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U.S. Reliance on Chinese Drones: A Sector for the Next CHIPS Act?
More and more lawmakers from both parties are beginning to pay attention to the issue of drones and national security. Different bills seek to regulate federal agency procurement and use of certain foreign-made unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), or drones. Annie I. Antón and Olivia C. Mauger write that “Building on the bipartisan consensus to enact the 2022 Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science (CHIPS) Act, there is a compelling case that UASs should be a next sector for similar action.”
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What the Iraq War Can Teach the U.S. About Avoiding a Quagmire in Ukraine – 3 Key Lessons
The Iraq and Ukraine wars have notable differences from a U.S. foreign policy perspective – chiefly, thousands of American soldiers died fighting in Iraq, while the U.S. does not have any ground troops in Ukraine. But assessing the Iraq War, and its long aftermath, can still help articulate concerns about the United States’ getting involved in intense violence in another faraway place.
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Is Taiwan Prepared for a Potential Chinese Attack?
Leaked U.S. documents cast doubt on Taiwan’s air defense capability against potential attacks. Experts, however, say that the island has some robust defense systems.
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China’s Defense Spending Growth Continues Apace
China, India and Japan are leading a surge in military spending in the Asian region with geopolitical tensions pushing South Korea, Australia and Taiwan, among others, to follow suit. China’s military spending now exceeds the combined outlays of the next 25 biggest nations in the region, for which there are reliable estimates.
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Helping the U.S. Fast-track Hypersonic Conventional Weapons
Hypersonic weapons have been a top priority for modernizing the armed forces, with ultrafast, long-range and maneuverable munitions being touted as a revolutionary advance in modern warfare. The U.S. has fast-tracked their development and announced plans to field the first conventional hypersonic missile battery this year. Sandia National Lab is helping the U.S. achieve this goal.
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Are We Asking Too Much of Cyber?
Both cyber enthusiasts and skeptics may be asking too much of cyber. “U.S. cyber strategies should be more explicit about articulating not only the strategic benefits cyberspace offers but also its limitations,” Erica Lonegran and Michael Poznansky write. “More realism about cyberspace may help leaders truly integrate cyber capabilities.”
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Pentagon Leaks Suggest China Developing Ways to Attack Satellites – Here’s How They Might Work
The recent leak of Pentagon documents included the suggestion that China is developing sophisticated cyber attacks for the purpose of disrupting military communication satellites. Disruption of civilian satellite communication would be disruptive, but disruption of military communication would be much more dangerous and debilitating.
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World Military Expenditure Reaches New Record High as European Sending Surges
Total global military expenditure increased by 3.7 per cent in real terms in 2022, to reach a new high of $2240 billion. Military expenditure in Europe saw its steepest year-on-year increase in at least 30 years. The three largest spenders in 2022—the United States, China and Russia—accounted for 56 per cent of the world total.
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Militaries, Metals, and Mining
The U.S. aerospace and defense industries need access to critical minerals. Securing these minerals today may be an even more-complex task than it was during the cold war: the task requires more than deploying audacious subterfuge, as the CIA did in the 1960s to get titanium out of the Soviet Union. These minerals are now very much in the public eye, and they are also needed for the clean energy technologies that will help combat climate change.
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U.S., Taiwan Defense to Firms Explore Weapons Co-Production
Defense contractors from the U.S. and Taiwan will next month resume in-person conversations to explore possibilities of co-producing weapons, a move likely to ignite protests from China. The Taiwan-US Defense Industry Forum will meet on May 3 in Taipei, with a focus on co-production, integrating Taiwan’s industrial capabilities, and a range of defense cooperation issues.
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The U.S. Is About to Blow Up a Fake Warship in the South China Sea – but Naval Rivalry with Beijing Is Very Real and Growing
As part of a joint military exercise with the Philippines, the U.S. Navy is slated to sink a mock warship on April 26, 2023, in the South China Sea. For its part, China is holding its own staged military event involving actual warships and fighter jets deployed around Taiwan. More than a century after President Theodore Roosevelt made the United States the preeminent maritime power in the Pacific, that position is under threat. China is seeking to displace it. The next time a warship is blown up in the South China Sea, it may not be just a drill.
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Iraq: Twenty Years On, Two Narratives Emerge
Twenty years on, discussions of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq offer two distinct yet incongruent narratives. Most, if not all, veterans of “Iraqi Freedom” tell an inward-facing story focusing on tactical and operational “lessons” largely devoid of political context. Meanwhile, Iraqi scholars and civilians look at the political and social upheaval, concentrating far more on the costs of war than on the supposed benefits of U.S. interventionism.
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The Time to Prevent Shortfalls in Critical Materials Is Now
Rare earth elements are—despite their name—everywhere. They’re in your cellphone, your car, maybe even in a crown in your mouth. They’re in satellites, wind turbines, night-vision goggles, laser-guided missiles, and fighter jets. All of which makes China’s near-total domination of the rare earth market a matter of economic and national security concern.
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A Balancing Act: What to Do About Taiwan
If one of the world’s liberal democracies were to be taken over by a neo-totalitarian superpower, what would this imply for the future of freedom in Asia? What should we make of China’s claims about Taiwan? Should the U.S. replace its current policy of “strategic ambiguity” with a more explicit commitment to Taiwan’s defense?
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The Iraq Invasion, Twenty Years Later
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the United States-led invasion of Iraq. Code-named “Operation Iraqi Freedom” by the George W. Bush administration, the goal was to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, topple Saddam Hussein, and remake Iraq into a democracy. What lessons should we learn from the war and its aftermath?
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More headlines
The long view
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
European Arms Imports Nearly Double, U.S. and French Exports Rise, and Russian Exports Fall Sharply
States in Europe almost doubled their imports of major arms (+94 per cent) between 2014–18 and 2019–23. The United States increased its arms exports by 17 per cent between 2014–18 and 2019–23, while Russia’s arms exports halved. Russia was for the first time the third largest arms exporter, falling just behind France.
How Climate Change Will Affect Conflict and U.S. Military Operations
“People talk about climate change as a threat multiplier,” said Karen Sudkamp, an associate director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program within the RAND Homeland Security Research Division. “But at what point do we need to start talking about the threat multiplier actually becoming a significant threat all its own?”
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.