Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”

—Hannah Arendt

"The art of conversation lies in listening."

– Malcolm S. Forbes

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."

– Ernest Hemingway

1. Xi Jinping Is Stripping Down His Military Command and Starting Over

2. China targeting three U.S. ‘centers of gravity’

3. Pentagon urged to wage decision-based AI warfare

4. Talking or Fighting, All of Iran’s Options Are Bad

5. Field Observation: Succession Without Peers – What the removal of peer authority inside the PLA signals for succession

6. Middle East Scrambles to Find U.S., Iran a Diplomatic Off-Ramp

7. When AI Can Fake Majorities, Democracy Dies Quietly

8. Pentagon Official Visits Japan as US Seeks More Defense Spending

9. US cyber defense chief accidentally uploaded secret government info to ChatGPT

10. Inside China’s plans for 'national total war,' according to the Pentagon

11. Army’s CamoGPT won’t be phased out as Pentagon embraces more commercial genAI products

12. Nuremberg’s Shadow: Accountability, Psychology, and Modern War

13. Exaggeration and Ignorance: The “Scramble for the Arctic”

14. Misdiagnosing Protest: How Counterinsurgency Logic Is Being Applied at Home

15. Is America’s Cyber Weakness Self-Inflicted?

16. Economic Statecraft Is Back. Is America Ready?

17. How Does Canada’s Military Fare Without the United States?

18. Wargames Keep Warning Us About Congested Logistics—It’s Time to Take Action

19. Taiwan, China react sharply differently to Japan's Taiwan remarks

20. ‘Speed plus range’: 101st Airborne incorporates Marine Osprey into training to prep for Army’s future tilt-rotor aircraft

1. Xi Jinping Is Stripping Down His Military Command and Starting Over

Summary:

Xi Jinping’s military purge signals both ambition and anxiety. Gen. Zhang Youxia is under investigation, widening a shakeup that has targeted at least 60 senior officers and defense industry figures since mid 2023. The WSJ count says just over one in five three star officers promoted under Xi have been dismissed or probed. Turnover drives fast promotions of less seasoned commanders, while Xi now has only one uniformed member on the party’s top military decision body. The PLA keeps a high tempo near Taiwan, yet procurement probes and a reported 10 percent 2024 revenue drop among major contractors hint at disruption.

Comment: Yes it appears all about corruption. However, I was speaking with someone at UT Austin yesterday and he mentioned one of the reasons could be when Xi saw what POTUS did in Venezuela he asked why the PLA could not give him the same option for Taiwan? His options are blockade and invasion. He may have wanted to know why hadn't the PLA planned for decaptition or if they could even undertake such an operation. Perhaps the failure to develop and provide this option is a result of corruption. Can Xi cut corruption in a way that will lead to increased competence or wlit only undermine it? Does churn reduce deterrence more than it strengthens loyalty? What breaks first in a crisis, hardware or trust? And lastly, how can we and should we exploit these developments?

Xi Jinping Is Stripping Down His Military Command and Starting Over

WSJ

Military purge shows limits of Chinese leader’s efforts to root out corruption and ensure loyalty

By Chun Han Wong

Jan. 28, 2026 11:34 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/xi-jinping-is-stripping-down-his-military-command-and-starting-over-2e747c07?mod=hp_listb_pos4

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in a suit, with senior military officers in December. Li Gang/Associated Press

Beijing’s announcement on Saturday that it was investigating Gen. Zhang Youxia, Xi’s highest-ranking military deputy, for alleged misconduct extended a seismic shake-up of the Chinese military leadership that has already unseated dozens of senior commanders.

Since mid-2023, at least 60 senior military officers and defense-industry executives have been placed under investigation, removed from public office or abruptly replaced, according to official disclosures viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Among them: top officers in China’s army, air force, navy, rocket force and paramilitary police, as well as major theater commands, including the one focused on Taiwan.

Just over one in every five officers whom Xi had promoted to three-star rank has been dismissed or come under investigation for serious misconduct, the Journal’s count found.

Gen. Zhang Youxia is under investigation for alleged misconduct, China’s Ministry of National Defense said on Saturday. Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

The turnover has led to rapid elevations for some commanders who are less experienced and are likely to be preoccupied with stabilizing morale and enforcing loyalty across the rank and file. Xi now has just one uniformed officer serving with him on the Communist Party’s top military decision-making body, which he chairs, down from the original six.

Many senior officers have only taken their jobs within the past two years or so to fill in for purged predecessors. Some replacements have themselves been replaced.

“As far as the corruption problem goes, I think that Xi has concluded that he had no other option but to cull virtually the entire generational cohort at the top” of the People’s Liberation Army, said Jon Czin, a China expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution and former analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.

The PLA remains one of the world’s largest and most formidable armed forces, with an estimated two million personnel operating advanced armaments from stealth fighters to aircraft carriers. Under Xi, China has expanded its nuclear arsenal, surpassed the U.S. in the number of naval vessels and started fielding cutting-edge weapons such as hypersonic missiles that Western powers have yet to master.

China’s military has also maintained a high operational tempo while the purges unfolded, conducting frequent and increasingly complex maneuvers near Taiwan, the island democracy that Beijing claims as its territory. Some analysts have compared Xi’s purges to President Trump’s shake-up of the U.S. military leadership, which has continued to execute major combat operations, including airstrikes on Iran and the capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.

Even so, Xi’s decision to clear out most of the PLA high command is destabilizing for an institution that serves as the ultimate guarantor of Communist Party rule, and which Xi set out to revamp from early on.

The purges also clash with Beijing’s rousing rhetoric about a military on the rise, particularly ahead of the PLA’s centenary in 2027, which Xi has earmarked as a milestone in his “China Dream” of national renaissance. Chinese leaders have long worried about the military’s readiness, it hasn’t fought a full-scale war since 1979 when China battled Vietnam.

Mindful of the troubling optics of the purges, the PLA Daily—the Chinese military’s flagship newspaper—has expressly pushed back against the idea that Xi’s relentless antigraft crackdown was making matters worse.

This isn’t a case of “the more we fight corruption, the more corrupt things get, but rather the more we dig, the deeper we get,” the PLA Daily said in an editorial on the probe against Zhang, which the newspaper portrayed as a show of the party’s resolve to root out corrupt elements, however highly placed.

Beyond the PLA, the purges have also rocked China’s arms industry. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an independent think tank, Xi’s latest purges have had a chilling effect on approvals for projects and arms sales, with the combined arms revenues earned by eight Chinese defense contractors in SIPRI’s rankings falling 10% in 2024.

“A host of corruption allegations in Chinese arms procurement led to major arms contracts being postponed or canceled in 2024,” said Nan Tian, director of the Sipri Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program. “This deepens uncertainty around the status of China’s military modernization efforts and when new capabilities will materialize.”

China has one of the world’s largest militaries. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Best-laid plans

When Xi took power in 2012, the party and its military were so plagued with corruption that graft was considered a threat. Beijing has disclosed—and the Journal has previously reported—that many officers were buying and selling ranks, siphoning funds meant for arms procurement and improperly leasing military land for property projects.

One popular grift involved running improper trades in military license plates, which drivers could abuse to speed through traffic and avoid paying road tolls.

At the same time, Xi had to contend with an outmoded command structure that was seen as susceptible to corruption and ill-equipped to fight modern wars. The military had four major departments overseeing operations, arms procurement, logistics and indoctrination, and seven major “military regions,” each operating like independent fiefs.

Xi threw out that system, overhauling the military’s command structure to centralize control in his own hands and overcome a lack of coordination between various armed services. He also announced cuts for 300,000 personnel to trim bloat in the military.

To help break up patronage networks, Xi purged two retired vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, the powerful body commanding the armed forces, and other senior generals. He brought in allies to execute modernization plans, including Zhang Youxia, a combat veteran with close ties to Xi.

But as military spending soared, new opportunities for graft emerged. Under Xi, China’s defense budget has more than doubled to 1.78 trillion yuan, around $257 billion, in 2025, compared with about 670 billion yuan in 2012, according to government data.

Some of the military commanders and industry executives cashiered in the past 2½ years, including Zhang, had been working in areas that benefited significantly from the influx of state funding, particularly weapons development.

Russian example

Xi’s latest military purges started in the summer of 2023, when Russian forces were bogged down in Ukraine. Moscow’s struggles there, after spending billions of dollars to upgrade its military, were a sign to Chinese leaders that ambitious overhauls don’t necessarily yield a formidable fighting force.

An abortive rebellion led by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, once an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, provided a vivid reminder that military loyalty can’t be taken for granted.

In July 2023, Chinese state media revealed that the general commanding the PLA Rocket Force, which operates China’s land-based nuclear arsenal, had been abruptly replaced. Other senior Rocket Force officers disappeared and were later accused of serious misconduct. The new Rocket Force commander would himself be expelled in October 2025.

A Pentagon assessment on China’s military power concluded that the dismissals were possibly connected to fraud cases involving the construction of underground silos for ballistic missiles.

The purges soon widened, ensnaring generals who had worked in arms procurement—including China’s defense minister at the time, Li Shangfu. Li had worked on space-launch missions earlier in his career, when he developed ties with China’s aerospace industry, a sector that also came under scrutiny from antigraft inspectors.

Senior executives at major defense contractors started disappearing, too, being replaced, dismissed from public office, or formally placed under investigation.

Of the 81 military officers promoted to three-star rank under Xi, at least 17—or just over one in five—have been expelled from the party, removed from office or faced disciplinary probes since the summer of 2023, according to the Journal review. Others have missed high-profile meetings in recent months, fueling speculation about their fate.

Inspectors are continuing to probe misconduct. In December, the military issued a notice soliciting tips on procurement-related violations in the air force, with a deadline set at the end of June.

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com

Appeared in the January 29, 2026, print edition as 'Xi Struggles to Curb Military Corruption'.

WSJ

2. China targeting three U.S. ‘centers of gravity’

Summary:

Bill Gertz reports that U.S. defense officials see Beijing pressuring three American “centers of gravity”: political decision-making, alliances in the wider Asia-Indo-Pacific, and U.S. power projection. The piece argues the United Front Work Department drives influence and information operations meant to skew choices and slow crisis decisions. It also links cyber pre-positioning, described as “Vault Typhoon” and “Salt Typhoon,” to plans for domestic disruption and delayed deployments. Public U.S. advisories instead use “Volt Typhoon,” so treat the naming as contested. A sober counterpoint: “center of gravity” can become a catchall unless effects are measurable.

Comment: I am told that center of gravity analysis is obsolete and an anachronism in the world of AI. What is the real choke point in U.S. decision-making under stress: speed, legitimacy, or trust? If cyber aims to slow force flow, what is the operational test for resilience? If alliances are a center of gravity, what holds them together when costs rise?

From my center of gravity analysis of our NSS and NDS strategies yesterday:

“If allies perceive that the United States is retrenching, the community of interest weakens. If domestic audiences perceive that alliances impose endless costs without clear purpose, public opinion turns inward.”

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/28/clausewitz-american-center-of-gravity/

If China perceives our alliances as a genter of gravity and thus important to US national security shouldn't we take that as a sign that perhaps we should defend them (and sustain and strengthen them)?.

China targeting three U.S. ‘centers of gravity’

washingtontimes.com · Bill Gertz

By - The Washington Times - Wednesday, January 28, 2026

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jan/28/inside-ring-china-targeting-three-us-centers-gravity/

NEWS AND ANALYSIS:

The military has identified three “centers of gravity” under attack by the Chinese Communist Party with the goal of weakening and defeating the U.S., Inside the Ring has learned.

A center of gravity refers to a military’s main sources of power, strength and will to act. The term originated with 19th century Prussian military theorist Gen. Carl von Clausewitz.

The first target of China’s potential whole-of-government attack on an American center of gravity would be U.S. political decision-making — the ability of civilian and military leaders to rapidly make decisions.

The CCP organization behind targeting critical American decision-making is the United Front Work Department, a combination intelligence-gathering and influence unit with a budget estimated to be as high as $11 billion annually.

The work department has been identified by the U.S. military as the engine behind China’s massive information warfare operations that use disinformation, propaganda and money to skew and impact American decision-making.

The second center of gravity under assault from China is the American network of friends, allies and partners.

For years, Chinese civilian and military operations have sought to peel off Asian allies and partners that support the U.S., mainly through propaganda and political operations designed to send the message to the allies that the U.S. is a destabilizing and disruptive force. The narrative also asserts that Asia should be for Asians alone and that the U.S. must stay in its own hemisphere — a strategy bolstered by President Trump’s heavy emphasis on expanding American power and influence in the Western Hemisphere.

Beijing’s efforts in this strategic domain have so far been unsuccessful, with China damaging its reputation with aggressive and threatening activities and attempts to create vassal states out of regional U.S. allies.

China recently introduced a new element in this effort by subtly shifting the narrative with information operations asserting the U.S. is a hostile power trying to drag Taiwan, the Philippines and other regional states into wars.

Reframing its past approach to Taiwan, Beijing political and military strategists are now claiming — falsely, in the U.S. view — that during World War II, China, Russia and the U.S. teamed up to defeat fascism and now Taiwan remains the final fascist bastion. Regional states are encouraged to join China in closing a final chapter of the war by forcing unification.

Along with this line of attack, the CCP is claiming its forces, and not the U.S., were the victors in World War II. In fact the party’s forces sat out the war and then when it ended stepped in and took advantage of the aftermath in seizing power in 1949.

Leaders of regional states in the Indo-Pacific so far have not fallen for China’s new approach, however.

China’s goal in achieving regional dominance seeks to play on historical grievances, to revise history to suit its goals and to expand its power over the entire region.

The third center of gravity under assault from China is the targeting of U.S. power projection capabilities.

This is evident in recent high-profile hacking operations code-named Vault Typhoon and Salt Typhoon.

The Chinese intelligence and military hacking programs are designed for conducting devastating cyberattacks in a future crisis or conflict.

The cyber intrusions are planned for attacks that will cause large-scale civil disruption and chaos in the U.S., and to disrupt and slow down U.S. leaders’ ability to make rapid decisions.

Chinese cyberstrikes are intended to be used to prevent U.S. forces from deploying and maneuvering and provide the PLA with superiority in all military domains — information, air and maritime — to prevent U.S. and allied forces from intervening in China’s military actions.

Kerry K. Gershaneck, a professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan, said China attacks America’s centers of gravity through sophisticated cognitive warfare that seeks “mind superiority.”

“China identifies cognition — how we think — as the ‘ultimate domain’ in conflict and war,” he said.

The CCP employs algorithmic social media warfare, United Front operations, cyberattacks, and a range of other warfares to disrupt our reasoning, decisions, and actions, he said.

“Specifically, China hopes to disrupt our political decision making, split us off from our allies and friends, and block our ability to militarily respond to China’s aggression in Asia,” Mr. Gershaneck said.

Beijing’s view of high-level military purge

Chinese government spokesmen normally are very forward-leaning in commenting on all manner of geopolitical events, large and small.

That, however, has not been the case so far regarding the stunning purge announced Saturday of the People’s Liberation Army’s most senior general, Gen. Zhang Youxia.

Gen. Zhang, one of two vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, is under investigation for both political and financial crimes, the Chinese Defense Ministry announced in a brief statement.

Despite the silence from Beijing, Inside the Ring has obtained an official view from the CCP on what is being called the highest-ranking political purge of a military general since the ouster of PLA Marshall Lin Bao.

Lin died in a plane crash fleeing China in 1971 after what the CCP authorities claimed was a failed coup attempt. He was later denounced as a traitor.

Like Lin, Gen. Zhang reportedly came under suspicion by CCP authorities for political and financial crimes, including allegations that he leaked nuclear secrets to the U.S. — something the party considers high treason.

Gen. Zhang’s ouster is said to have come as a shock inside China because he was viewed as having close personal ties to President Xi Jinping, the current chairman of the powerful military commission.

The high-level purge, like others in recent years, is part of Mr. Xi’s efforts to consolidate power and to remove potential rival centers of influence.

Beijing also signaled with the purge of Gen. Zhang that the military pressure campaign involving large and threatening drills around Taiwan will continue.

Military action against Taiwan, however, is said to be unlikely and is not imminent as a result of the most senior military leader’s dismissal.

The purge of Gen. Zhang is expected to introduce a period of temporary risk aversion to PLA planners.

According to the view from Beijing, the removal of Gen. Zhang will leave a military leadership vacuum in the upper ranks of the PLA until new officers are appointed. Also, the purge is expected to temporarily disrupt operational continuity and military decision-making.

The timing of the high-ranking purge also comes weeks before a key CCP meeting in March and months before a late 2027 major party conference called the 21st Party Congress.

Similar events in the past were used by the party to announce major leadership and personnel changes. The 21st Congress is expected to further solidify Mr. Xi’s unchallenged grip on power.

The fired CMC vice chairman was not immune from corruption and violations of CCP rules and most of his subordinating general officers also were purged.

No reliable stories or rumors of his current fate have circulated or surfaced in China.

Political stability remains intact and people appear calm with no signs of panic in Beijing.

Gen. Zhang is said to have a stern and unsmiling personality with limited knowledge of the U.S.

U.S. analysts dispute the notion the purge is part of Mr. Xi’s anti-corruption drive and instead say the Chinese supreme leader is preparing to appoint more competent PLA generals who share his views on future military action against Taiwan.

K. Tristan Tang, a China expert at the Secure Taiwan Associate Corporation and the Center for China Studies at National Taiwan University, said a close look at Gen. Zhang suggests he was purged over disagreements with Mr. Xi.

Gen. Zhang and a second high-ranking officer, Gen. Liu Zhengli, likely disagreed with the Chinese leader “over PLA development, particularly the joint operations training timeline, and may have pursued policies or issued orders that ran counter to Xi’s directives,” Mr. Tang said in a report published by the Jamestown Foundation.

“The simultaneous announcement of investigations into Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli indicates the decision stemmed from the same underlying cause,” he said.

Pentagon urged to wage decision-based AI warfare

The Pentagon is joining the global race to use artificial intelligence to produce more lethal forces but needs to shift from the current use of large language models to a new form of combat that a high-tech company is calling “agentic warfare.”

“Genuine strategic advantage in this new era will not come from stealthier jets, faster missiles or larger drone swarms alone; it will come from new kinds of human-machine teaming that drive accelerated decision-making,” the company Scale AI said in a new report.

The essence of agentic warfare is providing “decision advantage” at all levels of command. This advanced war-fighting capability will allow U.S. forces to outpace and outmaneuver the most capable enemies, the report says.

“The United States must capitalize on its first-mover advantage before adversaries do,” the report said.

The report by Scale AI executives Dan Tadross and Jared Jonker said the national security usage of large language AI models has produced impressive tools.

But the tools are mainly benefiting “clever junior staffers, summarizing emails or drafting memos, yet unable to execute complex tasks or interact with the physical world,” the report says.

War is not fought using text, and future military AI will be carried out with networks or groups of AI agents that can monitor the battlespace, plan, test and execute complex actions at speeds no human officer can match.

A fully armed military with strategically superior AI systems also would produce a deterrence of conflict through a superior decision-making advantage.

For example, a war in 2026 will include the world’s most advanced military sensors and weapons but will be hampered by an inability to rapidly connect them.

“We still rely on linear, manual workflows that produce static Operational Plans in physical binders that take two years to write and are often obsolete by the time they are printed,” Mr. Tadross and Mr. Jonker said.

“In a conflict with a near-peer adversary like China, we will not have two years; we may not even have two days.”

The authors warn that China’s military already has begun reorganizing its forces around so-called “intelligentized warfare” and “command brains.” These tools will seek to cognitively overwhelm enemies not equipped with AI-enabled systems and that can collapse American decision-making.

• Contact Bill Gertz on X @BillGertz.

• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.

washingtontimes.com · Bill Gertz

3. Pentagon urged to wage decision-based AI warfare

Summary:

The Washington Times reports that Scale AI urged the Pentagon to shift from using AI as a staff aid to using AI agents for “decision advantage.” The proposal, called agentic warfare, envisions networks of agents that fuse data, run scenarios, and help commanders choose and adapt faster than an opponent. It criticizes today’s linear planning and static operational plans that take years to write and arrive obsolete. It also argues large language tools draft text and cannot execute complex tasks or interact with the physical world, so real gains require human machine teaming in command and control at every echelon.

Comment: Accountability. Who is accountable when an agent’s recommendation drives lethal tempo? What must remain slow on purpose, even in a two day war?

How do you prove “decision advantage?"

I want to know how we can develop Ai with coup d'oiel? i.e., Clausewitz "inward looking eye" based on education and experience that can use imperfect information in the fog and friction of war to make sound judgments at the right time. When you can tell me AI has coup d'oiel then let's talk.

Pentagon urged to wage decision-based AI warfare

washingtontimes.com · Bill Gertz

By - The Washington Times - Thursday, January 29, 2026

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jan/29/pentagon-urged-wage-decision-based-ai-warfare/

“The United States must capitalize on its first-mover advantage before adversaries do,” the report said.

The report by Scale AI executives Dan Tadross and Jared Jonker said the national security usage of large language AI models has produced impressive tools.

But the tools are mainly benefiting “clever junior staffers, summarizing emails or drafting memos, yet unable to execute complex tasks or interact with the physical world,” the report says.

A fully armed military with strategically superior AI systems also would produce a deterrence of conflict through a superior decision-making advantage.

For example, a war in 2026 will include the world’s most advanced military sensors and weapons but will be hampered by an inability to rapidly connect them.

“In a conflict with a near-peer adversary like China, we will not have two years; we may not even have two days.”

• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.

washingtontimes.com · Bill Gertz

4. Talking or Fighting, All of Iran’s Options Are Bad

Summary:

POTUS’s ultimatum forces Iran into a lose-lose choice. Accepting a halt to enrichment, a core U.S. demand, would look like surrender on a pillar Khamenei has made symbolic of defiance. Refusing raises the odds of U.S. strikes, while Tehran’s threat of retaliation is risky because it could trigger escalation and reveal real capacity. The WSJ argues Iran is trying to buy time, yet time is shrinking as Washington increases military capability in the region, including an aircraft carrier, guided-missile destroyers, warplanes, and missile defenses. The article also notes limits on what outside force can achieve without ground involvement.

Comment: What does “deal” mean if each side defines survival differently? If force is used, what is the achievable political end state - or more precisely the acceptable durable political arrangement that will support, protect, and advance US national security interests?

Talking or Fighting, All of Iran’s Options Are Bad

WSJ

Trump’s new threats highlight how the regime is in its most dire position in decades

By David S. Cloud

, Alexander Ward

and Benoit Faucon

Jan. 28, 2026 12:42 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/talking-or-fighting-all-of-irans-options-are-bad-c3527c0a?mod=hp_listb_pos2

Security forces monitoring a pro-government rally earlier this month in Tehran. Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

President Trump’s ultimatum to Iran to negotiate away its nuclear program or face a possible attack leaves Tehran with a daunting dilemma: Either path risks putting the already weakened regime in a more precarious position.

“Hopefully Iran will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal—NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS—one that is good for all parties. Time is running out,” Trump posted on social media Wednesday. “The next attack will be far worse!”

A decision to halt enrichment of uranium, a key U.S. demand, would be a humiliating public retreat on a core national priority for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Rebuffing the demand is increasingly likely to prompt Trump to order strikes, further exposing the government’s vulnerability.

Either way, the regime is facing the most dire external threats to its survival in decades after protests over deep economic woes grew so fierce that they could only be put down with a deadly crackdown.

“Their strategy right now is just buying time,” said Alan Eyre, a former senior U.S. diplomat who specialized in Iran and is now at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank. “Their whole strategic outlook is when you’re in a weak position you don’t compromise, because that invites further aggression.”

Trump said Wednesday that a “massive Armada” was “moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose,” adding that it was “ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary.” The Pentagon’s buildup in the region includes an aircraft carrier with three guided missiles destroyers, warplanes and missile defenses.

Iran was in a similar position a year ago. Israel had carried out limited strikes that weakened the country’s air defenses and decimated militia allies Hezbollah and Hamas. A newly elected Trump was threatening to take military action if Tehran didn’t make concessions on its nuclear program.

This time, though, the squeeze is even worse. The regime was battered by the 12-day June war and a tightening of sanctions on its oil exports last fall. In the months since, the U.S. demands for a negotiated solution have gone up.

People checking the damage in a building hit by Israeli airstrikes in June in Tehran. Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

Along with insisting that Iran halt domestic enrichment of nuclear fuel and hand over its stockpile of uranium, Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff has indicated Tehran must accept limits on its ballistic-missile arsenal and abandon its support for militias in the region.

Iran already has rejected some of Washington’s terms. A senior Iranian official said Tehran wouldn’t compromise on its right to continue enrichment for civilian purposes or to maintain its missile arsenal, which it considers necessary for its defense.

Even a U.S. offer to ease sanctions that have crushed the Iranian economy in return for accepting limits on its nuclear program would be hard for the regime to accept, since Khamenei has elevated the nuclear program into a symbol of Iran’s defiance of the West, analysts said.

“The supreme leader is able to do compromises, but those compromises cannot touch the basic pillars of the regime, meaning he won’t forgo a missile buildup, he won’t forgo helping proxies and he won’t forgo enrichment,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a former Israeli intelligence officer and a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies.

Iranian officials are wary of making concessions to Trump, citing his decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal and Israel’s surprise attack in June just days before the U.S. and Iran were set to meet for another round of talks.

A White House official declined to comment on negotiations with Iran but said Trump is pleased that Iran canceled plans to hang more than 800 people and “hopes this trend continues.” Tehran prosecutor Ali Salehi pushed back against the president’s claim about the suspended hangings last week, saying, “Trump always talks a lot of nonsense.”

Hoping to deter an attack, Iranian officials are threatening massive retaliation against U.S. bases, warships and allies in the region, including Israel. But carrying out that threat is itself a risky strategy, one that will require revealing the strength of its arsenal of missiles and drones and that could invite further escalation by Trump.

Iranian clerics participating in an anti-U.S. rally in November. Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA/Shutterstock

The senior Iranian official said the country would have no option but to consider any U.S. attack, limited or not, as an existential threat and respond with the most force possible.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York replied to Trump’s warning on social media Wednesday, arguing that the U.S. was embarking on another risky war and mimicking Trump’s all-caps threats.

“Last time the U.S. blundered into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it squandered over $7 trillion and lost more than 7,000 American lives,” the mission said. “Iran stands ready for dialogue based on mutual respect and interests—BUT IF PUSHED, IT WILL DEFEND ITSELF AND RESPOND LIKE NEVER BEFORE!”

Trump could also opt for a strategy of tightening economic pressure on Iran’s already reeling economy. That could include trying to choke off Tehran’s oil exports by intercepting so-called ghost-fleet tankers—a version of the strategy he used in removing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.

Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said the Venezuela playbook would envision using “economic strangulation as a precursor to political, and possibly military, decapitation, aimed ultimately at Ayatollah Khamenei.”

Citrinowicz said killing Khamenei or expecting the other members of the regime to turn against him under U.S. pressure is a faint hope given Iran’s unity at the top. Even if Khamenei was somehow removed, the regime would likely coalesce quickly around a new leader, he said.

For all the setbacks the regime has suffered, there are few signs it is facing imminent collapse, such as splits within the leadership or the defections at the top of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the paramilitary organization that is closely aligned with Khamenei.

“They still have cohesion. The regime is still functioning,” Citrinowicz said. “If they feel this war is aimed at toppling this regime, it won’t topple this regime, because to do it will take time, and Trump has no intention to invest that time.”

Trump made clear during the 12-day war last summer that he viewed Khamenei as a possible target.

“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” he posted on social media in June. “He is an easy target, but is safe there—We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”

After promising to come to the protesters’ aid, the president nearly ordered a new round of airstrikes around the height of the Iranian crackdown earlier this month. But he held off after Israel and his advisers warned him the U.S. wasn’t militarily positioned to handle Iran’s retaliation.

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The carrier strike group and jet fighters now in the Middle East give Trump more capability to attack and defend. The White House and Pentagon have continued to refine options, though the president hasn’t made a decision about whether to strike, U.S. officials said.

Ultimately, the U.S. is facing limits of its own. There is little it can do from outside with military force to determine the regime’s fate, especially without deploying ground troops to influence events inside the country, analysts said.

“You could do airstrikes that significantly restrict this regime’s ability to control its population and to project power abroad,” Eyre said. “But to get from there to a better form of government in Iran? You can’t get there from here.”

Write to David S. Cloud at david.cloud@wsj.com, Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com

WSJ

5. Field Observation: Succession Without Peers – What the removal of peer authority inside the PLA signals for succession

Summary:

Erika Lafrennie argues the Zhang Youxia purge signals a change in PLA top level authority, not just discipline. Removing a senior, combat-experienced, personally connected figure reduces “peer constraint” inside the Central Military Commission and leaves a command environment organized around personal authority. She notes official language focused on violating the CMC chairman responsibility system and harming combat capability, and she flags timing tied to the final training cycle before 2027 and early 15th Five-Year Plan implementation. The effects are structural: narrower space for professional dissent, more vertical information flow, and corrections that arrive late and abruptly.

Comment: Again, how do we exploit this?

Field Observation: Succession Without Peers

What the removal of peer authority inside the PLA signals for succession

Erika Lafrennie

Jan 28, 2026

https://www.xinanigans.com/p/succession-without-peers?publication_id=5221340&utm

Most commentary on the recent purge of senior PLA leadership has focused on familiar questions: corruption, loyalty, readiness for Taiwan, or—at the outer edge—rumors of coups and internal revolt. Those readings miss what changed.

The removal of Zhang Youxia and other top uniformed commanders altered the structure of authority at the top of the Chinese military. The Central Military Commission now operates with fewer figures capable of exercising independent professional or institutional weight. What remains is a sharply centralized command environment, organized almost entirely around personal authority rather than peer constraint at the top. This shift is unusual not because loyalty enforcement is new, but because of who was removed.

Zhang Youxia occupied a different position from most senior officers removed in recent anti-corruption campaigns. He was older than Xi Jinping, combat-experienced, institutionally senior, and personally connected. His continued presence after the 20th Party Congress, despite age and tenure norms, reflected that status. His removal therefore signals something different from routine discipline enforcement. It marks the elimination of a category of authority that had become increasingly rare inside the PLA: senior figures with sufficient stature to question timelines, resist acceleration, or slow execution without immediately appearing disloyal. This removal eliminated peer authority at the top of the PLA.

The mechanics of the purge reinforce this reading. Official language emphasized violations of the CMC chairman responsibility system and damage to combat capability, not merely personal corruption. The timing, coming as the PLA entered the final annual training cycle before 2027 and the first year of the 15th Five-Year Plan’s implementation, suggests concern with compliance and execution, not just past misconduct. The scope of the removals left the top of the military unusually thin, reducing lateral checks within the command structure. Taken together, these features point to a structural adjustment rather than a symbolic one.

The resulting system displays several observable characteristics. Decision-making authority is now more concentrated. The space for professional dissent at the top has narrowed. Promotion pathways appear increasingly tied to demonstrated loyalty rather than accumulated institutional standing. Information is more likely to flow vertically than laterally. These are not judgments about effectiveness; they are features of how the system is now organized. They alter how the system responds to pressure.

In most authoritarian systems, senior peers play a quiet but important role during periods of transition. They provide informal constraint, shape elite consensus, and act as buffers when leadership arrangements change. Zhang Youxia’s stature made him relevant to that process regardless of personal ambition. His removal reduces the PLA’s capacity to act as an autonomous pole of authority during a future leadership transition. That does not eliminate succession uncertainty, but it does change its texture.

A system without peers is less likely to generate open resistance, but also less likely to surface problems early. Disagreement still exists, but it is pushed downward. Correction becomes harder to signal upward. When adjustment finally occurs, it is more likely to arrive abruptly than incrementally. What changed, then, is how difficulty will manifest during succession.

The PLA is now more tightly bound to Xi Jinping personally and less able to shape outcomes independently of him. That alignment reduces the risk of overt challenge. It also increases reliance on a narrower decision-making circle at precisely the moment when institutional resilience matters most. This signals consolidation and reveals how much redundancy has been stripped from the system.

Xi may have resolved the constraint in front of him, but the constraints that will follow remain unresolved.

6. Middle East Scrambles to Find U.S., Iran a Diplomatic Off-Ramp

Summary:

Middle Eastern governments are searching for a diplomatic off-ramp between the U.S. and Iran, but early mediation is stalling as both sides dig in. Egypt, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have pressed for talks with little progress. POTUS is pairing threats with a regional force buildup and demands a deal that includes zero enrichment plus limits on missiles and proxies. Iran repeats its long-held lines: no talks under pressure, a claimed right to enrich, and no negotiation over ballistic missiles. With positions this far apart, intermediaries are left selling process while the clock becomes a weapon.

Comment: What single, face-saving first move can both sides accept without locking in surrender?

Middle East Scrambles to Find U.S., Iran a Diplomatic Off-Ramp

WSJ

Efforts to get negotiations started are yet to bear fruit, as Trump makes new threats

By Summer Said

, Laurence Norman

and Jared Malsin

Updated Jan. 29, 2026 8:09 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/middle-east-scrambles-to-find-u-s-iran-a-diplomatic-off-ramp-0aad670c

President Trump said 'time is running out’ in a social-media post threatening Iran. Jose Luis Magana/AP

A number of Middle Eastern governments are trying to push the U.S. and Iran into talks to head off a possible conflict, efforts that so far are failing to gain traction as both sides dig in.

The diplomatic efforts have new urgency now that the U.S. has moved more firepower into the region and President Trump is making new threats to attack Iran if a deal isn’t reached. But Iran has stuck by its longstanding red lines for negotiations while the U.S. has toughened the terms it wants to see in a deal.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty held separate calls Wednesday with his Iranian counterpart and Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff but made no progress. Iran strongly objected to the U.S. terms and warned targets across the region would be fair game in the event of a U.S. strike, people familiar with the conversations said.

Efforts by Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia in recent days were similarly fruitless, people familiar with those outreaches said.

NATO ally Turkey—whose president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has a close relationship with Trump—is also pushing Washington to negotiate with Iran to head off a conflict that the Turkish government views as destabilizing.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan spoke Wednesday with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, about efforts to reduce tensions, Turkish Foreign Ministry officials said. Araghchi is set to travel to Turkey on Friday. Trump spoke to Erdogan on Wednesday.

“Iran is ready to renegotiate on the nuclear file,” Fidan said in an interview Wednesday with Al Jazeera. “My advice to Americans has always been this: Close the files with Iran one by one. Start with nuclear, close that, then move on to the others. If you present them all as a whole, it will be very difficult for our Iranian friends to digest and process, and may even seem humiliating at times.”

Failure of the diplomatic efforts would raise the risk of military conflict as the U.S. brings an aircraft carrier group, squadrons of warplanes and more missile defenses into the region to support a possible attack.

“Hopefully Iran will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal,” Trump said Wednesday on social media.

“Time is running out,” he warned, before making a reference to last year’s U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. “The next attack will be far worse!”

A White House official declined earlier to comment on negotiations with Iran.

“Iran and the U.S. continued to have such a gulf between their positions on the nuclear issue that any diplomatic proposal endorsed by one of them would be a nonstarter for the other,” said Nicole Grajewski, fellow at the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “So it locked them into a stalemate where neither side would make concessions over their positions.”

Tehran's international isolation has deepened. Vahid Salemi/AP

Recent protests have been met with a fierce response from Iranian authorities. Anonymous/Getty Images

The developments wind the clock back to last spring, when Trump’s efforts to negotiate away Iran’s nuclear program failed and the country’s 12-day war with Israel ensued, with the U.S. entering the conflict toward the end.

This time the stakes for Iran’s theocratic rulers are even higher. The country was rocked at the beginning of the year by mass protests that were only put down with a deadly crackdown that left thousands dead. Iran’s economy is crumbling with little way out absent sanctions relief, which would require humiliating concessions on its nuclear program. And the threat of an American attack is clear.

Yet Iran for now has stuck by the three principles that have governed its approach to talks with the West for two decades. It insists it won’t enter talks under pressure to sign up to outcomes predetermined by the U.S. It won’t give up what it calls its right to enrich uranium at home, and it is unwilling to negotiate constraints on its powerful ballistic-missile program.

Those conditions run up against Washington’s efforts to push Tehran into speedy talks under the threat of military force. It wants a deal to include zero Iranian enrichment and the removal of Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpile, along with limits on ballistic missiles and the reining in of Iran’s regional proxies.

Where U.S. officials said last spring they were open to agreeing to a basic framework for a deal before talks that would hammer it out in detail, that flexibility hasn’t been evident since Iran’s position weakened in June.

Qatar and Oman have sought ways to revive the negotiations, including some form of nonaggression pact, but people familiar with the discussions say the efforts haven’t gained traction.

Trump’s social-media post Wednesday said a “massive Armada” was “moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose,” adding that it was “ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary.” The Pentagon’s buildup in the region includes an aircraft carrier with three guided-missile destroyers, warplanes and missile defenses.

Iranian officials are threatening massive retaliation against U.S. bases, warships and allies in the region.

“Our brave Armed Forces are prepared—with their fingers on the trigger—to immediately and powerfully respond to ANY aggression against our beloved land, air, and sea,” Araghchi said Wednesday on social media.

In a sign of Iran’s growing isolation, the European Union agreed on Thursday to take a step that Washington has long called for—list Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror organization, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said.

The move won’t have a major economic impact on Iran, because the Revolutionary Guard already faces U.S. and EU sanctions. But it represents a politically significant hardening of attitudes in Europe after Iran’s crackdown on protesters.

Speaking on her way into a meeting of EU foreign ministers, the bloc’s foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas said the EU move will place the Revolutionary Guard on the same footing with al Qaeda, Hamas and Islamic State.

“If you act as a terrorist, you should also be treated as terrorists,” she said.

Write to Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com, Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com and Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com

WSJ

7. When AI Can Fake Majorities, Democracy Dies Quietly

Summary:

Packer and Van Bavel and coauthors warn that “malicious AI swarms” can fake majorities by running coordinated fleets of AI personas that look like distinct citizens, learn what works, and sustain influence over time. The democratic harm is not only false claims. It is synthetic consensus that collapses independent judgment, then turns crowds into mirrors. They point to the DOJ’s July 9, 2024 disruption of a Russia-linked AI-enhanced operation involving 968 accounts impersonating Americans as a sign this is already real. Their fixes focus on detecting coordination, strengthening provenance without killing anonymity, stress-testing with simulations, and changing incentives.

Comment: This is pretty scary. If legitimacy depends on consent, what does consent mean when “the crowd” can be manufactured? John Locke (and his social contract) must be rolling in his grave. Or maybe AI will resurrect him to revise the social contract in the world of AI.

The graphic at the link is very informative.

Research Bulletin

When AI Can Fake Majorities, Democracy Dies Quietly

The new threat of "malicious AI swarms”—and how to defend the public sphere

Dominic Packer & Jay Van Bavel, Daniel Thilo, and Jonas R. Kunst

Jan 27, 2026

https://www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/when-ai-can-fake-majorities-democracy

Imagine you’re doomscrolling through your social media feed. A political controversy breaks—and within minutes, it feels like a tidal wave of commentary. Thousands of “ordinary people” pile on, repeating a theme, sharing links, and “liking” each other’s posts while drowning out dissent.

You start to wonder: Am I out of touch? Is this what people really think?

Now imagine that wave wasn’t a wave of people at all.

That’s one of the central risks we outline in our new Science Policy Forum article on malicious AI swarms—coordinated fleets of AI agents that can imitate authentic social opinions and actions at scale.

Why is this dangerous for democracy? No democracy can guarantee perfect truth, but democratic deliberation depends on something more fragile: the independence of voices. The “wisdom of crowds” works only if the crowd is made of distinct individuals; when one actor can speak through thousands of masks—and create the illusion of grassroots agreement—that independence collapses into synthetic consensus.

“when one actor can speak through thousands of masks—and create the illusion of grassroots agreement—that independence collapses into synthetic consensus”

This is no longer just theory. In July 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it disrupted a Russia-linked, AI-enhanced bot operation involving 968 accounts impersonating Americans. And while estimates vary by platform and method, online discourse about major global events often involves substantial automated activity—on the order of ~20% in one global comparison.

At the same time, the market is beginning to industrialize coordinated synthetic activity: reporting in 2025 described Doublespeed, backed by Andreessen Horowitz, as marketing tools to orchestrate actions across thousands of social accounts, including attempts to mimic “natural” interaction via physical devices.

Concrete signs of industrialization are also emerging: the Vanderbilt Institute of National Security released an archive of documents describing “GoLaxy” as an AI-driven influence machine built around data harvesting, profiling, and AI personas for large-scale operations. And campaign-tech vendors market supporter-mobilization platforms and have begun promoting AI-powered analytics—an example of how “human-in-the-loop” coordination could be scaled even before fully autonomous swarms arrive.

Not all automation is malicious. But the capability jump due to developments in AI matters. What changes when automation can coordinate, infiltrate, adapt, and build trust over time?

An illustration of the capabilities of malicious AI swarms and how they can potential harm democratic discourse and institutions.

What is a “malicious AI swarm”?

We use “malicious AI swarm” to describe a set of AI-controlled agents that can maintain persistent identities and memory, coordinate toward shared objectives while varying tone and content, adapt in real time to feedback, operate with minimal human oversight, and deploy across platforms.

That combination distinguishes swarms from yesterday’s botnets. Older systems often relied on rigid scripts, repetition, and obvious synchronization. AI Swarms can now generate unique, context-aware content while still moving together as a coherent organism. They are less like a megaphone and more like a coordinated social system—and may therefore be much harder to detect and prevent.

Several shifts make swarms especially potent. Coordination can become fluid and hive-like, rather than purely “central command.” Swarms can infiltrate communities by mapping network structure and local cues at scale. They can evade detectors tuned for copy-paste behavior by producing human-level variation. They can also self-optimize through rapid experimentation—testing alternatives, learning what works, and propagating winning strategies quickly. Most importantly, they can persist over long periods, embedding in communities for weeks, months, or longer and shaping discourse gradually.

Why this is dangerous for democracy (it’s not just “misinformation”)

Democracy doesn’t require perfect truth—but it does require something more fragile: independent voices. The “wisdom of crowds” depends on independence between judgments. If a single actor can speak through thousands of inauthentic accounts, the apparent consensus of the crowd stops being informative.

One pathway of harm is synthetic consensus: creating the illusion of a majority opinion. Swarms can seed narratives across niches and amplify them via coordinated liking, replying, and cross-posting until it looks like broad support. People update beliefs partly through social evidence—what seems normal, common, or widely endorsed. Synthetic consensus exploits that cognitive shortcut.

A second pathway is segmented realities. Because swarms can mimic local language, emotion, and identity cues, they can tailor narratives community-by-community, reinforcing polarization and making cross-group cooperation and consensus harder.

A third pathway is poisoning the information substrate for future AI—sometimes described as “LLM grooming.” A long-term strategy is to flood the web with machine-targeted content so future models ingest and reproduce distorted narratives.

A fourth is synthetic harassment: scaling intimidation and smear campaigns until people self-censor. Swarms can generate relentless, tailored abuse that looks like a spontaneous public pile-on, pushing journalists, academics, dissidents, and officials out of the public sphere before defenders can even classify the campaign.

Finally, there is epistemic vertigo: if everything might be fake, why trust anything? Ironically, awareness of manipulation can deepen cynicism. If people believe large portions of discourse are synthetic, trust collapses—and the public sphere can shrink into gated channels and closed groups.

So what do we do? Focus on coordination, provenance, and incentives

We argue for defenses that make manipulation costly and risky—without turning platforms into a “Ministry of Truth.” Instead of trying to adjudicate content (“who decides truth?”), we should prioritize coordination signals, provenance, and incentives.

One priority is always-on detection for statistically unlikely coordination. Rather than episodic cleanups after campaigns go viral, platforms (and regulators) should push for continuous monitoring for anomalous patterns—signals that genuine crowds struggle to reproduce consistently. To reduce misuse, these systems should be paired with transparency measures and independent audits.

A second priority is stress-testing defenses with simulations. Defenders will always lag if they only react to yesterday’s tactics. Agent-based simulations—running swarms in synthetic networks—can help test detectors, uncover failure modes, and evaluate interventions before real attackers exploit them.

A third priority is strengthening provenance without killing anonymity. Real-ID policies can harm dissidents and whistleblowers. The goal is “verified-yet-anonymous” options—strong proof signals that raise the cost of mass impersonation while preserving privacy where it matters.

A fourth priority is building an ecosystem for shared situational awareness—an “AI Influence Observatory” model where researchers, NGOs, and institutions standardize evidence and publish verified incident reporting without centralized censorship.

And finally, we have to change the economics. Even the best detectors will be imperfect. So we should also target the commercial market for manipulation: discount synthetic engagement, enforce no-revenue policies for manipulation campaigns, and publish audited bot-traffic metrics. The goal is to make large-scale manipulation less profitable to sustain.

Bottom line

The point isn’t that AI makes democracy impossible. The point is that democracy becomes brittle when it’s cheap to counterfeit social proof—when it costs little to run a fake crowd and minutes to manufacture “public opinion.”

The mission is straightforward: make large-scale impersonation and coordination harder to run, easier to detect, and less profitable to sustain. If we get that right, the public square does not need a central authority to decide what is true. It needs conditions where authentic human participation is visible—and where engineered consensus collapses the moment it tries to scale.

Key takeaways

The next wave of influence operations may not look like obvious copy-paste bots. It may look like communities: thousands of AI personas with memory, social identities, distinct styles, and coordinated goals.
The most dangerous outcome is not a single viral lie—it is synthetic consensus: the illusion that “everyone is saying this,” which can quietly bend beliefs and norms.
This is already moving from theory to reality. In July 2024, the U.S. DOJ announced it disrupted a Russia-linked AI-enhanced bot operation involving nearly 1,000 accounts impersonating Americans.
Defenses should not hinge on policing content. They should focus on coordination and provenance: detecting statistically unlikely patterns, stress-testing defenses with simulations, strengthening identity/proof signals, and shifting platform incentives.

This post was drafted by Daniel Thilo Schroeder and Jonas Kunst, with edits from Jay Van Bavel. You can read our full paper here:

Daniel Thilo Schroeder et al. (2026). How malicious AI swarms can threaten democracy. Science, 391,354-357. DOI:10.1126/science.adz1697

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8. Pentagon Official Visits Japan as US Seeks More Defense Spending

Summary:

Elbridge Colby visited Tokyo to discuss strengthening the U.S.-Japan alliance as Washington presses allies in the Asia-Indo-Pacific to spend more and carry more of the load. He met Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Takehiro Funakoshi, and Japan’s Foreign Ministry said both sides agreed on the alliance’s critical role for deterrence and response. Colby tied the push to deterrence along the first-island chain. Japan is accelerating its goal to reach 2% of GDP on defense, while U.S. rhetoric has floated a 5% standard for allies.

Comment: Can anyone notice the subtle difference in terreat of our allies, Korea and Japan, by the USW(P)? What is the real objective: more yen, more capability, or more operational integration?

Pentagon Official Visits Japan as US Seeks More Defense Spending

Bloomberg · Alastair Gale · January 27, 2026

January 27, 2026 at 10:01 PM EST

Updated on January 28, 2026 at 2:58 AM EST

A top Pentagon official discussed strengthening the US-Japan military alliance with a Japanese counterpart in Tokyo as Washington continues to put pressure on its allies in Asia to ramp up defense spending and ease the burden on the American military.

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby exchanged views on the regional security environment with Vice-Minister for Foreign Affair Takehiro Funakoshi on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

“They concurred on the critical role both countries play to reinforce the Japan-U.S. Alliance capabilities to deter and respond,” the ministry said.

Colby’s visit comes a few days after the release of a new US National Security Strategy that directs the Defense Department to “maintain a favorable balance of military power in the Indo-Pacific” while prioritizing threats posed by migration and narcotics in the Western Hemisphere.

The focus in Asia is on the so-called first-island chain stretching from the Japanese archipelago, through Taiwan and into the Philippines. To deter China from aggression, including any attempt to seize Taiwan, the NDS says US allies need to shoulder more of the burden.

Japan has for decades leaned heavily on its alliance with the US for security, but Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi recently brought forward a goal to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense by two years to this fiscal year. She has also set in motion discussions about a new spending plan.

President Donald Trump has called for US allies to spend a total of 5% of their GDP on defense, a goal adopted by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “We will advocate that our allies and partners meet this standard around the world, not just in Europe,” the NDS says.

On his arrival in Japan earlier Tuesday, Colby highlighted the significance of the US-Japan alliance, which allows the US to station around 55,000 troops in Japan. That’s the largest permanent American military presence in a foreign country.

“The US-Japan alliance is of profound and fundamental importance. I look forward to discussing with Japanese counterparts how we can quickly and materially strengthen deterrence along the first island chain in line with the NSS and NDS,” Colby wrote on X.

Colby’s visit to Japan comes after a visit to South Korea, where he held talks with the local foreign and defense ministers. During his visit to Seoul, Colby praised South Korea as a “model ally” for pledging to sharply raise defense spending to 3.5% of GDP.

(Updates with Colby’s meeting with Japanese official.)

9. US cyber defense chief accidentally uploaded secret government info to ChatGPT

Summary:

Ars Technica reports that CISA’s acting director, Madhu Gottumukkala, uploaded sensitive contracting documents marked “for official use only” into a public version of ChatGPT last summer, prompting multiple DHS cybersecurity warnings meant to prevent data leaving federal networks. DHS confirmed most staff are blocked from public ChatGPT and use internal tools like DHSChat, while CISA’s spokesperson said Gottumukkala had short-term permission “with DHS controls in place.” The episode triggered an internal review and sharpened scrutiny amid staffing turmoil and congressional oversight.

Comment: Secret or FOUO? Clickbait headline? Regardless, you can see me shaking my head in wonder. POGO. How do you build a compliance culture when leadership breaks the norm first? Rules for thee but not for me.

US cyber defense chief accidentally uploaded secret government info to ChatGPT

Congress recently grilled the acting chief on mass layoffs and a failed polygraph.

Ashley Belanger – Jan 28, 2026 2:56 PM | 73

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/us-cyber-defense-chief-accidentally-uploaded-secret-government-info-to-chatgpt/

Alarming critics, the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Madhu Gottumukkala, accidentally uploaded sensitive information to a public version of ChatGPT last summer, Politico reported.

According to “four Department of Homeland Security officials with knowledge of the incident,” Gottumukkala’s uploads of sensitive CISA contracting documents triggered multiple internal cybersecurity warnings designed to “stop the theft or unintentional disclosure of government material from federal networks.”

Gottumukkala’s uploads happened soon after he joined the agency and sought special permission to use OpenAI’s popular chatbot, which most DHS staffers are blocked from accessing, DHS confirmed to Ars. Instead, DHS staffers use approved AI-powered tools, like the agency’s DHSChat, which “are configured to prevent queries or documents input into them from leaving federal networks,” Politico reported.

It remains unclear why Gottumukkala needed to use ChatGPT. One official told Politico that, to staffers, it seemed like Gottumukkala “forced CISA’s hand into making them give him ChatGPT, and then he abused it.”

The information Gottumukkala reportedly leaked was not confidential but marked “for official use only.” That designation, a DHS document explained, is “used within DHS to identify unclassified information of a sensitive nature” that, if shared without authorization, “could adversely impact a person’s privacy or welfare” or impede how federal and other programs “essential to the national interest” operate.

There’s now a concern that the sensitive information could be used to answer prompts from any of ChatGPT’s 700 million active users.

OpenAI did not respond to Ars’ request to comment, but Cyber News reported that experts have warned “that using public AI tools poses real risks because uploaded data can be retained, breached, or used to inform responses to other users.”

Sources told Politico that DHS investigated the incident for potentially harming government security—which could result in administrative or disciplinary actions, DHS officials told Politico. Possible consequences could range from a formal warning or mandatory retraining to “suspension or revocation of a security clearance,” officials said.

However, CISA’s director of public affairs, Marci McCarthy, declined Ars’ request to confirm if that probe, launched in August, has concluded or remains ongoing. Instead, she seemed to emphasize that Gottumukkala’s access to ChatGPT was only temporary, while suggesting that the ChatGPT use aligned with Donald Trump’s order to deploy AI across government.

“Acting Director Dr. Madhu Gottumukkala was granted permission to use ChatGPT with DHS controls in place,” McCarthy said. “This use was short-term and limited. CISA is unwavering in its commitment to harnessing AI and other cutting-edge technologies to drive government modernization and deliver” on Trump’s order.

Scrutiny of cyber defense chief remains

Gottumukkala has not had a smooth run as acting director of the top US cyber defense agency after Trump’s pick to helm the agency, Sean Plankey, was blocked by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) “over a Coast Guard shipbuilding contract,” Politico noted.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem chose Gottumukkala to fill in after he previously served as her chief information officer, overseeing statewide cybersecurity initiatives in South Dakota. CISA celebrated his appointment with a press release boasting that he had more than 24 years of experience in information technology and a “deep understanding of both the complexities and practical realities of infrastructure security.”

However, critics “on both sides of the aisle” have questioned whether Gottumukkala knows what he’s doing at CISA, Cyberscoop reported. That includes staffers who stayed on and staffers who prematurely left the agency due to uncertainty over its future, Politico reported.

At least 65 staffers have been curiously reassigned to other parts of DHS, Cyberscoop reported, inciting Democrats’ fears that CISA staffers are possibly being pushed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The same fate almost befell Robert Costello, CISA’s chief information officer, who was reportedly involved with meetings last August probing Gottumukkala’s improper ChatGPT use and “the proper handling of for official use only material,” Politico reported.

Earlier this month, staffers alleged that Gottumukkala took steps to remove Costello from his CIO position, which he has held for the past four years. But that plan was blocked after “other political appointees at the department objected,” Politico reported. Until others intervened to permanently thwart the reassignment, Costello was supposedly given “roughly one week” to decide if he would take another position within DHS or resign, sources told Politico.

Gottumukkala has denied that he sought to reassign Costello over a personal spat that Politico’s sources said sprang from “friction because Costello frequently pushed back against Gottumukkala on policy matters.” He insisted that “senior personnel decisions are made at the highest levels at the Department of Homeland Security’s Headquarters and are not made in a vacuum, independently by one individual, or on a whim.”

The reported move looked particularly shady, though, because Costello “is seen as one of the agency’s top remaining technical talents,” Politico reported.

Congress questioned ongoing cybersecurity threats

This month, Congress grilled Gottumukkala about mass layoffs last year that shrank CISA from about 3,400 staffers to 2,400. The steep cuts seemed to threaten national security and election integrity, lawmakers warned, and potentially have left the agency unprepared for any potential conflicts with China.

At a hearing held by the House Homeland Security Committee, Gottumukkala said that CISA was “getting back on mission” and plans to reverse much of the damage done last year to the agency.

However, some of his responses did not inspire confidence, including a failure to forecast “how many cyber intrusions CISA expects from foreign adversaries as part of the 2026 midterm elections,” the Federal News Network reported. In particular, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) criticized Gottumukkala for not having “a specific number in mind.”

“Well, we should have that number,” Gonzales said. “It should first start by how many intrusions that we had last midterm and the midterm before that. I don’t want to wait. I don’t want us waiting until after the fact to be able to go, ‘Yeah, we got it wrong, and it turns out our adversaries influenced our election to that point.’”

Perhaps notably, Gottumukkala also dodged questions about reports that he failed a polygraph when attempting to seek access to other “highly sensitive cyber intelligence,” Politico reported.

The acting director apparently blamed six career CISA staffers for requesting that he agree to the polygraph test, which the staffers said was typical protocol but Gottumukkala later claimed was misleading.

Failing the test isn’t necessarily damning, since anxiety or technical errors could trigger a negative result. However, Gottumukkala appears touchy about the test that he now regrets sitting for, calling the test “unsanctioned” and refusing to discuss the results.

It seems that Gottumukkala felt misled after learning that he could have requested a waiver to skip the polygraph. In a letter suspending those staffers’ security clearances, CISA accused staff of showing “deliberate or negligent failure to follow policies that protect government information.” However, staffers may not have known that he had that option, which is considered a “highly unusual loophole that may not have been readily apparent to career staff,” Politico noted.

Staffers told Politico that Gottumukkala’s tenure has been a “nightmare"—potentially ruining the careers of longtime CISA staffers. It troubles some that it seems that Gottumukkala will remain in his post “for the foreseeable future,” while seeming to politicize the agency and bungle protocols for accessing sensitive information.

According to Nextgov, Gottumukkala plans to right the ship with “a hiring spree in 2026 because its recent reductions have hampered some of the Trump administration’s national security goals.”

In November, the trade publication Cybersecurity Dive reported that Gottumukkala sent a memo confirming the hiring spree was coming that month, while warning that CISA remains “hampered by an approximately 40 percent vacancy rate across key mission areas.” All those cuts were “spurred by the administration’s animus toward CISA over its election security work,” Cybersecurity Dive noted.

“CISA must immediately accelerate recruitment, workforce development, and retention initiatives to ensure mission readiness and operational continuity,” Gottumukkala told staffers at that time, then later went on to reassure Congress this month that the agency has “the required staff” to protect election integrity and national security, Cyberscoop reported.

Ashley Belanger Senior Policy Reporter

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

10. Inside China’s plans for 'national total war,' according to the Pentagon

Summary:

Task & Purpose, summarizing a Pentagon report to Congress, argues China is preparing for a form of “national total war,” meaning a clash of national systems rather than a military-only campaign. The report’s framing emphasizes whole-of-nation mobilization: civilian industry and logistics, tech acquisition and denial, social control, and cyber power alongside PLA operations. It links lessons from Ukraine to tools such as blockades, isolation, sanctions, and pressure on supply chains. On Taiwan, it notes dual-use lift options like civilian ferries and training with commercial vessels. It also flags cyber access to critical infrastructure as a deterrence lever.

Comment: If conflict is systems-on-systems, where is the U.S. least resilient under sustained disruption? I hate to beat a dead horse but this seesm line a natural eveoilaton for China from 1999's Unresticted Warfare.

Inside China’s plans for 'national total war,' according to the Pentagon

taskandpurpose.com · Kyle Gunn

The Pentagon says China’s strategy of “national total war” aims to mobilize the country's civilian industry, tech, logistics, and cyber power to aid the nation's military.

Kyle Gunn

Published Jan 28, 2026 3:48 PM EST

https://taskandpurpose.com/video/china-national-total-war/

China’s military strategy for future conflicts has evolved into “national total war,” a whole-of-nation mobilization effort aimed squarely at overcoming “the strong enemy” it sees in the United States. That’s the conclusion of a recent Pentagon report to Congress on China’s military developments as the country’s leaders eye Taiwan and other regional ambitions.

Pentagon planners say the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leaders envision future conflict not simply as a clash of armies and navies, but as a “clash of national systems” that integrates civilian and military power.

The report’s point is that China’s leadership and the PLA aren’t preparing for a future conflict that looks like a clean, military-only fight. The Pentagon argues that the PLA envisions its future “great power conflict” with the U.S. as a top-to-bottom fight using all of Chinese society, with traditional military combat backed by industrial and economic pressure, technology denial, and widespread social control.

What the Pentagon says China’s ‘national total war’ could mean

The report says the PLA expects future warfare to include high-tech and autonomous systems, but also maritime blockades, forced isolation, and comprehensive sanctions — lessons it says the PLA has learned from the Western response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The Pentagon also tries to defuse a common misunderstanding about the term “total war.” The term traditionally implies an all-out conflict that ends in total political goals and unconditional surrender. The report says PLA usage implies something different: complete mobilization of strategic resources to resist the United States and allies while still holding limited political objectives that allow maximize control and chances of success.

A Chinese Y-8 anti-submarine patrol aircraft. Chinese Ministry of National Defense.

Put simply, China is working toward mobilizing the country as a billion-person weapon system while avoiding any escalation that could find it bogged down in its own version of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, which has now run longer than the Soviet involvement in World War II.

The report cites a series of national reforms announced in Beijing in July 2024 as a major turning point. Those new laws and goals, ostensibly aimed at cleaning up corruption, also included changes meant to improve military-civilian integration and to refine national defense mobilization reporting, communications, and mobilization systems. It also included changes to the military system and border and coast defenses in order to boost support from civilian sectors and local governments.

An eye on Taiwan

The Pentagon’s “systems war” framing is easiest to visualize in the report’s sections on Taiwan.

Many analysts point out that China may lack the military assets to pull off an amphibious invasion of Taiwan. But with dozens of civilian ferries to plug the gap, China could surge amphibious capacity without raising too many eyebrows.

The authors note that the PLA Navy continues to train with civilian roll-on/roll-off commercial vessels, which may indicate it is trying to mitigate a lift shortfall by using dual-use civilian-lift vessels.

Many feel China will make a move on Taiwan in 2027, something known as the “Davidson Window” after U.S. Navy Admiral Philip Davidson, who warned Congress in 2021, “Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before then. And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.” It would also line up with the PLA’s centenary, which Chinese President Xi Jinping has set as a milestone to achieve “world-class” military modernization.

Military-civil fusion

The report also notes that Beijing’s push for military-civil fusion, or the idea that civilian technology and industry should feed military modernization. Chinese leaders have rolled this society-wide vision into a broader concept the Pentagon calls an “integrated national strategic system and capabilities.” This is described as “a whole-of-nation effort to advance China’s military.”

It then ties this concept to real-world tech realities, noting Chinese commercial enterprises and research institutions continue to acquire components from U.S. suppliers to support research and development in critical dual-use technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), biotech, quantum technology, advanced semiconductors, and advanced energy general and storage.

The report gets particularly detailed on technology chokepoints, especially high-performance AI accelerators such as Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and other advanced chips that power modern AI. The Pentagon says China’s AI sector remained constrained in 2024 by limited access to high-performance AI accelerators, and it lays out the methods Beijing is using to work around those constraints, including stockpiling and attempts to circumvent export controls.

Cyber warfare as part of the ‘national systems’ picture

The summary also says Chinese cyber campaigns such as Volt Typhoon “burrowed into U.S. critical infrastructure” in 2024, “demonstrating capabilities that could disrupt the U.S. military in a conflict and harm American interests.”

Chinese amphibious assault vehicles fire at mock targets. Chinese Ministry of National Defense.

It goes on to point out that in the initial stages and during a conflict, these cyber capabilities “would seek to create disruptive and destructive effects” through denial of service attacks and physical disruptions of critical infrastructure such as electric and water utilities. Other targets could include military command and control infrastructure as well as logistics nodes. They theorize that these cyber operations would aim to “deter U.S. involvement by demonstrating China’s capability and resolve to threaten U.S. strategic interests and weaken U.S. public support for involvement.”

Friction

The Pentagon does not present this “national total war” strategy as effortless. It highlights organizational challenges and the difficulty of adapting doctrine quickly, warning that rigid structures can slow the ability to adapt on the fly and incorporate lessons learned.

The report points out that China’s military doctrine is issued in generations, the most recent update coming in 2020, and before that 1999. This makes incorporating lessons learned from Russia in Ukraine, or technological advancements, very difficult.

This report is dense, but the main takeaway is pretty simple: China is preparing for a conflict where ships and missiles are only part of the story. They’re setting the stage for a reality where industry, tech access, and infrastructure resilience matter just as much.

We walk through the key passages and what they mean in plain English on our YouTube channel, so go watch that here.

Task & Purpose Video

Each week on Tuesdays and Fridays our team will bring you analysis of military tech, tactics, and doctrine.

Watch Here

Kyle Gunn

YouTube Producer

Kyle Gunn has been with Task & Purpose since 2021, coming aboard in April of that year as the social media editor. Four years later, he took over as producer of the YouTube page, inheriting nearly 2 million subscribers and absolutely no pressure not to screw it all up.

taskandpurpose.com · Kyle Gunn

11. Army’s CamoGPT won’t be phased out as Pentagon embraces more commercial genAI products

Summary:

DefenseScoop reports the Army will not deactivate CamoGPT after the Pentagon rolled out GenAI.mil. The Army says it remains committed to AI R&D, and CamoGPT, first prototyped by the Army AI Integration Center in 2024, is designed to support administrative and operational tasks using Army-specific data while protecting Controlled Unclassified Information and certain classified information. In 2025, the Army launched an Enterprise Large Language Model Workspace with access to more than 23 approved commercial frontier models. GenAI.mil aims to scale commercial genAI across DoD, starting with Google Gemini for Government, with other vendors expected. CamoGPT shifts back toward an R&D platform for agentic AI experimentation.

Comment: What amazes me is how quickly the Army developed this AI/LLM platform specifically for the Army. ChatGPT,et al, have only been out for a couple of years and the Army quickly fielded this program. That is the buried lede.

Army’s CamoGPT won’t be phased out as Pentagon embraces more commercial genAI products

defensescoop.com · Brandi Vincent · January 27, 2026

The Army-managed platform is said to offer specialized AI tools that complement those on the GenAI.mil system.

Brandi Vincent

January 27, 2026

https://defensescoop.com/2026/01/27/army-camogpt-dod-genai-mil/

In the aftermath of the Pentagon’s large-scale rollout of the new GenAI.mil platform, the Army has no plans to deactivate its highly specialized CamoGPT machine learning offering or cut off personnel’s access to the other preexisting, purpose-built frontier AI models.

“The U.S. Army remains committed to advancing artificial intelligence capabilities through rigorous research and development,” a spokesperson for the service told DefenseScoop this week.

Generative AI is an emerging and disruptive technology field that applies massive models to generate original, human-like outputs that are based on user prompts, but not always factual. Since commercial genAI products were widely released to the general public around late 2022 — quickly becoming a global phenomenon — experts have warned about severe known and unpredictable threats that the tech poses to humanity, public trust and democratic processes.

Broadly, the individual U.S. military services’ policies and paths to adopting genAI systems have been fragmented and complicated by data ownership, acquisition issues and other complexities.

The Army’s AI Integration Center (AI2C) began prototyping CamoGPT in 2024. That model is billed as more than a chatbot, and is designed to reliably support personnel across a range of administrative and operational tasks in a safe environment. Thousands of users reportedly interact with the tool daily to receive insights built off Army-specific data, like internal doctrine and training materials, while maintaining security for Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and certain classified information.

Building on that work, in 2025, the Army unveiled its Enterprise Large Language Model Workspace, which the spokesperson said currently provides insiders with access to more than 23 approved, industry-made AI frontier models.

Separately, Pentagon leaders led the breakneck launch of GenAI.mil last month.

Through that platform, the Defense Department aims to supply more than three million military personnel, civilian employees and contractors with access to advanced, commercial-grade genAI models. Google Cloud’s Gemini for Government products are the first to be offered in the one-stop-shop, and others from xAI, OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to soon follow.

Following the enterprise-wide genAI hub’s release, the military services are pursuing different approaches in their prioritization of the still-maturing capabilities.

The Air Force announced plans shortly after to phase out NIPRGPT, and the Marine Corps is also moving away from legacy products in favor of DOD’s new enterprise offering. The Coast Guard, on the other hand, is hustling to refine and enhance its custom Ask Hamilton platform as it also leans into the GenAI.mil suite.

Like the latter, the Army appears to be maximizing its personnel’s access to a range of options — including but not limited to the specialized CamoGPT research and development platform and the Army Enterprise LLM Workspace for service-wide use — as well as commercial products on the Pentagon-run GenAI.mil workspace that are trained on more non-military, internet-sourced data.

“While CamoGPT was initially an experimental tool that gained traction in the absence of an enterprise AI platform solution, its transition back to a research and development capability upon the release of the Army Enterprise LLM Workspace reflects the Army’s focus on maturing the AI culture across the force,” the Army spokesperson told DefenseScoop. “CamoGPT continues to serve as a vital platform for testing agentic AI and exploring future AI capabilities that can enhance mission effectiveness for the Army and transitioning them to the production environment for use at both the tactical and enterprise levels.”

In a separate correspondence on Wednesday, Col. Dave Butler, a senior spokesperson for the service told DefenseScoop that GenAI.mil is now available to the entire Army enterprise.

“We’re using it today and every day. GenAI is great and getting better every day, the Army is helping to invest in this model by pulling in lessons from other platforms. CamoGPT and other platforms we’ve previously invested in help us mature [the Army and Defense Department’s] overall approach to AI,” he said.

Updated on Jan. 28, 2026, at 3:40 PM: This story has been updated to include comment from senior Army spokesperson Col. Dave Butler.

Written by Brandi Vincent

Brandi Vincent is a Senior Reporter at DefenseScoop, where she reports on disruptive technologies and associated policies impacting Pentagon and military personnel. Prior to joining SNG, she produced a documentary and worked as a journalist at Nextgov, Snapchat and NBC Network. Brandi grew up in Louisiana and received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland. She was named Best New Journalist at the 2024 Defence Media Awards.

defensescoop.com · Brandi Vincent · January 27, 2026

12. Nuremberg’s Shadow: Accountability, Psychology, and Modern War

Summary:

Farhan Rasool argues Nuremberg still matters because it fused law with a hard view of human behavior in war. The trials made individual responsibility real, rejected “orders” as a shield, and anchored civilian protection in modern international law. Rasool adds that war narrows moral perception, hierarchy rewards compliance, and moral disengagement makes harm feel necessary, so accountability must focus on people inside institutions. He notes Nuremberg era psychiatric work found no single “madman” profile, which undercuts the comfort of blaming atrocity on pathology. Later tribunals and the ICC extend these principles into current conflict scrutiny and command decisions.

Comment: The film, Nuremberg. is on my "to watch" list.

Essay| The Latest

Nuremberg’s Shadow: Accountability, Psychology, and Modern War

by Farhan Rasool

01.29.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/29/nurembergs-shadow/

01 Jan 1946, Nuremberg, Germany --- The defendants at the Nuremberg Nazi trials. Pictured in the front row are: Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. In the back row are: Karl Doenitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, and Fritz Sauckel. --- Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

Abstract

The Nuremberg Trials transformed international law by establishing individual criminal responsibility for wartime atrocities and rejecting defenses based on orders or state policy. This article argues that Nuremberg’s enduring relevance lies not only in legal doctrine but in its integration of accountability with an implicit understanding of human psychology under conditions of war. By examining the trials, behavioral research, subsequent international jurisprudence, and contemporary conflict scrutiny, it explains why these principles continue to shape modern conflict analysis and policymaking.

Introduction

Recent renewed public attention to the Nuremberg Trials, prompted in part by contemporary cultural representations, has revived broader discussion about how accountability in war is understood and applied. While such portrayals often emphasize historical symbolism, the deeper significance of Nuremberg lies in the durable frameworks it established for evaluating conduct during armed conflict.

Accountability during war remains one of the most contested issues in modern conflict. Civilian protection, proportionality, and command responsibility are debated in nearly every major military operation, yet the frameworks guiding these debates emerged from a specific historical moment. The Nuremberg Trials of 1945–46 marked the first sustained effort to operationalize individual criminal liability under international law, rejecting claims based on superior orders, state policy, or wartime necessity, as articulated in the Charter of the International Military Tribunal.

The continuing relevance of Nuremberg is not solely legal. The trials reflected a deeper insight: War alters decision-making environments, but it does not erase moral agency. This article argues that modern accountability frameworks remain anchored in Nuremberg’s integration of law and behavioral understanding. By examining the trials, research on wartime decision-making, post–Cold War international jurisprudence, and contemporary applications, it explains why these principles continue to structure how modern conflicts are assessed, debated, and judged.

Nuremberg and the Foundations of Individual Responsibility

The Nuremberg Trials marked a decisive shift in international law by establishing that individuals—not just states—could be held accountable for wartime atrocities. Senior leaders of the Nazi regime were prosecuted for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. In doing so, the tribunal explicitly rejected the defense of superior orders, holding that obedience to authority does not absolve criminal responsibility.

Although genocide had not yet been codified as a legal term at Nuremberg, the evidentiary record assembled during the trials directly informed the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948, which formalized genocide as a crime under international law. Postwar accountability thus emerged incrementally, grounded in documented patterns of mass violence rather than abstract moral theory.

These legal innovations responded to historical conditions that had enabled mass violence. Longstanding antisemitism, nationalist ideology, and racial thinking were embedded in German society well before the Second World War, allowing exclusion, discrimination, and dehumanization to become normalized and politically mobilized. Such ideological foundations were central to how violence against Jews and other targeted groups became justified and systematized under the Nazi regime.

More broadly, Nuremberg established that sovereignty does not shield individuals from accountability. Civilians retain protection even during war, and leaders who authorize violence against them remain responsible regardless of political, strategic, or ideological context. This principle remains foundational to modern international humanitarian law.

Psychology and Wartime Decision-Making

Legal rules ultimately respond to human behavior. Understanding how individuals and institutions operate under conflict conditions helps explain both the persistence of violations and the necessity of accountability mechanisms.

Research consistently shows that war environments alter moral perception, narrowing ethical horizons and increasing tolerance for violence. Historical and behavioral analysis demonstrates how ordinary individuals can become perpetrators when embedded in coercive systems, as documented in Christopher Browning’s study of German reserve police units involved in mass shootings during the Holocaust.

Hierarchy further shapes behavior. Experimental research on authority illustrates how individuals may comply with harmful directives when legitimacy, institutional pressure, and role conformity are present, even when actions conflict with personal moral beliefs. The concept of moral disengagement explains how individuals cognitively reframe harmful actions as necessary, defensive, or inevitable during conflict, reducing perceived personal responsibility and moral self-sanction.

Together, these mechanisms explain why violations of the law of armed conflict are often systemic rather than accidental. They also reinforce why accountability frameworks must focus on individuals operating within institutions, rather than attributing wrongdoing solely to abstract structures or wartime chaos.

Psychiatric Findings at Nuremberg

Psychological explanations for Nazi crimes were directly examined at Nuremberg. Allied authorities commissioned psychiatrists and psychologists to evaluate senior Nazi defendants to determine whether mental illness could explain their actions.

Psychologist Gustave Gilbert and psychiatrist Douglas Kelley conducted interviews, behavioral observations, and psychological testing while defendants awaited trial, documenting their findings in extensive records. Their conclusions challenged popular assumptions. The clinicians did not identify a shared psychopathological profile among the defendants. While some exhibited paranoia or emotional instability, others appeared strategic, ambitious, and cognitively intact.

Subsequent analysis demonstrated that projective testing methods could not reliably distinguish Nazi defendants from non-Nazis, underscoring the limits of psychiatric diagnosis in explaining ideological violence. The significance of these findings lies in what they ruled out: Mass atrocity could not be explained as collective insanity. Responsibility, therefore, remained with individuals embedded in ideological, bureaucratic, and institutional systems, reinforcing the legal logic of Nuremberg.

Genocide, Intent, and Legal Thresholds

These behavioral dynamics raise an unavoidable question for law: How should different forms of mass violence be legally distinguished?

The Genocide Convention defines genocide as specific acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. This requirement of specific intent distinguishes genocide from other grave violations such as war crimes or crimes against humanity.

International courts rely on patterns of conduct, institutional documentation, and corroborated testimony to establish intent and responsibility, as articulated in landmark jurisprudence from international criminal tribunals. For policymakers and military professionals, this distinction is not semantic. Misapplication of legal categories can undermine credibility, complicate operational decision-making, and weaken the normative force of international law.

From Nuremberg to The Hague: Jurisprudential Continuity

The legal and moral logic established at Nuremberg did not end with the postwar tribunals. It has been reaffirmed and operationalized through subsequent international courts, most notably the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Court (ICC). These institutions extended Nuremberg’s core principles—individual responsibility, rejection of superior orders as a defense, and the protection of civilians—into late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century conflicts.

The ICTY affirmed this continuity in Prosecutor v. Tadić, holding that individuals bear criminal responsibility for serious violations of international humanitarian law regardless of official position or domestic legal authorization. The judgment reinforced that armed conflict does not suspend legal accountability, even in complex internal or non-international conflicts.

Command responsibility, implicit at Nuremberg and later formalized, became a central doctrine in ICTY jurisprudence. In Prosecutor v. Delalić et al. (the Čelebići case), the tribunal held commanders criminally responsible for crimes committed by subordinates when they knew or had reason to know of the offenses and failed to prevent or punish them (held).

The ICC further institutionalized these principles through the Rome Statute, which affirms that official capacity does not exempt individuals from liability. In Prosecutor v. Bosco Ntaganda, the court reaffirmed that individuals within organized armed groups remain accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity, emphasizing personal agency within hierarchical structures.

For contemporary military professionals, these cases clarify that accountability is no longer retrospective symbolism but an operational reality shaping command decisions in real time.

Contemporary Relevance and Modern Conflict Scrutiny

Nuremberg-derived accountability norms now shape how contemporary conflicts are scrutinized by international institutions. Legal expectations regarding civilian protection, proportionality, and individual responsibility continue to guide investigations, reporting, and diplomatic engagement.

The conflict involving Israel and Palestine illustrates how these frameworks operate in practice. United Nations agencies have documented civilian harm and humanitarian constraints affecting both populations, repeatedly calling for adherence to international humanitarian law. Public discourse frequently invokes legal terms such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

Consistent with the post-Nuremberg legal order, however, formal determinations remain the responsibility of authorized judicial bodies, including the International Court of Justice. The relevance of this example lies not in adjudicating the conflict itself, but in demonstrating how Nuremberg-derived principles structure modern scrutiny of warfare long before any legal verdict is rendered.

Conclusion

The principles articulated at Nuremberg continue to shape how modern conflicts are analyzed, investigated, and judged. By affirming individual responsibility, rejecting defenses based on orders, and emphasizing civilian protection, they created a framework that remains central to international law and military ethics.

Psychological research, including psychiatric observations conducted at Nuremberg itself, reinforces the necessity of these principles. Atrocity does not require madness. It emerges from ordinary human behavior operating within permissive ideological and institutional systems. For policymakers and military professionals, Nuremberg’s enduring relevance lies in its insistence on clarity, evidence, and accountability in war.

Check out all of Small Wars Journal’s great content.

Tags: crimes against humanity, Genocide, Genocide Prosecution, International Law, military ethics, moral authority, psychology, War Crimes, World War II

About The Author

Farhan Rasool
Farhan Rasool is a multidisciplinary writer whose work spans conflict analysis, political psychology, humanitarian response, theology, and literary studies. His published writing addresses mental health in crisis settings, moral reasoning in political violence, and ethical frameworks across cultural and religious traditions, with contributions to the Humanitarian Practice Network (Overseas Development Institute), Feminism In India, Cambridge Open Engage, and other international platforms.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farhan-r-9591b721b/

13. Exaggeration and Ignorance: The “Scramble for the Arctic”

Summary:

Sergio Miller argues the “scramble for the Arctic” is being sold with exaggeration and basic ignorance, especially claims that Greenland is swarming with Russian and Chinese ships. He says there are no Chinese mining operations in Greenland, no Chinese warship visits, and no evidence of PLA Navy submarines operating there. He adds Russia is in no position to contest Greenland, a NATO space, given its thin Northern Fleet surface force, degraded naval aviation, and commercial priorities tied to a shadow fleet. Greenland’s mining reality is small and slow, and rare earth dreams ignore China’s dominance in processing.

Exaggeration and Ignorance: The “Scramble for the Arctic”

by Sergio Miller

01.29.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/29/exaggeration-and-ignorance/

Nuuk, capital of Greenland. Source: Sky News

The “scramble for the Arctic” would be a story of “high farce” rather than “high North” but for the current United States (U.S.) administration threatening to forcibly annex Greenland, the territory of NATO ally Denmark. U.S. President Donald Trump claims that the island is ‘covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place’ and that the U.S. must ‘own’ Greenland to prevent imagined Russian or Chinese ownership. Republican Senator Randy Fine recently introduced a Greenland Annexation and Statehood Act that would authorize the White House to annex Greenland ‘by any means necessary’, citing Rare Earth Elements (REEs) as a key reason. This act ignores the wishes of Greenlanders and is a gross assault on Denmark, NATO, and Europe.

China in Greenland

There are no Chinese mining operations in Greenland. There never have been and it is unlikely there ever would be except in partnership with other Western companies.

No Chinese warship has ever visited Greenland. There is no evidence that a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) nuclear submarine has ever deployed to Greenland’s waters and at present there are no commercial Chinese ships near Greenland (MarineTraffic). Furthermore, there are no Chinese mining operations in Greenland. There never have been and it is unlikely there ever would be except in partnership with other Western companies. From 2011 to 2018, China expressed interest in mining and infrastructure projects but did not commit to anything. Chinese company Shenghe Resources currently has a 10.5% stake in the Kvanefjeld rare earths project, led by the Australian company Energy Transition Minerals. However, this project was halted in 2021 over uranium contamination fears and a lawsuit for $11.4 billion in damages. It is unlikely this project will proceed.

Russia in Greenland

The Northern Fleet surface fleet rests on three modern frigates – only one of which ever sails at a time – and Russian Naval Aviation is moribund and reliant on a small number of airworthy Soviet-era aircraft.

No Russian warship has ever visited Greenland or ever will; Greenland is unmistakably NATO territory.

The Northern Fleet surface fleet rests on three modern frigates – only one of which ever sails at a time – and Russian Naval Aviation is moribund and reliant on a small number of airworthy Soviet-era aircraft. Russia’s nuclear submarine fleet is just now leaving behind the troubled 90s with the commissioning of Yasen-M and Borei-A class boats. The old Soviet nuclear boats were a menace to everyone and multiple Western countries provided extensive financial and technical assistance to decommission them. The Northern Fleet’s best conventional capabilities are their Kinzhal and Tsirkon hypersonic missiles, munitions which Putin is inordinately proud of. However, Ukrainian air defenders have proved Russian hypersonic missiles can, in fact, be downed.

Northern Fleet naval towns and bases on the Kola Peninsula are dilapidated and in decline, something long known by U.S. intelligence. Just this New Year, districts in Severomorsk – populated almost entirely by naval families or contractors – woke up without heat or electricity in -30 C° If you conversed with a sailor of the Northern Fleet, they would likely be much less focused on competition in the Arctic and inclined to gripe about the post-Soviet squalor and humiliation in their daily lives.

When a threat truly existed in the Arctic. NATO monitored between 130-140 Northern Fleet Russian submarines. Today, as many as two nuclear submarines may be on patrol. Source: United States Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power series, published annually 1980s.

There are no Russian commercial ships in Greenland’s waters either at this moment. The absolute and urgent priority for Russian commercial shipping currently is its ‘shadow fleet’ and associated oil and gas exports, not Greenland.

There are no Russian mining operations in Greenland. There never have been and never will be. Russian mining is in crisis: high interest rates, under-investment, sanctions, Chinese competition, and low commodity prices have crippled the Russian mining sector. Russian Railways – the prime carrier – is now on the verge of collapse with over 4 trillion rubles in debt (equivalent to the entire remaining liquid assets of Russia’s National Wealth Fund or one third of Russia’s exploded defense budget). Russian Railways’ bankruptcy intersects with three other key and similarly failing industries: coal, metallurgy, and construction.

Mining in Greenland

Greenland has two active mines. The White Mountain Anorthosite Mine is the only year-round mine in Greenland and has yet to turn a profit. There is also the smaller and actively explored Nalunaq Gold mine that turns a profit. For context, there are over 12,000 operational mines globally. Anorthosite’s primary use is in fiberglass production; none of its other uses have strategic value to the United States.

The Tanbreez Rare Earth Project in southern Greenland is scheduled to open a pilot plant in the near future. New York-based Critical Metals purchased this project following U.S. lobbying. However, despite the size of the site, there is skepticism the project will achieve commercial production. If it does, China will likely join the value chain anyway. Obsession with ‘owning’ Greenland and imagined mining riches misses the point: China dominates 90% of REE processing capacity globally, with our without Greenland.

The Greenland ‘El Dorado’ and the Arctic Sea Routes

Since 1798 – a period of 228 years – only nine mines have operated.

Mark Twain once quipped “a mine is a hole owned by a liar”. In total, there have been around 250 companies in Greenland granted over 700 exploration licenses. Though seemingly high, the numbers are misleading. Since 1798 – a period of 228 years – only nine mines have operated. The overwhelming majority of explorations and licenses have been abandoned. On average, it takes about 16 years to open a mine, information freely available to anyone with an interest in mining opportunities in Greenland at the Greenland Mineral Resources Portal. Chinese and Russian companies do not need to crawl ‘all over the place’; they can log on like anyone else.

A similar misconception surrounds sea routes near Greenland. The Arctic Sea routes are not ‘opening up’. This is a myth repeated every year by lobby groups and vested interests blithely ignoring inconvenient facts. Last year, just 41 vessels completed the full transit of the Northern Sea Route in the narrow summer window; for comparison, around 165,000 vessels transit the English Channel annually.

Conclusion

The real reasons for U.S. threats towards Greenland lie elsewhere. The government of Greenland sets high regulatory standards, prioritizes environmental concerns, and plans appropriately for climate change. The current U.S. administration holds all three of these policies in contempt and supports lobbying groups funded by extremely wealthy individuals. They describe climate change as a ‘con job’ and their attitude towards regulation and the environment is best summarized by the macho phrase ‘drill baby drill’; President Trump implied as much in a weekend interview with The New York Times. When asked why he did not simply deploy more troops to Greenland – something the United States can do under current treaty arrangements – he replied: “I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty”. If America forcibly seized the island, the concerns of Greenlanders could be swept aside and the drill would rule (but not discover El Dorado).

Tags: Arctic Security, Donald Trump, mining, rare earth elements, Strategic Competition

About The Author

Sergio Miller
Sergio Miller is a retired Intelligence Corps officer and contributor to The Wavell Room, British Army Review and Small Wars Journal. He is the author of a two-volume history of the Vietnam War (No Wider War/In Good Faith) and a history of the British Army in Afghanistan from 2001-2014 (Pride and Fall) (both Osprey/Bloomsbury). The latter was a joint runner-up for the Templer Medal. He is currently working on Z: Putin’s Assault on Ukraine, an account of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

14. Misdiagnosing Protest: How Counterinsurgency Logic Is Being Applied at Home

Summary:

The essay argues that labeling Minneapolis protest activity as a “domestic insurgency” misapplies counterinsurgency pattern recognition. The author takes Eric Schwalm’s claim seriously, then tests it against COIN doctrine: legitimacy, population security, intelligence-led precision, unity of effort, and clear off-ramps. Organized comms and role specialization can signal competence, but not insurgency without decision authority, leadership, resource allocation, and an explicit political end state. Mislabeling unrest as insurgency invites overreaction, erodes credibility, and can harden grievances into the very insurgent dynamics it claims to detect.

Comment: Mark remains old and very bold with this commentary. I agree with him. But this is the battle of the narratives. And you can create a narrative to support your agenda which is happening at scale and speed. It is also a battle of grievances. One the one side you have those who are protesting government overreach and overreaction and on the other side you have those who are claiming to be fighting for law and order. No one is doing the deep analysis to understand the phenomenon that is taking place (Except for Mark here). And many of us in the SOF community or those who think about counterinsurgency can easily apply the theories we have all learned to paint a picture of insurgency and counterinsurgency. Paradoxically much of the theory we have learned is simply social networking that can be amplified using social media and modern communications techniques. I see so much "organizing" and information sharing taking place among various media - from HOA chat groups to Ring camera chats, to Facebook and others. As an aside I watched the entire January 6th event organized on Facebook by like minded people. I watched as they planned transportation from outlying areas, established rally points, and provided specific instructions all of which can be interpreted in the same way as the actions in Minnesota are being interpreted by some. Where you stand depends on where you sit.

Let me just offer my opinion. The only way forward is to ensure we are all supporting and defending our Constitution and all the rights that are outlined in it. All the rights. That has to be the foundation for all actions on both sides of the issue. Ask yourself, what is my right and what is my responsibility?

Mark's essay should cause us some reflection:

If insurgency is a political project to govern, where is the demonstrated end state, leadership, and enforcement mechanism?

When officials exaggerate before evidence, who wins the information fight, and who pays in legitimacy?

What would “precision and transparency” look like in practice without turning lawful dissent into an enemy category?

Misdiagnosing Protest: How Counterinsurgency Logic Is Being Applied at Home

substack.com · The Old and BoldJan 28, 2026

What Happens When the State Confuses Dissent for Rebellion

The Old and Bold

Jan 28, 2026

https://vaberet.substack.com/p/misdiagnosing-protest-how-counterinsurgency?isFreemail=

I was forwarded an article that began circulating widely in conservative, military, and political commentary circles in the last few days. It caught my attention because it was written by Eric Schwalm, a former Special Forces Warrant Officer with a background not unlike my own. In it, Schwalm compares protest activity in Minneapolis to insurgent tactics he observed in Iraq, arguing that what we are seeing is not protest or even civil unrest, but the early stages of a formal domestic insurgency—one using activism as cover while quietly building command-and-control, intelligence networks, and operational discipline. The piece spread quickly across Twitter, online forums, and conservative social media not because it was sensational, but because it came from someone with firsthand counterinsurgency experience.

You may not have seen it yet. It’s still reaching a broader audience. But for anyone who has worked in counterinsurgency environments, the argument feels immediately familiar. Schwalm draws on patterns many of us learned overseas: spotters, decentralized cells, disciplined communications, and deliberate efforts to provoke overreaction while winning the information fight.

That familiarity is exactly why I think the essay deserves a response.

I don’t agree with his conclusion. I believe he is seeing patterns where coordination exists, intent where grievance exists, and insurgency where there is unrest—but not an organized effort to replace or overthrow state authority. In short, I think the diagnosis is wrong.

But this isn’t an argument to dismiss or mock. When someone with real experience says, “This looks familiar—and that should worry you,” the right response isn’t reflexive rejection. It’s to slow down, apply doctrine carefully, and ask whether the label fits the reality.

That’s what this essay attempts to do.

I want to take Schwalm’s premise seriously, test it against what counterinsurgency doctrine actually requires, and explore what the implications would be if he were right. Because mislabeling unrest as insurgency doesn’t just distort analysis—it shapes response. And history shows that getting that wrong can make a bad situation much worse.

If This Were an Insurgency, We’d Be Fighting It Wrong

Eric Schwalm’s essay deserves to be taken seriously—not because I agree with his conclusion, but because he is asking the right question in the wrong way.

He argues that what we are seeing in Minneapolis is not protest, but the early stages of a formal insurgency—one hiding behind the cover of activism while building command-and-control, intelligence networks, and operational discipline. As someone who has spent real time in insurgent environments, I understand why that pattern recognition fires. When you’ve hunted cells overseas, it’s hard not to see shadows at home.

So let’s take the claim seriously. Let’s assume—for the sake of argument—that what’s unfolding in Minnesota really is an insurgency.

If that were true, then doctrine matters. And by doctrine, the current U.S. response fails almost every test.

What Counterinsurgency Doctrine Actually Requires

Counterinsurgency is not just “using force against organized resistance.” It is a political-military campaign centered on legitimacy. Every modern COIN manual—from Vietnam onward—starts with the same premise: the population is the center of gravity.

If Minnesota were an insurgency, a doctrinal COIN response would prioritize:

Population security, not force projection
Intelligence-driven operations, not broad presence patrols
Isolation of insurgents from the population, not collective punishment
Shape–Clear–Hold–Build–Transition, not perpetual confrontation
Unity of effort across federal, state, and local authorities
Legitimacy of governance, not dominance of terrain
Psychological operations grounded in truth, consistency, and credibility

Tactically, we would expect:

Tight, intelligence-based targeting
Clear rules of engagement, publicly understood
Amnesty and off-ramps for low-level participants
Minimal visible militarization
A relentless focus on separating “the fish from the water”

If Schwalm is right—if this is an insurgency—then the U.S. government is not just underperforming. It is actively violating COIN doctrine.

Where the Current Response Undermines Legitimacy

Start with narrative control. In every successful COIN campaign, the government’s story must be fact-based, verifiable, and boringly consistent. That is not what we are seeing.

In Minneapolis, official statements have repeatedly raced ahead of evidence, only to be contradicted by video, witness testimony, or later clarification. That is fatal in an information environment. Insurgents thrive not because they are more truthful, but because governments lose credibility by exaggerating, obscuring, or spinning.

Then there is disproportionate escalation. Heavy federal presence patrols, aggressive posture, and ambiguous rules of engagement create exactly the “fish vs. water” problem doctrine warns against. When civilians cannot tell who is a combatant and who is merely present, legitimacy collapses.

COIN doctrine is explicit: indiscriminate pressure radicalizes neutrals faster than it defeats insurgents.

Add to that a lack of unity of effort. Federal actions that sideline local authorities—or publicly undercut them—signal weakness, not strength. In successful COIN campaigns, host-nation legitimacy is reinforced. Here, it is eroded.

If this were an insurgency, we would already be failing it.

The Command-and-Control Argument—and Why It Still Fails

Schwalm’s strongest claim is organizational: Signal groups, role specialization, SALUTE reporting, OPSEC hygiene. That looks like structure.

But structure alone does not make an insurgency.

Information sharing—even disciplined information sharing—is not command-and-control. Insurgencies have decision authority. Someone decides priorities, allocates resources, adjudicates disputes, enforces discipline, and defines political end state. None of that has been demonstrated here—by Schwalm, by law enforcement, or by intelligence agencies.

In fact, under oath in December, federal officials were unable to identify leadership, hierarchy, funding pipelines, or external direction for the movements being described. That matters. Insurgencies are not vibes; they are intelligence-definable systems.

What Schwalm is describing is networked resistance behavior, not insurgency. That distinction is critical, because the response is different.

COIN doctrine warns repeatedly against confusing organizational competence with political intent. Protest movements can be organized, disciplined, even disruptive—without seeking to replace state authority.

Insurgencies aim to govern. These actors aim to obstruct.

That difference matters.

If This Were an Insurgency, There Is a Better Way to Kill It

Ironically, if Schwalm were right, the solution would not be escalation—it would be precision and transparency.

If the goal is truly “the worst of the worst,” then publish the target packages. Put names, crimes, warrants, and evidence into the public domain. Run an influence campaign against actual criminals, not against crowds.

Conduct targeted raids, not random presence patrols. Stop unfocused stop-and-frisk-style enforcement that creates more enemies than it removes.

If criminal warrants exist, hand them publicly to Minnesota law enforcement and step back. Let local authorities act, visibly and lawfully. That is how you isolate insurgents from the population.

Publish the rules of engagement. Make clear—publicly—that lethal force is a last resort. Transparency is not weakness in COIN; it is oxygen.

These steps would suffocate an insurgency by denying it narrative, legitimacy, and recruits.

Here’s a sharpened, more explicit conclusion that lands the warning cleanly and doesn’t hedge. It keeps your tone—measured, serious, but unmistakably firm.

Conclusion: Ends Matter as Much as Means

Let me be clear about something up front: controlling illegal immigration matters. A sovereign nation has the right—and the obligation—to enforce its laws. Years of inconsistent enforcement have real consequences, from strained public services to eroded trust in government. Ignoring that reality is neither serious nor responsible.

But enforcing the law this way is actively harming the United States.

Heavy-handed tactics, overheated rhetoric, and the casual use of “insurrection” language are not restoring order or legitimacy. They are doing the opposite. They are undermining public trust, eroding cooperation with local authorities, and turning a law-enforcement challenge into a political and social powder keg. Even if the intent is lawful enforcement, the effect is corrosive.

And here is the deeper danger: if these tactics are normalized and expanded nationwide, they will begin to create the very conditions that give rise to an insurgency. History is unambiguous on this point. Insurgencies rarely begin with ideology; they begin with grievance, alienation, and the belief that the state no longer distinguishes between lawful dissent and rebellion. When federal power is applied broadly, imprecisely, and without visible restraint, resistance hardens. Neutral populations choose sides. And problems that were once manageable metastasize.

Which brings us to the question we are studiously avoiding:

What is the end state?

If the end state is more effective, sustainable enforcement of immigration law—one that isolates serious criminals, restores public confidence, and preserves constitutional norms—then this approach is not just wrong, it is counterproductive. It burns legitimacy faster than it removes violators and leaves the country less stable than it was before.

If, however, the end state is something else—if the goal is to expand federal power into areas traditionally reserved to the states, to normalize the use of national security authorities for domestic governance, and to condition the public to accept that expansion—then we should at least be honest about that intent.

And if that is the true end state, then resistance—lawful, constitutional, and principled—may not only be understandable, but necessary.

Nations do not stumble into internal conflict overnight. They drift there by refusing to ask hard questions about power, restraint, and purpose. Illegal immigration must be addressed. But how we address it will determine whether we solve a problem—or sow the seeds of a far more dangerous one.

The choice is still ours.

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substack.com · The Old and BoldJan 28, 2026

15. Is America’s Cyber Weakness Self-Inflicted?

Summary:

Shaoyu Yuan argues America’s telecom cyber problem is less Chinese wizardry and more American negligence. Salt Typhoon, framed as a Chinese espionage campaign, succeeded because basic controls failed: legacy gear, weak passwords, and patches left unapplied, and carriers still have not convincingly shown they expelled the intruders, per a December 2025 Senate Commerce Committee hearing. The author warns that sanctions, indictments, or “hack back” do little if access is easy to regain. A 2025 joint advisory similarly warns Chinese actors often exploit known vulnerabilities, not zero-days.

Excerpts:

Finally, Washington should stop dismantling the few enforceable controls it currently has. Sen. Cantwell’s letter notes that the Federal Communications Commission relied on its reclassification authority to interpret the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act in a way that required robust cyber security for wiretap interfaces, effectively making security failures a punishable offense. However, under pressure from industry lobbyists and dissenting commissioners who argued the mandate constituted regulatory overreach, the Federal Communications Commission rescinded the ruling months later. That was a strategic error. It stripped regulators of their authority to fine carriers for the very vulnerabilities Salt Typhoon exploited. While the legal basis for this authority has historically been a partisan flashpoint, the Salt Typhoon breach demonstrates the high cost of political gridlock. Reinstating that binding authority is not a stealthy way to grow bureaucracy. Instead, it is a declaration that if telecom networks are considered critical infrastructure, baseline cyber security is not optional.

For now, Washington may keep debating how serious China is about cyber espionage. But Salt Typhoon already answered the question that matters most: When basic defenses fail at scale, intent becomes irrelevant. In strategic competition in cyberspace, the advantage often goes to the side that treats security as routine maintenance — funded, audited, and enforced — not as an emergency patch after the damage is done.

Is America’s Cyber Weakness Self-Inflicted?

warontherocks.com · · January 29, 2026\

Shaoyu Yuan

January 29, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/01/is-americas-cyber-weakness-self-inflicted/

China didn’t break into America’s telecom networks with futuristic cyber weapons — it walked through unlocked doors.

Washington often frames the cyber conflict with Beijing as high-stakes statecraft, a sophisticated great-power chess match characterized by daring spies and zero-day exploits. This narrative is flattering, but false. As the recent Salt Typhoon revelations show, America is not losing a chess match to China’s hackers. It is failing a safety inspection of its own making.

Securing U.S. networks requires treating telecom cyber security not as a voluntary partnership, but as a critical safety discipline: enforcing mandatory operational baselines, demanding executive verification of network hygiene, and locking down the lawful intercept systems that adversaries are actively targeting.

BECOME A MEMBER

The Myth of Sophistication

In December 2025, the Senate Commerce Committee aired a blunt conclusion about Salt Typhoon, the Chinese state-sponsored cyber espionage campaign against U.S. telecommunications networks and critical infrastructure: America’s networks remain vulnerable, and telecom firms like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and others still have not convincingly shown they have evicted the intruders. The Senate hearing cited basic failures, such as legacy equipment, weak passwords, and years-old patches that were never applied, as key reasons the breach succeeded.

This operational reality matters. In Washington, the reflex is to reach for dramatic fixes. Some lawmakers and former officials call for more sanctions and tougher China-tech restrictions. Others float the idea of offensive “hack back” operations to disrupt attacker infrastructure. These tools might impose costs and signal resolve, but as repeated rounds of Chinese hacker indictments and sanctions have shown, they rarely change behavior on their own when access remains easy to restore.

The uncomfortable lesson of Salt Typhoon is not that Beijing has futuristic capabilities. It’s that Washington often treats major intrusions as proof of overwhelming adversary sophistication, when in reality, basic, preventable weaknesses still account for much of the vulnerability. A 2025 joint advisory issued by U.S. and allied intelligence agencies warned that Chinese state-sponsored threats have targeted networks globally — especially telecommunications — and that these actors have not relied on zero-day exploits. Instead, they often succeed by manipulating publicly known vulnerabilities and avoidable weaknesses.

From Beijing’s perspective, long-term access into U.S. telecom infrastructure creates options — not just intelligence collection, but the ability to exploit access in a crisis to disrupt service, degrade confidence, or selectively intercept or expose private communications. This leverage exists whether intended primarily for espionage or in preparation for military operations.

This distinction matters. While Salt Typhoon is best understood as an espionage campaign based on communications access, Volt Typhoon has been framed as pre-positioning for potential disruption of critical infrastructure ahead of a military attack. Sen. Maria Cantwell’s Nov. 2025 letter to the Federal Communications Commission underscores why Salt Typhoon still carries strategic stakes. The breach allowed adversaries to geolocate millions of Americans and access to the “lawful intercept” wiretap interfaces used across federal, state, and local law enforcement.

The Policy Trap

The official U.S. response to Salt Typhoon has fractured along familiar lines. In late 2025, the Federal Communications Commission rescinded binding cyber security orders for telecom carriers, replacing them with a framework of voluntary industry collaboration. At the same time, the Trump administration doubled down on external punishment, expanding export blacklists and issuing new sanctions against Chinese state-linked technology firms and Ministry of State Security front companies. This response shows how policy gets stuck between two unsatisfying poles: voluntarism and techno-protectionism.

On the one hand, major telecom associations argue the U.S. government should avoid binding mandates and lean on information sharing and voluntary partnership with industry. They worry that rules only create checklist compliance and delay adaptation against fast-moving threats. That concern is valid. Poorly designed regulation can force companies to prioritize paperwork over beefing up security. For example, after the May 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, the Transportation Security Administration’s emergency directives were criticized as rushed and for imposing rigid information technology protocols that were technically incompatible with the specialized control systems used to manage the flow of fuel. In response, the Transportation Security Administration shifted to performance-based standards, which set specific security goals while allowing operators to choose the technical methods to achieve them.

On the other hand, a congressional group led by conservative lawmakers sees network vulnerability primarily as a supply-chain issue: rip out Chinese equipment, tighten export controls, and call it a day. This logic is reflected in recent congressional debates over “rip-and-replace.” Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr and Sens. Ted Cruz and Deb Fischer all touted existing laws requiring the removal of Huawei and ZTE gear as evidence the United States is already responding forcefully to Salt Typhoon. While supply-chain security matters, it does not necessarily explain how Salt Typhoon succeeded in the first place. As public reporting confirmed, the breach did not rely on Chinese hardware. It exploited basic maintenance failures in U.S.-made equipment, including seven-year-old unpatched vulnerabilities in Cisco routers.

Locking the Backdoor

Beyond the two poles, a third approach is needed. The U.S. government should treat telecom cyber security as a public safety discipline and regulate telecom networks as critical infrastructure. This means moving beyond purely voluntary frameworks and enforcing mandatory safety baselines, like structural inspections required for bridges or pre-flight checks for commercial aviation. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

First, the United States needs a minimum cyber security floor for telecom carriers and the backbone systems they operate — the way safety baselines are set for aviation or drinking water. That does not mean a 200-page checklist. It means a short set of standards enforced by the Federal Communications Commission, potentially using the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s existing Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals. These goals map directly onto the kinds of weaknesses lawmakers and investigators keep highlighting: multi-factor authentication for every privileged account (administrative logins with deep system access), with no carve-outs for “legacy” remote access; an end to shared administrator credentials; patching and configuration deadlines for internet-facing systems so critical fixes are applied in days rather than weeks; and a realistic plan to retire unsupported equipment instead of keeping it online indefinitely.

Second, these standards should come with verification protocols. Right now, the American public is asked to take assurances on faith that intruders have been expelled, even as lawmakers warn that telecom firms still cannot convincingly prove it. Verification does not require publishing network diagrams or exposing vulnerabilities. An oversight framework should have separate testing procedures and auditable verification methods using protected communication channels to connect with regulatory bodies. Large telecom carriers like Verizon or AT&T should perform third-party penetration tests and simulations that assume an adversary is already inside, checking their ability to detect and contain intrusions within hours, not months. Telecom executives should provide written confirmation to the Federal Communications Commission about their company’s core control systems — the sensitive infrastructure that manages user databases, routing equipment, and lawful intercept portals. This would create a personal liability loop: False attestations about safety would result in civil or criminal penalties, just as false financial certifications do under corporate fraud law.

Third, civil liberties should be protected because telecom breaches can tempt the wrong lesson. After a high-profile hack, policy responses tend to call for expanding domestic monitoring or weakening encryption. This is what happened after the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation demanded encryption backdoors, and after the 2020 SolarWinds cyber attack, when lawmakers debated expanding intelligence agencies’ domestic surveillance powers.

That would be a strategic gift to adversaries. Mandating backdoors or weaker encryption creates a single point of failure that foreign intelligence services can target. Salt Typhoon proved why: The intruders reportedly exploited the very lawful intercept capability used by law enforcement. A more effective policy response would focus on strengthening the hardware that processes wiretap orders and administrative gateways like the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act servers that aggregate wiretap data. This requires specific protection like hardware-based credential storage and two-person authorization rules to prevent any single user from hijacking these powerful tools.

Finally, Washington should stop dismantling the few enforceable controls it currently has. Sen. Cantwell’s letter notes that the Federal Communications Commission relied on its reclassification authority to interpret the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act in a way that required robust cyber security for wiretap interfaces, effectively making security failures a punishable offense. However, under pressure from industry lobbyists and dissenting commissioners who argued the mandate constituted regulatory overreach, the Federal Communications Commission rescinded the ruling months later. That was a strategic error. It stripped regulators of their authority to fine carriers for the very vulnerabilities Salt Typhoon exploited. While the legal basis for this authority has historically been a partisan flashpoint, the Salt Typhoon breach demonstrates the high cost of political gridlock. Reinstating that binding authority is not a stealthy way to grow bureaucracy. Instead, it is a declaration that if telecom networks are considered critical infrastructure, baseline cyber security is not optional.

For now, Washington may keep debating how serious China is about cyber espionage. But Salt Typhoon already answered the question that matters most: When basic defenses fail at scale, intent becomes irrelevant. In strategic competition in cyberspace, the advantage often goes to the side that treats security as routine maintenance — funded, audited, and enforced — not as an emergency patch after the damage is done.

BECOME A MEMBER

Shaoyu Yuan is an adjunct professor of global security at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and a research fellow at Rutgers University. He writes on the strategic implications of Chinese technology policy, critical infrastructure protection, and U.S.-Chinese competition.

Image: Gemini

warontherocks.com · Grace Parcover · January 29, 2026

16. Economic Statecraft Is Back. Is America Ready?

Summary:

Hanson and Field argue economic statecraft is back as a central instrument of power, and the United States is not organized to compete. They trace the long history of sanctions and coercion, then argue globalization has made economic tools sharper through supply chains, capital markets, banks, and institutions. The authors say both China and the United States now use economic leverage more coercively. China expands tools such as critical minerals pressure, investigations, IP theft, and strategic investment, while the United States uses sanctions, tariffs, investment screening, and reindustrialization. Their core warning is organizational: no whole-of-government doctrine, and DoD’s emerging role is not integrated with Treasury, Commerce, and State.

Comment. I still think this all falls under George Kennan's description of political warfare.

1. Political warfare is the logical application of Clausewitz’s doctrine in time of peace. In broadest definition, political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. Such operations are both overt and covert. They range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures (as ERP), and “white” propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of “friendly” foreign elements, “black” psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states.

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945-50Intel/d269

Who sets the doctrine, and who coordinates execution when every department owns only a slice? We need an American Political Warfare directorate at national level.

Economic Statecraft Is Back. Is America Ready?

warontherocks.com · · January 29, 2026

Nicholas Hanson and Madeline Field

January 29, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/01/economic-statecraft-is-back-is-america-ready/

In 432 B.C.E., a year before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, the Megarians received an unusual decree from the Athenian assembly: They were prevented from accessing the vast Athenian Empire’s harbors and marketplaces due to their alliance with Sparta, a rising empire that posed a clear threat to Athens’ hegemony. While the official reasoning is lost to history, many scholars believe that Athens, fearful of the rising great power, used sanctions to force Megara’s economic decline.

So began the deliberate use of economics as a tool of statecraft.

In the millennia since, economics remained an important enabler of state power. Yet over the course of the 20th century, the tools of economic statecraft transformed in response to globalization and its gnarled, twisted webs of overlapping capital markets, supply chains, multinational commercial banks, and international organizations. Economic statecraft has quickly become more critical than ever.

Since World War II, the United States has shaped both global governance and the international economic order, as it boasts the world’s most powerful economy. The U.S. dollar serves as the world’s reserve currency. Together, America’s strong economy and the dollar’s exorbitant privilege have allowed it to unilaterally wield economic weapons against its foes while rarely being the target. Yet that postwar dynamic has shifted significantly in the past decade. This is in part due to “America First” politics, which broadly seeks to renegotiate the terms of U.S. economic engagement with the rest of the world, but also from China’s rise as America’s primary strategic competitor. A manufacturing superpower and the world’s second-largest economy, China’s behavior contradicts its common refrain that it is participating in a win-win “community of common destiny.” Rather, experts believe that China — and arguably the United States — is playing a zero-sum game at the rest of the world’s expense.

China and America each draw their international political power from the strength of their economies and access to capital markets, and throughout the aughts, there was a sense that the two countries could together build a more prosperous world. Yet in the past decade, both countries have begun to exert their economic leverage, and the economic relationship between the United States, China, and the rest of the world has instead become outright coercive. And industry, both directly affected by economic statecraft and critical to its success, is on the frontlines.

In the past several years, China has expanded its economic statecraft toolset: restricting access to critical minerals supply chains, opening up antitrust investigations of U.S. tech companies, ramping up its well-known intellectual property theft (increasingly enabled by cyberattacks), and increasing strategically significant investments in wealthy countries. The United States, too, has expanded its economic statecraft policy options. In addition to maintaining its crippling sanctions regime, it has sought access to critical minerals, tightened some restrictions on foreign investments, introduced new limits on the imports of strategic resources in the defense supply chain, aggressively pursued reindustrialization, and slapped large tariffs on friend and foe alike.

While current economic statecraft policy is at times bewildering, there is no doubt that the cost of losing ultimate economic leverage is high. In America, increased economic pressure from China would lead to higher prices, goods shortages, and ultimately, slow growth. More broadly, it will lead to a more neo-mercantilist and illiberal future. America, and its friends — if they are still friends — will ultimately suffer.

Yet despite an increased reliance on economic tools to accomplish national security objectives and the high stakes, America is unequipped to address China and other threats to its economic security.

Currently, there doesn’t seem to be a whole-of-government economic statecraft policy driving decisions. While economic statecraft assumes a central role in the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy, the document is short on specifics. Similarly, the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act contain few allusions to it, with a few exceptions.

The Defense Department has emerged as a potential coordinating agency in focusing heavily on important economic security issues: supply chain vulnerabilities, the availability of critical materials, cybersecurity, and emerging technologies. Efforts to further empower the Office of Strategic Capital and stand up the new Economic Defense Unit indicate that the department is serious about these threats.

Yet the Defense Department has generally been separated from the traditional instruments of economic statecraft wielded by the Treasury, Commerce, and State Departments. Without a more defined role handed to the Defense Department by Congress or the White House, its impact is limited. Such ambiguity within the U.S. government does not send strong demand signals to industry partners, enable strategists to begin developing tools and networks for successful policy, or lay the bedrock for effective inter-agency coordination.

Americans haven’t had to consider a post-liberal world in decades, much less what weaponized interdependence would do to the international economic order. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that consequential, uncomfortable questions have largely gone undiscussed: What does an economic security doctrine look like for the Defense Department? What agencies or departments own the problem set, and how can they receive funding? How may governments and private industry interact or share business intelligence? How can industry be incentivized to cooperate with the Defense Department? If economic statecraft fits in the Defense Department, what consideration for economic statecraft should be given across the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution process, and who is responsible for coordination and alignment?

America needs a broader strategy, and that starts with an informed conversation. Concerned about the existential stakes of this issue, the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks are teaming up to elevate this debate. This special series will seek to answer those questions and more in a series of 11 articles, each building upon the last. While these authors will provide some high-level policy recommendations, they are in no way intended to be exhaustive solutions to complex, billion-dollar problems.

We’re extremely excited to partner with the Potomac Institute on this important effort. The Potomac Institute — a leading science and technology policy research center at the intersection of government and business — has been behind the scenes coordinating these discussions for several years. They’ve brought to bear their network of experts, and other representatives of this small but passionate community, and we encourage you to explore their research on these topics.

This is a perilous time for the United States and its allies, as we all navigate a more uncertain world. The team at War on the Rocks hopes you’ll feel as concerned and inspired by these challenges as we do.

Nicholas Hanson is the chief operating officer of War on the Rocks.

Madeline Field is the assistant editor of Cogs of War, a vertical at War on the Rocks focused on defense technology and the defense industrial base.

**Please note, as a matter of house style, War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress.

Image: The White House via Wikimedia Commons.

17. How Does Canada’s Military Fare Without the United States?

Summary:

Lagassé and Massie revisit their 2024 “death spiral” diagnosis and find partial, fragile recovery. Ottawa, under Prime Minister Mark Carney, pledges to hit NATO’s 2 percent of GDP this fiscal year, add CA$82 billion over five years, retire aging fleets, and raise pay to aid retention. Yet readiness still hinges on people, not platforms: training capacity is tight, recruiting remains hard, and even large reserve expansion ideas lack approved funding. They argue tensions with POTUS push Canada to diversify partners, but decades of integration mean Canada cannot escape U.S. dependence for major operations any time soon.

Comment: What breaks first in a U.S.-Canada rupture: procurement, continental defense, or public willingness to pay for autonomy?

How Does Canada’s Military Fare Without the United States?

Philippe Lagassé and Justin Massie

January 28, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/01/how-does-canadas-military-fare-without-the-united-states/

In 2024, Philippe Lagassé and Justin Massie wrote, “Don’t Count on Us: Canada’s Military Unreadiness,” where they argued that Canada’s military was in a death spiral. In the midst of heightened tensions between Canada and the United States, we thought now would be a good time to revisit the question of Canada’s independent military readiness.

Image: Petty Officer 2nd Class Robert Simpson

In your 2024 article, “Don’t Count on Us: Canada’s Military Unreadiness,” you argued that Canada’s military was in a death spiral, completely unready to face a serious adversary or make meaningful contributions to allied security needs. What is your assessment of the strength and readiness of Canada’s armed forces today?

Canada is slowly beginning to increase its military strength. The new government of Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to meet NATO’s 2 percent of GDP target this fiscal year. Over the next five years, Canada will be spending an additional CA$82 billion on defense. The government is also retiring a number of older fleets as new ones come online, which will improve readiness. Equally important, the government has greatly increased salaries for military personnel, which should help with recruitment and retention.

Yet challenges still remain. Recruitment remains very difficult, given the lack of capacity to take people in and get them trained for the trades where they are most needed. New capabilities are being acquired, but the question of whether the Canadian Armed Forces will have enough people to use them effectively remains open. Indeed, the Carney government is currently looking into increasing the size of the primary reserve from about 23,500 today to 100,000 soldiers, and the supplementary reserve from 4,300 today to 300,000. But the mobilization plan has yet to be approved or funded.

The 2025-26 Departmental Plan estimates that the regular forces will reach their authorized strength of 71,500 in 2027 and its authorized reserve force of 30,000 by 2032. Moreover, the plan acknowledges that the Canadian Armed Forces will only achieve the readiness level required to sustain its full set of concurrent operations by 2032. In short, while investments improve the Canadian Armed Forces’ strategic posture, full force readiness — particularly in meeting recruitment and capability targets — remains a work in progress.

Since your article was published, the relationship between the United States and Canada has become more strained, after President Donald Trump suggested annexing Canada as the 51st state of America and both threatened and implemented high tariffs against Canadian imports. Has this tension affected the countries’ defense relationship in any way? Can you also provide a general update on the status of the U.S.-Canadian strategic partnership?

President Trump’s second term has dramatically affected Canadian defense policy. Trump’s return was a driving force behind the Canadian government’s promise to meet the NATO 2 percent of GDP target this year and the 5 percent target by 2035. In light of Trump’s 51st state remarks, tariff threats, and implied economic coercion, Prime Minister Carney pledged to reduce Canada’s military dependence on the United States. This has led Ottawa to join the European Security Action for Europe program and to seek various ways to diversify Canada’s defense partnerships. For example, Canada is currently re-examining its decision to procure 88 F-35A fighter jets and exploring the possibility of a mixed fleet composed of F-35 and Gripen fighter jets. In addition, the Canadian government has pledged to develop and acquire more sovereign capabilities from Canadian industry, but has yet to release its first Defence Industrial Strategy. All that said, there are limits to how much distance the Canadian government can create between Canada and the United States in military matters. Canada will remain deeply dependent on American military capability for decades to come. The Canadian government continues, and will continue, to acquire higher end military capabilities, such as the F-35 and P-8A, from the United States, and the Canadian Armed Forces will remain dependent on the U.S. military to conduct major operations overseas. And Canada has expressed interest in joining President Trump’s Golden Dome. Indeed, the Canadian defense minister has gone so far as to state that Canada is moving in lockstep with the United States when it comes to continental defense. All this suggests that the U.S.-Canadian relationship is under severe strain and may result in political infighting depending on the degree to which the Canadian government will seek to distance itself from Washington. But Canada’s margin of maneuver is limited by decades of dependence on the United States.

You discuss in your article how most Canadians, despite a few notable exceptions, have typically seen little incentive for serious security and defense investment. If this trend continues, how do you foresee adversaries (such as Russia and China) exploiting this, whether to undermine the United States or the Western Hemisphere more broadly?

The Canadian reluctance to spend on defense is longstanding and enduring. While Canadians are currently supportive of major defense spending increases, this is in response to President Trump’s aggressive stance toward Canada, and the deteriorating international security environment. Both Russia and China will benefit from a degradation of the U.S.-Canadian relationship, regardless of the increased Canadian defense expenditures this fuels. The reason for this is simple: Tensions between Canada and the United States may lead to a less effective North American security and defense relationship, and greater concerns in Europe and the Indo-Pacific about how the United States treats its allies.

To ensure public backing, the government has tied defense spending to economic growth through major investments in Canadian industry and innovation. If those goals aren’t realized, the public may sour on the defense spending increases and major capability procurements that are promised. Public support in Canada for reaching the ambitious 5 percent of GDP defense spending target also hinges on avoiding spending scandals, as past controversies have eroded willingness to back increases in defense expenditures.

Finally, with the benefit of hindsight, what would you change about your original argument?

We underestimated how quickly Canadians would be willing to reinvest in their armed forces because we did not anticipate how aggressive and demanding a second Trump administration would be toward Canada. We assumed that the U.S.-Canadian relationship would stay more or less constant, when changes to it proved to be the most important factor in leading Canadians to support increased defense expenditures and military capabilities. Were we to change our original argument, we would have paid more attention to the political faction inside the Trump administration willing to jeopardize its relationship with longstanding allies to achieve political objectives. If President Trump were to use force against Denmark or coerce Greenland into joining the United States, the resulting rupture in trans-Atlantic relations would likely be so severe that Canada’s resolve — and pace — in reducing its dependence on the United States could accelerate markedly.

***

Philippe Lagassé is associate professor and Barton Chair of international affairs at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

Justin Massie is professor of political science at the Université du Québec à Montréal and codirector of the Network for Strategic Analysis.

Image: Senior Airman Zachary Foster via DVIDS

18. Wargames Keep Warning Us About Congested Logistics—It’s Time to Take Action

Summary:

After reviewing more than 100 wargames and tabletop exercises, Welch argues the joint force keeps relearning the same lesson: logistics fails first when environments are congested and contested, yet force design, posture, and feasibility assumptions rarely change. The issue is not insight or participation. It is ownership. Logistics is treated as decisive in briefs, but optional in institutional decisions, so games become confirmatory instead of decision forcing. She urges clearer problem framing, attention to “seams” across DoD, industry, and allies, and enforceable mechanisms that convert recurring findings into binding tradeoffs that favor resilience over efficiency.

Comment: As Eliot Cohen and John Gooch wrote in Military Misfortune: all military failures are a result of three things: failure to learn, failure to adapt, and failure to anticipate. Are we failing to anticipate here? How can we fail with so many warning signals? Who has ownership of "anticipation?"

If logistics is decisive, who is accountable for turning game outputs into orders, budgets, and posture changes?

What “decision forcing” triggers would make leaders accept near term cost now to avoid operational paralysis later?

Wargames Keep Warning Us About Congested Logistics—It’s Time to Take Action - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · Katherine Welch · January 29, 2026

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After examining more than a hundred wargames and tabletop exercises, the conclusion is unavoidable: The US joint force has a logistics problem. And it does not stem from a lack of effort, insight, or participation. Rather, the real problem is that the board has not moved. Despite repeated play, the joint force’s game pieces—force design choices, posture decisions, assumptions about operational feasibility, and risk decisions—remain largely unchanged, even as wargames have begun to advance the decomposition of contested environments and illuminate the real-world logistics challenges US forces will face under congested and contested conditions.

Across the Department of Defense, industry, interagency partners, and allied and partner nations, logistics is routinely described as decisive, and just as routinely treated as secondary. As the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has observed, contested logistics is among the “key capability areas” that are inherently joint, multidomain, and multitheater. This emphasis reflects a broader continuity in senior military leadership: The previous chairman similarly underscored that “all our operations are underwritten by logistics,” explicitly linking sustainment to deterrence and strategic effect. Wargames repeatedly surface the same vulnerabilities, creating a set of well-established known knowns about logistics in contested conditions. Yet those insights rarely translate into changed assumptions, altered force design, or binding institutional decisions. The result is a cycle of activity without progress because we keep rediscovering logistics vulnerabilities instead of converting them into operational advantage.

This is not a failure of analysis. It is a failure of ownership. The issue is not insufficient insight or participation, which are conditions often cited as limiting factors, but the absence of mechanisms to translate recurring findings into enforceable decisions.

Drawing on more than a hundred logistics-oriented wargames and tabletop exercises over the last six years, this assessment examines why recurring insights have not translated into institutional decisions. It reflects experience as a designer, adjudicator, advisor, and participant, as well as personal review of tactical-, operational-, and strategic-level wargame and tabletop exercise reports dating back to 2019.

Decisive in Theory, Optional in Practice

Recent defense publications have highlighted this disconnect. A Navy Supply Journal essay described the “elevation of logistics in joint warfighting,” while a Joint Force Quarterly article warned that US plans still rely on optimistic sustainment assumptions that collapse once conditions become contested. These critiques align closely with what wargames continue to demonstrate: Logistics is acknowledged conceptually but rarely integrated as a determining factor in operational decision-making.

Contested logistics has become a catchall phrase, often used to describe any friction or difficulty. For analytic clarity, it should instead be understood as a condition in which an adversary can deliberately and persistently disrupt the logistics system across domains, authorities, and time horizons, not merely by attacking lines of communication, but by targeting the enterprise that generates, sustains, and regenerates combat power.

It is essential to distinguish contested logistics from two related but distinct conditions that are frequently conflated in wargames. The first is congested logistics, in which throughput is degraded by capacity constraints, bottlenecks, infrastructure limits, or systemic inefficiencies. These conditions create friction and delay, but they are largely internal to the logistics system and can often be mitigated through improved planning, prioritization, or investment.

The second is a logistics environment in which multiple actors, including services, components, allies, partners, or civilian entities compete for shared logistics resources within the same operational or industrial ecosystem. Competition for lift, fuel, munitions, port access, maintenance capacity, or commercial transportation can constrain operations even in the absence of direct adversary interference.

While the distinctions between these two concepts and that of congested logistics are apparent, there is risk when a wargame’s design or play place all logistics challenges into a single bucket rather than forcing participants to engage with them separately. Conflating these conditions drives analytic focus toward managing scarcity rather than countering strategy and leads wargames to generate solutions optimized for efficiency instead of resilience and endurance. The result is a body of analysis that consistently identifies where logistics fails under pressure, but rarely produces pathways to turn those vulnerabilities into operational advantage. Wargames become confirmatory rather than transformative.

Modern contested logistics extends well beyond kinetic attack. It includes cyber effects on planning and transportation systems; economic, legal, and regulatory pressure on industry; political constraints on access and basing; and information operations that shape commercial risk tolerance. In future conflicts, logistics will not transition cleanly from steady state to contested. Persistent disruption is the baseline condition.

More Wargames, No New Outcomes

Joint wargames bring together military professionals, interagency teams, industry experts, and allied and partner nations working in good faith to address logistics challenges. Over the past six years, the volume and frequency of these events have increased markedly. Consistency should have enabled progress; instead, it has normalized risk.

Recurring problems include weak command structure, poor readiness, limited resources, outdated systems, and short endurance.

Despite repeated exposure, these findings rarely drive changes in force design, posture decisions, or institutional priorities. Logistics remains the quiet warfighting function, strategically decisive but rarely given equal footing with fires, maneuver, or command and control.

Across logistics-focused wargames, the most persistent limitation is not a lack of creativity or analytic rigor, but inconsistent problem framing. Logistics is frequently treated as a movement problem focused on how to push forces forward once disruption occurs, rather than as a system that must be designed to operate under persistent pressure. This framing shapes analysis toward workarounds instead of redesign and toward mitigation rather than advantage.

That tendency is reinforced in multidomain wargames, where logistics is often abstracted or simplified to preserve tempo. While adjudication is richly informed for fires, intelligence, and command and control, logistics is frequently treated as a background condition rather than a pacing function. The result is predictable: Games validate legacy assumptions, reinforce optimism bias, and obscure the role logistics plays in determining feasibility, timing, and risk.

Seeing the Parts, Missing the Seams

Wargames often treat logistics as a monolithic system. It is an ecosystem spanning military, industry, interagency, and allied and partner communities. The seams between these actors, across authorities, incentives, infrastructure, and time horizons, are where modern vulnerabilities emerge and where adversaries increasingly focus their efforts.

Near-peer competitors understand this. Their approaches to logistics contestation extend beyond military targets to civilian infrastructure, commercial transportation networks, and industrial dependencies—something the Department of Defense has repeatedly highlighted in its assessments of China’s military strategy. Yet wargame scenarios and adjudication often fail to reflect this reality, limiting their ability to assess enterprise-level risk or inform capability development.

Who Owns Contested Logistics?

The underlying constraint revealed by wargaming is structural rather than cultural or analytical. Contested logistics is treated as an enterprise-level challenge, but no single entity is responsible for integrating its implications across force design, posture, sustainment, and industrial base decisions. Authorities are distributed across organizations with legitimate but partial mandates, producing coherence at the component level but not at the system level.

As a result, insights generated through wargames tend to inform awareness rather than decision-making. Findings are briefed upward, but no designated authority is responsible for adjudicating tradeoffs, accepting risk on behalf of the enterprise, or enforcing alignment across portfolios.

A 2023 Government Accountability Office report underscored this gap, noting the department’s lack of an integrated mechanism to track and coordinate logistics challenges across wargames and exercises.

Congress responded in the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act by assigning responsibility for global contested logistics posture management to the deputy secretary of defense, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the commander of US Transportation Command. This shift creates a rare opportunity to move beyond diagnosing logistics vulnerabilities and toward enforcing decisions that deliberately trade efficiency for resilience, and mitigation for advantage. Senior leaders should use this new joint responsibility to treat wargaming outputs as decision-forcing mechanisms, linking logistics findings directly to posture, force design, and industrial base tradeoffs rather than allowing them to remain analytic artifacts.

Target the Problem at the Seams

The seams Congress identified, between the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, and US Transportation Command, are the right place to start. How those seams are managed will determine whether contested logistics insights remain descriptive, or become prescriptive inputs to force design, posture, and operational risk decisions.

The implication is clear: Without sustained ownership to integrate analysis, adjudicate tradeoffs, and enforce alignment, additional wargames will continue to ineffectively represent the logistics enterprise and generate insight without effect. In an environment defined by persistent disruption, delay is not neutral. It compounds risk.

The department has already identified the problem. The question is whether it will convert that understanding into action before conditions impose the decision instead.

Katherine Welch advises senior defense leaders on problem framing in complex, contested environments, with a focus on institutional seams.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Cpl. Jacob Joseph, Australian Defence Force (via US 8th Theater Sustainment Command)

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mwi.westpoint.edu · Katherine Welch · January 29, 2026

19. Taiwan, China react sharply differently to Japan's Taiwan remarks

Summary:

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi reiterated comments that Japan’s Self-Defense Forces could cooperate with U.S. forces in a Taiwan contingency, framed as support for evacuating Japanese and American citizens. Beijing reacted sharply. A foreign ministry spokesperson said Japan has “no right to meddle” in the Taiwan issue, and state media amplified the warning that Tokyo is crossing diplomatic red lines. Chinese online commentary urged curbs on exchanges, and sources said Beijing is weighing retaliatory measures. Taiwan’s response was positive, welcoming the remarks as support and a contribution to regional peace and stability, even boosting Takaichi’s standing there.

Comment: If evacuation planning becomes the public rationale, what indicators would signal to Beijing that Japan is shifting from protection to intervention?

World News Jan. 28, 2026 / 8:25 PM / Updated Jan. 28, 2026 at 8:25 PM

Taiwan, China react sharply differently to Japan's Taiwan remarks

By Asia Today and translated by UPI

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/01/28/china-taiwan-responded-different-ways-japanese-pm-takaichi-sanae-remarks/4241769649557/

Liberal Democratic Party President and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi speaks during the Panel Discussion by the Leaders of 7 Parties at the Japan National Press Club (JNPC) in Tokyo, Japan, 26 January 2026. Photo by David Mareuil /EPA

Jan. 28 (Asia Today) -- China and Taiwan responded in starkly different ways to remarks by Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae on possible intervention in the event of a Taiwan contingency, further straining already tense cross-strait relations and worsening ties between Beijing and Tokyo.

Takaichi reiterated the comments Sunday, echoing statements she first made in early November, suggesting that Japan's Self-Defense Forces could cooperate with U.S. forces in a contingency to help evacuate Japanese and American citizens. The remarks triggered an angry backlash from Beijing, while drawing praise in Taiwan.

According to diplomatic sources in Beijing familiar with cross-strait relations, relations between China and Japan have entered what could be their most difficult phase in years, largely due to the fallout from Takaichi's comments late last year. Chinese authorities are reportedly mobilizing a range of retaliatory measures to exert pressure on Tokyo.

From Beijing's perspective, Japan's alliance with the United States does not justify involvement in what China considers its internal affairs. Chinese officials argue that Tokyo should manage bilateral relations carefully and avoid actions that could further inflame tensions.

China's response was swift and sharp. At a regular press briefing Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Japan had "no right to meddle in the Taiwan issue," expressing strong opposition to the remarks. State-run media, including the People's Daily, amplified the statement, accusing Japan of crossing diplomatic red lines.

Online reaction in China followed a similar tone. Commentators and social media users widely criticized Japan, with some calling for a temporary suspension of exchanges between the two countries.

Taiwan's reaction, by contrast, has been largely positive. Politicians, media outlets and public figures there have welcomed Takaichi's remarks as a sign of Japan's firm support, framing them as a contribution to regional stability and peace. Some observers in Taiwan have even suggested that Takaichi's popularity there now rivals that of President Lai Ching-te, underscoring the favorable reception.

Cross-strait relations are already at a low point, and analysts say the polarized reactions to Japan's stance are likely to push tensions even higher. Some sources in Beijing warn that the situation has deteriorated to the point where even a limited confrontation can no longer be ruled out.

As reactions to Takaichi's remarks deepen divisions between Beijing and Taipei, observers say relations between China and Japan are also set to worsen further, adding another layer of instability to the region.

-- Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

20. ‘Speed plus range’: 101st Airborne incorporates Marine Osprey into training to prep for Army’s future tilt-rotor aircraft

Summary:

At Fort Campbell, the 101st Airborne trained with Marine MV-22 Ospreys for its first tilt-rotor air assault, using Operation Lethal Eagle to shape doctrine before the Army fields Bell’s MV-75. Leaders frame it as “Air Assault 2.0,” arguing speed plus range changes the geometry of the fight and lets infantry move from farther staging areas with less warning. Soldiers noted the ride was fast and smooth compared with Chinooks. The MV-75 is projected to carry 14 troops, cruise about 320 mph, and reach roughly 920 miles, with first aircraft expected around 2028.

Comment: Our Army is developing an amazing capability. I hope there will be a SOF variant. If speed and range are the gain, what new vulnerabilities do we accept in basing, signatures, and sustainment?

‘Speed plus range’: 101st Airborne incorporates Marine Osprey into training to prep for Army’s future tilt-rotor aircraft

Stars and Stripes · Corey Dickstein · January 28, 2026

https://www.stripes.com/branches/army/2026-01-28/101st-airborne-osprey-training-future-tilt-rotor-20545386.html

An MV-22 Osprey from Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 774 flies over Fort Campbell, Ky., training grounds on Jan. 23, 2026, during an air assault exercise for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division. Fort Campbell incorporated the tilt-rotor Osprey into training for the first time as the 101st prepares for the arrival of the Army’s first MV-75 tiltrotor aircraft in the coming years. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — The Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey touched down gently on the long, thick vegetation in a clearing on Fort Campbell’s training grounds, sending debris flying across the field as soldiers stormed out the back of the tilt-rotor aircraft.

The 101st Airborne Division soldiers raced forward and dove into the grass, turning away from the hulking airframe to protect them from the hurricane-strength winds the Osprey produces with its twin rotors in helicopter mode. It marked a first for the historic division — a long-range air assault of infantry forces with a tilt-rotor aircraft. And it marked the first step to prepare the division to receive its own tilt-rotor aircraft — the MV-75 that Bell Helicopter is building for the service — in the coming years.

“We cooked that flight,” said Army Staff Sgt. Peyton Porter, an infantry squad leader in the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team. A veteran of the Iraq War who has completed dozens of air assault operations on traditional Army UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47 Chinook helicopters, Porter said he was struck by the speed of the Osprey in his first time flying in a tilt-rotor aircraft.

“It was pretty smooth, especially considering how fast it was,” Porter said Friday immediately after conducting the air assault operation during a major training exercise dubbed Operation Lethal Eagle. “It was very fast. Very nice. A lot faster than any Chinook ride that I’ve been on.”

Operation Lethal Eagle is the 101st’s primary annual divisionwide home station training exercise, which brought together about 7,000 Fort Campbell soldiers to test the 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team’s lethality. After the Army announced last year the 101st would be the service’s first unit to receive the MV-75 aircraft, division planners sought to include Ospreys in Lethal Eagle to help develop the Army’s doctrine for fighting with its coming tilt-rotor capability.

“We don’t want [the MV-75] to arrive here with a learning curve,” said Brig. Gen. Travis McIntosh, the 101st Airborne’s deputy commander for operations and a longtime Army aviator. “We want it to arrive as a warfighting capability ready to go in this division. So, getting the MV-22 tilt-rotor experience today allows us to inform how we will fight with the MV-75 tomorrow.”

Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101 Airborne Division’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team conduct an air assault operation out of an MV-22 Osprey during a training event at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Jan. 23, 2026. Fort Campbell incorporated the tiltrotor Osprey into training for the first time as the 101st prepares for the arrival of the Army’s first MV-75 tiltrotor aircraft in the coming years. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

‘Large-scale and long-range’

The 101st Airborne Division has spent recent months planning for the eventual arrival of the MV-75, currently slated for 2028, but last week was the first time it got its hands on an Osprey to see firsthand the difference a tilt-rotor aircraft could make.

The MV-75, once completed, will be slightly smaller than the Osprey, but it will bring “a new world” of capability to the 101st Airborne and the Army, according to McIntosh. Leaders at Fort Campbell have begun referring to those coming capabilities as “Air Assault 2.0,” he said.

“We’ve never been able to really get large-scale and long-range together, and that’s the relevance,” the general said. “We think speed plus range equals relevance. … In this division, we only have half the equation right now, I can either give you speed or range, not both, and with the tilt-rotor capability that we will be fielding soon, we will have that relevance and bring Air Assault 2.0 into the future fight.”

Though the Osprey can serve for now as a stand-in for the MV-75, the comparison of the tilt-rotor aircraft is not apples-to-apples, said Douglas Englen, a retired legendary Army aviator who is now a military sales and strategy manager for Bell Helicopter.

He said that Bell — which worked with Boeing to build the Osprey — has taken many design and capability cues from the Osprey, but the MV-22 was purpose-built for the Marines. Bell has designed the MV-75 from scratch specifically for the Army’s needs, Englen said.

Englen describes the new helicopter as a jump to a third generation in tilt-rotor aviation. Among the key concepts of the design is an all-digital platform that can be rapidly updated and equipped with the most modern software and hardware capabilities to allow the Army to adjust practically on the fly to emerging enemy capabilities.

The MV-75 is designed to carry 14 troops and a crew of four, according to the Army. It has a cruise speed of 320 mph — much faster than the Black Hawk’s operating speed of 183 mph. And it will boast a range of up to 920 miles, which dwarfs the Black Hawk’s 367-mile top range.

Fort Campbell officials expect to begin receiving MV-75s around 2028. Since it was chosen to build the new tilt-rotor aircraft in 2022, Bell has sped efforts to produce the new airframe, moving its goal for production up about 30 months from its initial plans, Englen said. The Army wants to further speed production, Gen. Randy George, Army chief of staff, said this month. Army officials said this week they could not immediately provide an updated time frame for MV-75 production.

‘Much more lethal’

Army officials believe the new capability will allow the 101st Airborne to deploy its forces as far as Europe with just MV-75s, instead of needing to load troops and helicopters on planes or ships to reach the Continent.

Army Col. Ryan Bell, the commander of the 101st’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, described that coming capability as “extending our legs.”

Bell watched closely Friday as the MV-22 from Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 774 at Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C., conducted a handful of air assault flights with his Easy Company soldiers, who had held as his reserve force for the exercise.

The colonel, an infantry officer and veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, joked that he wished he would have put himself on one of the Osprey flights to experience just how much faster it was than the Black Hawks and Chinooks he has flown on for years.

But the operation was an opportunity to learn. Bell was impressed with the Osprey’s ability to rapidly load up squads of his soldiers at a location miles away from the training fight and deliver them into an engagement.

“We can move forces from much farther away, whether we’re fighting in Europe or the Pacific — from a different island, for example,” Bell said. “It lets me change the geometry of the battlefield because of those speed and legs — the distance it can cover so quickly.

“It’s going to make us much more lethal.”

But Bell also said it was critical his troops spent Lethal Eagle focusing on basic infantry tactics while they worked to incorporate all the Army’s latest technology and the tilt-rotor Ospreys. His units employed the Army’s new M7 rifles, its latest night vision goggles and the new Infantry Squad Vehicle during its Lethal Eagle fight.

“We’re infantry. It’s all about being really good at the fundamentals,” he said. “Can you shoot, move, communicate? We’re getting a ton of technology. It enables us. It doesn’t replace those core skill sets.”

It was not lost on Bell or McIntosh the significance of placing the 2-506th’s legendary Easy Company — of “Band of Brothers” fame — in the Osprey for the 101st Airborne’s first-ever tilt-rotor air assault. One of the Army’s first airborne units that jumped into combat on World War II’s D-Day, Easy Company will now help pave the way for the next revolution in Army air-based operations, McIntosh said.

The division plans to include Ospreys in all its major training events going forward until the MV-75 arrives at Fort Campbell — so long as the Marines or another of the Army’s sister services has one available, McIntosh said.

“We’ve often said we’re not an innovation division, but we are a division that has a history of innovating, and this fits right in our profile,” the general said. “This is the division that will innovate appropriately and tell our Army how to properly execute [MV-75] air assaults.”

Stars and Stripes · Corey Dickstein · January 28, 2026

21.War Department Boards Merge to Form New Science, Technology and Innovation Board (STIB)

Summary:

The War Department says Secretary of War Pete Hegseth approved merging the Defense Innovation Board and the Defense Science Board into a new Science, Technology and Innovation Board, pending formal notice in the Federal Register. The release argues the goal is speed, fewer overlapping advisory lanes, and faster advice to the force. Emil Michael, the under secretary for research and engineering, says the new board will join technical rigor with private-sector agility and deliver clear, actionable guidance. The STIB would keep two standing subcommittees focused on strategic options and national security innovation, spanning emerging tech, management, talent, and scaling ideas into fielded capability.

Comment: New acronym. Do you want to join the STIB? The STIB does STEM.

Release

Immediate Release

War Department Boards Merge to Form New Science, Technology and Innovation Board (STIB)

Jan. 29, 2026 |

https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4392488/war-department-boards-merge-to-form-new-science-technology-and-innovation-board/

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth today has approved a major overhaul of the War Department's legacy advisory boards, directing the merger of the Defense Innovation Board (DIB) and the Defense Science Board (DSB) into the new Science and Technology Innovation Board (STIB), pending formal establishment by the Federal Register. This move continues the transition of the Department away from the alphabet‑soup era of indecisive overlapping groups that delay results to the American warfighter. The STIB is built on speed and clarity for rapid resolution to complex national security problems.

As the Department reestablishes a warrior ethos, the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering continues to assist in eliminating the bureaucratic blockers that undermine the decision-making velocity expected of a fighting force. The unification of two powerful advisory bodies into one will create one voice for innovation that replaces competing recommendations with fast, coherent guidance. The STIB brings together the DSB's deep scientific and technical rigor with the DIB's private‑sector agility and disruptive mindset. This merger results in one board with the authority, expertise and urgency to deliver real answers, not more processes.

"Our warfighters can't afford to wait. We are unifying our best scientific minds and our most innovative private-sector leaders into a single board built to provide clear answers, not more bureaucracy. The creation of the STIB ensures that ideas on the bleeding edge move quickly from concept to the field, directly making a difference to the joint force," said Emil Michael, Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering.

To ensure the board drives outcomes, the STIB will maintain two permanent subcommittees:

Subcommittee on Strategic Options – Charged with identifying concepts, capabilities, strategies, and courses of action across the S&T enterprise that rebalance cost and benefit, strengthen deterrence, and ensure U.S. operational dominance.
Subcommittee on National Security Innovation – Tasked with examining and advising on innovation pathways, emerging and disruptive technologies, commercial best practices in strategy and management, organizational design, human capital, decision‑making, and scaling — while leveraging America's broader innovation ecosystem for national security.

This merger transforms two respected boards into a unified force multiplier for the War Department. It reduces bureaucratic drag, eliminates redundant operations and ends the churn of siloed advisory groups that often hinders progress. The STIB will attract top talent from science, technology and commercial innovation hubs, giving them a single, powerful venue to shape both disruptive advancement and foundational scientific priorities.

The War Department is moving with renewed order and purpose. The STIB now stands as the forum where America's leading scientists and industry experts provide grounded, mission‑focused counsel to solve our warfighter's toughest problems.

View the new board appointments here: www.stib.cto.mil

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

https://apstrategy.org/

Executive Director, Korea Regional Review

https://www.upi.com/Korea-Regional-Review/

Editor-at-large, Small Wars Journal

https://smallwarsjournal.com/

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

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Xi Jinping Is Stripping Down His Military Command and Starting Over

Military purge shows limits of Chinese leader’s efforts to root out corruption and ensure loyalty

Best-laid plans

Russian example

China targeting three U.S. ‘centers of gravity’

Pentagon urged to wage decision-based AI warfare

Talking or Fighting, All of Iran’s Options Are Bad

Trump’s new threats highlight how the regime is in its most dire position in decades

Field Observation: Succession Without Peers

What the removal of peer authority inside the PLA signals for succession

Middle East Scrambles to Find U.S., Iran a Diplomatic Off-Ramp

Efforts to get negotiations started are yet to bear fruit, as Trump makes new threats

When AI Can Fake Majorities, Democracy Dies Quietly

The new threat of "malicious AI swarms”—and how to defend the public sphere

What is a “malicious AI swarm”?

Why this is dangerous for democracy (it’s not just “misinformation”)

So what do we do? Focus on coordination, provenance, and incentives

Bottom line

Key takeaways

Pentagon Official Visits Japan as US Seeks More Defense Spending

US cyber defense chief accidentally uploaded secret government info to ChatGPT

Scrutiny of cyber defense chief remains

Congress questioned ongoing cybersecurity threats

Inside China’s plans for 'national total war,' according to the Pentagon

What the Pentagon says China’s ‘national total war’ could mean

An eye on Taiwan

Military-civil fusion

Cyber warfare as part of the ‘national systems’ picture

Friction

Kyle Gunn

YouTube Producer

Army’s CamoGPT won’t be phased out as Pentagon embraces more commercial genAI products

Nuremberg’s Shadow: Accountability, Psychology, and Modern War

Abstract

Introduction

Nuremberg and the Foundations of Individual Responsibility

Psychology and Wartime Decision-Making

Psychiatric Findings at Nuremberg

Genocide, Intent, and Legal Thresholds

From Nuremberg to The Hague: Jurisprudential Continuity

Contemporary Relevance and Modern Conflict Scrutiny

Conclusion

About The Author

Exaggeration and Ignorance: The “Scramble for the Arctic”

China in Greenland

Russia in Greenland

Mining in Greenland

The Greenland ‘El Dorado’ and the Arctic Sea Routes

Conclusion

About The Author

Misdiagnosing Protest: How Counterinsurgency Logic Is Being Applied at Home

What Happens When the State Confuses Dissent for Rebellion

Is America’s Cyber Weakness Self-Inflicted?

Economic Statecraft Is Back. Is America Ready?

How Does Canada’s Military Fare Without the United States?

Wargames Keep Warning Us About Congested Logistics—It’s Time to Take Action - Modern War Institute

Taiwan, China react sharply differently to Japan's Taiwan remarks

Related

‘Speed plus range’: 101st Airborne incorporates Marine Osprey into training to prep for Army’s future tilt-rotor aircraft

War Department Boards Merge to Form New Science, Technology and Innovation Board (STIB)