• CHINA WATCHRising Dragon, Slumbering Sam

    By Bill Sweetman

    Last week was one for the books. President Donald Trump rebranded the Department of Defense as the Department of War, while China held a remarkable parade and flyover in Beijing. It was clearly intended to demonstrate that China’s armed forces had at least attained technical parity with the United States and possibly surpassed it. The week closed with a report of the Pentagon’s plan to prioritize focusing on domestic threats while downgrading other missions, such as deterring China and countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow.

  • TECHNOLOGYBookshelf: Smartphones Shape War in Hyperconnected World

    By Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox

    The smartphone is helping to shape the conduct and representation of contemporary war. A new book argues that as an operative device, the smartphone is now “being used as a central weapon of war.”

  • CHINA WATCHDigital Siege Puts Taiwan’s Resilience to the Test

    By Nathan Attrill

    The most sustained conflict unfolding between China and Taiwan is not taking place on the water or in the air; it is happening in cyberspace.

  • WMDTo Better Detect Chemical Weapons, Materials Scientists Are Exploring New Technologies

    By Olamilekan Joseph Ibukun

    Chemical warfare is one of the most devastating forms of conflict. It leverages toxic chemicals to disable, harm or kill without any physical confrontation. Across various conflicts, it has caused tens of thousands of deaths and affected over a million people through injury and long-term health consequences.

  • CRITICAL MINERALSGeological Mapping Project Supports Critical Mineral Explorations, Enhances Public Safety in the Southeast

    A key focus of a new USGS mapping project is to identify where critical minerals vital to the economy and national security might be located. As demand for rare earth elements and other critical minerals grows for use in technology, energy, and defense sectors, this project can provide vital data that helps the U.S. secure domestic sources of critical minerals, thus reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign sources.

  • EUROPEAN DEFENSEEurope Is Significantly Boosting Its Defense Spending. Can the Continent Become a Military Superpower?

    By Tanner Stening

    Military spending across the European Union is ramping up in what observers have noted is a significant and “extraordinary” pivot from the comparatively placid postwar decades. Mai’a Cross thinks Europe’s shift toward an “era of rearmament” will be in its long-term interest.

  • DRONESNot Just Drones, but Massed Swarms of Them. Defenses Can’t Cope

    By Timothy Millar

    A new and sophisticated phase of aerial warfare has emerged from the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East over the past month, defined by the systematic use of massed drone saturation attacks. This evolving doctrine uses quantity and simultaneity to overwhelm even the most advanced air-defense systems.

  • CRITICAL MINERALSU.S. Moves Decisively to Avoid Dependence on China’s Rare Earths

    By David Uren

    The Pentagon’s package of support for rare earths company MP Minerals, announced on 10 July, should free the US military and eventually much of US industry from dependence on Chinese supply chains for rare earth magnets.

  • DRONES & TERRORISMMoving Targets: Implications of the Russo-Ukrainian War for Drone Terrorism

    By David Hambling

    Small and commercially available drones in the hands of violent extremists pose a rapidly growing terrorist threat. This threat hasimplications for global counterterrorism, especially when considering the psychological impact, scalability, and low operational risk of drone attacks.

  • CHINA WATCHThe Taiwan Scenarios 4: The Catastrophe

    By Nathan Attrill and ASPI Defense Strategy Staff

    By any measure, China’s four main choices for forcing unification with Taiwan—subversion, quarantine, blockade, or invasion—would all have far-reaching consequences for Beijing and the wider Indo-Pacific. The world must convince China that the road to Taipei is lined with peril, not prizes. If Beijing acts, it faces the wrecking of its global standing. Preventing conflict is not Taiwan’s burden alone.

  • CHINA WATCHBuilding Taiwan's Resilience

    By Marta Kepe and Scott W. Harold

    China’s increased military threats and intimidation activities against Taiwan and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have prompted Taiwan’s government and civil society to strengthen the country’s resilience.

  • CHINA WATCHThe Taiwan Scenarios 3: Day Zero

    By Nathan Attrill and ASPI Defense Strategy Staff

    If China decides to dramatically accelerate unification with Taiwan—whether through subversion, quarantine, blockade or full-scale invasion—the first 24 hours will be pivotal. But they will hardly be the end. 

  • CHINA WATCHThe Taiwan Scenarios 2: Warning Signs

    By Nathan Attrill and ASPI Defense Strategy Staff

    At first, it may not be easy to see what’s afoot. The difference between China’s routine coercion of Taiwan and early signs of serious escalation to take control of the island may not be clear.

  • ARGUMENT: ACHIEVING DRONE DOMINANCEFactories First: Winning the Drone War Before It Starts

    Wars are won by factories before they are won on the battlefield,Martin C. Feldmann writes, noting that the United States lacks the manufacturing depth for the coming drone age. Rectifying this situation “will take far more than procurement tweaks,” Feldmann writes. “It demands a national-level, wartime-scale industrial mobilization.”

  • CHINA WATCHThe Taiwan Scenarios 1: Subversion, Quarantine, Blockade, Invasion

    By Nathan Attrill and ASPI Defense Strategy Staff

    President Xi Jinping likely favors a path to unification in which Taiwan is gradually worn down by sustained and intensifying Chinese coercion. However, if he sought to accelerate this process, he would likely favor actions that remained below the threshold of war but still compelled Taiwan to cede aspects of its sovereignty.