• Taiwan May Yet Become a Porcupine

    It’s early days, but the signs are strong that Taiwan’s new government will insist on much more of a porcupine strategy for national defense than many officers in the country’s hidebound armed forces have been willing to accept.

  • New U.S. Arctic Strategy Focused on Russian, Chinese Inroads

    The United States is looking to boost intelligence collection in the Arctic and enhance cooperation with allies in the region, to prevent Russia and China from exploiting the cold and icy northern region at America’s expense.

  • Russia Spreads Disinformation to Cover Up Its Use of Chemical Weapons in Ukraine

    The United States determined Russia used the chemical weapon chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops and riot control agents (RCA) as a method of warfare in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

  • Germany Foils Russian Plot to Assassinate German Arms Company Chief

    German politicians have voiced horror over a report that Russia planned to murder a German arms company boss. US intelligence is said to have uncovered the plot against Rheinmetall chief Armin Papperger.

  • To Guard Against Cyberattacks in Space, Researchers Ask ‘What If?’

    If space systems such as GPS were hacked and knocked offline, much of the world would instantly be returned to the communications and navigation technologies of the 1950s. Yet space cybersecurity is largely invisible to the public at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions.

  • How to Equip the U.S. Coast Guard Against China’s Grey-Zone Operations

    America’s allies in the Indo-Pacific are getting pretty familiar with China’s grey-zone maritime behavior, but the United States itself is ill-prepared for dealing with it. Yet it should be prepared. The U.S. must not only counter the threat to its national security posed by China’s coercive operations, but also support its allies against Chinese efforts to rewrite the rule of law in the region.

  • High Noon at Second Thomas Shoal

    China has identified the beleaguered garrison at Second Thomas Shoal as a weak link among the South China Sea features physically occupied by the Philippines and, by extension, the US-Philippines alliance.

  • Record Number of NATO Allies to Hit 2% Defense Spending Goal

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has announced that more NATO member states than originally expected were set to fulfill the 2% target of GDP defense spending this year. The NATO defense investment target was agreed upon in 2014. Across the alliance, all member states aside from Slovenia and Italy have upped their defense budget.

  • Joining NATO Binds Countries to Defend Each Other – but This Commitment Is Not Set in Stone

    At the root of debates over policy toward alliances such as NATO is the assumption that NATO requires its members to step in and help with defense if another member of the alliance is attacked, but it is important to understand that, in reality, alliance agreements are more flexible than people think. In practice, it is possible for the U.S. and other Western countries to stay out of a conflict that involves a NATO country without having to break their alliance commitments.

  • Fact Check: Fake Footage of Russian Warships in Cuba

    The arrival of Russian navy ships, some carrying advanced weapons, off the coast of Havana has given rise to online disinformation. Some analysts breathlessly warned of a new Cuban Missile Crisis. But the story was fake news, using old footage and clever editing.

  • Cyber Conflict and Subversion in the Russia-Ukraine War

    The Russia-Ukraine war is the first case of cyber conflict in a large-scale military conflict involving a major power. Over the years, Russia-sponsored hacking groups have adapted their tradecraft to the war setting. “Contrary to cyberwar fears, most cyber operations remained strategically inconsequential,” Lennart Maschmeyer writes. “The case of Ukraine illustrates not only the limitations of cyber operations but also the relative superiority of old-school means of subversion.”

  • Fool’s Gold: Overhyped Tech Startups Distract from Military Innovation

    Technology startups almost never live up to all the hype they generate. Much of this innovation is fool’s gold. Often, these solutions are not developed beyond an initial concept. It’s a missed opportunity for the U.S. military. Startup companies often present the Pentagon with more cost-effective, swift, and adaptable solutions compared to the weapons systems typically provided by the handful of major contractors the Pentagon usually turns to.

  • China’s Control and Coercion in Critical Minerals

    Markets for critical minerals are no longer shaping up to be the next components of the global economy to be dominated by China. They already are. While Western nations were sleeping, China built vertically integrated supply chains for several critical minerals vital to the energy transition and high technology applications, including defense equipment.

  • Autonomous Vessels Need to Be More Afraid of Dying

    Could the Helge Ingstad maritime accident have been avoided if the Royal Norwegian Navy’s warships had been equipped with artificial intelligence?

  • The U.S. and China Need an AI Incidents Hotline

    The United States and China have been talking about AI security, but Christian Ruhl writes that this is not enough. Given the rapid rate of progress of frontier AI research, “diplomats will need to be quick to come up with risk-mitigation measures if they want to be more than a talk shop. Moreover, these measures will need to be ‘future proof,’ meaning they can’t focus solely on current capabilities that will remain relevant for no more than a few months; risk mitigation needs to be flexible to respond to ever-more capable models.”