths of a liberal order.

Adam Smith, Economics, Finance and Geopolitics

George Friedman

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Adam Smith defined how we think about free markets. His guiding principle was, famously, the invisible hand – a mystical force or the hand of God, but the idea that the pursuit of individual interests in economic life would inevitably produce an optimized and predictable economy. The theory rested on the assumption that individuals were rational in understanding their needs and thus in their economic actions. Government intervention would, therefore, disrupt the functioning of natural economic intercourse. For Smith, no overarching and or well-intended intervention in the free market could optimize the outcome of the economy; optimization is achieved only through freedom of action. Collectively, individual actions rationalized the system, propelled society forward and, crucially, provided predictability such that the irrational whims of the few had little impact on the whole.

The problem – one that Smith was keenly aware of – was that humans were part of nations, and that economies depended on the viability of nations. The desire of citizens to maximize their wealth drives nations, but wealth is only one dimension of a nation. The internal passions within nations – the differences in geographic regions, cultural values or educational levels – spark tensions within nations that weaken the invisible hand because wealth could be accumulated in such a way that classes might be formed that would use political power to disrupt the free market. But Smith was aware that inequality in economic outcomes could destabilize the nation and thus weaken the economy. He never addressed the problem of how to stabilize a system if the wealth of nations was concentrated in the hands of the few. Nations could be wealthy, but their citizens could be poor. Thus the mixed economy worked with the state manipulating the economy, accepting a disruption of the invisible hand in favor of maintaining the stability of the state.

Enabling Responsible Space Behaviours Through Space Situational Awareness

Douglas Barrie, Matthew Bint & Ester Sabatino

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The relevance of space has increased substantially in recent decades. The pervasiveness of space technology is demonstrated by the increasing number of civilian, commercial and defence applications relying on space for their functioning. Furthermore, the more than tenfold increase of satellites expected to be put in low Earth orbit by 2030 exemplifies the increasing reliance on space capabilities, making discussions over space governance, such as those over the definitions of rules and norms for responsible behaviour in space, crucial.

This report analyses the main United Nations activities intended to foster the peaceful and responsible use of space, such as activities conducted under both the banner of the ‘Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space’ (PAROS) agenda and the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) as well as in their recent merging under the Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) for the period 2024–28, which will provide recommendations on all aspects related to activities in outer space. The merging of the PAROS and COPUOS work strands under the OEWG was seen as a way to address both the civilian and military risks of space activities, particularly considering the strong dual-use character of space technology.

Regardless of the regulatory system countries decide to abide by, space situational awareness (SSA) is an indispensable tool to increase transparency and confidence building among space actors. Therefore, this report looks at ways SSA collection, data validation and sharing can be exploited to better contribute to a safer use of space and space technologies.

Software is eating the DoD: Brought to you by the Atlantic Council

Nick Cleveland-Stout & Julia Gledhill

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In 2011, Marc Andreessen penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal proclaiming that “Software is eating the world.” Andreessen argued that every industry — even national defense — would have to embrace the “software revolution” sooner or later.

Now, Andreessen’s acolytes just have to convince the Pentagon – so long as it’s their software the department buys. Last week, the Atlantic Council launched an effort in partnership with dozens of defense industry executives — several of whom are funded by Andreessen’s firm a16z — calling on the Pentagon to usher in an era of “software-defined warfare,” a term which includes artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

In his opening remarks, the Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig claimed that policymakers adopted over 70% of the recommendations from a previous commission on defense acquisition. In other words, government officials are likely taking note of the Atlantic Council’s new report.

Pointing to the threat of China, its authors argue that the Pentagon should quickly embrace software-defined warfare by increasing reliance on digital weapon testing tools, cutting software funding restrictions, and prioritizing commercial technologies. For instance, it recommends the Pentagon “enforce commercial as the default approach for software” instead of building its own custom software.

Army evaluates several evolving electronic warfare concepts at Project Convergence

Mark Pomerleau

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The Army tested a variety of evolving electronic warfare capabilities and concepts at its recent Project Convergence experiment in the California desert.

A venue for the Army to test emerging concepts along with other services, Project Convergence Capstone 5 served as a “critical test bed” for the service’s in-development electronic warfare capabilities, according to a spokesperson from Army Cyber Command. During the event, the Army sought to not only focus on rapid generation and deployment of effects in contested environments, but also streamline the process of target identification, develop countermeasures to adversary capabilities and deliver them across multiple electronic warfare systems at speeds required for large-scale combat operations.

The advanced modern state of electronic warfare involves a constant cat-and-mouse game between friendly forces and adversaries. Each side aims to jam or deny the other’s access to spectrum for communications or other systems, while also seeking to geolocate forces based on electronic emissions and enable freedom of maneuver for themselves.

The Army, along with the other services, has been preparing for large-scale combat operations of the future that take place over greater distances with sophisticated adversaries, a departure from the war on terrorism that was more regionally focused and fought against technologically inferior enemies.