• Afghanistan: Who’s Who in the Taliban’s “Inclusive” New Administration

    By Amalendu Misra

    It appears that the Taliban regime intends to completely revamp the structure of government when it formally embarks upon its administration from 1 September — for example, the Taliban plans to get rid of the position of the elected president, and, more importantly, it aims not to elevate or project a single individual to the position of supreme leader. One thing is not going to change: The individuals who are going to run the main government departments and security services are all hard-liners.

  • Afghanistan, Policy Choices, and Claims of Intelligence Failure

    Was the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan the result of an intelligence failure? David Priess, who served as a CIA analyst in the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, writes that to make this judgment, we need answers to many questions. But even if the written records, such as the PDBs, are declassified, “unless and until Joe Biden opens his mind and soul, we are unlikely to understand if he internalized the core judgments in any intelligence documents or briefings.”

  • Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley: The Last Stronghold of Resistance to Taliban Rule

    By Kaweh Kerami

    Panjshir Valley, nearly 150km north of Kabul, is home to a largely ethnic Tajik population and through four decades of civil war and Taliban insurgency has been a center of resistance. Panjshir resisted the Soviet invasion in the 1980s and Taliban rule during the late 1990s. In the past 20 years, it was the only province that the predominantly ethnic Pashtun Taliban seemed unable to penetrate. The fate of Panjshir is consequential not only for anti-Taliban resistance forces but also for the stability and security of Afghanistan, the region and the west.

  • China’s Response to the Taliban’s Takeover

    “The primary interest for China in Afghanistan is ensuring stability so that no unrest would spill over into the wider region and China in particular. In this sense, the U.S. presence in Afghanistan has been a positive for China as it has played the security role at no cost to China. Now, China will have to develop its own relationships with the Taliban,” says Harvard’s China expert Tony Saich.

  • Cybersecurity Experts Worried by Chinese Firm’s Control of Smart Devices 

    By Adam Xu

    From rooftop to basement and the bedrooms in between, much of the technology making consumer products smart comes from a little-known Chinese firm, Tuya Inc. of Hangzhou.More than 5,000 brands have incorporated Tuya’s technology in their products. Cybersecurity experts are worried, and they urge Washington to limit or ban Tuya from doing business in the United States, in part because a broad new Chinese law requires companies to turn over any and all collected data when the government requests it.

  • Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley Remains Out of Taliban's Reach

    By Rodion Ebbighausen

    The Panjshir Valley is Afghanistan’s last remaining holdout where anti-Taliban forces seem to be working on forming a guerrilla movement to take on the Islamic fundamentalist group.

  • Joe Biden's Disgrace and the Tragedy of Afghanistan

    Twenty years ago, Islamist terrorists, trained under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, attacked the United States, killing nearly 3,000. The Biden administration is withdrawing all American forces from Afghanistan, and the country will again be ruled by the Taliban. This withdrawal was unnecessary.

  • Learning the Right Lessons from Afghanistan

    Gregory Treverton, former Chair of U.S. National Intelligence Council, writes that “The main lesson of Afghanistan should be an easy one by now, after the sweep of events from Vietnam to Iraq: nation-building requires a nation, or at least a competent, committed government. America’s signal successes at nation-building were nation-rebuilding, in the instances of Germany and Japan. It is not just that nation-building is hard, and we don’t do it very well. In Afghanistan there was never any nation to rebuild, only a collection of warring tribes, clans, and sects.”

  • CDC Sets Up New Disease Forecasting Center

    The CDC announced a new center — the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics — designed to advance the use of forecasting and outbreak analytics in public health decision making. Among other missions, the new center will accelerate access to and use of data for public health decision-makers who need information to mitigate the effects of disease threats, such as social and economic disruption.

  • Afghan troops sought safety in numbers – igniting a cascade of surrender

    By Todd Lehmann

    Throughout the conflict, the perennial emphasis on a U.S.“exit strategy” meant U.S. politicians always focused on whether it was time to leave yet. For 20 years, U.S. efforts focused on short-term thinking and problem-solving that shifted both military and political goals over time, rather than investing the time and effort to develop a comprehensive long-term strategy for the war.

  • Taliban Return to Power: Fears of Al-Qaeda Resurgence

    The Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan is stoking renewed fear of a resurgence in terrorism from al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups. The group has retained close ties with the Taliban, raising the prospect that it will once again be offered a safe haven on Afghan soil to plot and launch attacks against western targets.

  • Taliban to Gain Control over $1 trillion Mineral Wealth

    By Nik Martin

    To date, the Taliban have profited from the opium and heroin trade. Now the Islamist group effectively rules a country with valuable resources that China needs to grow its economy. Afghanistan’s mineral riches will also bolster China’s dominance in rare Earth elements.

  • Chinese Hackers Used Cyber-Disguising Technology against Israel: Report

    By Forest Cong

    Beginning in January 2019, UNC215, a Chinese government digital spy group, had hacked into Israeli government networks after using remote desktop protocols (RDPs) to steal credentials from trusted third parties.

  • Collapse in Afghanistan: Early Insights from Experts

    The sudden end to America’s longest war came Sunday as the Taliban rolled into the capital of Afghanistan and the national government collapsed. Thousands of U.S. citizens and Afghans who worked for Americans are waiting to be evacuated. U.S. troops are at the Kabul airport to keep flights going. RAND experts offer explanations.

  • Why Did a Military Superpower Fail in Afghanistan?

    By Arie Perliger

    The criticisms of President Joe Biden’s decision to end U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and of the withdrawal’s logistics, while valid, may be beside the point. There are more fundamental problems with the United States’ strategy in the 20-year war, of which the current chaos is only the latest manifestation. They stem from an approach in which military seizures of territory are intended to fight international extremist movements and ideologies, in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The clear conclusion from all the evidence is that military intervention should be focused on military objectives, and should not diverge into political or social engineering.