• Critical Minerals Competition Uses AI to Accelerate Analytics

    The United States depends on a variety of raw, non-fuel materials dubbed “critical minerals” to manufacture products considered essential to national security. Increasing demand, coupled with limited domestic supply and increasing reliance on foreign companies to import these critical minerals, poses significant risks to the U.S. supply chain. DARPA is offering prizes for automating aspects of USGS critical mineral assessments.

  • Iran to Supply Combat Drones to Russia for Use in Ukraine War

    Iran has supplied drones to its proxies in the Middle East and employed them during reconnaissance, sabotage, and attack missions in the region. Now, Iranian-made drones could end up in the hands of Russia for use in its war in Ukraine.

  • Origins of Unconventional War

    Flamethrowers, poison gases, incendiary bombs, the large-scale spreading of disease: are these terrifying agents of warfare modern inventions? Not by a long shot. Societies around the world have used biological and chemical weapons for thousands of years. “One sobering result of writing this book is the realization that there was no time or place when biological weapons were unthinkable,” says Adrienne Mayor, the author of a new book on the subject.

  • Might Russia Turn to Terror Bombing Civilians in Ukraine?

    Recent Russian missile attacks against civilian targets in cities far away from the front lines have killed scores of Ukrainians, leading to widespread outrage. These events raise the question of whether the war in Ukraine is entering a new phase in which terror attacks might become common.

  • Russian Casualties in Ukraine Invasion Top 75,000, U.S. Says

    More than 75,000 Russian soldiers — about half the force sent by Moscow to invade Ukraine in February — are believed to have been killed or wounded, a U.S. lawmaker said after attending a classified briefing with administration officials. The new numbers, if confirmed, would mean heavy losses for Russia as Ukraine presses ahead with a counteroffensive in the Russian-occupied southern portion of the country.

  • 'Killer Robots': Will They Be Banned?

    A UN panel in Geneva remains split on whether to ban autonomous weapons, which don’t need a human to pull the trigger. Increasingly, these sorts of weapons are the stuff of a manufacturer’s promotional materials rather than science fiction movies. The war in Ukraine is complicating the conversation.

  • Ukraine's Homegrown Response to “Deadly” Chinese Drone Detection Tech

    Ukrainian forces have been using drones for tracking the movement of Russian forces, and armed drones to attack Russian tanks, trucks, and artillery batteries. But the effectiveness of the drones has been limited by a Chinese drone-tracking technology called AeroScope. Ukrainian drone enthusiasts have now developed their own drones which are capable of evading the Chinese detection technology.

  • Time for the Russian Army to Take Stock

    Late last week, Vladimir Putin insisted that there are no grounds for concern about Russia’s military performance. “Largely speaking,” he said last Thursday in a meeting with parliamentary leaders, “we haven’t even yet started anything in earnest.” This boosterism may be designed to deter NATO countries from even greater engagement, and also to reassure a domestic audience, although the more discerning will find such reassurances deeply worrying.

  • The Chinese Military’s Access to AI Chips

    The Chinese military has made rapid progress in artificial intelligence. This progress largely depends on continued access to high-end semiconductors designed by American companies and produced in Taiwan and South Korea. The aggressive moves by the Trump and Biden administrations to limit technology exports to the Chinese military notwithstanding, China continues to order large quantities of American-designed advanced semiconductors from manufacturers in Taiwan and South Korea.

  • North Korea’s Military Capabilities

    North Korea could have the material for more than one hundred nuclear weapons, according to analysts’ estimates. It has successfully tested missiles that could strike the United States with a nuclear warhead. North Korea has the world’s fourth-largest military, with more than 1.2 million personnel, and is believed to possess chemical and biological weapons. Despite UN Security Council sanctions and past summits involving North Korea, South Korea, and the United States on denuclearization, Pyongyang continues to test ballistic missiles.

  • Alaska: U.S. Bolsters “Last Frontier” Bases on NATO's Western Flank

    Despite Alaska’s geographic and environmental challenges, the U.S. military has staked its claim there since the 1860s, when the U.S. bought the territory from Russia and nearly a century before Alaska became a U.S. state. In the last decade, the military has redoubled its efforts in the far north, investing billions of dollars upgrading air and missile defenses while completely revamping the foundational structure of its Army forces.

  • The Department of the Navy Hosts Climate Tabletop Exercise

    The Department of the Navy hosted a first-of-its-kind Climate Tabletop Exercise to examine the impacts that climate change has on mission, readiness, and warfighting capacity.

  • Global Summit on the Use of Drones

    Over 300 participants from more than 50 countries have converged in the Norwegian capital to attend INTERPOL’s fourth expert conference on the use of drones, representing a multitude of law enforcement agencies as well as attendees with security and emergency preparedness functions.

  • Would Russia Use Bioweapons in Ukraine?

    In March, claims from the Kremlin of a U.S.-funded bioweapon program in Ukraine flooded global media. Those reports were amplified by China and picked up by conservative news outlets and conspiracy groups in the U.S. U.S. warned that Russia could be using this thread of disinformation to stage a false-flag incident using bioweapons, or to justify the use of its own bioweapons against Ukraine. It wouldn’t have been the first time Russia used false-flag tactics, and the threat of Russia using bioweapons in either scenario isn’t an outlandish prospect.

  • Examining Scenarios of U.S.-China War Over Taiwan

    For years, U.S. policy has been to effectively deter a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait while preparing for contingencies in the event of a Chinese attack. More recently, top officials from President Joe Biden’s administration have repeatedly warned against Beijing’s use of force to alter the status quo.