• 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.”

  • Dependable AI for National Security Applications

    AI is rapidly becoming one of the most important assets in global competition, including AI-assisted autonomy and decision-making in battlefield applications. But today’s AI models are vulnerable to novel cyberattacks and could be exploited by adversaries, and are not sufficiently robust and dependable to orchestrate and execute inherently human-centric, mission-critical decisions.

  • U.S., Allies Warn China Aggressively ‘Headhunting’ Western Fighter Pilots

    China’s military appears to be intensifying its efforts to recruit current and former Western fighter pilots, employing new and more intricate tactics to snare Western expertise. The end goal, according to the U.S. and its allies, is for China to better train its own fighter pilots while gaining insights into how Western air forces operate, something that could erode Western advantages or even give Chinese fighter jets a boost in case of a conflict.

  • Radar Is Advancing at Historic Speed. How Engineers Are Setting the Pace.

    In a whirling geopolitical landscape of new nuclear weapons, hypersonic weapons, drones and satellites, the U.S. is hustling to test new kinds of radars aimed at detecting evolving threats.

  • Chinese Military Drills Test Taiwan’s Defense Readiness, Analysts Say

    China wrapped up a two-day, large-scale military exercise Friday after its forces deployed 111 aircraft and 46 naval vessels to areas around Taiwan. Experts say the Chinese military simulated some scenarios that would be involved in a potential invasion of Taiwan during the exercise.

  • China Conducts Military Drills Around Taiwan as “Punishment” for New Leader

    China kicked off a two-day large-scale military exercise in the water and airspace around Taiwan on Thursday, emphasizing that it is “a strong punishment for the separatist acts of ‘Taiwan independence forces’” and “a stern warning” against provocation by external forces.

  • Can Taiwan Defend Itself Against China?

    Large-scale Chinese military drills near Taiwan are taking place just days after William Lai Ching-te, of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was sworn in as president of the island nation. Taiwan has expanded its asymmetric warfare capacity, which involves using smaller but highly effective weapons to make an invasion by a larger force prohibitively costly.

  • China's Growing Threat to U.S. National Security in the Crosshairs of Congress

    While the Chinese Communist Party’s possibly imminent invasion of Taiwan could spark a war in the region, experts and lawmakers in Congress on Thursday said that the Taiwan issue is just one part of a broader Chinese strategy countering the U.S.

  • Israel’s Invasion of Rafah Will Not Eliminate Hamas or End the War. So, What Is Benjamin Netanyahu’s Plan?

    The longer the war has dragged on, the more it has highlighted that Israel, which has been under Netanyahu’s almost continuous rule since 2009, has no long-term strategy for living side-by-side with its Palestinian neighbors. Even if a ceasefire could be agreed to, Netanyahu’s government hasn’t articulated a plan for the “day after”. Already, this lack of a plan is creating a dangerous power vacuum in northern Gaza that has been filled by gangs, clans and criminals.

  • UN Halves Its Estimate of Women and Children Killed in Gaza

    Between May 6 and May 8, the UN cut in half its estimates of the number of women and children killed in Gaza. The estimates were based on Hamas numbers and are a reminder that all fatality estimates coming from that source are unreliable.

  • Investigation: How Russia's Warplanes Get Their 'Brain Power' From the West, Despite Sanctions

    The sanctions Western countries have imposed on Russia have many vulnerabilities –a recurring complaint for Kyiv as, handicapped by a deficit of weapons and ammunition, it watches Russian forces advance, hammering soldiers, civilians, and vital infrastructure.

  • Tech Diplomacy: What It Is, and Why It’s Important

    We need to get used to a new concept in international security: tech diplomacy. It means technological collaboration across sectors and between countries, but the simplicity of the idea shouldn’t disguise its importance.