War on the Rocks

Automating the Action Officer: Between Bureaucracy and Technology

Samuel Canter — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 08:00:52 +0000

If there is a revolution brewing in the automation of white-collar work, you wouldn’t know it at the Pentagon. Here, the typical action officers, staff who tackle the daily work of the bureaucracy, perform essentially the same duties as their predecessors in 1996 or 1956: creating charts, authoring papers, delivering briefings, and coordinating across offices. Given the promise of AI tools, allowing this staff ecosystem to remain stuck in the past represents a dangerous failure to adapt, especially as senior leaders criticize the workforce for lacking organizational speed. Having served as an action officer across the White House, Pentagon, and

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The Assessment Gap in U.S. Counter-Terrorism Strikes

Jim Loucks — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 07:30:59 +0000

For eight years I helped decide whether American counter-terrorism money was working.As a programs advisor in the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism from 2018 to 2025, I oversaw about 20 projects in East Africa worth roughly $80 million a year. None of that money moved without a performance monitoring plan. We established baselines before work started and agreed on indicators in advance. When a project underperformed, or the reporting came late, we withheld funding. Reporting tracked activities against those metrics across the life of the program. Independent evaluations validated what implementers said they had done.That machinery was not the bureau’s

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Forced Into the Right Decision? A Look at U.S. Land-Based Deterrence Posture

Steve Fetter — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:30:23 +0000

In 2019, Steve Fetter wrote “A Cheaper Nuclear Sponge,” in which he argued that building a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was unnecessary for strengthening U.S. land-based deterrence. After several years of changing defense budgets and strategic priorities, we asked Steve to revisit his arguments.Image: U.S. Air Force (John Ingle)In your 2019 article, you argued that building an entirely new ICBM was unnecessary and that the Pentagon could save tens of billions by extending the life of the Minuteman III instead. Nearly seven years on, how has that argument held up? What has the new ballistic missile program’s trajectory looked

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The Tyranny of Shipyard Cost-Plus Contracting

Kavon Hakimzadeh — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 08:00:38 +0000

As a naval shipyard commander, my mandate from Navy leadership is straightforward: return warships to the fleet as quickly as possible. Neither my shipyard nor many other public and private shipyards are consistently fulfilling that mission.Public shipyard availabilities — the scheduled periods during which nuclear-powered warships are taken out of operational service for maintenance, repair, or modernization — are often delayed well beyond their original timelines. A recent Government Accountability Office report highlighted that over the past 10 years, maintenance delays for attack submarines have resulted in 15,000 lost operational days and an estimated $3.4 billion in costs. This problem of maintenance

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The Strange Transformation of the Front Line in Ukraine

Édouard Maurin — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:30:29 +0000

On Jan. 5, 2025, my volunteer platoon attached to the 23rd Special Purpose Battalion of the Presidential Brigade entered a 1-kilometer-long tree line called CHAI, on the outskirts of Kotlyne, a few kilometers west of Pokrovsk, Ukraine. Our task was to occupy a position whose status on DeepState, an open-source map tracking military operations in the Russo-Ukrainian war, had been shifting out of gray for five days. On DeepState’s map, different colors illustrate the fighting situation: the red area is held by the aggressor, while green or blue areas show territory successfully defended or recaptured by the Ukrainian army. The

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The Mecca Pact’s Credibility Gap

Doga Eralp — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:15:03 +0000

Collective-defense pacts are meant to make war less likely. Poorly designed ones can do the opposite. If allies make sweeping promises without the military integration, decision-making mechanisms, and escalation controls needed to carry them out, they may invite adversaries to test the boundaries of these promises.The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, signed on Aug. 7 amid intensifying regional conflict, represents a significant but uncertain development in the region. The agreement declares that an attack on one member will be treated as an attack on all three, establishing a broad commitment to collective deterrence. Yet the

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The Two Questions Ukraine Asks Before Every Decision

Nicole Wiley — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 19:50:05 +0000

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum, only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war. The perspectives gathered here are varied, candid, and often surprising, together forming a more complete picture of Ukraine as it really is.Frontline and StrategyЕспресо

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China’s Warrior Scientists: Insights from Recent Operations Around Taiwan

Peter Alan Dutton — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 07:30:45 +0000

China’s marine scientific research ships are expanding their operations around Taiwan, and they are not just there to advance the frontiers of human knowledge. Their operations serve to undermine Taiwan’s independent political status and to force international acceptance of Beijing’s claim of sovereignty over the island and its surrounding waters. This pressure campaign by the People’s Republic of China began intensifying in 2022. While media coverage of this development has focused on the activities of the People’s Liberation Army and the China Coast Guard, China’s civilian survey ships operate among them often unnoticed and in unprecedented numbers. Because of the

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Nicaragua’s Army Will Decide What Comes After Ortega

Orlando J. Pérez — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 07:00:26 +0000

The first institution Nicaragua’s National Assembly called to testify on the constitutional reform ending competitive elections was the army. On July 29, 2026, Gen. Julio César Avilés appeared before the Special Constitutional Commission and pledged the firm support of the Army of Nicaragua for a package that dissolves the electoral basis of the civilian authority he serves. Avilés spoke on behalf of the General Command, the Military Council, and the ground, naval, air, and reserve forces under his command. Five years earlier, at the ceremony launching the distribution of ballots for the 2021 election, the same officer committed 15,000 troops

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The Strategic Fiber of America: Kevlar’s Impact on Warfighters

Julie George — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:00:53 +0000

Editor’s note: This is the tenth article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader national security, politics, and society. This series will run for several weeks to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary, and winners will be selected by a reader vote undertaken through our newsletter later this summer. Prior installments can be found at the Arsenal of Innovation page.I was fortunate enough to do something that would be a benefit to mankind. It’s been an extremely satisfying discovery. I don’t think there’s anything like saving someone’s life to bring you satisfaction and happiness.– Stephanie Kwolek,

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Shrinking Buffers: Why Turkey and Israel Are on a Collision Course

Ali Murat Kursun — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 07:30:31 +0000

When Israeli warplanes struck the Abu al-Duhur airbase in Syria on Aug. 18, 2026, the smoke rose over the demolition of an old geopolitical assumption about the Middle East. This time, Israel directly targeted a strategic sphere of influence where the Turkish military had been working to build local security capacity.Turkey rapidly filled the power vacuum in post-Assad Syria, expanding its military and intelligence footprint southward and positioning itself as a founding actor in the Levant’s new security architecture. With this military move, Israel aimed to draw a new line of engagement on the ground for both Ankara and Damascus.

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New Complications in Countering the Flow of Arms in the Caribbean

Ian Ralby — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 07:00:22 +0000

Arms trafficking in the Caribbean has soared in recent years, with many states now ranking firearms trafficking as the number one public safety and security threat. As new methods of arming individuals and gangs emerge across the Caribbean, gun violence continues to rise throughout the region. While armed gangs in Haiti currently possess superior firepower to the police, most countries are trying to get a handle on the problem before it becomes that bad. Some outdated narratives, particularly about South American arms, still color thinking about firearms in the region, but the reality is becoming increasingly complex in the directional

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The Fruit of Patience: How Regional Shifts Ripened Turkey’s Path to Kurdish Reconciliation

Riccardo Gasco — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 07:30:39 +0000

On Aug. 25, at the People’s Palace in Damascus, Mazloum Abdi announced the dissolution of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which he had commanded for a decade. Speaking first in Arabic and then in Kurdish, he said the force had joined the Syrian army and would no longer operate independently. 15 days earlier, Turkey’s parliament had passed a framework law for the disarmament of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. The group has long been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Turkey, which have waged a brutal campaign against it for decades. Two

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The Future of Combat Medicine

John Quinn — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:30:11 +0000

War has always been a brutal engine of medical innovation, running on a feedback loop: Civilian breakthroughs are adapted for the battlefield, while battlefield necessity pushes advances back into civilian care. We asked three experts to identify the innovations from the last five years most likely to shape the future of combat medicine.Read more below.John Quinn Adjunct Lecturer, College of Remote and Offshore Medicine Foundation Medical Volunteer in UkraineThe war in Ukraine has made it clear that the most important combat-medical innovations are not gadgets, but new distributions of risk, skill, and authority. First, blood-forward resuscitation will require moving whole

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Where Does AI Escalation Come From? We Don’t Know. We Should Find Out.

Dustin League — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 07:30:30 +0000

We played a wargame using AI players. Two nuclear-armed nations — Red and Blue — with a long-standing, fierce border dispute were placed into a militarized crisis. Over the course of several turns, the states managed to avoid escalation to war, though there were non-operational nuclear demonstrations. Surprised by the lack of escalation we’d been primed to find by Juan-Pablo Rivera, Gabriel Mukobi, Anka Reuel, Max Lamparth, Chandler Smith, and Jacquelyn Schneider, as well as Kenneth Payne, we tried upping the stakes. We gave Red some new tactical nuclear weapons, altering the balance a bit in their favor. The states

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Russia’s Road to El Dorado

Raphael Parens — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 07:00:03 +0000

As a new convoy of Russian armored vehicles arrives from the port of Lomé to support Russia’s Africa Corps deployment in Mali, that mission has entered its fifth year. Russia’s investment of blood and treasure urgently demands a return, but what could this return be? What is the Russian end goal in Mali?When the Wagner Group, Africa Corps’ predecessor, entered Mali in December 2021, it was pursuing a resources-for-security deal like the one it had achieved in the Central African Republic. Along with my co-authors Chris Faulkner and Colin Clarke in our book, Moscow’s Mercenaries, I documented Wagner’s lessons learned,

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Is Taiwanese Society Prepared for a China Contingency?

Michael A. Hunzeker — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 17:30:43 +0000

In 2025, Michael Hunzeker and Yuster Yu wrote, “Taiwan’s Biggest Problem in Steeling Itself for War With China is Cultural,” where they argued major cultural changes were needed in both Taiwan’s military and civilian society if it were to be competitive in a conflict with China. A year later, we asked them to revisit their arguments.Image: Taiwan Presidential Office via Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2025 article, you argued that major cultural changes must take place in both the officer corps of Taiwan’s armed forces and broader society if Taiwan is to be competitive in a contingency with China. A year later,

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European Resilience in Digital Infrastructure: The Changing Nature of State-Business Relations

Michiel Foulon — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:00:52 +0000

As the war in Ukraine progressed, Russian strikes increasingly degraded Ukraine’s terrestrial communications infrastructure, steadily deepening Kyiv’s dependence on SpaceX’s Starlink. The satellite constellation became indispensable for crucial military functions, including command and control, drone operations, and artillery fire coordination, with no readily available European alternative should access be withdrawn.This reality exemplifies the idea that today, governments rely on critical infrastructure that is privately owned and globally embedded. But these interdependencies can be weaponized, and state-firm relations can become misaligned. Recent controversies over the ability of American and Chinese technology companies to restrict access to critical AI models, alongside NVIDIA’s

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Ukraine’s Ground Robots and the Economics of Survival

Lesia Bidochko — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 07:30:47 +0000

In August 2024, special forces from five Ukrainian military intelligence units crossed the Black Sea to raid Russian-held Kinburn Spit. The commandos of these units — Chimera, Aratta, Stuhna, Paragon, Terror, and the Siberian Battalion — landed, fought, destroyed equipment, and withdrew. Two years later, in July 2026, Ukraine returned, but left the soldiers behind. Instead, an uncrewed surface vessel carried a ground robot across the water and released it onto the shore. The robot, equipped with a Wolly 7.62 remotely operated combat module, featuring a machine gun and an AI-assisted targeting system, rolled onto shore and engaged targets. A

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Why Are People Talking About a German Reset with Russia?

Ian Klinke — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 07:15:33 +0000

The summer of 2026 has raised questions once again among politicians, diplomats, and academics about whether Germany might be about to dither on Russia. Last month, a drone attack on German soil seemed designed to coerce Germany back into business as usual. Earlier, there had been rumblings about two German ex-chancellors brokering a peace treaty between Kyiv and Moscow. Both Angela Merkel and Gerhard Schröder are living embodiments of the ill-reputed Ostpolitik, Germany’s tradition of pragmatic cooperation with the Kremlin over the heads of other Eastern European countries.Is Germany getting ready for a reset with Russia, though? Not really. Berlin’s

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The Atlantic Brief: U.S. and European Perspectives on Nuclear Deterrence

WOTR Staff — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 18:45:59 +0000

Date: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026Time: 12:00-1:00 PM ETThe second joint webinar by RUSI and War on the Rocks: Two leading defense publications from both sides of the Atlantic present their expert panel. OverviewFor this edition of The Atlantic Brief, the Royal United Services Institute and War on the Rocks will present a dialogue on U.S. and European Perspectives on Nuclear Deterrence. Participating experts from the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and the United States bring decades of first-hand experience in the armed forces, diplomacy, and foreign policy. They will explore evolving views of America’s extended nuclear deterrence, the role of the British

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A Rulebook for Surprises: Commanding Autonomous Aircraft

Greg Search — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:00:28 +0000

My greatest challenge while flight testing collaborative combat aircraft was not troubleshooting errors at high speed in the cockpit. It was when, in a single keystroke, my job shifted from pilot to something like a dog handler — a supervisor of an autonomous agent. As a test pilot, my instinct is to stop for surprise machine behavior, but that met a system where such unexpected behavior could be a good thing. Managing autonomy means accounting for a new phenomenon — machine behavior that is both correct and unexpected.Historically, aircrews have handled surprises by assuming there’s a malfunction and fixing it,

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The Educated Operator: Rethinking Lethality in Special Operations

Calvin Richards — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 07:30:23 +0000

Editor’s Note: While War on the Rocks has a high standard for allowing pseudonyms, this is an unusual case: U.S. Army Special Operations Command requires its uniformed personnel to use pseudonyms when writing for public consumption (Policy 23-16). Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books. –Ralph Waldo Emerson Over the course of more than a dozen combat deployments, it is undeniably true that being dumb has sometimes

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The Political Constraint on America’s Data-Center Power Buildout

Javaid Iqbal Sofi — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 07:00:15 +0000

In April, President Donald Trump issued two Defense Production Act determinations covering grid infrastructure and large-scale energy infrastructure. One found that the country’s constrained electric grid posed an increasing threat to national defense and made grid infrastructure and its supply chains essential to national defense. The other found that financing risks, regulatory delays, and market barriers were preventing large-scale energy infrastructure essential to national defense from being provided in a timely manner. Less than three months later, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul imposed a one-year moratorium on new hyperscale data centers. Her order said the pause would keep New Yorkers

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The Divine Calculus of the Ukraine War’s End

Nicole Wiley — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 16:35:54 +0000

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The Quantum Stack and the Countdown to Q-Day

Cameron Chehreh — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:43 +0000

Quantum’s hype obscures a reality with real geopolitical stakes: the technology works and is advancing every day. Cameron Chehreh (IonQ), JD Dulny (Booz Allen), and Ben Gianni (GDIT) join Jonathan to discuss the race to Q-Day. They cover the shift to post-quantum cryptography, competing hardware modalities, emerging use cases, and why talent gaps and fragile supply chains mean the United States could be at risk of falling behind.Image: Jonathan Steffen via DVIDS.

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Stop Using AI. Start Commanding It

Cody Nichols — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 07:30:52 +0000

Walk into the Pentagon, climb the escalator, and an Uncle Sam-style poster points at you: “I want YOU to use AI.” It worked. GenAI.mil hit 1.5 million users in six months, and I have heard enough OpenAI-in-disguise pitches to last a lifetime. The adoption really is great, but the poster contains a problem. “Use” is the verb of tools, and the Department of Defense does not win by using tools. It wins by commanding forces.North of the Pentagon, a task force few know about operates in a Maryland basement. They collect intelligence, develop missions, and execute against targets 24/7 within

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The (Un)importance of the Battle of Tours

Daniel Wollenberg — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 07:30:05 +0000

Editor’s note: This is the first article in a new occasional series featuring battles that just didn’t matter, may look important, but in fact had negligible strategic or political effects or were absurd, anticlimactic, or structurally irrelevant to the wars they were part of.Some battles never end. Their impact is debated endlessly, sometimes for centuries, as they take on new life with new generations of historians and swindlers alike. Few battles better exemplify this eternal lifespan than the Battle of Tours — also known as the Battle of Poitiers — as it was fought between the two cities in modern-day

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Beneath the Surface: Overlooked Cyber Security Threats

Emily Harding — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 17:30:16 +0000

Cyber security remains a persistent concern for public and private sector organizations alike. Given the potential impact of cyber threats from criminal groups, adversarial states, and extremists, the topic draws substantial attention. Yet, in a field that evolves so quickly, some risks slip through the cracks. We asked four experts to identify and assess a key cyber security threat to U.S. national security that analysts and policymakers often overlook.Read more below. Emily HardingDirector of the Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program and Vice President of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Determining the state

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The Goldilocks Fallacy: The Undefined Limits of Korea’s Nuclear Role

Hanbyeol Sohn — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 07:30:16 +0000

“Unthreatening and respectful.” That is how the president of the United States described North Korea on Aug. 16, 2026, in his social media post ordering his secretary of defense to scale back joint exercises with South Korea. Two years earlier in Seoul, the U.S.-South Korean alliance agreed that South Korea’s role in an American nuclear operation would involve exercises and training, formalizing those guidelines at a Nuclear Consultative Group meeting co-chaired by Vipin Narang, then-acting assistant secretary of defense for space policy.Three weeks before the president’s post, on July 24, Narang spoke at the second Deterrence Symposium hosted by South

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“Zero Problems” Abroad, Plenty at Home: Reassessing al Sharaa’s Leadership in Syria

Rob Geist Pinfold — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 17:30:39 +0000

In 2025, Rob Geist Pinfold wrote, “The March Massacres Show That Syria Urgently Needs Solutions, Not Sanctions,” in which he argued that sanctions relief was a major way the West could positively engage with the new Syrian government. A year later, after sanctions relief materialized and the United States removed Syria from its list of terrorism sponsors, we asked him to revisit his arguments and reassess President Ahmed al Sharaa’s leadership, both foreign and domestic. Image: Voice of America via Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2025 article, you argued that one way the West should engage with post-Assad Syria was through sanctions relief.

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The Marine Corps’ Plan for the Future of Ground Combat

Jason Morris — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 16:55:18 +0000

The Marine Corps just released its plan to fight against adversaries on land, and Ryan had the two architects of the plan, Ground Combat Element 2040, on the show to talk about it. They discuss drones, resilience, long-range fires, logistics, and what marines will need to survive and fight on an increasingly transparent battlefield while still preserving the critical human element.Image: Khalil Brown via DVIDS

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Would Wartime Elections Save Democracy or End It?

Nicole Wiley — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:00:53 +0000

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From Hormuz to the Caucasus: The New Geography of Energy Security

Aidin Panahi — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 07:30:16 +0000

Every crisis in the Middle East returns the world’s attention to the same stretch of water. When tankers are seized, or missiles fly near the Persian Gulf, oil prices move, insurers reprice risk, shipping reroutes, and the United States repositions naval and airpower to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. The reflex is sound, because the strait carries volumes nothing else can. Alongside the maritime map, a second geography of energy security is taking shape: the pipelines, railways, power lines, and transit corridors linking the Caspian Basin and the South Caucasus to Europe.Western governments are pairing forward military presence in

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Russia’s Next Top General: Promotions in Russian Military Leadership

Dmitry Gorenburg — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 07:30:17 +0000

Judged by the initial strategic goals set by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2022, Russia’s military lost its war against Ukraine some time ago. Yet Russia’s armed forces have not stopped fighting and continue to prosecute large-scale combat operations in a brutalizing, protracted war sucking up much of Russia’s assets of national power, from pure military capacity to foreign policy priorities to considerable societal and economic resources. While Putin calls the most important strategic shots, it is Russia’s senior military elite that makes the strategic and operational decisions impacting warfighting outcomes every day. Who are these senior officers, where did

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Command and Politics in the War Between Moscow and Kyiv

Dara Massicot — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 13:00:05 +0000

Our intrepid team covers a lot of ground in this episode: the increasing fluidity of the battlefield, drones and air defense, the biting Black Sea campaign, the causes and aftermath of the firing of Ukraine’s popular defense minister, why Ukraine probably cannot produce PAC-3 air defense missiles (despite what some journalists are telling you), and the likelihood of a new round of Russian mobilization. This episode is Dara Massicot and Michael Kofman at their best.Thanks to NODA AI for supporting this episode. NODA AI is building mission command for autonomous forces. Learn more at warontherocks.com/nodaImage: ArmyInform

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Betting on Autonomous Aircraft

Brandon Tseng — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Brandon Tseng, the co-founder and president of Shield AI and a former Navy SEAL, whose company builds the Hivemind autonomy software, the V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon synthetic reality and simulation technologies. We asked Brandon about the bet at the center of his company — that the AI pilot matters more than the airframe — and about what a decade building autonomy for the Pentagon has taught him. Sign Up for Our Newsletter You founded Shield AI in 2015, before defense tech was fashionable, and when few in Washington believed a startup could

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The Risks of Downplaying China’s Military

Thomas Shugart — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 07:30:35 +0000

China has spent years modifying civilian ferries to launch amphibious armored vehicles, developing specialized equipment to move forces ashore without conventional port facilities, hardening dozens of air bases, and rapidly expanding the missile forces that could be used to deter or defeat a U.S. intervention. Yet at the same time, a recurring line of analysis has argued that concerns about China’s military capabilities are overstated — and that an invasion of Taiwan remains beyond the reach of the People’s Liberation Army.These analyses differ in important ways. Some emphasize the Chinese military’s political character, lack of combat experience, and institutional shortcomings. Others

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Pressure Points: Economic Strain, Allied Discord, and War Fatigue

WOTR Staff — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 20:50:55 +0000

Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below.***IranU.S. strikes on Iranian soil tapered off in August after frequent exchanges throughout July. The hiatus seems more of an adjustment in tactics to wear down Iran’s finances rather than further degrade its military capability: A combined “one-two punch” of a physical blockade against Iran’s maritime trade and increased sanctions measures, which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week said, “have never been seen in the history of the economic isolation of a country.” Iran will

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A Rock and China’s Three-Sea Problem

Shuxian Luo — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 07:30:50 +0000

Two rocks surrounded by coral, with a total land size of less than 10 square meters (approximately 108 square feet) at high tide, are the entire basis on which Japan claims a 150,000-square-mile exclusive economic zone, an area nearly the size of Japan itself. The uninhabited feature, located more than 1,000 miles south of Tokyo, is called Okinotori.In late July, Japan protested Sino-Russian live-fire drills held within the exclusive economic zone it claims around Okinotori. Tokyo cited the safety risks the drills posed to nearby vessels, but its broader objection was to Beijing’s claim that Okinotori is merely a rock

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Mental Health Is a Warfighting Readiness Problem for the U.S. Navy

Heath “Hank” Brightman — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 07:00:14 +0000

“You cannot be at mental peace always. You will be worried. So even my family — they are scared all the time, and they were anxiously praying [for] the vessel [to] come out of this area safely.” While Captain Chirag operates a commercial cargo vessel in the Red Sea, his comments in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attacks in the Middle East could just as easily be attributed to the hard-charging crew of the guided-missile destroyer USS Carney and other surface combatants fighting Houthi threats, or the experiences of the sailors assigned to Carrier Strike Group Three engaging

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War: Watt Is It Good For?

Harry Krejsa — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:00:25 +0000

Military analysts are captivated by how the material nature of war is transforming in Ukraine. Unmanned systems have captured Russian infantry units, battered Russian naval and commercial ships, and even, with the help of on-board AI, conducted autonomous strikes deep into areas where Russian jamming foils remote piloting. These technologies are powering a dramatic democratization of military capability, allowing a country to hold off an invader many times its size.But that democratization is only part of the story, and is in fact driven by an equally dramatic consolidation. Strip down any of these battlefield-transforming tools, and you will find remarkably

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China’s Military Says AI Can’t Replace Commanders. Xi Is Testing That

Jaehwan Lim — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 07:30:47 +0000

For years, the Chinese military’s own newspaper has been making a promise it may no longer be able to keep. Whenever the People’s Liberation Army Daily (Jiefangjun Bao), the official newspaper of China’s Central Military Commission, discusses artificial intelligence and command, it returns to the same reassurance: Machines may sort sensor data, draft options, and compress the time between observation and action, but the final authority, and the responsibility that comes with it, belong to the human commander. As one 2025 article puts it, AI cannot resolve the allocation of command authority and responsibility because only a human commander can

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Inside Iran’s Wartime Regime

Afshon Ostovar — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 19:30:45 +0000

Afshon Ostovar, one of the leading experts on Iran and the host of the members-only podcast The Iran Reckoning, is joined by War on the Rocks membership editor Kerry Anderson for a state-of-play conversation on the conflict between the United States and Iran. They consider why the fighting has settled into a stalemate and dig into which figures in the Iranian regime have influence over Iran’s approach to the war. Afshon unpacks the implications of Mohsen Rezaei’s recent appointment as head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, before the two look ahead to what comes next. Normally members-only content, this

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Contested Logistics and the “Last Unmanned Mile”

Tom Garvey — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:00:58 +0000

In a Pacific war, the U.S. military cannot assume uncontested access to its depots and supply lines for munitions, spare parts, food, water, and energy. Jonathan is joined by David Tuttle (Rune Technologies), Paul Lwin (HavocAI), and Tom Garvey (CACI) to discuss sustaining a dispersed force that’s facing enemy fire and lacks stable, secure communications. They debate autonomy versus automation, predictive resupply, where the data comes from, and which lessons from Ukraine transfer across theaters.Image: Sgt. Alora Finigan via DVIDS.

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Managed Instability: Why the Wars Against Iran and Ukraine Can Go On and On and On…

Alex Kolbin — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 07:30:50 +0000

The Iran war is beginning to resemble the Ukraine war in one important way. Operationally, the wars themselves are still very different — Ukraine is a large-scale ground invasion, while the Iran war is not there just yet. But their political logic after a failure to achieve a quick result is starting to look very similar. In both cases, a larger power expected its overwhelming military force to produce a quick political result. And in both cases, that expectation failed.The targeted state adapted, outside supporters helped it remain afloat, and both conflicts moved from the promise of a decisive outcome

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Proving the Negative: Three Warnings from Arms Control for the Age of AI

Mark Daley — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 07:00:54 +0000

In early 1963, a single number characterized the difference in the positions of the United States and the Soviet Union on a comprehensive nuclear test ban. Nikita Khrushchev had proposed three on-site inspections each year. Washington was asking for seven. Other differences remained, including inspection procedures and treaty language. But the difference mattered: Seismology could not always distinguish an underground test from an earthquake, and inspections created both assurance and opportunities for espionage.Neither number had been delivered by a technical expert wielding a seismograph. Each represented a political judgment about how much residual uncertainty its government should accept. The negotiations

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How Feasible Is a European Nuclear Deterrent Without Washington?

James Cameron — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:45:41 +0000

In 2025, James Cameron wrote, “Eurodeterrent: A Vision for an Anglo-French Nuclear Force,” where he argued the United Kingdom and France should cooperate to develop a nuclear deterrent umbrella for Europe, independent of Washington. A year later, after French President Emmanuel Macron’s landmark nuclear speech, we asked him to revisit his argument. Image: SAC Rob Bourne/MODIn your 2025 article, you argued that, given Europe’s perceived uncertainty about the U.S. commitment to its security and defense, the United Kingdom and France should cooperate to develop a nuclear deterrent umbrella independent of Washington. In July 2025, the United Kingdom and France signed the Northwood Declaration, and

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AI and the Risks of Tearing Down an Old System

Jordan Kane — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 07:30:31 +0000

Operation Epic Fury made clear that AI is now at the heart of American warfighting. Central Command used Claude through Palantir’s Maven Smart System platform to generate and prioritize roughly 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours of the campaign, at an operational tempo that more than doubled the opening phase of the 2003 Iraq invasion. Over 38 days, the campaign reached 13,000 total strikes, according to Pentagon data. Project Maven says that the program has accelerated targeting even further to 5,000 in a single day. The question is whether the department can evaluate what it deploys before it deploys

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Inside Brazil’s 3D-Printed Gun Supply Chain

Carlos Eduardo da Silva — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 07:00:57 +0000

On June 26, 2026, the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro, through its specialized firearms, ammunition, and explosives unit, raided a clandestine workshop in Rio das Pedras, on the city’s west side. Investigators said the group used a 3D printer seized at the scene to produce pistol frames and structural rifle parts in polymer and then completed them with metal parts. Early reports described those parts as imported, but police said on the day of the raid that they were still determining the metal’s origin. Police described the operation’s main target as an international arms and ammunition trafficker who supplied

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The Tension Between Collectivism and Individualism in Ukraine

Nicole Wiley — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 19:00:41 +0000

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A Life in Army Special Operations, from Desert Storm to the Next War

Francis Beaudette — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 17:40:08 +0000

Lt. Gen. (ret.) Francis Beaudette, former commanding general of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, joins Ryan to discuss how his family history, service, and books shaped his path into and time in the Army. Together, they talk through his years as a young officer during Operation Desert Storm, the wars that followed, the present and future challenges of special operations (and how they aren’t that different from the past), and the difficulty of learning the right lessons from the wars of today. Thanks to Legion Intelligence for sponsoring the event at which this episode was recorded.Image: ChatGPT

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Blanchard’s Lathe and the Long Arc of American Manufacturing

Aubry Eaton — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:05 +0000

Editor’s note: This is the ninth article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader national security, politics, and society. This series will run for several weeks to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary, and winners will be selected by a reader vote undertaken through our newsletter later this summer. Prior installments can be found at the Arsenal of Innovation page.Emerging from the chaos of supplying the U.S. Army during the War of 1812, the War Department sought to foster domestic production of standardized muskets. Out of this industrial project arose an invention that laid the foundation

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What Have We Learned from the 9/11 Wars? Not Nearly Enough

Jonathan Schroden — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 07:30:08 +0000

Editor’s Note: The following article draws on themes from the author’s forthcoming book titled US Counterterrorism Operations in Afghanistan: Jackpots, Dry Holes, and Collateral Damage.Over the next month, the United States will pass two major historical milestones: the five-year anniversary of its withdrawal from Afghanistan and the 25-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. While the latter is likely to receive at least a modicum of respectful remembrance from U.S. leaders and the American public, the former is likely to be ignored by the U.S. government and to escape broader notice.These are painful milestones. Ones that are

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Cheap Drones, Dry Taps: The Iran War Opens a New Era of Water Infrastructure Risk

Gabriel Collins — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 07:30:30 +0000

Water and energy infrastructure have become one of Iran’s main levers of deterrence against the United States. Iranian Foreign Minister Aragchi recently made it clear to Gulf states that if the U.S. military renewed large-scale strikes on Iran, their critical infrastructure would be struck. Iranian forces’ operational history over the past six months confirmed the threat’s credibility.Kuwait first reported damage near a desalination plant early in Operation Epic Fury, when debris from an intercepted drone struck the Doha West facility. Then, on March 7 and 8, Iran claimed a desalination facility on Qeshm Island had been attacked, and in response,

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The Commercial Space Race

Rebekah Reed — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 18:14:06 +0000

A strong commercial space industry is an important partner for the U.S. government, as it contributes to building more robust space and defense capabilities and facilitates innovation more broadly. As competition between the United States and China heats up, both countries look to the commercial space sector to help them get ahead in both the space race and defense technologies. We asked five experts: What is a crucial step for the United States to take now to stay ahead in commercial space competition with China?Read more below.Rebekah ReedAssociate Director in the Belfer Center’s Program on Emerging Technology, Scientific Advancement, and

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The True Cost of Cheap Chips

Faisal Akhter — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:29 +0000

Given the relentless demand for computing power, electronic components are in scarce supply. Prices for certain memory chips, known as DRAM, have surged by more than 50 percent in a single quarter this year, and have roughly quadrupled since last fall. Because DRAM supply is tight, Apple, Dell, and HP are currently evaluating memory from ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), a company the Pentagon has designated as a Chinese military company. Apple, in particular, has sought assurances from the U.S. government that CXMT will not face future sanctions that would cut off its supply. Apple justifies its request by pledging to

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2026 and All That: Another Benchmark Year in Royal Navy Decline

Steven Wills — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 07:30:49 +0000

The 1930 comic history, 1066 and All That, made famous the British habit of reducing national history to a sequence of memorable dates. The modern Royal Navy has its own unhappy version of that calendar. Since 1945, a series of ostensibly practical political decisions has steadily reduced Britain’s ability to sustain a globally relevant fleet: the 1956 failed Suez expedition, the 1966 retreat from “East of Suez,” the 1981 Nott Review, the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, and the 2010 review that further reduced the fleet even as Britain moved toward operating the long-desired Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. The year 2026

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Russia’s Blurry Line Between Science and Sabotage Beneath the Ocean’s Surface

Nurlan Aliyev — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 17:30:08 +0000

In 2025, Nurlan Aliyev wrote, “The Mayhem of Russia’s “Research” Fleet,” where he argued that NATO must act decisively to safeguard critical undersea infrastructure from Russian sabotage attempts. A year later, we asked him to revisit his arguments. Image: Andrey Luzik via Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2025 article, you argued that NATO needed to act decisively to safeguard critical undersea infrastructure in the Baltic, Barents, and Arctic regions from Russian sabotage. Since then, where has NATO strengthened its deterrence and defense in this area, and where do gaps still remain? Since 2025, NATO and E.U. members have strengthened coordination to protect critical undersea infrastructure through

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Hyman Rickover and the Birth of Nuclear Power

Thane C. Clare — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:00:51 +0000

Editor’s note: This is the eighth article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader national security, politics, and society. This series will run for several weeks to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary, and winners will be selected by a reader vote undertaken through our newsletter later this summer. Prior installments can be found at the Arsenal of Innovation page.For more than 70 years, nuclear power has propelled America’s silent service — attack submarines stalking their prey from below, and the “boomers” that lurk undetected, ballistic missiles on alert, forming the most survivable leg of the

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The Next School of War: Educating for Tomorrow’s Battlefield

Brig. Gen. Matthew Tracy — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 07:30:12 +0000

When war changes, schools change. New technology, the politics of mass mobilization and campaign design, and novel tactics that defined Napoleonic warfare led to Gerhard von Scharnhorst’s reforms and the idea of lifelong education as a professional obligation. The pattern repeated itself in the interwar period. In 1929, James Carson Breckinridge, a Marine officer, published “Some Thoughts on Service Schools” in the Marine Corps Gazette, calling for a new educational paradigm consistent with John Dewey’s ideas about pragmatism and experiential learning.War is again changing. The promise of the third offset has arrived, extending the battlefield and resulting in wars waged by

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Who Pays for America’s Research and Development?

Cogs of War Staff — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:32 +0000

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, the U.S. government was the unrivaled patron of American science. It funded nearly two-thirds of the nation’s research and development — much of it for defense — defining the early Cold War. In a phenomenon that’s been widely explored in our Arsenal of Innovation series, for several decades federal dollars pushed the technological frontier, and the private sector followed.Today, that arrangement has been inverted. Industry now funds roughly three-quarters of U.S. research and development, while Washington’s share is less than a fifth. Because the cutting edge increasingly emerges from commercial labs, the

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Putting Armageddon on Autopilot: How Artificial Intelligence Could Make Nuclear Threats More Effective

Joshua Schwartz — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 07:30:08 +0000

Nine countries now possess nuclear weapons. Arms control agreements painstakingly built over decades have collapsed. Geopolitical competition is intensifying rivalries between nuclear-armed powers. North Korea continues expanding its arsenal and delivery systems. China is on a trajectory to go from roughly 600 warheads today to around 1,500 by 2035. Meanwhile, Russia bears most of the responsibility for the expiration of New START and is developing an array of exotic new nuclear delivery systems designed to circumvent missile defenses. This includes nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed cruise missiles and underwater drones, hypersonic glide vehicles, and a nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapon. Although most recent focus

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The White House Is Right on AI. Now Let Defenders Use It.

Cory Ondrejka — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 07:00:52 +0000

The White House has the right instinct on AI. Its June 5 National Security Presidential Memorandum commits the government to putting the most capable models in the hands of national security professionals “without delay.” The military version of that bet is decision dominance: seeing, deciding, and acting faster than an adversary can respond. Recently, we saw a live test of how far the commitment reaches.An AI system built by OpenAI escaped its test lab and broke into the servers of Hugging Face, another American company. When Hugging Face’s security team went to investigate, safety controls on the commercial AI services

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Is Ukraine Drifting Towards Groupthink on European Integration?

Nicole Wiley — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:45:16 +0000

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What America Learned About Democracy When It Gained Stealth

T. Nelson Collier — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:00:41 +0000

Editor’s note: This is the seventh article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader national security, politics, and society. This series will run for several weeks to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary, and winners will be selected by a reader vote undertaken through our newsletter later this summer. Prior installments can be found at the Arsenal of Innovation page.On the night of 24 March 1999, U.S. pilots flying 15,000 feet or more above the Balkans released precision-guided munitions, or “smart bombs,” onto military targets in Yugoslavia, beginning Operation Allied Force. The U.S.-led NATO operation carried

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Why Military Cooperation in the Indian Ocean Still Falls Short

Rebecca Strating — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 07:30:32 +0000

The United States has bluntly signaled a deprioritization of the Indian Ocean at a peculiar time. The reversion of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command to its former name, U.S. Pacific Command, signifies no material change in force posture or organizational responsibilities, but it unavoidably signals less focus on the Indian Ocean, presumably in favor of its consistent top priority in the western Pacific, although it’s not clear anyone really knows.The recent closure and persistent uncertainty over the Strait of Hormuz have underscored the fragility of international shipping lanes that traverse the ocean, especially in Asia, where most countries relied on oil shipped

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Why Conflict Gold Sanctions Fail

Amanda Kadlec — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 07:00:36 +0000

In April 2026, over a month after the United States launched its attack on Iran, leading to thousands of reprisal strikes across the Gulf, the United Arab Emirates shut down a network of money changers connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iranian exchange houses and the shell companies built around them — vehicles for laundering billions in offshore Dubai-based holdings and funneling funds to help Iran evade sanctions — are reported to have knowingly operated on Emirati soil for over a decade.Washington’s pivotal Gulf ally proved useful in the fallout of the Iran war. Emirati authorities finally cracked down

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Warlords of Greece: Warfare in Homer’s World

Josho Brouwers — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 07:30:12 +0000

The Iliad and Odyssey have shaped Western ideas of heroism for nearly three millennia. Yet despite centuries of debate over whether they reflect historical reality or poetic fantasy, the Homeric world remains an internally consistent universe worth studying on its own terms. This isn’t about separating fact from fiction: it’s about understanding the warrior ethos that dominated the ancient Greek and Roman imagination, and how battles were truly fought in the world of Achilles, Hector, and Odysseus.The release of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in cinemas has led to a resurgence in public interest in the original source material. In ancient

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How Can U.S. Special Operations Forces Help Defeat China on Taiwan?

Brian Petit — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 07:00:55 +0000

It is conceivable that in one blistering campaign, the People’s Republic of China could invade, occupy, and forcibly annex Taiwan. One question would dominate the post-occupation debate: “What more could have been done?” The obvious answers will be better intelligence, bigger exercises, more weapons. One underexamined answer is a different model for U.S. special operations forces advising.The United States has spent decades using rotational military teams to train foreign partners. This approach is sustainable and useful for specific tactical tasks, but it is poorly suited to the institutional, linguistic, and political work required to help Taiwan prepare for a prolonged

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Attacks, Deals, and Discontent

WOTR Staff — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 18:15:30 +0000

Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below.***IranOver the last two weeks, President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened major attacks on Iran. Going into the weekend, multiple news outlets reported that he was mulling a major bombing campaign — which would almost certainly result in retaliatory strikes against U.S. bases and allies around the region. But late Saturday night, Trump asserted that a deal was in the works to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, based on which he would hold fire for the

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Does Latent Nuclear Deterrence Really Work?

Matthew Fuhrmann — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 15:00:27 +0000

In 2025, Matthew Fuhrmann wrote, “U.S. Allies and Adversaries Are Attempting Nuclear Deterrence Without Weapons – Will It Work?,” where he argued countries don’t always need to go as far as actually building nuclear weapons to reap the benefits of nuclear deterrence. A year later, we asked Matthew to revisit his arguments.Image: MidjourneyIn your 2025 article, you argued countries don’t necessarily have to follow through with building nuclear weapons to reap the benefits of nuclear deterrence, a strategy you called latent nuclear deterrence. Which countries do you think stand to gain the most from this strategy, given the significant and,

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The Arsenal and the Statehouse: New Defense Firms, Venture Capital and State Industrial Policy

Joshua Alley — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:09 +0000

When Anduril announced a $910 million drone production facility in Ohio, it was not politics as usual. The main message came from Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, while Representative Mike Carey’s press release thanked the governor. Members of Congress usually take substantial credit for defense industrial jobs, but Carey did not because he could not. Anduril sited Arsenal-1 near Columbus partially because of state subsidies.New defense firms backed by venture financing and state economic development subsidies have given states a political stake in the most innovative portion of federal defense procurement. New entrants promise and sometimes deliver fast, commercial solutions. Subsidies

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The Blood Price: In Israel, Military Sacrifice Is Becoming Political Power

Guy Ziv — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 07:30:42 +0000

In late June, cadets at the Israeli military’s officer training school sat through a lecture by Ofer Winter, a retired brigadier general and a polarizing figure in the Israel Defense Forces. According to Haaretz, Winter told the future officers that “there are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza” and accused two former chiefs of staff of politically blocking his career. Regulations prohibit political activity in training programs, and the Israeli military later called the episode a failure. The cadets who spoke to Haaretz, however, described this politically charged lecture as part of a pattern of guest speakers drawn overwhelmingly from the

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Beyond Hormuz: The Future of Maritime Chokepoints

Patrick Cronin — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:30:07 +0000

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz and efforts to extract payments for safe passage — plus, more recently, the Houthis’ move to attack Saudi shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — have highlighted the risks of maritime chokepoints to global shipping and raised questions about the future for freedom of navigation. The impacts extend beyond the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, so we asked five experts to consider the implications for several other crucial waterways: the Strait of Malacca, the Taiwan Strait, the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal, and the Turkish Straits.Read more below.Patrick M. CroninAsia-Pacific Security Chair

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Why Trump’s Israel Normalization Demand May Kill the Saudi Nuclear Deal

H. A. Hellyer — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 07:30:49 +0000

Only days after the Trump administration celebrated what it called a landmark civilian nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, the president himself appeared to place the entire arrangement in jeopardy. In a Truth Social post, President Donald Trump declared the deal “totally subject” to Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords and normalizing with Israel — a condition absent from the administration’s own announcement barely a day earlier. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt then confirmed that, without normalization, “the deal is off.”The reversal was striking not simply because it resurrected a condition Washington had already concluded was ineffective, as Saudi Arabia

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Beyond the Output Trap: Haiti and the Future of International Stabilization

Philippe de Bard — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 07:00:33 +0000

Five years after the assassinations in Haiti of Monferrier Dorval, Diego Charles, and Antoinette Duclaire, justice remains elusive. Four years after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, accountability is still incomplete. Yet international reporting on Haiti continues to foreground outputs: workshops on gender and youth participation, deployments, and decrees. International organizations, including the United Nations, and the donor community measure what they do. Meanwhile, the Haitian public measures what actually changes.Call this the output trap: Missions demonstrate progress in outputs without delivering comparable gains in outcomes. Closing that gap requires making outcomes, not outputs, the measure of success. I examine

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A Conversation with the Pentagon’s Chief Buyer, Under Secretary Michael P. Duffey

Michael P. Duffey — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:00:41 +0000

Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael P. Duffey joins Jonathan to discuss the Pentagon’s ongoing acquisition transformation. Their conversation spans the recent munitions agreements, industry investments, the shift to portfolio acquisition executives, allied coproduction, and more.Image: Cpl. Sarah Grawcock via DVIDS.

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Is Washington Rewriting the North American Trade Agreement Around China?

Daniel Rechtschaffen — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 07:30:43 +0000

Washington has repeatedly used trade policy and U.S. market access over the past decade to advance broader economic security priorities with its trading partners. The Trump administration’s decision not to renew the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on July 1, during a mandatory six-year review, is the latest example of this approach. Despite the inclusion in the U.S. trade representative’s announcement that deficits were a prevailing concern, conversations with industry sources and past statements by the administration indicate that ongoing negotiations increasingly focus on limiting Chinese supply chain inputs by embedding economic security principles into the continent’s trade architecture. Incorporating provisions like investment screening,

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Why Egypt’s Opinion of Ukraine Matters, Now and Later

Nicole Wiley — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 17:30:14 +0000

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war. The perspectives gathered here are varied, candid, and often surprising, together forming a more complete picture of Ukraine as it really is.Frontline and StrategyФокус —

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How to Stop China from Freeriding on American AI

Ryan Fedasiuk — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:00:32 +0000

The release of the Chinese open-weight AI model Kimi K3 has compressed a year’s worth of unresolved AI policy debate into a single news cycle. On July 21, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened sanctions against Chinese labs found to have built their models on “theft,” reporting that the government is “finding watermarks of our U.S. large language models on many of the Chinese models.” The following day, White House science advisor Michael Kratsios clarified that the Chinese AI lab behind K3, Moonshot AI, had built a sophisticated platform to copy Anthropic’s Fable model while evading detection.Industry has been vocal about

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Possible Is Not Plausible: How Nightmare Scenarios Hijack Unconventional Weapons Policy

April Arnold — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 07:30:16 +0000

Current conversations surrounding unconventional weapons — chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear — have become so fantastical as to be unserious. As the Chinese military fundamentally rethinks biological warfare and Russia continues to use chloropicrin in Ukraine, hypothetical scenarios of AI-enabled bioweapons dominate the headlines. If national security leaders and unconventional weapons experts continue to prioritize latent potentialities of emerging technology over current trends, U.S. national security will once again run the risk of being unprepared for an actual chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear incident.Executive agencies and Congress have drastically cut down opportunities for successful unconventional weapons policy formation by eliminating

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The Atlantic Brief: The Strait of Hormuz and the Future of Free Navigation

Andrew Burns — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 20:27:03 +0000

In February 2026, the United States and Israel initiated a war in the Middle East against Iran. Since then, the warring sides have oscillated between strikes, a fragile ceasefire, and the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz. Open hostilities resumed in mid-July. More recently, the Houthis in Yemen have threatened Saudi shipping through the Bab al-Mandab, raising the risk to shipping through that critical waterway.For the first webinar of The Atlantic Brief, War on the Rocks and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) present a dialogue on the Strait of Hormuz and the future of free navigation, exploring the consequences

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Can Cyber Operations Be Deterred? What Wargames Reveal

Ruby Booth — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 07:30:39 +0000

The most successful deterrent threats leave no evidence behind. No missiles fly. No networks go down. No troops cross borders. Nothing happens. For policymakers, that is often the desired outcome. For researchers, it is a nightmare. Imagine, however, being able to observe a decision-maker preparing to attack, receiving a deterrent threat, and then changing their mind. That moment — the instant deterrence succeeds — is arguably the most important observation in international security. It is also one we almost never see.We can see its failure: the red line crossed, the chemical weapons used, the invasion that follows from “military exercises.”

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How Mexico Locked In Its Militarized Police State

Andrew Ivey — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 17:30:17 +0000

In 2021, Andrew Ivey wrote, “‘I Have Other Data’: The Guardia Nacional and the Entrenchment of Mexico’s Militarization’,” where he warned Mexico was headed toward a militarization trap. Five years later, amidst increased pressure from the Trump administration and the election of a new Mexican president, we asked Andrew to revisit his arguments.Image: Sitio Oficial de Andrés Manuel López ObradorIn your 2021 article, you warned that Mexico was headed toward an entrenched militarization trap. In 2024, the Chamber of Deputies passed a constitutional reform formally placing the National Guard under military control, with President Claudia Sheinbaum embracing the change. Has

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ASML’s Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography and the Limits of Reverse Engineering in China

Andrea Gilli — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:00:20 +0000

In June, the U.S. Department of Commerce informed the Dutch company ASML that it suspects one of its extreme ultraviolet lithography machines has reached China, an accusation that ASML denied, and for which no supporting evidence has yet been made public. ASML is the sole global producer of the machines capable of making the most advanced microchips. Whether China obtained a full extreme ultraviolet lithography scanner, major subsystems, or just related components, the strategic question is the same: How much can China gain from physical access to these pieces of the technology?The U.S. concern presumably spans across several dimensions, but

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Parsing Trump’s Decision to (Maybe) Give Uranium Enrichment to Saudi Arabia

Richard Nephew — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 07:30:23 +0000

On June 22, the United States announced that it had signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. This type of agreement broadly authorizes trade in nuclear technology, equipment, and materials, but only if the agreement and the country in question meet defined nonproliferation requirements. They are called Section 123 agreements for the section of the 1957 U.S. Atomic Energy Act that lays out the specific conditions for them. But the legal terms of Section 123 are only the minimum requirements in law: On top of the legal standards are nonproliferation policies that have been held by the United States

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Key Areas Where Water Scarcity Intensifies Risks of Conflict

David Michel — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 17:30:22 +0000

Water disputes can directly drive conflict, but more often, water scarcity acts as a catalyst — one that, combined with other pressures, raises the risk of conflict. This is nothing new; water has shaped human conflict for millennia. What’s changed is the accumulation of stress, as climate change, population growth, human migration, and the intensive demands of agriculture and industry are converging to strain water systems in ways that threaten to exacerbate instability. However, examples of governments cooperating to manage scarce resources also suggest that conflict over water is not inevitable.Water scarcity contributes to the risk of conflict in many

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The Octane Revolution: How Jimmy Doolittle Catalyzed a Wartime Industry

Aidan Poling — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:00:30 +0000

Editor’s note: This is the sixth article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader national security, politics, and society. This series will run for several weeks to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary, and winners will be selected by a reader vote undertaken through our newsletter later this summer. Prior installments can be found at the Arsenal of Innovation page.The impact of chance and poor logistics on warfare is especially acute when a battle or campaign is a close-run thing, as it was over the skies of England in 1940. After all, for want of a

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The First Waves of Amphibious Assault Will Be Unmanned

Brian Kerg — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 07:30:09 +0000

In the Pacific War, the U.S. Navy’s underwater demolition teams prepared the way for U.S. and allied amphibious landings on enemy-held islands. Through beach reconnaissance, obstacle breaching, mine clearance, and other missions, these teams paved paths for the first waves of amphibious assaults conducted by naval task forces and subsequent landings by marines and soldiers throughout the island hopping campaign. These critical first steps of an amphibious operation were incredibly risky in World War II. And the underwater demolition teams, which were the predecessors of the Navy SEALs, were understandably proud of their work. The Marine Corps prided itself on being first to hit the beach. And when marines did hit the beach, they often

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How Orbán’s Fall Changed Serbia’s Political Future

Liudmila Listrovaya — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 07:15:25 +0000

In the speech announcing his invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin took only minutes to arrive at the original sin in his catalogue of Western crimes. Before Iraq, before Libya, before Syria, came Belgrade: “First a bloody military operation was waged against Belgrade, without the U.N. Security Council’s sanction but with combat aircraft and missiles used in the heart of Europe.” The placement was not incidental, as Putin was telling Serbs that Russia’s war in Ukraine and NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia belonged to the same story, and that he, unlike the West, remembered. Aleksandar Vučić has been

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Zelensky’s Political Storm Starts to Clear

Nicole Wiley — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:45:07 +0000

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Taiwan’s Tech Hurdles Threaten Military Capability and Potential Coalition Defense

Fanny Chao — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:00:25 +0000

Taiwan produces the world’s most advanced semiconductors, yet the island’s own military is only in the opening stages of adopting artificial intelligence systems. This mismatch bears directly on Taiwan’s ability to deter Chinese aggression.Beijing is pushing to develop and field sophisticated AI-enabled military capabilities. Given China’s focus on “reuniting” with Taiwan, the Taiwanese military could be the first to contend with the People’s Liberation Army’s emerging defense technologies during a potential conflict. Should the United States, and possibly allied forces, come to the island’s defense, a coalition would benefit from having access to AI-enabled military systems that share data and

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Why Norway and Finland Should Preserve Two of Europe’s Most Important Security Arrangements

Douglas Peifer — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 07:30:26 +0000

Svalbard is a stark archipelago of glaciers and coal mines lying 650 kilometers (403 miles) north of Norway’s North Cape, roughly halfway between the Norwegian mainland and the North Pole. It belongs to Norway but is governed under a 1920 treaty that grants nationals of more than 40 signatory states sweeping economic rights while barring Oslo from constructing naval bases or using the archipelago for “warlike” purposes. Far to the south, in the Baltic Sea between the Finnish and Swedish coasts, lie the Åland Islands, which are composed of roughly 6,500 islands and reefs. They are also home to 30,000

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Global Risks Heating Up

WOTR Staff — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:45:02 +0000

Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below.***IranThe U.S.-Iranian ceasefire agreed in April began deteriorating — and the Memorandum of Understanding signed on June 17 — ramping up to a near-constant exchange of hostilities in early July. On July 10, Trump declared that the ceasefire was over. The United States resumed its naval blockade and has been striking Iranian soil on a daily basis. Iran has targeted vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz while launching drones and missiles at Arab Gulf states

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Before a Cyber Force, Fix Cyber Governance

Justin Hardy — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:30:15 +0000

Let’s not start picking out uniforms just yet. The chorus calling for a Cyber Force continues to grow by the day, but the debate has its priorities backward. In June, an amendment from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) calling for the creation of a cyber service within the Department of the Army failed in the Senate Armed Services Committee by a single vote. Support is popular on both sides of the aisle, with Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) quoted as saying that a “Cyber Force is inevitable.” The highly anticipated June 2026 Center for Strategic and International Studies report skips the question of whether the Department needs a Cyber Force and

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Chaotic Progress: European NATO’s Quest for Stronger Defense

Max Bergmann — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:00:19 +0000

In 2024, Max Bergmann wrote, “NATO Missed a Chance to Transform Itself,” where he argued NATO’s leadership needs to facilitate a strong European pillar of the alliance through structural reforms in European institutions. Two years later, we asked Max to revisit his arguments.Image: The White House via Wikimedia CommonsIn 2024, you argued NATO’s own leadership should facilitate a European pillar. Two years later, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told the European Parliament that anyone who thinks Europe can defend itself without the United States is dreaming, drawing public pushback from European leaders. Does that rift suggest NATO’s leadership is blocking progress on

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America Needs an Off-Ramp Between Doing Nothing and Shutting AI Down

Martijn Rasser — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:26 +0000

For 18 days in June, two of America’s most capable AI models went dark worldwide, not for technical or business reasons, but because the U.S. government ordered it. On June 12, 2026, the Commerce Department informed Anthropic that its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models could no longer be provided to any foreign person without a license, and the company concluded that compliance meant shutting the models down for everyone. Public access to Fable 5 was restored on June 30.The United States doesn’t have a trusted, standardized process for evaluating the security risks of frontier AI models or proportionate remedies

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The King of Cool: Mobile Refrigeration and the Remaking of Global Logistics

Caitlan Fealing — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 07:45:53 +0000

Editor’s note: This is the fifth article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader national security, politics, and society. This series will run for several weeks to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary, and winners will be selected by a reader vote undertaken through our newsletter later this summer. Prior installments can be found at the Arsenal of Innovation page.Have you ever wondered how the United States transitioned from only having local fresh produce to an abundance of perishable goods available year-round across the country, even during the off-season? Today, almost $3 trillion (roughly 2.7

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The Importance of the Invasion of Sicily

Steven T. Barry — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 07:30:48 +0000

On July 10, 1943, the Allied invasion of Sicily — codenamed Operation Husky — put more assault troops ashore on its first day than the Normandy landings would 11 months later. Despite the scale of these amphibious and vertical assaults on the Mediterranean’s largest island, the images most carry of this campaign come from a movie: Patton. In the 1970 film, U.S. Lt. Gen. George S. Patton wins the race to Messina and waits, smirking, as British Lt. Gen. Bernard Montgomery’s column rolls in late. The scene is an invention that reduces the campaign to a duel between two generals’

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