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Six Takeaways from the Pentagon’s Report on China’s Military
Despite ongoing and high-profile corruption issues, China’s military continues to rapidly modernize. China has made significant strides toward building a highly modern and capable military that can threaten the United States and its allies and partners.
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U.S. Tech-Defense Leaders Want to Upend the Establishment
Elon Musk wants to cancel the F-35, get rid of manned combat aircraft generally and rely more on drones. But it was no surprise, however, even without Musk’s comments along those lines, that the US Air Force punted any decision on the Next Generation Air Dominance air-combat project to the next administration.
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Smart Pressure: Conceptualizing Counterterrorism for a New Era
When it comes to counterterrorism, the United States has been living through an inflection point. It wants to focus less on terrorism so it can place more emphasis on strategic competition, but key terrorist adversaries remain committed. The terrorism landscape and the approaches used by key terror adversaries have also been evolving
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California Connection: How A Chinese Factory's Electronics Are Fueling Russia's War
A Chinese company that owns a California electronics distributor has sent hundreds of shipments of restricted dual-use technology to Russia since the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, including to sanctioned companies with ties to the Russian military.
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U.S. Army Cyber Command, DARPA Evaluate Advanced Cyber Threat Detection Technologies
Joint activities through the Constellation program accelerate maturation of tactical and strategic cyber capabilities.
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An Idea Whose Time Should Never Come: Using Special Forces Against the Cartels Would Be a Colossal Mistake
While this idea is not new, it has become hazardous now given the Mexican drug cartels’ increased military capacity and tactical competence.
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Guidance for Critical Minerals Policy from ASPI’s Darwin Dialogue 2024
Critical minerals are a focal point of international contention in an increasingly fracturing international system. These minerals underlie competition across civil and defense sectors and promise economic opportunity throughout their supply chain.
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The Past, Present, and Future of Homeland Defense
Homeland defense issues my be referred to as seams of ambiguity which doesn’t clearly define itself as either a defense or a law enforcement issue, and our adversaries have discovered the seam and they’re playing along that seam. And that’s what thrusts us into the gray areas that we’ve been talking about for at least two decades now.
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Failure in the Sahel
There may be an element of schadenfreude in watching Russia fail in the Sahel in a major play against Western interests and get caught in a mess, from which it can only extricate itself with a loss of face. But the problem is that the result of this failure has been to turn the Sahel into a center for extremist violence that risks spreading further.
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Hezbollah, Hamas Down but Not Out, U.S. Says
Israel’s war against Hezbollah and Hamas, while inflicting considerable damage, has yet to strike a crippling blow to either of the Iran-backed terror groups, according to a top U.S. counterterrorism official.
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Houthis’ Lesson for the U.S. Army: How a Land Force Can Fight a Maritime War
The US Army should consider borrowing a page from the playbook of Yemen’s Houthi militants. The character of war is always changing, and the Houthis’ ongoing attacks against shipping in the Red Sea may prove to be one of the more significant inflection points in military history.
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Concerns about Elon Musk, Russia's Putin Not Fading Yet
Reports that billionaire Elon Musk has been talking on a consistent basis with Russian President Vladimir Putin are cause of concern. Musk’s companies are doing work for the Pentagon NASA. Some of that work is so sensitive that Musk has been given high-level security clearances due to his knowledge of the programs, raising concerns among some that top secret U.S. information and capabilities could be at risk.
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Vietnam Expands Strategic Capabilities in South China Sea
Hanoi is building runways, military structures on reclaimed islands at a ‘surprising’ pace, a think tank said.
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Threatening ‘The Enemy Within’ with Force: Military Ethicists Explain the Danger to Important American Traditions
In a time of increasing political polarization, military educational institutions are focusing even more explicitly on the oath military members take to the Constitution, rather than to a person or an office. Military members have a duty to obey orders from superior officers, but the content of an order is not the only factor that determines whether it is a moral one. The political motivation for an order may be equally important, because the military’s obligation to stay out of politics is deeply intertwined with the mutual obligation of civilian officials not to use the military for partisan reasons.
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World War I Was the Crucible of Air Power. Ukraine Looks the Same for Drones
We seem to be seeing a new kind of air battle—lower, slower at close quarters and in a physical environment where fighter aircraft cannot intervene affordably or effectively. Could it be that Ukraine is to small unmanned systems what World War I was to aircraft?
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The long view
How to Reshape U.S. Defense Production to Counter China
A new Council on Foreign Relations report finds that long production timelines and supply chain bottlenecks—worsened by munitions stocks depleted in the Iran conflict—mean the United States must enact policy reforms and scale precise mass capabilities to counter China in the next few years. One of the authors provides critical takeaways from the report on the alternatives the U.S. government should pursue.