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Legal Questions Answered and Unanswered in Israel’s Air War in Gaza
The Israeli Air Force’s (IAF’s) bombing of Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, has been widely criticized for the extreme level of civilian deaths, the choices of weapons used, and the way in which those weapons have been employed. Marc Garlasco writes that the Israel Air Force (IAF) dropped a staggering number of bombs on Gaza, and, what’s more, many of these bombs were “dumb bombs” which cause wide-area damage. Garlasco writes that that question “is how the IAF is assessing proportionality, which is the amount of civilian harm acceptable for a military target. To date, that appears to be heavily skewed to a point where Israel will accept extreme levels of civilian harm for questionable military value.”
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Self-Assessment: Setting Expectations on the Russo-Ukraine War
The question of the expectations surrounding this war has become an issue in itself. Has an optimism bias pervaded the commentariat? Did pro-Ukrainian sympathies lead to playing down Russia’s inherent strengths and failing to appreciate Ukraine’s vulnerabilities? There was certainly more optimism surrounding the Ukrainian position at the start of the year than there was at the end — largely because of the meagre returns from Ukraine’s intensive efforts to liberate more territory.
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The Bureaucratic Fix to the Military Recruitment Crisis
Declining recruitment numbers are vexing nearly all branches of the U.S. military. Removing a medical bottleneck could dramatically streamline recruiting for applicants and personnel.
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Congress Bans Pentagon from Using Chinese Port Logistics Platform
The U.S. Congress has passed legislation that would ban the Pentagon from using any seaport in the world that relies on a Chinese logistics platform known as LOGINK. LOGINK, by tracking cargo and ship movements, lets Beijing monitor America’s military supply chain, which relies on commercial ports.
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Generative AI and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Will AI Lead to Proliferation?
Large Language Models (LLMs) caught popular attention in 2023 through their ability to generate text based on prompts entered by the user. Ian J. Stewart writes that “some have raised concerns about the ability of LLMs to contribute to nuclear, chemical and biological weapons proliferation (CBRN). Put simply, could a person learn enough through an interaction with an LLM to produce a weapon? And if so, would this differ from what the individual could learn by scouring the internet?”
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Red Sea Attacks: Why Arab Nations Won't Join Naval Coalition
The U.S. has announced a naval coalition to protect shipping from Houthi attacks, but only one Middle Eastern country has joined. Why have others — like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt — not done so? Each of these states has its own reasons, but analysts say that the one thing the three powers have in common is the fact that they don’t want to be seen as working in defense of Israel.
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U.S.-Led Taskforce Deploys in Red Sea as Middle East Crisis Threatens to Escalate Beyond Gaza
The world economy is strongly dependent on the global maritime supply chain. About 80% of international trade by volume is transported by sea. It does not take much to disrupt the global maritime supply chain. Intentional disruptions of the maritime supply chain by pirates or terrorists pose a challenge that goes beyond simple logistics. Attacks on civilian shipping directly affect insurance premiums and deter operators from transiting through certain areas for financial and security reasons.
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Claims That U.S. Abandoned Arms in Afghanistan are “Farce”: U.S.
The United States has again denied leaving any weapons in Afghanistan during the American military’s withdrawal from the country in August 2021, dismissing such allegations as “farce.” An administration spokesperson said that over the course of 20 years in Afghanistan, the United States had equipped the Afghan national security forces. In the face of advances by the Taliban insurgency, many Afghan forces had decided not to fight and lay down their arms.
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Planning for an Uncertain Future: What Climate-Related Conflict Could Mean for U.S. Central Command
The Middle East and Central Asia are projected to become hotter and drier, with reduced access to fresh water, resulting from climate change. These changes could lead to greater conflict in U.S. Central Command’s (CENTCOM) area of responsibility.
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Can Hamas Really Be Completely “Eliminated”?
The short answer, military analysts say, is “no.” The long answer is more complex. Israel’s campaign may degrade the group’s capabilities but defeating its ideology is likely impossible without a political solution.
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Israelis and Palestinians Warring Over a Homeland Is Far from Unique
Seen from the perspective of territorial conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is far from unique. Ultimately, the tragedy of deep attachment to a homeland territory lies in the fact that while it can create a sense of belonging for one group, it too often comes at the expense of another.
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No, Japan Is Not Ready for AUKUS
It is a natural strategic choice for Japan to join in advanced military technology cooperation under the trilateral Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) agreement – turning the alliance into “JAUKUS” – but there is a fundamental stumbling block: Japan’s lack of effective counter-espionage laws.
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International Partnership Focuses on Insider Threats
Insider threats can take many forms. They are real, and if not identified, they can be costly and damaging.
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Outsourcing Surveillance: A Cost-Effective Strategy to Maintain Maritime Supremacy
Persistent surveillance is one of the most valuable types of surveillance missions. But, Josh Portzer and Aaron Stein write, “Persistent surveillance is a challenging problem for two reasons: capacity and cost. In today’s budgetary climate, “simply increasing U.S. military capacity is not tenable. [But] by increasing the number of sensors globally, the Department of Defense would not only gain valuable, near-persistent surveillance data in areas of interest at (relatively) affordable prices, but also would enjoy the option of gray-zone operations given the strategic ambiguity that outsourcing provides.”
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How Do Civilians Respond to Political Violence?
When conflict breaks out, civilians inevitably suffer. But they do not react uniformly, with some fleeing, others staying, and still others joining the fray. Civilians’ perceptions of their own agency often shape their behavior. Aidan Milliff writes that this understanding has implications for policy: The United States and other countries, in their efforts to help civilians who face political violence, should focus more on changing these civilians’ perceptions.
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More headlines
The long view
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
European Arms Imports Nearly Double, U.S. and French Exports Rise, and Russian Exports Fall Sharply
States in Europe almost doubled their imports of major arms (+94 per cent) between 2014–18 and 2019–23. The United States increased its arms exports by 17 per cent between 2014–18 and 2019–23, while Russia’s arms exports halved. Russia was for the first time the third largest arms exporter, falling just behind France.
How Climate Change Will Affect Conflict and U.S. Military Operations
“People talk about climate change as a threat multiplier,” said Karen Sudkamp, an associate director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program within the RAND Homeland Security Research Division. “But at what point do we need to start talking about the threat multiplier actually becoming a significant threat all its own?”
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.