• The Nasrallah Killing Is a Crushing Blow to Hezbollah

    Hezbollah leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah possessed a rare set of abilities that made the group a formidable foe to Israel and a power broker in Lebanon. His killing by Israel sharply weakens the threat posed by the group and its patron, Iran.

  • Remotely Exploding Pagers Highlight Supply Chain Risks

    The attacks against Hezbollah using weaponized pagers and walkie talkies serve as a stark reminder of the dangers of compromised supply chains and why Australia must secure its own against the threats from China.

  • What We've Learned About the Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Norwegian Links To Hezbollah's Pagers

    A Bulgarian company with Norwegian links has surfaced in the supply chain of the pagers that detonated in Lebanon this week, killing 37 people and injuring several thousand others. The pagers, which were being used by members of Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy in the Middle East and designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, exploded simultaneously across Lebanon on September 17.

  • Pagers and Walkie-talkies Over Cellphones – a Security Expert Explains Why Hezbollah Went Low-Tech for Communications

    In general, I believe the adversary in an asymmetric conflict using low-tech techniques, tactics and technology will almost always be able to operate successfully against a more powerful and well-funded opponent. But from a cybersecurity perspective, Israel’s attack on Hezbollah’s pagers shows that any device in your life can be tampered with by an adversary at points along the supply chain – long before you even receive it.

  • Defense Department Should Secure Access to Advanced Semiconductor Technologies

    A new, multipronged strategy is needed for the U.S. Department of Defense to secure access to advanced semiconductor technologies, one of the agency’s defining challenges, says a new report. DOD should invest in leap-ahead semiconductor technologies, work to reshore production capabilities, and strengthen industry and interagency engagement, says a new report.

  • The Israel-Hezbollah Conflict: Where It Stands

    Cross-border fighting has returned to a lower intensity following Israel’s preemptive strike in Lebanon, but the conflict could escalate again, and a reprisal from Iran remains likely.

  • Global AI Adoption Is Outpacing Risk Understanding, Warns MIT CSAIL

    As organizations rush to implement artificial intelligence (AI), a new analysis of AI-related risks finds significant gaps in our understanding, highlighting an urgent need for a more comprehensive approach.

  • The Danger of AI in War: It Doesn’t Care About Self-Preservation

    Recent wargames using artificial-intelligence models from OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic revealed a troubling trend: AI models are more likely than humans to escalate conflicts to kinetic, even nuclear, war.

  • How U.S. Military Planning Has Shifted Away from Fighting Terrorism to Readying for Tensions and Conflict with China and Russia

    As changes emerge in the types of threats facing the U.S., the American military adjusts its strategic focus, budgets and planning. For instance, after 9/11, the U.S. military refocused away from its Cold War emphasis on preparing for combat against a powerful nation – the Soviet Union – and toward fighting small terrorist and insurgent groups instead. Over the past decade, the Pentagon’s efforts have shifted back to preparing for what officials call “great power competition” among the U.S., Russia and China.

  • Floating Piers and Sinking Hopes: China’s Logistics Challenge in Invading Taiwan

    Last month the United States disassembled and removed the floating pier it had assembled at a Gaza beach to take aid deliveries. It took almost a month to assemble, waves damaged it and almost destroyed it, and waves drove ashore boats that serviced it. And all that was nothing compared with the challenges that China’s armed forces would face in trying to deliver a mountain of personnel, equipment and supplies in an invasion of Taiwan.

  • Space Militarization Could Pose a Challenge to Global Security

    Typically, we would not be thinking of killer satellites, space nukes, and orbital debris fields that could lead to global collapse. But maybe we should. In May 2024, Russia launched a satellite that some observers believe is a weapon system that could allow the targeted destruction of other satellites in orbit.

  • China May Be Putting the Great Firewall into Orbit

    The first satellites for China’s ambitious G60 mega-constellation are in orbit in preparation for offering global satellite internet services—and we should worry about how this will help Beijing export its model of digital authoritarianism around the world.

  • Artificial Intelligence at War

    The Gaza war has shown that the use of AI in tactical targeting can drive military strategy by encouraging decision-making bias. At the start of the conflict, an Israeli Defense Force AI system called Lavender apparently identified 37,000 people linked to Hamas. Its function quickly shifted from gathering long-term intelligence to rapidly identifying individual operatives to target.

  • A New U.S. Russia, China Nuclear Arms Race Spells Danger

    Unlike in the Cold War, the United States faces the prospect in the next decade of two peer nuclear adversaries, which will together have twice as many strategic nuclear weapons as it does. While extended nuclear assurance and persuasion have been important factors in the US for a long time, there does not appear to be any widely accepted methodology for reaching a decision on how many weapons are needed for these purposes.

  • ‘Killer Robots’ Are Becoming a Real Threat in Africa

    The use of drones in the Sahel, a region of Africa that has been plagued by violence driven by jihadist insurgency for much of the past decade, has become a real problem. But even more concerning is the fact that their AI-powered variants, which are known as lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), have been deployed in Africa in recent years.