• IDF’s Subterranean Challenge: Profiling Gaza Metro, Hamas’s Center of Gravity

    The subterranean infrastructure developed by Hamas, popularly known as the Gaza Metro, consists of tunnels, command and control centers, living spaces, stores and contingency fighting positions. The infrastructure is the pivot of Hamas’s irregular warfare strategy and allows it to undertake both offensive and defensive operations and has been assessed as one of its centers of gravity. Israel has been aware of the infrastructure but has possibly been surprised by the scale and sophistication achieved by Hamas in tunnel construction. The IDF’s technologies and doctrinal concepts are being tested every day in the ongoing war and will have a number of lessons for other armies.  

  • 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.”

  • Vietnam Isn’t North Korea—and 50 Years of Australian Aid Has Helped

    How have Australia and Vietnam, two countries with extremely different political systems, built such a successful partnership? It was done through long-term investment across all the tools of statecraft—including diplomacy, trade and defense—with development cooperation as a key element. This enabled a progression from battlefield enemy to major economic and development partner in a surprisingly short period.

  • Fighting European Threats to Encryption: 2023 Year in Review

    Private communication is a fundamental human right. In the online world, the best tool we have to defend this right is end-to-end encryption. Yet throughout 2023, politicians across Europe attempted to undermine encryption, seeking to access and scan our private messages and pictures.

  • How Tennessee’s Justice System Allows Dangerous People to Keep Guns — With Deadly Outcomes

    Michaela Carter was one of at least 75 people killed in domestic violence shootings in Nashville since 2007. Nearly 40% were shot by people who were legally barred from having a gun.

  • Russian Revanchism Can and Must Be Defeated in Ukraine

    The Ukraine war is only the first phase of a broader conflict between Western democracies and an emerging axis comprising Russia and its allies. And while the West enjoys economic, military, and technological superiority, it is in growing danger of squandering its advantages and paying a much higher price later.

  • 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.

  • Fiasco: How Trump’s 2018 Decision Facilitated Iran’s Nuclear-Weapons Program

    The 2015 nuclear deal between the world powers and Iran made it impossible for Iran to build nuclear weapons for at least twenty years – from 2015 until about 2035. Critics of the deal, lamenting the deal’s sunset clauses, said they were worried about Iran being (relatively) free to build an infrastructure for nuclear weapons in 2030-2035, once some of the deal’s clauses were set to expire. It was a legitimate concern. But the answer to that perceived weakness in the deal was not the answer Donald Trump gave in May 2018: to unilaterally withdraw from the deal and thus make it possible for Iran to build its first bomb in 2024.

  • Reports Analyzing the Police Response to a Mass Shooting Can Leave Unanswered Questions — if They’re Released at All

    Communities often rely on after-action reviews of mass shootings for a comprehensive and independent assessment of what happened. But even if an after-action investigation is released, a lack of national standards leads to wide variability in the detail of information in reports, an investigation found.

  • Iran Triples Production of Enriched Uranium

    Iran has tripled its production of uranium enriched to 60 percent, after slowing down of production earlier this year, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported on Tuesday. Iran, free of the restrictions it accepted as part of the 2015 deal, is now producing about 9 kg a month of uranium enriched to 60 percent.

  • Research on Extremism in the U.K. Hobbled by Skewed Research Environment

    A new report, analyzing the research environment in the U.K. within which research on extremism takes place, found that there are problems in studying extremism and communicating the findings of studies of extremism. These problems have caused gaps in the knowledge base around extremism in the U.K. and a lack of research on specific extremist movements, especially Islamist extremism.

  • Chinese Migration Up at Border as U.S. Marks Anniversary of Repeal of Exclusion Act

    As the U.S marks the 80th anniversary of the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, thousands of Chinese immigrants are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, mostly for the same reasons as their countrymen did more than a century ago.

  • Immigrant Rights Groups Sue Texas to Halt New Law Allowing Arrests of Migrants

    The lawsuit asks a judge to prevent the state from enforcing Senate Bill 4, which will authorize Texas police to arrest immigrants suspected of crossing the border illegally.

  • 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.

  • Xi Jinping and Joe Biden Compete to Win Over Vietnam, the Region’s Critical Partner

    Vietnam has a long history of wars and historical enmity with China, and China is not generally popular with the Vietnamese public. Hanoi also, among Southeast Asian states affected by China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea, has been most assertive in pushing back. But President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vietnam demonstrates China’s continued importance to the pivotal Southeast Asian nation.