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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 October 7 Attack: An Assessment of the Intelligence Failings
Hours after the Hamas attack of October 7 began, they were widely attributed to an apparent Israeli intelligence failure, with pundits pointing to several possible sources, including a misunderstanding of Hamas’ intentions, cognitive biases, and an overreliance on the country’s technological superiority. Building on previous literature on surprise attacks and intelligence failures to examine both Israel’s political level and intelligence level prior to October 7, 2023, the findings suggest that the attack was likely not the result of a single glaring failure but rather the accumulation of several problems at both levels.
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Al Qusayr Destroyed
For years, the Institute for Science and International Security has been following and reporting on the Al Qusayr Underground Facility in Syria, close to the Lebanon border, where construction started as early as 2009 and continued until recently. A few days ago, the site was destroyed in an Israeli attack.
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Each Year, Landmines Kill Residents of War-Torn Countries. This Innovative Tool Could Save Lives.
Landmines and other explosive remnants of war killed or wounded at least 4,710 people in at least 49 countries in 2022, according to a recent report from the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Ukraine reported 608 casualties. Afghanistan documented 303. Colombia recorded 145.
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The long view
Autonomous Weapon Systems: No Human-in-the-Loop Required, and Other Myths Dispelled
“The United States has a strong policy on autonomy in weapon systems that simultaneously enables their development and deployment and ensures they could be used in an effective manner, meaning the systems work as intended, with the same minimal risk of accidents or errors that all weapon systems have,” Michael Horowitz writes.
Ukraine Drone Strikes on Russian Airbase Reveal Any Country Is Vulnerable to the Same Kind of Attack
Air defense systems are built on the assumption that threats come from above and from beyond national borders. But Ukraine’s coordinated drone strike on 1 June on five airbases deep inside Russian territory exposed what happens when states are attacked from below and from within. In low-level airspace, visibility drops, responsibility fragments, and detection tools lose their edge. Drones arrive unannounced, response times lag, coordination breaks.
Shots to the Dome—Why We Can’t Model US Missile Defense on Israel’s “Iron Dome”
Starting an arms race where the costs are stacked against you at a time when debt-to-GDP is approaching an all-time high seems reckless. All in all, the idea behind Golden Dome is still quite undercooked.