Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the bet guarantee of their loyalty.

– Hannah Arendt

"The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject."

– Marcus Aurelius

"Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed. Quit evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now."

– Epictetus

1. China, Betting It Can Win a Trade War, Is Playing Hardball With Trump

2. U.S. Kills 6 People in Fifth Strike on Suspected Drug Boat

3. Chinese Criminals Made More Than $1 Billion From Those Annoying Texts

4. US national security expert Ashley Tellis arrested over classified files; China ties probed

5. After Israeli Withdrawal, Hamas Launches Violent Crackdown on Rivals in Gaza

6. China is ‘pacing threat,’ Army Secretary says—while backing Trump’s homeland defense push

7. How The Night Stalkers Are Planning To Survive In Future High-End Fights

8. Army to host ‘recurring’ competitions for counter-drone tech

9. I Corps adapts to meet modern challenges in the Indo-Pacific

10. Top US Army General Says He’s Letting ChatGPT Make Military Decisions

11. Drug Smugglers Change Supply Routes to Evade U.S. Warships

12. Move over James Bond: A new service lets anyone share secrets with Britain

13. Media including Fox News overwhelmingly reject Pentagon press policy

14.Chinese arms makers urged to embrace AI technology in weapons development

15. The Ethical Imperative of Information: Just War Considerations for Global Information Strategy

16. Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data

17. Book Review | William Spears’ Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy: Insights on the Morality of Military Service

18. Two Dangerous Assumptions in U.S. Defense Planning and How to Fix Them

19. The Dilemma of Duty Under Trump

20. Russia’s Hybrid Warfare Triggers Logistics, Comms & Operational Disruption

21. Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg Are Putting Cat Ears on the US Military

22. DOJ seizes $15 billion bitcoin in SE Asia crypto scam bust

23. How America Can Win the Biotech Race: To Outcompete China, Washington Must Unleash the Private Sector

24. US wades deeper into rising Philippine-China sea tussle

25. Trump, China, and Declining US Influence in Asia

1. China, Betting It Can Win a Trade War, Is Playing Hardball With Trump

Excerpts;

Both sides have vacillated between tough talk and de-escalation in recent days, but the rhetoric took a harder turn on Tuesday. China’s commerce ministry accused the U.S. of “double standards” regarding tariff threats and it vowed that China would “fight to the end” in the trade dispute.

On his Truth Social platform, Trump said the U.S. is considering “terminating business” with China on cooking oil and other “elements of Trade,” because of China’s refusal to buy U.S. soybeans—a decision Beijing has said is retaliation for Trump’s own tariffs.

The stock market has remained one of the few checks on a president who has wielded executive power aggressively.

Trump frequently wields the market as a real-time barometer of his economic stewardship. He has taken to social media to trumpet record market highs, crediting his administration’s policies such as deregulation and tax cuts. Conversely, when the market has faltered, particularly in response to his aggressive trade policies, he has tended to retreat or float the prospect of new deals.

...

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC on Tuesday that senior officials in Washington and Beijing held discussions about the latest trade tensions on Monday, saying both sides “will be able to work through it.”

People familiar with the matter said the U.S. ambassador to China, David Perdue, has been trying to arrange a phone call between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who leads the U.S. negotiation team, and his Chinese counterpart, Vice Premier He Lifeng.

Attention now turns to the expected summit between Trump and Xi when both attend a gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders in South Korea later this month.

“The meeting will be the message. There will not be major breakthroughs,” said Ryan Hass, director of the China center at the Brookings Institution think tank and a former senior national-security official. “Xi will want to use the meeting to project greater stability and predictability. Trump could look for assurances on flows of rare-earth elements. They may announce an extension of the trade truce that limits tariff escalation.”

China, Betting It Can Win a Trade War, Is Playing Hardball With Trump

Chinese leader Xi Jinping thinks the president will fold before launching new tariffs that would roil markets

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-trade-war-trump-talks-25c50136

By Lingling Wei

Follow and Gavin Bade

Oct. 14, 2025 9:00 pm ET

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has adopted a hard-line approach in the China-U.S. trade dispute. Ichiro Canno/AFP/Getty Images

In its trade standoff with Washington, Beijing thinks it has found America’s Achilles’ heel: President Trump’s fixation on the stock market.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is betting that the U.S. economy can’t absorb a prolonged trade conflict with the world’s second-largest economy, according to people close to Beijing’s decision-making. China is holding a firm line because of its conviction, the people said, that an escalating trade war will tank markets, as it did in April after Trump announced his so-called Liberation Day tariffs, prompting Beijing to hit back.

China expects that the prospect of another market meltdown ultimately will force Trump to negotiate at an expected summit with Xi late this month, the people said.

Beijing continued playing hardball this week, escalating the trade fight Monday by sanctioning the U.S. units of South Korean shipping company Hanwha Ocean. The move whipsawed U.S. markets on Tuesday, triggering a sharp early selloff as hopes for easing tensions faded, before major indexes partially rebounded and steadied in the afternoon.

Last week, Beijing imposed sweeping restrictions on the export of rare-earth minerals, which are vital to consumer electronics and the tech industry. Trump then threatened additional 100% tariffs on China starting Nov. 1.

Both sides have vacillated between tough talk and de-escalation in recent days, but the rhetoric took a harder turn on Tuesday. China’s commerce ministry accused the U.S. of “double standards” regarding tariff threats and it vowed that China would “fight to the end” in the trade dispute.

U.S. Kills 6 People in Fifth Strike on Suspected Drug Boat

https://news.usni.org/2025/10/14/u-s-kills-6-people-in-fifth-strike-on-suspected-drug-boat?utm

Mallory Shelbourne

October 14, 2025 7:35 PM

An alleged drug trafficking boat moments before it is struck. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared the video on his personal X account on Oct. 14, 2025. DoD Photo

The U.S. military conducted a fifth strike on a suspected drug boat, killing six people in international waters off the coast of Venezuela, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday afternoon.

Trump disclosed the strike in a post on Truth Social, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared a video of the attack on his personal account on social media website X.

“No U.S. Forces were harmed,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The Trump administration has given little legal justification for the strikes, which the president first disclosed in early September at a news conference at the White House. The Trump administration describes the strikes as military self-defense operations under U.S. Title 10. Both Democrat and Republicans lawmakers have raised questions on the strikes’ legality.

Earlier this month The New York Times reported that the Trump administration told Congress it considers those allegedly trafficking drugs “unlawful combatants.” Citing a memo to lawmakers, the newspaper said the administration considers the drug cartels engaging in an “armed attack against the United States,” the report said.

All five of the strikes on the suspected drug-running boats have occurred in waters off the coast of Venezuela.

Hegseth disclosed the last strike on Oct. 3. That strike killed four people in international waters, the Trump administration said at the time.

3. Chinese Criminals Made More Than $1 Billion From Those Annoying Texts

I have to admit that when I first started receiving these messages they appeared authentic. But since we have been taught not to click on links I went to my account and learned that my auto-pay was properly functioning and I did not have any bill to pay.

The scam I have found interesting is an email message from people I know who say they are stuck somewhere or lost their credit card and they want me to purchase a gift card for them. The email looks real and appears to be from someone I know. However, it is so obvious the person I know would not find themselves in such a situation and if they did their solution would not be to reach out to friends asking for a gift card. A simple email to that person's email address (not a reply to the scam email) always reveals that the person is fine and did not ask for help.

Chinese Criminals Made More Than $1 Billion From Those Annoying Texts

Messages seeking payment for unpaid tolls or postage fees prompt victims to hand over credit-card information, which gangs use to buy gift cards and luxury goods

https://www.wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/url-scam-texts-china-gangs-68e96097

By Robert McMillan

Oct. 14, 2025 10:00 pm ET

Emil Lendof/WSJ

Quick Summary

Criminal organizations in China have made more than $1 billion in the last three years through scam text messages.View more

The U.S. is awash with scam text messages. Officials say it has become a billion-dollar, highly sophisticated business benefiting criminals in China.

Your highway toll payment is now past due, one text warns. You have U.S. Postal Service fees to pay, another threatens. You owe the New York City Department of Finance for unpaid traffic violations.

The texts are ploys to get unsuspecting victims to fork over their credit-card details. The gangs behind the scams take advantage of this information to buy iPhones, gift cards, clothing and cosmetics.

Criminal organizations operating out of China, which investigators blame for the toll and postage messages, have used them to make more than $1 billion over the last three years, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Behind the con, investigators say, is a black market connecting foreign criminal networks to server farms that blast scam texts to victims. The scammers use phishing websites to collect credit-card information. They then find gig workers in the U.S. who will max out the stolen cards for a small fee.

Making the fraud possible: an ingenious trick allowing criminals to install stolen card numbers in Google and Apple Wallets in Asia, then share the cards with the people in the U.S. making purchases half a world away.

The deluge of phishing texts is getting worse. Americans reported an all-time high of 330,000 toll-scam messages in a single day last month, says Proofpoint, a company that filters mobile spam messages. The average monthly volume of toll-scam messages is about 3½ times what it was in January 2024.

An undated video shows how criminals can use stolen credit card numbers in one smartphone to make tap-to-pay purchases using a completely different smartphone.

Setting up SIM farms

Criminal gangs are able to flood people with text messages using so-called SIM farms, rooms jammed with boxes of networking devices. The servers are stuffed with the little white cards that mobile customers put in their new phones to begin making calls or sending texts.

“One person in a room with a SIM farm can send out the number of text messages that 1,000 phone numbers could send out,” said Adam Parks, an assistant special agent in charge at Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of DHS.

Criminal gangs overseas typically operate the farms remotely, but hire gig workers in the U.S. to set them up. The gangs recruit the workers via the WeChat messaging app, Parks said. Workers needing help have instruction manuals and live technical support.

At least 200 SIM boxes are operating in at least 38 farms across the U.S., in cities such as Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Miami, said Ben Coon, chief intelligence officer with the cybersecurity company Unit 221b, who has investigated the messaging fraud.

Coon has discovered SIM farms in shared office spaces, crack houses and an auto-repair shop.

Fake E-ZPass bill leads to a phishing site

Consumers receiving a scam toll text are asked to visit a website where they can pay their bill, after providing their name and credit-card or bank information.

Most people know to ignore the messages, but the fraction that click then enter a phishing site.

Texts seeking payment for an outstanding balance on E-ZPass tolls are ploys that criminal gangs in China have used to obtain sensitive credit-card information from unsuspecting Americans.

Some gangs set up sites using software found in criminal channels on the Telegram messaging app, investigators say. Through the sites, the scammers can watch every keystroke the victims type, and enter the same information into wallets on their own smartphones.

“It’s the easiest system I’ve ever seen for making phishing sites,” said Gary Warner, director of threat intelligence with the cybersecurity firm DarkTower.

The phishing sites ask their victims to submit a one-time password from their financial institution. But the point of this password isn’t to pay toll fees. The criminals use it, along with the other stolen information, as a final step to install the victims’ cards into mobile phone wallets located in Asia.

Pennies for every $100 gift card

The criminals find people in the U.S. willing to make purchases through Telegram channels. On any given day scammers employ 400 to 500 of the mules. The workers are paid around 12 cents for every $100 gift card they buy, Parks said.

The scammers use remote tap-to-pay software to create “a virtual bridge between the phone in China and a phone in the United States,” Parks said.

The trick allows the gig buyers to tap their phones at a store’s checkout to make a purchase, as if they were using their own credit card.

“Having these cards put into digital wallets is so powerful because multi-factor authentication is never needed again,” said Ford Merrill, a researcher at the threat intelligence firm SecAlliance. “You’ve effectively told your bank that you trust this device.”

Sometimes the gig workers buy products like iPhones, clothing and cosmetics directly. But to further cover their tracks, they often get gift cards that are later used to buy goods, which they then ship to China.

“Once it’s shipped to China, it’s sold in China, and all that money goes to Chinese organized crime groups,” Parks said.

An undated video that Warner, the cybercrime investigator, viewed earlier this year shows a man walk up to a point-of-sale system and then use a single Android phone to drain funds from more than a dozen different card accounts.

In another case, a Chinese national named Heng Yin pleaded guilty in August to wire fraud and identity theft charges in a federal court in Kentucky, and is scheduled to be sentenced next month.

Yin purchased 70 gift cards worth $4,825 using 107 different credit-card numbers loaded onto his phone’s Tap-to-Pay method at a Meijer grocery store in the Lexington, Ky., region, according to his plea agreement. To conceal all the gift cards, Yin covered the cards with larger items at self-checkout.

Write to Robert McMillan at robert.mcmillan@wsj.com

4. US national security expert Ashley Tellis arrested over classified files; China ties probed

Excerpts:

Tellis, an India-born naturalised US citizen, has been a prominent figure in Washington’s foreign policy establishment for decades.

He was one of the key negotiators of the landmark US-India civil nuclear agreement during the George W. Bush administration in 2008 and served on the National Security Council under Bush. Earlier, he was an adviser to US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill between 2001 and 2003.

Tellis has been notably critical of the Narendra Modi government in India. Reacting to the news of the charges, Amit Malviya, head of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s National Information and Technology Department, suggested that Tellis’s past criticisms of the government now take on new context.

“This explains why Ashley Tellis, often cited and celebrated by India’s opposition, spoke so frequently and harshly against us. The forces working against India are beginning to unravel in ways few could have imagined,” he said.

According to court filings, Tellis has held top-level security clearance since 2001. He served as an unpaid senior adviser at the State Department and as a contractor with the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment.

US-China relations

China Diplomacy

US national security expert Ashley Tellis arrested over classified files; China ties probed

FBI found over 1,000 classified pages at the long-time US adviser’s home amid scrutiny of his Beijing contacts

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3329035/us-national-security-expert-arrested-over-classified-files-china-ties-probed?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article

Khushboo Razdanin Washington

Published: 5:10am, 15 Oct 2025Updated: 9:09am, 15 Oct 2025

Ashley Tellis, a prominent Indian-American national security expert and long-time US adviser, has been accused of hoarding classified documents and repeatedly meeting Chinese officials, stirring concern over possible Beijing ties and jolting Washington’s foreign policy circles.

An affidavit dated October 13 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said more than a thousand pages of classified materials – several marked “Top Secret” and “Secret” – were recovered from various parts of Tellis’s Virginia home, including three trash bags, during a Federal Bureau of Investigation search over the weekend.

The Justice Department alleges that Tellis repeatedly removed highly classified materials from secure government facilities and stored them unsecured at his residence just outside Washington.

A State Department official confirmed to the Post that Tellis, a “consultant” with the department, was arrested on Saturday. Court documents revealed that on the day of the search, Tellis and his family were scheduled to fly to Rome.

China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Aerial view of the US Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Photo: AFP

Tellis, an India-born naturalised US citizen, has been a prominent figure in Washington’s foreign policy establishment for decades.

He was one of the key negotiators of the landmark US-India civil nuclear agreement during the George W. Bush administration in 2008 and served on the National Security Council under Bush. Earlier, he was an adviser to US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill between 2001 and 2003.

Tellis has been notably critical of the Narendra Modi government in India. Reacting to the news of the charges, Amit Malviya, head of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s National Information and Technology Department, suggested that Tellis’s past criticisms of the government now take on new context.

“This explains why Ashley Tellis, often cited and celebrated by India’s opposition, spoke so frequently and harshly against us. The forces working against India are beginning to unravel in ways few could have imagined,” he said.

According to court filings, Tellis has held top-level security clearance since 2001. He served as an unpaid senior adviser at the State Department and as a contractor with the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment.

He is also a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a regular participant in policy panels both in the US and abroad.

The affidavit says surveillance footage captured Tellis multiple times in recent weeks accessing, printing and removing classified materials from government facilities.

It says that on September 12, cameras at the Pentagon’s Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia, showed Tellis directing a colleague to print several classified documents, including one labelled “Top Secret”.

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On October 10, he was seen hiding those papers inside notepads and placing them in his leather briefcase before leaving the building, the affadavit adds.

Federal investigators also said that on September 25, Tellis accessed a classified State Department system and opened a 1,288-page US Air Force manual labelled “Secret”.

According to the court filing, he renamed the file “Econ Reform” to disguise it, printed hundreds of pages and deleted the file. The affidavit also said he printed two 40-page Air Force documents on military aircraft capabilities, both marked “Secret”.

Investigators further detailed Tellis’s repeated meetings with Chinese government officials in Fairfax, Virginia. In one 2022 dinner, he arrived carrying a “manila envelope” and left without it.

At their most recent encounter, on September 2, 2025, Chinese officials gave him a “red gift bag”. While these meetings are described in the filing, espionage charges have not been filed.

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, Virginia. Photo: EPA

The news has resonated across Washington’s think-tank community.

Christopher Clary, a non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center, reflected on social media after the court filings were made public, recalling a meeting with Tellis in 2002.

“He has been unfailingly polite and thoughtful in countless interactions since that time, even when we have disagreed on substantive matters,” Clary said, wishing him “fairness and compassion as the legal process unfolds”.

The case was made public on Tuesday by the Department of Justice in a press release, which said Tellis was “charged by criminal complaint with the unlawful retention of national defence information”.

“We are fully focused on protecting the American people from all threats, foreign and domestic,” said Lindsey Halligan, interim US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

“The charges as alleged in this case represent a grave risk to the safety and security of our citizens.

“The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served.”

Khushboo Razdan

Khushboo Razdan is a senior correspondent based in Washington. Prior to this, she worked for the Post in New York. Before joining the team, she worked as a multimedia journalist in Beijing and New Delhi for over a decade. She is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School.

5. After Israeli Withdrawal, Hamas Launches Violent Crackdown on Rivals in Gaza

Photos at the link.

Excerpts:

Clashes around a hospital in Gaza City on Sunday left dozens dead, according to the Hamas unit that conducted the raid and members of the family it was fighting. Videos that emerged Monday—verified by Storyful, which like The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp—show Hamas fighters dragging a number of men from the family into a public square in broad daylight, forcing them to kneel and executing them in front of a crowd of onlookers.Clashes around a hospital in Gaza City on Sunday left dozens dead, according to the Hamas unit that conducted the raid and members of the family it was fighting. Videos that emerged Monday—verified by Storyful, which like The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp—show Hamas fighters dragging a number of men from the family into a public square in broad daylight, forcing them to kneel and executing them in front of a crowd of onlookers.

...

“A few days ago there was a problem, and the mukhtars and other men stepped in seriously to find a solution,” Majaydeh said of the clashes. He said he believes the roots of the conflict with Hamas are political: His family is overwhelmingly affiliated with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority.

The family decided to declare its loyalty to the Hamas government and hand in its weapons. Hamas said it has met with leaders of other families to mend divisions. The steps could help de-escalate the fighting, but point to the bigger issue of Hamas’s growing dominance of Gaza.

“The main problem we face and are suffering from is this: Many people can’t wait to get rid of Hamas’s rule, but on the ground they are widely spread throughout the Gaza Strip,” said Falah Masri, 64, who lives in a tent in Deir al-Balah. “Whether it will continue or be temporary until order is restored is unclear.”

After Israeli Withdrawal, Hamas Launches Violent Crackdown on Rivals in Gaza

Firefights and public executions raise concerns about spiral of internecine violence; ‘I could hear gunfire all around’

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-gaza-israel-withdrawal-33d69b55

By Suha Ma’ayeh, Abeer Ayyoub and Benoit Faucon

Oct. 14, 2025 9:00 pm ET

A U.S.-brokered cease-fire has hit pause on the war between Hamas and Israel. In its place, a fight between Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip is now under way.

As Israeli troops pulled back last week to facilitate a deal that freed the living hostages still held in Gaza, Hamas surged security forces in behind them—a public assertion of authority intended to make clear the group remains the enclave’s governing power.

Those forces immediately began cracking down on rival militias controlled by prominent Palestinian families, engaging in firefights and conducting public executions that have spread fear and raised concerns that a spiral of internecine violence could bring new pain to a long-suffering population.

Clashes around a hospital in Gaza City on Sunday left dozens dead, according to the Hamas unit that conducted the raid and members of the family it was fighting. Videos that emerged Monday—verified by Storyful, which like The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp—show Hamas fighters dragging a number of men from the family into a public square in broad daylight, forcing them to kneel and executing them in front of a crowd of onlookers.

An image from a video released by the Hamas-run al-Aqsa TV's Telegram channel shows Hamas fighters in the moments before a public execution on Monday on a street in Gaza City.

The violence points to the challenges ahead as talks around President Trump’s peace plan move beyond the hostage deal to the more complex task of disarming Hamas and replacing it with new administrative and security functions. The U.S.-designated terrorist group’s assertion of authority, if it persists, will be at odds with the requirements of Trump’s plan.

Israel, which has provided arms to some anti-Hamas groups, is closely monitoring the fighting to see how it develops, an Israeli official said.

“Hamas is re-establishing control,” said Hasan Abu Hanieh, an independent analyst based in Amman specializing in Islamist groups. “Hamas will be even more aggressive now to prove to the outside world that no one can remove them, that no force can challenge them.”

Trump was asked Monday about Hamas’s deployment of security forces and ongoing crackdown while traveling on Air Force One to tout his peace plan in Israel and Egypt. He said the group had understandably asked to be allowed to secure the devastated enclave. “They’ve been open about it, and we gave them approval for a period of time,” he said.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters: “They’re going to disarm…and if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them.”

Hamas’s authority had been badly eroded by the devastation brought upon Gaza after the group attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Palestinians desperate for an end to the war have been increasingly bold in expressing their anger with the group, which many believe had needlessly prolonged the fighting to protect its own interests and avoid surrendering.

Palestinians protested against Hamas in northern Gaza in March. Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg News

Israel’s crackdown on aid flows and expanded military control of the enclave had cut off a key source of revenue and broken down the group’s cohesion, turning it into a collection of isolated cells that had trouble paying its own fighters.

Prominent families and other armed groups took advantage, challenging Hamas publicly and moving to establish control in their own areas. Some of those groups, such as Abu Shabab in the Rafah area of the southern Gaza Strip, were armed by Israel in an effort to further weaken Hamas’s grip.

Now Hamas is fighting back. The militant group is taking advantage of the pause in the war to shift its focus from military operations against Israel to internal security deployments aimed at re-establishing its hold on the enclave.

Khaled Qaddoumi, Hamas’s envoy in Tehran, said the group has beefed up its forces under Gaza’s Interior Ministry and is deploying them to restore order, crack down on criminals and looters, and punish people it believes have collaborated with Israel.

“Hamas is realizing the patriotic and national responsibilities after the war to spread the sense of peace and stability,” Qaddoumi said.

Old rivalries

One early target was the Doghmosh family in Gaza City. The two foes have a long history of friction, having clashed when Hamas took control in Gaza in 2007 from the rival Palestinian Fatah faction, which the Doghmosh family favored.

In 2007, members of a Hamas police force displayed weapons allegedly seized from the Doghmosh family. Abid Katib/Getty Images

On Sunday, masked Hamas fighters armed with Kalashnikovs and pistols showed up outside the Jordanian hospital in Gaza City. A number of Doghmosh family members had taken shelter there during an Israeli offensive in the area, and the Hamas fighters ordered them to leave, Doghmosh family members said.

Earlier, Hamas had demanded the Doghmoshes hand over 10 family members it alleged had cooperated with Israel, said Ahmad Doghmosh, reached by the Journal while besieged in the area. The family said it couldn’t turn over its sons.

At the hospital gates, an armed Hamas fighter threatened to clear the hospital by force unless the family members left immediately. When they refused, some of the gunmen raised their weapons. One pointed a weapon at a family member and threatened to bring the hospital down on top of him if he didn’t leave. Another family member shot the Hamas fighter dead.

That killing sharply escalated the fighting, the Doghmosh family members said. Hamas closed off access around the hospital and besieged the neighborhood with forces that greatly outnumbered the family’s fighters. Doghmosh and other family members said Hamas torched houses and cars and fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Members of a Hamas internal security force in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on Sunday. eyad baba/AFP/Getty Images

Doghmosh said he saw around two dozen bodies in the street, with many wounded and homes on fire.

“I could hear gunfire all around, heavy clashes,” said Sobheia Doghmosh, another family member reached by the Journal during the fighting. “The area is now completely surrounded by masked gunmen carrying weapons.”

On Monday, the family’s “central council” released a statement saying it had been targeted by a campaign of intimidation and violence, which it called a heinous crime and contrary to the interests of Palestinians. It tried to de-escalate the situation by acknowledging and disavowing deeds it said didn’t represent the family, including the killing of the Hamas fighter.

Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Ministry of Interior said it had begun taking necessary measures to restore order following implementation of the cease-fire. It said it was cracking down on criminal gangs that exploited the chaos to loot aid and attack other Palestinians. It said it was offering an amnesty period this week for rival fighters who hadn’t committed murder to turn themselves in.

Palestinian gunmen secure aid trucks after a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in January hatem khaled/Reuters

Hamas’s self-styled paramilitary Rada’a, or Deterrent, unit said it had neutralized a number of wanted people and taken control of militia positions in Gaza City. It also said it had rounded up rival militia members in the central and southern areas of the Gaza Strip.

“The Rada’a force is determined to enforce order and uproot gangs and militias, and will strike with an iron fist anyone who tampers with the security of the home front,” the group said.

Prepping for a crackdown

Hamas has long been planning for the opportunity to reassert itself. Husam Badran, a member of the Hamas political bureau, told the Journal last year that the group had begun working to create a new police force to crack down on what it said was looting and price gouging.

More recently, in negotiations with Israel, Hamas argued that it was willing to give up what it called offensive weapons like rocket systems, but should be allowed to keep “defensive weapons” like assault rifles, according to Arab mediators. One of Hamas’s concerns was the need to fend off rival armed groups.

Hamas has been gathering intelligence on other Palestinian armed groups and their members. A July 2025 report by the Ministry of Interior documented a number of the purported groups and their areas of operation. It concluded, for example, that a dozen small armed clans had regrouped in an area under Israeli control to work with militia leader Yasser Abu Shabab. The report also described a rival fighter allegedly wanted for two murders who always traveled in a white Kia Sorento and had a personality that was “very spiteful.”

Some Palestinians worry Hamas will go too far, and that Gaza could face the same fate as other places where efforts by outside powers to impose new political arrangements led to insurgencies or worse.

Mohammad Hadieh, a Palestinian lawyer and mediator who works to resolve intra-Palestinian conflicts, said there is growing concern about the turmoil. “They are afraid of civil war,” Hadieh said of Gazans. “This is very dangerous. It has already started.”

Gaza lacks the deep ethnic and sectarian divisions that characterize much of the Middle East. The important divisions break along family lines, each with thousands of members and many involved in smuggling or other crimes. Established families make up about 30% of Gaza’s population, with the balance being people who have fled or left other areas during the fighting around the founding of Israel, said Abu Hanieh, the independent analyst. That could keep the fighting more contained.

Hamas security forces have been in the streets as refugees stream back into Gaza City. eyad baba/Afp/Getty Images

Israel has deepened some of the divisions by trying during the war to recruit families as a counterweight to Hamas. Nizar Doghmosh, 56, who heads his family’s council and a former official in the Palestinian Authority, which ran Gaza until being ejected by Hamas, said he got a call last month from someone who said in Arabic he represented Israel’s military and asked him to help stabilize the family’s neighborhoods. Doghmosh said he declined.

Israel’s military declined to comment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel has supported the Abu Shabab group in southern Gaza.

“It was an Israeli fantasy,” said Michael Milshtein, a former head of Palestinian affairs for Israeli military intelligence, referring to the efforts to encourage an alternative to Hamas. “Although Hamas is much weaker than two years ago, they are not going to give up and will break these groups.”

No alternative

Analysts and even Israel’s military have long argued the Palestinian Authority needs to be brought back into Gaza as the only viable alternative to Hamas. But Netanyahu has refused, calling it corrupt and inept, and he is wary of advancing the possibility of a Palestinian state, which he opposes.

Ephraim Sneh, a retired Israeli brigadier general, said Hamas’s assertive behavior shows the consequences of that vacuum. “Hamas’s strategic role is to take over Palestinian society and representation,” he said. “Netanyahu doesn’t want the alternative, which is the Palestinian Authority.”

Gazans say Hamas’s presence in the streets is noticeable during this cease-fire. Its police officers deter crimes such as theft and thuggery while keeping the traffic flowing. Even to the many who oppose Hamas, that is a welcome alternative to lawlessness.

Displaced people returning to Gaza City passed through a checkpoint on Sunday. eyad baba/Afp/Getty Images

Many Gazans blame Israel for destroying the social fabric and political order that had underpinned stability in the enclave before the war, including killing many Hamas police officers. They also believe some of the families had been looting and hoarding scarce food supplies to profit on sales.

The masked Hamas forces fighting the battles with the families spread more fear. Following its fight with the Doghmoshes, Hamas went after the Abu Samra family, sparking intense battles in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah.

In early October, before the cease-fire, Hamas fought gunbattles with the Al Majaydeh family. Mohammad Majaydeh, 50, a spokesperson for the family and deputy mukhtar, or leader, said a half-dozen family members were killed in the fight, before a surprise Israeli airstrike left more dead.

Israel has confirmed the airstrike but wouldn’t comment on whether it was intervening in the dispute.

Fighters affiliated with the armed wing of Hamas in central Gaza in October. bashar taleb/Afp/Getty Images

“A few days ago there was a problem, and the mukhtars and other men stepped in seriously to find a solution,” Majaydeh said of the clashes. He said he believes the roots of the conflict with Hamas are political: His family is overwhelmingly affiliated with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority.

The family decided to declare its loyalty to the Hamas government and hand in its weapons. Hamas said it has met with leaders of other families to mend divisions. The steps could help de-escalate the fighting, but point to the bigger issue of Hamas’s growing dominance of Gaza.

“The main problem we face and are suffering from is this: Many people can’t wait to get rid of Hamas’s rule, but on the ground they are widely spread throughout the Gaza Strip,” said Falah Masri, 64, who lives in a tent in Deir al-Balah. “Whether it will continue or be temporary until order is restored is unclear.”

Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com

Appeared in the October 15, 2025, print edition as 'Hamas Cracks Down on Rivals After Truce With Israel Begins'.

6. China is ‘pacing threat,’ Army Secretary says—while backing Trump’s homeland defense push

Shift away from the Asia-Indo-Pacific?

"The homeland is in the pacific." Another way to look at it is if you lose on the pfacifi and especially northeast Asia, you lose the homeland. You cannot defend the homeland by only defending the homeland.

Excerpts:

“If you think of the Indo-Pacific, and the tyranny of distance between our homeland and that theater, it's 6,000 miles,” Driscoll said. “If it's going to be with contested logistics, you're not going to be able to ship our equipment and our energy sources on slow moving freight liners across the Pacific Ocean. We are going to have to be much more flexible as a nation, and we are focused on that. We are reorienting and continuing to strengthen the Army for that fight.”

It’s unclear what a strategic shift away from the Indo-Pacific would mean for troops stationed in the region. Lt. Gen. Hank Taylor, the commander of the 8th Army, told reporters at AUSA that the new strategic guidance has not reduced funding or training opportunities for soldiers in South Korea.

China is ‘pacing threat,’ Army Secretary says—while backing Trump’s homeland defense push

Driscoll’s comments follow Pentagon documents detailing shift away from Indo-Pacific.

defenseone.com · Thomas Novelly

China is the “pacing threat,” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said Tuesday, but homeland security and southern border operations are just as important as countering that threat.

"I think my understanding of the administration's priorities and the Secretary of War is China is the pacing threat,” Driscoll said on the sidelines of the annual Association of the U.S. Army’s conference in Washington, D.C. “We must, as a nation, be ready to provide security to Americans no matter where they are located in the world.”

But Driscoll stopped short of calling China the top priority, adding that “we are also, at the same time, in parallel, executing on providing security and maintaining what the president has done at the border.”

Strategic documents have detailed the shift in military focus from China to border enforcement, countering drug trafficking, and backing the Department of Homeland Security. The Army has invested significant manpower behind those missions. U.S. Northern Command has sent around 10,000 troops to the southern border, and the Trump administration has deployed thousands of National Guardsmen to American cities supporting ICE activities.

And, Driscoll said, he expects the southern border mission “to continue into the future for years to come.”

Other military officials have said ahead of the National Defense Strategy rollout that homeland defense is relevant to multiple theaters and missions. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told reporters at the Air & Space Force Association’s conference last month that “homeland defense pretty much captures all threats.”

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command leader Adm. Samuel Paparo has reiterated the need to support the region amid strategy shifts, and said last month that “the homeland is in the Pacific.”

Driscoll’s comments on China followed a joint announcement between the Army and the Energy Secretary Chris Wright to build a microreactor at a stateside base by 2027. Those officials pointed to long diesel supply chains overseas, including the Pacific, as a threat to U.S. military operations.

“If you think of the Indo-Pacific, and the tyranny of distance between our homeland and that theater, it's 6,000 miles,” Driscoll said. “If it's going to be with contested logistics, you're not going to be able to ship our equipment and our energy sources on slow moving freight liners across the Pacific Ocean. We are going to have to be much more flexible as a nation, and we are focused on that. We are reorienting and continuing to strengthen the Army for that fight.”

It’s unclear what a strategic shift away from the Indo-Pacific would mean for troops stationed in the region. Lt. Gen. Hank Taylor, the commander of the 8th Army, told reporters at AUSA that the new strategic guidance has not reduced funding or training opportunities for soldiers in South Korea.

defenseone.com · Thomas Novelly

7. How The Night Stalkers Are Planning To Survive In Future High-End Fights

Photos and video at the link.

A lot of emphasis on SOF in large scale combat operations. We should keep in mind the SOF mission planning criteria.

SOF Mission Planning Criteria

1. Must be an appropriate special operations forces (SOF) mission or activity.

2. Mission or tasks should support the joint force commander’s campaign or operation plan, or special activities.

3. Missions or tasks must be operationally feasible, approved, and fully coordinated.

4. Required resources must be available to execute and support the SOF mission.

5. The expected outcome of the mission must justify the risks.

How The Night Stalkers Are Planning To Survive In Future High-End Fights

The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment is having to drastically adapt its playbook in order to be effective in future fights against major foes.

Joseph Trevithick, Howard Altman

Published Oct 14, 2025 8:55 PM EDT

twz.com · Joseph Trevithick, Howard Altman

https://www.twz.com/air/how-the-night-stalkers-are-planning-to-survive-in-future-high-end-fights?utm

The TWZ Newsletter

Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.

The U.S. Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), better known as the Night Stalkers, has been exploring ways to ensure it can operate in more heavily defended airspace in the future. This includes making increased use of uncrewed aircraft, the employment of new electronic warfare and decoy capabilities, and just flying longer and faster. The U.S. special operations community as a whole continues to reorient itself around preparing for high-end fights, such as one across the broad expanses of the Pacific against China, after decades of low-intensity missions in much more permissive environments.

Army Col. Stephen Smith, head of the 160th SOAR, talked about planning for future operations in denied areas deep inside an opponent’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) ‘bubble’ during a panel discussion today at the Association of the U.S. Army’s main annual symposium. TWZ‘s Howard Altman was in attendance and had the opportunity to speak more with Smith directly afterward. The Night Stalkers publicly acknowledged fleets include a mixture of heavily modified MH-60M Black Hawk, MH-47G Chinook, and AH/MH-6R Little Bird helicopters. The 160th also has MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones. The unit expects to eventually receive special operations-specific versions of the Army’s future MV-75A tiltrotor.

A pair of 160th SOAR MH-60Ms configured as Direct Action Penetrator (DAP) gunships seen during training. USMC

“Over the last 20 years that I’ve been in the Regiment, we have been really, really good at deploying in an environment like GWOT,” Smith said, referring to the Global War on Terror era of operations in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. “What we have done over the last 10 years is, we’ve looked at the near-peer threats across the globe, and we looked at ‘how does the 160th expect to operate inside that environment?'”

“So, what we’re going to have on the aircraft to defend the aircraft, by itself, will not survive in the A2/AD environment,” he also said bluntly during the panel, speaking generally about the known Night Stalker fleets.

One of the 160th SOAR’s MH-6 Little Birds wearing an experimental maritime camouflage wrap seen during shipboard operations training. USASOC

Specialized training for Night Stalkers to help them survive in more contested environments has existed, but there is clearly a new paradigm.

“What we realized was really two major takeaways. The number one takeaway is we can’t do it alone. The idea of ‘alone and unafraid,’ that does not exist in the denied area planning space,” he explained. “And then, second, we needed a team to look at that. So we stood up a five-person team that consisted of our aviation flight leads.”

“When we started looking at the training concept of how the 160th is going to operate, we leveraged the three range complexes on the West Coast of the United States to create an environment that provides us a ‘tyranny of distance‘ problem, but also the complexity of using those three ranges to replicate a near-peer,” he added.

A pair of Night Stalker MH-47G Chinooks. USAF

The 160th’s commander says the unit has come from all this with new views on how it might operate in more heavily defended environments going forward. This includes additional emphasis on crewed-uncrewed teaming.

“Manned-unmanned teaming is the future. We’ve talked about the potential of launched effects off the aircraft, or a potential loyal wingman,” Smith said. Launched effects is a broad term that the U.S. military currently uses to refer to uncrewed aerial systems configured for different missions, like reconnaissance or acting as loitering munitions, which can be fired from other aerial platforms, as well as ones on the ground or at sea.

“We see in the near future, for our primary mission of crisis response, and also denied area penetration, we still see a human in the loop,” Smith noted. “We don’t expect to send Kit [Col. Kitefre Oboho, commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment] and his team to the X without Night Stalkers in the front of the aircraft.”

Smith highlighted how the 160th has already been teaming its crewed helicopters with its MQ-1Cs drones as something the unit is looking to build on. “So, when we train on the West Coast, we’ll use an MQ-1 to lead the half [a group of helicopters] into the objective.”

An extended-range version of the MQ-1C Gray Eagle, which the 160th SOAR is known to operate. US Army

This also leads into the electronic warfare and decoy capabilities the Night Stalkers are looking at as part of future denied area operations planning.

“We can hang different capabilities on that platform [the MQ-1C]. So that platform could look like a Black Hawk. It could look like a [CH-]47. It could look like a Little Bird,” Smith said. “So we’re using that as a decoy, [and there are] potentially other capabilities on [the] side of that aircraft.”

The 160th is also exploring other new electronic warfare capabilities, including improved self-protect jamming systems, according to Smith. “We’re also looking at a layered effect of using cyber and space to create a pulse for us to be able to penetrate,” he added.

There’s also just the matter of being able to fly longer and do so faster. The 160th is already well known for conducting long-duration flights in challenging and hostile environments. The unit’s MH-60Ms and MH-47Gs are capable of being refueled in flight to extend their range. Night Stalkers typically fly their missions at extremely low altitudes and under the cover of darkness, using terrain to help mask their ingress and egress.

“Leveraging the cover of darkness, leveraging weather, flying at low altitudes, and flying where the enemy systems are not. That seems somewhat obvious, but that is really driving the basis of our Night Stalker fundamentals, [and] mission planning to create those contingencies so we can buy down a number of the risk,” Smith said.

However, historically, 160th operations have often been punctuated by stops at temporary forward arming and refueling points (FARP) along the way, to and from objectives. Smith says extending the range of his fleets will be key to future operations in denied areas because of the vulnerabilities that landing in the middle of a mission creates.

A Night Stalker MH-60M seen during FARP training. US Army Sgt. Robert Spaulding

“One of the things we’ve learned is, if you go to ground, you’re vulnerable,” he said. “And so we have leveraged our aerial refuel[ing capability] to get after that, and we look at some of our collapsible fuel systems inside the aircraft to do that.”

There is a question here that is increasingly facing the entire U.S. military, about how existing non-stealthy aerial refueling tankers will be able to support any fixed or rotary-wing aircraft operating deep in high-threat areas. The U.S. Air Force, which currently provides the bulk of aerial refueling support to the 160th, has separately been looking at ways to get after that problem set, as you can read more about here.

This is also where the future special operations version of the MV-75A, which is set to offer the 160th an important boost in speed and range, especially over its MH-60Ms, could also come into the picture. Those tiltrotors are also expected to have aerial refueling capability. Questions do also remain about what the final special operations configuration of the MV-75A may look like, though we know the core design is already being developed with specific features to make it more readily adaptable to that role.

Bell’s V-280 tiltrotor, from which the MV-75A is being derived. Bell

“That’s a great question, and we don’t know, and that’s why we’re actually having that conversation,” Smith told TWZ‘s Howard Altman after the panel when asked for more information about what the special operations configuration of the MV-75A might look like. “We have not determined what that looks like. Is it the version that we’re all in lockstep with, is that going to be the version? Possibly. Is [sic] there some minor modifications? Potentially.”

What is clear is that the 160th SOAR is looking hard at ways to ensure that it can bring its unique skill sets and otherwise survive, even in more contested environments, while taking part in future high-end fights.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Joseph Trevithick

Deputy Editor

Joseph has been a member of The War Zone team since early 2017. Prior to that, he was an Associate Editor at War Is Boring, and his byline has appeared in other publications, including Small Arms Review, Small Arms Defense Journal, Reuters, We Are the Mighty, and Task & Purpose.

Howard Altman

Senior Staff Writer

Howard is a Senior Staff Writer for The War Zone, and a former Senior Managing Editor for Military Times. Prior to this, he covered military affairs for the Tampa Bay Times as a Senior Writer. Howard’s work has appeared in various publications including Yahoo News, RealClearDefense, and Air Force Times.

twz.com · Joseph Trevithick, Howard Altman

8. Army to host ‘recurring’ competitions for counter-drone tech

Army to host ‘recurring’ competitions for counter-drone tech - Breaking Defense

“We have about 12 vendors out there showing us their kit,” Army Col. Guy Yelverton said of an ongoing competition for soldier common equipment. “And if they're all good, we'll select all 12, because we need a lot of capability in the counter UAS [unmanned aerial systems] environment.”

breakingdefense.com · Michael Marrow · October 14, 2025

AUSA 2025 — Rapid changes in drone warfare require defenses that can evolve just as quickly, according to US Army officials who said the service plans to run competitions “at least” every two years to help field cutting-edge defenses against smaller drones for Army units.

“We need to ensure that we continuously outpace the threat,” Col. Guy Yelverton, the project lead for the Army’s counter-drone product office, said during a panel discussion here at the annual AUSA conference Monday. “So we will have these competitions at least at an every two-year cycle, to make sure that we know and understand the capabilities out there from our industry partners, and that we continue to provide our warfighters the best capability so that we outpace that threat that’s evolving.”

Yelverton said the Army has five different lines of effort to field defenses against drones, and that competitions are aimed at furthering two key ones: ensuring every soldier has kit they could carry on them, and unit common equipment like a sensing array that could be mounted on a Humvee.

The contests would further hone skills for two other lines of effort, which are focused on protection for fixed sites and counter-drone air defense batteries, according to a slideshow accompanying the panel. (The efforts by Yelverton and his colleagues focus on the threat of smaller drones, since officials say larger Group 4 and 5 unmanned systems typically require traditional air defense systems like Patriot batteries or fighter jets.)

The Army is currently wrapping up competitions focused on a new fire control system and is evaluating counter-drone equipment that could be commonly carried by soldiers, Yelverton said, which follow an award last year to AV subsidiary BlueHalo for a next-generation drone-killing missile. The colonel then previewed a number of competitions coming up for fiscal 2026, which will solicit industry for unit common equipment, sensors and electronic warfare.

“We have about 12 vendors out there showing us their kit,” Yelverton said of the ongoing competition for soldier common equipment. “And if they’re all good, we’ll select all 12, because we need a lot of capability in the counter UAS [unmanned aerial systems] environment.”

Maj. Gen. David Stewart, the Army’s director of long-range fires and integrated air and missile defense, said that Group 3 drones occupy a vexing middle ground for soldiers due to their speed, maneuverability and size. Stewart said Monday that swarms consisting of Groups 1 and 2 drones “almost equal to that” of a Group 3 attack. According to Col. Marc Pelini, high-power microwave weapons are likely the best tool to address the swarm problem.

“I think that that’s probably the most economical and combat-effective approach,” said Pelini, the military deputy for the Army’s fires future capability directorate. Pelini emphasized that any microwave systems will need to be capable of hitting targets “at least a kilometer or two” away. (The Army is also testing platforms like a Coyote interceptor that could fly to drone swarms and fry their electronics.)

Still, officials stressed that layers of defenses are required to defeat modern drone threats.

“I don’t think there’s a silver bullet that can address the full range of the threats,” Pelini said. “So you need kind of a Swiss Army Knife of effectors to completely protect yourself from an engagement perspective.”

breakingdefense.com · Michael Marrow · October 14, 2025

9. I Corps adapts to meet modern challenges in the Indo-Pacific

I Corps. America's Corps. The Corps of the Future. I remember those words from my time at Fort Lewis in 1989-1994.

Excerpts:

How are the Pathways exercises in the Pacific evolving?

We’re optimizing what we’re doing with each of our partners based on where they are. Our partners have sovereign defense desires. We’re keen on addressing those as part of the Pathways events.

We have three focus areas: what we’re building in terms of multilateral training tasks with partners participating in that event; building our own readiness for our tactical units and operational tasks; and experimentation to give feedback on new technology.

Across the board, the Philippines are shifting from counter-insurgent to large-scale combat operation focus. They’re reorganizing their army to focus on homeland defense.

We’re helping them do that as they’re looking at some type of land component command, which is the operational level headquarters that we’re working on with the Japanese and the Koreans as well.

In Japan, we continue to do Yamasakura and other events that focus on the defense of Japan. We’ve been really deliberate about focusing on how we integrate networks based on where their military is, so we can communicate and share data. That’s the key aspect.

The integrated command-and-control systems is a focus for us right now as we look at the Indo-Pacific Multinational Network. The development of that system enables us to work with any of our partners, based on where they are, to have a common operational picture, common intelligence picture and common logistics picture.

[It’s] still under development and we’re working hard to iterate and provide feedback, but certainly a focus at echelon is to make sure we can get it and have a C2 network. That’s a mission partner environment ability we all need.

We tested it in a couple exercises ... and we’re continuing to refine it. The Indo-Pacific J-6 is the lead for this effort and we’re continuing to work with them as they develop it.

I Corps adapts to meet modern challenges in the Indo-Pacific

https://www.defensenews.com/land/2025/10/14/i-corps-adapts-to-meet-modern-challenges-in-the-indo-pacific/?utm

Defense News · Jen Judson · October 14, 2025

The U.S. Army’s I Corps is at a moment of strategic transition, shouldering the responsibility of shaping the service’s readiness across the vast, complex Indo-Pacific theater.

Overseeing that effort is Lt. Gen. Matthew McFarlane, under whose command the Corps, through continuous exercise and training, is rethinking itself as both a forward campaign-capable headquarters and a practical force provider for homeland defense.

The Corps has adopted innovation from the top to the bottom, working to modernize networks, integrate long-range precision fires and manage how unmanned systems in formations will transform the force.

Defense News sat down with McFarlane in a recent interview to discuss how the Corps is preparing for various phases of conflict and recap lessons from its expansive training campaign.

Portions of this interview have been edited for clarity.

DN: The Pentagon is placing a greater emphasis on homeland defense but is also focused on China as a pacing threat. I Corps is focused on both. How has this shift in emphasis affected I Corps?

McFarlane: I Corps is undergoing significant transformation, purposely evolving to meet complex challenges of the 21st-century battlefield.

This isn’t simply about adopting new technology. [It’s] fundamentally reshaping how we think, train and operate, building a more agile, resilient and lethal force capable of rapidly responding to a wide spectrum of threats and contingencies across the Indo-Pacific region.

This transformation is driven by clear understanding of the evolving strategic landscape and a commitment to maintaining our competitive edge.

Central to that is a focus on modernizing our capabilities in key areas like network integration, long-range precision fires and unmanned systems. We’re actively experimenting with emerging technologies and integrating them into our formations as we campaign forward in the Indo-Pacific to enhance our situational awareness, decision-making and overall combat effectiveness.

Simultaneously, we’re refining operational concepts to ensure we can effectively employ new capabilities in a joint, combined, all-domain environment. This isn’t a future aspiration. We’re actively integrating advancements in our current training, campaign operations, forward and operational plans.

[U.S. Pacific Command commander] Adm. Paparo recently emphasized a strong connection between the Indo-Pacific and homeland defense. As he spoke earlier in September, the homeland is the Pacific.

How are you developing contested logistics capabilities, distributed operations and access to islands?

I Corps as the operational headquarters [is] very focused on enabling our divisions with command-and-control, fires and sustainment, key aspects of operations in the Pacific.

We’re conscious in ensuring we are rehearsing those activities that are part of that set theater. We’re working closely with Army Material Command and 8th Theater Sustainment Command as they establish Joint Theater Distribution Centers in Japan, Australia, Philippines, Guam and others in development.

U.S. soldiers fire an M142 HIMARS during Exercise Balikatan 24 at Rizal, Philippines, May 2, 2024. (Cpl. Kyle Chan/U.S. Army)

They enable us to operate forward, and we’re deliberate about exercising those processes to move supplies from those theater distribution centers to places where we’re exercising.

All of our exercises generate readiness at home station and forward in certain areas during Pathways. ... We apply those ready forces forward and establish what we call Joint Interior Lines to make sure we understand how we can sustain forward operations wherever we’re conducting the Pathways event. It is a continual focus.

We continue to refine and validate pre-positioned stocks and systems we need to get what’s in those stocks into soldiers’ hands so they can apply them in whatever manner for the Pathways event.

How is I Corps enabling innovation at small unit levels?

Transformation is a key line of effort for I Corps across all of its down-trace units. All divisions have innovation labs. The key is how we integrate the progress each division is making with less redundancy and an optimized learning from each other.

We’re conscious about integrating [innovation labs] and are being deliberate about sharing lessons with the 25th Infantry Division and 4th Infantry Division as we experiment with everything from unmanned aircraft systems and counter-UAS to next-generation command-and-control.

Through that, we are helping them exercise with new technology in the field. The Pacific is a key aspect of that.

What are some examples of capabilities gaining traction in the wider Army?

3D printing is a big one, UAVs, spare parts, coding different AI aspects.

Just in this headquarters, we coded an ability to ingest subordinate situation reports to create a comprehensive roll-up, highlighting opportunities and risks and recording command updates to provide an [executive summary] that aligns the team. That helps me understand risks and opportunities.

At every echelon we’re doing it and getting better. The key is harnessing all that to make sure we’re efficient.

How are the Pathways exercises in the Pacific evolving?

We’re optimizing what we’re doing with each of our partners based on where they are. Our partners have sovereign defense desires. We’re keen on addressing those as part of the Pathways events.

We have three focus areas: what we’re building in terms of multilateral training tasks with partners participating in that event; building our own readiness for our tactical units and operational tasks; and experimentation to give feedback on new technology.

Across the board, the Philippines are shifting from counter-insurgent to large-scale combat operation focus. They’re reorganizing their army to focus on homeland defense.

We’re helping them do that as they’re looking at some type of land component command, which is the operational level headquarters that we’re working on with the Japanese and the Koreans as well.

The Army's Precision Strike Missile launching for the first time outside of U.S. territory during Valiant Shield in Palau. (U.S. Army)

In Japan, we continue to do Yamasakura and other events that focus on the defense of Japan. We’ve been really deliberate about focusing on how we integrate networks based on where their military is, so we can communicate and share data. That’s the key aspect.

The integrated command-and-control systems is a focus for us right now as we look at the Indo-Pacific Multinational Network. The development of that system enables us to work with any of our partners, based on where they are, to have a common operational picture, common intelligence picture and common logistics picture.

[It’s] still under development and we’re working hard to iterate and provide feedback, but certainly a focus at echelon is to make sure we can get it and have a C2 network. That’s a mission partner environment ability we all need.

We tested it in a couple exercises ... and we’re continuing to refine it. The Indo-Pacific J-6 is the lead for this effort and we’re continuing to work with them as they develop it.

New long-range fires capabilities are taking shape in the Indo-Pacific, with testing of the Precision Strike Missile and the Typhon Mid-Range Capability missile. Now Typhon is in Japan. What recent lessons have you learned in terms of developing long-range fires concepts?

It’s clearly something that the Indo-Pacific commander has mentioned. Land-based, long-range fires is what he sees as the Army’s top contribution to joint forces in the Pacific.

As long-range fires evolve to get precision fires on the land and maritime domain, control of the land is a markedly more important factor.

Think of a strait where you have land-based fires on either side and then long-range fires as we reorganize and put HIMARS in the [division artillery], which we’re doing with 25th Infantry Division. It’s extending our operational reach.

We are continuing to integrate these capabilities into existing exercises and war games to adjust concepts for the fight and what we can provide the joint force.

We’re doing an exercise here in April — Courage Lethality — where we’ll link all of the Corps’ long-range fires assets, Multidomain Task Force assets, some joint force partner assets for sensor-to-shooter integration and validation across the region from Washington state to the first island chain.

What would you say is the biggest thing most allies want you to bring to the table during these exercises?

The UAS, counter-UAS and cyber are the ones all are asking for assistance with, and we’re deliberate about helping.

Others are long-range fires. The Philippines just acquired the self-propelled 155mm ATMOS system. The Japanese just deployed two hypersonic battalions. The technology’s following.

Another one is just ensuring partners are integrated with us and that we’re helping them see what’s happening around them. [We] are conscious about building those types of capabilities for homeland defense and the protection aspect.

Everyone’s watching Ukraine and learning different lessons. Ukraine certainly informs what’s going to happen in the Pacific, but it doesn’t mean what’s happening in Ukraine is exactly what is going to happen in the Pacific. It’s a completely different theater, different environment, different threats.

So, we’re conscious in making sure we’re pulling the applicable lessons to share with partners and integrate training against those tasks during rehearsals.

You talked about how I Corps is adapting to meet emerging needs and threats. Can you provide some examples?

If you don’t adapt, you aren’t going to survive. We’re helping our soldiers understand the reality of the modern battlefield through things, for example, like putting command posts underground.

We’re optimizing our electronic warfare range here at Joint Base Lewis-McChord so we can work through the contested electronic warfare environment. We’re bringing in swarms of UAVs to training events so soldiers understand you are constantly in contact, either from threat satellites or from threat air assets and sometimes low-cost UAVs.

We’re shedding some of the things we did over the last 20 years as we operated with [central command posts and forward operating bases], distributing ourselves across the battlefield in smaller nodes for command posts and encouraging our leaders and units to understand that mindset to operate in a distributed sense.

About Jen Judson

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

10. Top US Army General Says He’s Letting ChatGPT Make Military Decisions

The headline is NOT what he said or meant. But it is good clickbait (it got me). The operative word is "help." The commander is seeking ways to help make better military decisions (which is what good commanders should - always seek better, new, and innovative ways to fight). But in no way did he say or imply that he was forgoing military decision making by human beings. Now more than ever Commanders require Clausewitz' coup d'oiel - the inward looking eye of the military genius - the combination of education and experience that allows a commander to exercise sound judgment and make good decisions despite the fog and friction of war - AI will never eliminate that fog and friction and right now because AI makes mistakes it is imperative that Commanders rely on their sound judgment.. We need to be educating our leaders with ever greater priority because of AI. AI must not be used as an excuse to reduce professional military education because we think we can use AI for military decision making.

Top US Army General Says He’s Letting ChatGPT Make Military Decisions

Your decision to launch an invasion isn't just gutsy — it's downright kinetic.

https://futurism.com/future-society/general-taylor-korea-chatgpt

By Joe Wilkins

Published Oct 14, 2025 4:19 PM EDT

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images

If it’s worrying that high school kids are outsourcing their brains to AI, it’s downright alarming to imagine US military leaders — the commanders of the most well-equipped armed forces in history — doing the same.

Unfortunately, that scenario is no longer the stuff of cold war fiction. As first reported by Business Insider, Major General William “Hank” Taylor, commander of the 8th Field Army in South Korea, told reporters that “Chat[GPT] and I” have become “really close lately.”

“I’m asking to build, trying to build models to help all of us,” he said, adding that he’s using ChatGPT to help make military and personal decisions affecting the soldiers under his command. This includes the joint United Nations Command in South Korea, which Taylor currently leads as chief of staff.

“As a commander, I want to make better decisions,” Taylor reportedly said. “I want to make sure that I make decisions at the right time to give me the advantage.”

It’s a remarkable comment coming from the top US military official in Korea, a nation the US has occupied since 1945. ChatGPT is notorious for its often-agreeable answers, prioritizing endless engagement over accuracy. In extreme cases, ChatGPT has even encourages users as they’ve fallen into severe mental health crises that led to involuntary commitment and even death by suicide.

The company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, has since tried to address more extreme cases of brown-nosing with the release of the more grounded GPT-5. That was short-lived, however, as a massive outcry from users prompted the company to reinstate the chatbot’s sycophantic traits.

Beyond sycophancy, GPT-5 has been found to generate false information on basic facts “over half the time” — a problematic track record even before you consider the fact that it’s now helping manage the US military in the shadow of one of the longest-standing geopolitical showdowns of the modern era.

More on AI: Experts Concerned AI Is Going to Start a Nuclear War

11. Drug Smugglers Change Supply Routes to Evade U.S. Warships

Drug smuggling cartels are learning organizations.

Drug Smugglers Change Supply Routes to Evade U.S. Warships

With the United States surging its military presence in the region and bombing boats, countries in the Caribbean are seeing more flights carrying illegal drugs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/us/us-drug-trafficking-boats-caribbean.html

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An anti-narcotics official in Trinidad who was not authorized to release them shared what he said were photos of drugs that washed ashore in St. Vincent and the Grenadines last month.

By Frances Robles

Reporting from Florida

Published Oct. 14, 2025

Updated Oct. 15, 2025, 5:26 a.m. ET

Leer en español

When the United States military launched an airstrike on a speedboat as it approached the southern shore of the Dominican Republic last month, killing three people on board, Dominican authorities said more than 375 packages of cocaine went flying into the Caribbean Sea.

Dozens of them had red packaging with a brand name clearly labeled in black and white capital letters, MEN, according to photos distributed by the Dominican anti-narcotics agency.

The 1,000 kilos of cocaine recovered from the wreckage were added to the nearly 19,000 kilos of drugs the Dominican Republic’s anti-narcotics agency had already captured since January, in what had been a record-setting year of narcotics seizures at sea before U.S. warships moved into the region.

The Trump administration, claiming to battle drug-trafficking cartels it labels terrorists, has been destroying speedboats in the Caribbean, shining a fresh light on a decades-old industry responsible for bringing tons of cocaine into the United States each year.

Long known as a popular corridor for moving people, drugs and guns, the Caribbean is no longer the dominant route it was in the 1980s, when television shows like “Miami Vice” captured the way Colombian drug cartels shipped and flew illicit products to South Florida.

But as enforcement strategies have changed throughout the years, the region has periodically re-emerged as a popular channel for moving illicit goods, increasingly to Europe, where the demand for cocaine, and the price, is higher.

Despite the Trump administration’s portrayal of the Caribbean and Venezuela as a rampant conduit for drugs killing Americans, the vast majority of maritime drug trafficking bound for the United States actually occurs on the Pacific, U.S. and United Nations data show.

Still, experts say, the Caribbean continues to be an important hub for the trafficking of Colombian cocaine, with some of it passing through Venezuela, though it plays no role in the movement of fentanyl, which had been President Trump’s chief concern before the strikes on the boats began.

Video

The Dominican anti-narcotics agency released video of cocaine recovered from the wreckage after the U.S. military struck a speedboat as it approached the southern shore of the Dominican Republic last month, killing three people on board.CreditCredit...

With the Trump administration cracking down on the U.S. southern border and flooding the Caribbean with military assets, drug traffickers are finding different ways to push drugs from Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine producer, to various markets, experts and law enforcement officials say.

Traffickers typically move narcotics from Colombia to Caribbean countries, including Trinidad, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, where they are repackaged and prepared for shipment elsewhere. Depending on the crime organization, the drugs may island-hop some more before being put on fast boats or hidden in container ships bound for their final destination.

Some smugglers are increasingly using cargo vessels in the Caribbean to hide contraband, experts say, which makes it particularly difficult to detect because the drugs are mixed in with legal goods, such as produce.

In Trinidad and Tobago, the Trump administration’s crackdown in the region has led to a sudden surge in the number of illegal air flights from South America dropping bales of drugs at sea, to be picked by larger vessels, according to a senior anti-narcotics official who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Elsewhere in the Caribbean, the presence of patrolling U.S. warships has had varying effects.

In the Dominican Republic, the number of drug boats spotted at sea has declined drastically, said a senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In Jamaica, anti-narcotics officials say drug dealers are moving drugs in smaller quantities to lessen their loss if their loads are confiscated.

“We are seeing changes in modus operandi,” said Patrae Rowe, who heads the Firearms and Narcotics Investigation Division of the Jamaica Constabulary Force. “More covert means are being used to transship drugs,” he said, like hiding drugs in food shipments.

This much is clear: The world has never been awash in so much cocaine. The U.S. Coast Guard seized nearly 175,000 kilos, or about 193 tons, of cocaine on the high seas in the fiscal year that ended in September, more than double the amount seized the year before. A third of that — about 64 tons — was in the Caribbean.

Why Blowing Up Venezuelan Boats Won’t Stop the Flow of Drugs

The Coast Guard, whose practice generally is to intercept drug-smuggling vessels, confiscate contraband and detain suspects, stressed that much of its enforcement remains in the Pacific, and declined to comment further for this article.

The amount of cocaine seized in Jamaica has risen steadily over the past five years, Mr. Rowe said. More than 2,508 kilos were confiscated in 2024, most of that in a single smuggling case, he said.

In the 1980s, the Caribbean was the main route for drug trafficking into the United States. Colombian cartels run by powerful drug lords like Pablo Escobar ran sophisticated trafficking organizations that controlled everything from the growth of the coca plant to the fast boats used to deliver cocaine to Miami.

That dynamic changed about 20 years ago, when the industry shifted to largely moving cocaine by land into the United States through Mexico. Counternarcotics measures in Mexico pushed some of that cocaine trafficking back to the Caribbean in the past decade, experts said.

With so much cocaine being produced and demand increasing around the world, traffickers looked to pricier markets overseas, giving the Caribbean an increased role in moving drugs to places such as Rotterdam, Europe’s busiest port, and even farther, to Australia and South Africa.

Image

Packages of cocaine discovered in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Cartels have also shifted strategy by dividing tasks such as growing, storage and transportation among interconnected organizations so no one cartel controls the entire operation, making dismantling smuggling networks more difficult.

Local drug lords in Trinidad, for example, have been tasked with logistics and security, said the anti-narcotics official who was not authorized to speak publicly.

The official said that with eight U.S. Navy warships in the Caribbean, the authorities had detected far more unauthorized flights leaving from Colombia to Caribbean islands. While in the past there might have been five illegal flights in a single morning, now there are 15, he said.

The drugs are often dropped from the planes at sea, to be picked up by a yacht or commercial shipping vessel, the official said, since U.S. forces are not attacking vessels that large.

Bales of cocaine that washed up on shore in recent weeks in Trinidad and other islands were packaged with rope and hooks, suggesting that they were intended to be hauled out of the water, he said.

Several large packages of cocaine were discovered in recent weeks in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, including a few wrapped in white tarps listing vitamin ingredients that were labeled “Industria Colombiana.”

Since the beginning of September, the Trump administration said, it had destroyed at least five go-fast-style boats and killed 27 people. Administration officials, without offering evidence, have said they were smuggling drugs for “narco-terrorists” who threatened the security of the United States. Experts on the rule of law widely agree that the attacks violate international law.

The administration justified the military assaults by citing the enormous number of overdoses in the United States. But most drug deaths are from fentanyl, none of which is trafficked through the Caribbean.

The first boat, whose destruction was announced on Sept. 2, was attacked near Trinidad. Another vessel was destroyed on Sept. 19, about 80 miles south of Isla Beata, which is part of the Dominican Republic, in what was described as a joint operation of the United States and the Dominican Republic.

Image

The White House released still images taken from video of what President Trump said was a U.S. strike on a Venezuelan drug cartel vessel. It was the second strike on a suspected drug boat in recent weeks.Credit...The White House

The Dominican Republic is considered a major drug transshipment point, with most narcotics leaving through its commercial ports.

Nearly 225,000 kilos of drugs — 248 tons — have been seized in the past five years, according to the Dominican Foreign Ministry.

Estimates of how much of the cocaine in the United States is shipped through the Caribbean vary, but some experts say it is as little as 10 percent.

Lilian Bobea, a sociologist at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts who studies the illegal drug industry, said increased pressure from the United States on Mexico and increased consumption “is making the Caribbean very relevant again.”

The price of a kilo, or 2.2 pounds, of cocaine in the Caribbean region is about $3,000. Early indications suggest that the Trump administration’s military buildup in the region is pushing the price up, but the full effect will not be seen for several months, experts said.

Still, experts say, U.S. warships will probably do little to dent what is an extraordinarily lucrative market.

“There is an overproduction of cocaine in the producing countries,” said Alberto Arean Varela, a regional coordinator for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. “There’s more to smuggle.”

“We cannot stop using drugs,” he added.

Prior Beharry contributed reporting from Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Frances Robles is a Times reporter covering Latin America and the Caribbean. She has reported on the region for more than 25 years.

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 15, 2025, Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Drug Smugglers Change Tactics to Evade U.S. Warships. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

12. Move over James Bond: A new service lets anyone share secrets with Britain

I thought the CIA had already established a similar program.

But this can never replace the need for HUMINT and case officers developing sources to produce vetted HUMINT. This can only supplement the most important work of case officers but not replace it.

Some interesting and perhaps troubling questions here.

Excerpts:

The ease with which people could contact MI6, even from inside the United States, has raised concerns among intelligence veterans.

"I'm hopeful that there's been complete coordination between the U.K. and the U.S.," said Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of the FBI for counter-intelligence, the part of the bureau responsible for catching spies operating inside the U.S.

"It's the first time that I've seen the Brits do this as broadly as they appear to be doing it here, certainly using social media platforms and casting a wide net in their efforts to collect [intelligence]," Figliuzzi told NPR.

Both countries are members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, meaning that information gathered through Silent Courier could, in theory, be shared with Washington. Approached by NPR for comment, Britain's Foreign Office declined to comment on that specifically, but added "the US is our closest ally, and we will continue to cooperate closely on defence, intelligence and security matters."

The fact that MI6's instructional videos are accessible inside the U.S. raised another issue, Figliuzzi said.

"This question of coordination becomes even more interesting if indeed someone inside the United States has decided 'I think I'd rather deal with the Brits than with the Americans,' for whatever reason, political or otherwise."

Move over James Bond: A new service lets anyone share secrets with Britain

https://www.npr.org/2025/10/14/nx-s1-5564056/security-mi-6-uk-secrets-foreign-intelligence-silent-courier

October 14, 20254:45 AM ET

Heard on Morning Edition

Adam Bearne

NPR · By · October 14, 2025

A view of the headquarters of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, in London, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. Kin Cheung/AP

The United Kingdom has a new way for people to share secrets with the country's foreign intelligence agency.

It's called Silent Courier, and it's being advertised online.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by MI6 (@mi6)

The service can be found on the dark web, and allows potential spies to share classified information with the U.K.'s Secret Intelligence Service — better known as MI6 — securely. The nation's Foreign Office, which oversees MI6, says the portal is being launched as the U.K. tries to recruit "potential new agents in Russia and around the world."

That makes sense to former MI6 intelligence officer Matthew Dunn. He told NPR that Silent Courier could be used by foreign officials who otherwise couldn't meet with an MI6 handler, or sneak into a British embassy.

"MI6 has always had the facility for what we call walk-ins. Traditionally, that is embassy driven," he said. "Sometimes, we have had gold dust intelligence as a result of defectors and the like."

Silent Courier is a less risky option, Dunn believes.

"The potential for somebody to think 'thank goodness for that, I now have a mechanism to contact the organisation, [when] for various reasons I couldn't physically face to face present my credentials,' this enables that possibility," he added.

Sponsor Message

Dunn also thinks it could be useful for getting information related to Russia's war in Ukraine from those involved in the conflict, especially if they're not being specifically targeted by MI6.

"This is a complementary strategy that's taking place and one that is clearly reflective of the nature of the world as [it] is right now," Dunn said.

MI6 is home to the fictional character James Bond, but prospective double agents don't need to channel the skills of 007 to use Silent Courier.

A promotional video on YouTube explains how to access the service. The introduction is delivered by Sir Richard Moore, who served as MI6's chief under the codename "C." Moore recently retired, paving the way for Blaise Metreweli, the first woman to lead the agency.

A security risk for the United States?

The ease with which people could contact MI6, even from inside the United States, has raised concerns among intelligence veterans.

"I'm hopeful that there's been complete coordination between the U.K. and the U.S.," said Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of the FBI for counter-intelligence, the part of the bureau responsible for catching spies operating inside the U.S.

"It's the first time that I've seen the Brits do this as broadly as they appear to be doing it here, certainly using social media platforms and casting a wide net in their efforts to collect [intelligence]," Figliuzzi told NPR.

Sponsor Message

Both countries are members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, meaning that information gathered through Silent Courier could, in theory, be shared with Washington. Approached by NPR for comment, Britain's Foreign Office declined to comment on that specifically, but added "the US is our closest ally, and we will continue to cooperate closely on defence, intelligence and security matters."

The fact that MI6's instructional videos are accessible inside the U.S. raised another issue, Figliuzzi said.

"This question of coordination becomes even more interesting if indeed someone inside the United States has decided 'I think I'd rather deal with the Brits than with the Americans,' for whatever reason, political or otherwise."

Figliuzzi speculated that shifts in Washington could prompt that choice.

"Have the Brits said, 'look, it's time for us to pick up any slack there,'" he said. "The question of whether the Brits would tell us that a person inside our borders has chosen to deal with them, I hope that that's the case. But in the dark world of cloak and dagger work, we may not know that ever, let alone in the short term."

With Silent Courier, MI6 might not need to send James Bond to handle it.

The radio version of this story was edited by Ashley Westerman, and the digital version was edited by Majd Al-Waheidi.

NPR · By · October 14, 2025

13. Media including Fox News overwhelmingly reject Pentagon press policy

Media including Fox News overwhelmingly reject Pentagon press policy

The network, which is generally supportive of the Trump administration, has joined ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN in not signing the Defense Department press policy.

UpdatedOctober 14, 2025 at 5:42 p.m. EDT

Washington Post · Scott Nover

Fox News, along with ABC, CBS and NBC, did not sign the Defense Department’s press policy by Tuesday’s deadline, having earlier in the day denounced the new regulations in a joint statement that included CNN, which previously said it would not sign.

“Today, we join virtually every other news organization in declining to agree to the Pentagon’s new requirements, which would restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues,” the news networks wrote. “The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections. We will continue to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press.”

Fox’s dissent is notable considering the Trump-friendly views of many of its opinion hosts, whose ranks previously included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The policy prohibits journalists from accessing or soliciting information the Defense Department doesn’t make available for them and revokes Pentagon press credentials from those who will not sign on. The new rules have drawn an anguished chorus of detractors across the ideological spectrum since they were announced last month.

The TV networks joined many other outlets in saying no, including The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg News and the Atlantic. Right-wing outlets including Newsmax, the Washington Times, the Daily Caller and the Washington Examiner also declined to sign, along with a raft of defense-related trade publications. (A list of outlets’ stances on the rules is below.)

As of Tuesday’s 5 p.m. deadline, only the MAGA-friendly One America News had said it would sign the policy.

The result, the Atlantic’s Nancy Youssef wrote Monday on X, is that reporters will take part in an unprecedented clearing out of the Defense Department’s gargantuan headquarters in Northern Virginia. “Starting Wednesday, for the first time since the Pentagon opened in 1943, there will be likely no major news outlets accredited to cover the [department], the one spending nearly $1 trillion of taxpayer money.”

“There is no need or justification for [the Pentagon] to require reporters to affirm their understanding of vague, likely unconstitutional policies as a precondition to reporting from Pentagon facilities,” the PPA said in a statement. “The Pentagon’s required acknowledgment is particularly problematic because it demands reporters to express an ‘understanding’ that harm inevitably flows from the disclosure of unauthorized information, classified or not — something everyone involved knows to be untrue.”

The Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment.

“It’s commonsense stuff, Mr. President,” he said. “We’re trying to make sure national security is respected, and we’re proud of the policy.”

In a brief exchange with the media, Trump indirectly endorsed Hegseth’s more restrictive regulations.

“You walk around the White House talking to anybody that can breathe,” he told a reporter. “But I find that when it comes to war and now our great Department of War … it bothers me to have soldiers and, even, you know, high-ranking generals walking around with you guys on their sleeve asking — because they can make a mistake, and a mistake can be tragic.”

On Tuesday, the mood at the Pentagon press facilities was grim, according to credentialed journalists who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Journalists emptied out their desks of items that in some cases had been accrued over decades. Networks picked up broadcasting equipment to lug back to their bureaus. Through it all, there was an air of sadness but also resilience, people said. “Everyone is united but disappointed that it’s come to this,” one reporter said.

“Most reporters just feel determined to keep doing their jobs,” another said. “It’ll make it harder for sure. But I think everyone understands this is about a defense secretary who is actually quite thin-skinned.”

“Camaraderie is still really good among the reporters,” another correspondent said. “If any press corps knows how to cope with gallows humor, it’s absolutely this one.”

Liam Scott and Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.

News outlets’ stances on the Pentagon’s new media rules

Signing

• One America News

Refusing to sign

• ABC News

• Air & Space Forces Magazine

• Al Jazeera

• AL-Monitor

• Associated Press

• The Atlantic

• Aviation Week

• Axios

• Bloomberg News

• Breaking Defense

• C4ISRNET

• CBS News

• CNN

• The Daily Caller

• Defense Daily

• Defense News

• Defense One

• The Economist

• Federal Times

• The Financial Times

• Fox News

• The Guardian

• The Hill

• HuffPost

• Military Times

• MSNBC

• NBC News

• The New York Times

• Newsmax

• NPR

• PBS Newshour

• Politico

• RealClearPolitics

• Reuters

• Task & Purpose

• USNI News

• The Wall Street Journal

• The Washington Examiner

• The Washington Post

• The Washington Times

• WTOP

Washington Post · Scott Nover

14. Chinese arms makers urged to embrace AI technology in weapons development

Excerpts:

AI has already been used in the development of Chinese weapons, including a pistol-sized coilgun where the technology was used to suggest a huge set of optimised data points.

Chinese researchers also reportedly built an AI system to study the shock waves in wind tunnel tests with a view to the technology eventually being used to design hypersonic weapons.

However, the article also warned of the risks and challenges in using AI in weapons development, including that it learns only from what has happened previously and lacks true innovation. Other problems include issues related to security, reliability, data privacy and ethical concerns.

“Appropriate management and control measures must be adopted,” it said.

Recognising the role of AI in defence, Washington continues to tighten export controls and investment restrictions on advanced computing chips and related technologies in a bid to curb the Chinese military’s access to semiconductors and other tech needed for its modernisation and AI weapons development.

Chinese arms makers urged to embrace AI technology in weapons development

State-run defence industry magazine says the tech can be used to improve efficiency and quality, though it should be approached with caution

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3329069/chinese-arms-makers-urged-embrace-ai-technology-weapons-development?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article

Liu Zhen

Published: 7:00pm, 15 Oct 2025

Chinese arms makers should explore the use of artificial intelligence in the development of weapons to improve efficiency and quality, according to a state-run defence industry magazine.

But the article in the latest issue of Modern Weaponry also noted that AI technology had risks and challenges and its use should be approached with caution.

“Artificial intelligence will leverage its self-learning capabilities in the development of weapons and equipment, serving as an advisory tool that provides recommendations,” according to the article in the publication run by state defence corporation China North Industries Group, or Norinco.

It said the technology could also provide more efficient and accurate design and simulation tools using historical data and optimising design algorithms, and it could significantly upgrade traditional systems like artillery production.

AI would do that by analysing historical trajectory data and integrating real-time sensor data. So it would learn about then create more detailed firing tables for the artillery, and adjust the key factors that affect projectile accuracy.

“The earlier a traditional weapon system was introduced and the lower its level of automation, the more significant the performance enhancement that can be achieved by applying AI to optimise its design methodologies and underlying performance principles,” the article said.

It also pointed to the use of AI in new system research and development, particularly digital twin technology that creates a virtual replica of the equipment for simulation and testing. It said the technology could improve early prediction of potential failures and diagnosis of mechanical faults by having the twin model reverse-engineer the cause.

AI could also be used to evaluate the combat performance of weapons and equipment – including testing and assessment under near-realistic operating conditions – and it could improve testing methodologies to improve accuracy, according to the article.

It noted the development of China’s weapons R&D programme – from the 1980s, when manual drafting was still done, to the computer-aided design system used to develop the J-10 fighter jet in the 1990s.

A computer-aided design system was used to develop the J-10 fighter jet in the 1990s. Photo: Xinhua

AI has already been used in the development of Chinese weapons, including a pistol-sized coilgun where the technology was used to suggest a huge set of optimised data points.

Chinese researchers also reportedly built an AI system to study the shock waves in wind tunnel tests with a view to the technology eventually being used to design hypersonic weapons.

However, the article also warned of the risks and challenges in using AI in weapons development, including that it learns only from what has happened previously and lacks true innovation. Other problems include issues related to security, reliability, data privacy and ethical concerns.

“Appropriate management and control measures must be adopted,” it said.

Recognising the role of AI in defence, Washington continues to tighten export controls and investment restrictions on advanced computing chips and related technologies in a bid to curb the Chinese military’s access to semiconductors and other tech needed for its modernisation and AI weapons development.

Liu Zhen

Liu Zhen joined the Post in 2015 as a reporter on the China desk. She previously worked with Reuters in Beijing.

15. The Ethical Imperative of Information: Just War Considerations for Global Information Strategy

Excerpt:

In a complex global environment where conventional war presents immeasurable costs, America and its allies have a moral obligation to pursue every possible nonviolent means to promote peace and stability. Information warfare, especially when informed by sound ethical principles, presents precisely the tool required to navigate international challenges and promote the common good. By remaining below the threshold of conflict, information activities create a venue for truth and freedom while simultaneously countering adversarial narratives and avoiding deadly conflict. While the risk of war will never be zero, and a strong defense posture should be maintained to respond to global threats, American policymakers, strategists, and ethicists alike prioritize the ethical use of information to promote national interests and ensure a just, stable global order.

The Ethical Imperative of Information: Just War Considerations for Global Information Strategy

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/10/15/the-ethical-imperative-of-information-just-war-considerations-for-global-information-strategy/

by C.B. Duncan

10.15.2025 at 06:00am

Abstract

This article examines the implications of Just War Theory, an ethical framework governing the use of lethal force by governments, for the use of information warfare in the 21st century. The author posits that ethical considerations demand a robust, integrated approach to information operations, both as a means of averting armed conflict and for accomplishing strategic objectives with minimal human harm or suffering. Classical ethics theories are applied to the requirement for and application of information warfare in the modern context.

Introduction

Navigating the ethical challenges of competition and warfare in the 21st century is daunting at best and treacherous at worst. Warfighters and policymakers must leverage creative and unconventional approaches to navigate a complex environment rife with threats. America, which for decades has served as the de facto guarantor of the current international order, has an ethical obligation to respond to each of these threats, both for the good of its own citizens and for the good of the entire world. Doing so, however, is akin to walking a minefield blindfolded; one strategic move in the wrong direction could have second- or third-order effects that send nukes flying or innocent civilians to their graves. It is imperative that the United States and its allies pursue ethical means of dealing with threats to stability in the modern era, especially in ways that lie below the threshold of all-out war. In this context, gray-zone tactics like information warfare present a valuable ethical tool to address the actors seeking to undermine a secure global environment. By adhering to Just War theory principles, the U.S. can ethically leverage information as a soft-power tool to pursue the common good while avoiding the destruction brought on by full-scale military conflict.

Just War Considerations in the Modern Era

Just War theory, first outlined by Augustine of Hippo in the sixth century and further developed by the philosopher-theologian Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae, provides a framework to evaluate the morality of the use of deadly force as a tool of statecraft. The principles of Just War theory have long informed discussion as to whether a nation or other entity can ethically engage in war, even in the modern era.

Principles of Just War Theory

Legitimate Authority. According to Just War Theory, only a state, not a civilian group or individual, may lawfully declare war. In the case of the U.S., Congress holds this authority for a formal declaration of war, though the President may authorize the use of military force in scenarios outside the realm of traditional state-on-state conflict.
Just Cause. War may only be declared if there is a grave reason justifying the use of force, such as defense against aggression or the correction of a serious injustice, and not for reasons such as revenge or conquest.
Right Intention. War must be waged to advance the common good, not to simply benefit a select group or for national interest outside that which would be considered a just cause.
Last Resort. All other means (diplomacy, economic enticement, information strategy) must be exhausted before committing to the use of force.
Even if war is conducted, combatants are still bound by ethical considerations in how the war is fought. The means of destruction must be proportional to the military ends achieved, and all steps must be taken to minimize damage to civilians or property. Simply, the harm done by war must not outweigh the good accomplished.

The Costs of Modern War

Considered in the light of Just War theory, the costs of modern warfare raise serious concerns as to the ethics of full-scale war. On one hand, great powers vie for influence on the global stage with military buildups and real or threatened invasions of sovereign neighbors, gray-zone tactics, and predatory economic policies seeking to solidify their posture against their adversaries and rewrite the international order. The cost of traditional war between great powers in the modern era is massive. Nuclear weapons alone present a nearly incalculable cost to human life and infrastructure, not to mention the suffering that the economic and geopolitical fallout of a war of this kind would present. For example, according to the United Nations, more than 50,000 civilian casualties have occurred as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Similarly, the United Nations reports that the Israel-Hamas conflict has displaced nearly 2 million civilians from their homes in Gaza. A war with North Korea could see nearly $40 trillion in a worst-case scenario on top of millions of military and civilian casualties, according to expert analysis. Geopolitically, the effects of war must be considered. In the case of China’s threatened invasion of Taiwan, such an act would fly in the face of international norms of sovereignty and undermine the stability of the entire Indo-Pacific region. Simultaneously, rogue states, terrorist groups, and other non-state actors seek to wrest local or regional control away from the established order with weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, transnational crime, and more. Additionally, in the information age, cyberattacks and disinformation impose substantial costs on civilian populations to the tune of billions of dollars and a psychological degradation in one’s own ability to trust what they see, read, or hear online. Russian and Chinese propaganda, for example, propagated substantial disinformation campaigns during the COVID-19 pandemic, threatening global public health outcomes and trust in government institutions. In sum, the costs of modern war present a compelling need to reevaluate how states interact in times of conflict or crisis, and especially so given the moral obligation of leaders to pursue the common good. Just War theory provides one such ethical compass by which one can navigate these waters, and in so doing calls for a revamped approach to conflicts.

The Ethical Necessity of Information Warfare

Given that full-scale war is so costly, how can nations seek to justly promote the common good while not provoking destruction on a massive scale? The answer lies in the use of information warfare amid other gray-zone tactics, seeking to accomplish national objectives against adversaries while remaining below the threshold of war. The information tool of national power relates in part to a nation’s ability to disseminate information into a given environment and thereby influence a specific audience. This can occur through various means; public diplomacy, psychological operations, cultural exchanges, and even cyber capabilities serve to shape narratives and deter adversary actions that would lead to conflict. As a soft-power tool, the use of information can and should be exhausted before, and even during and after, conflicts break out, according to the Last Resort principle of Just War theory. Since little to no physical destruction or death occurs as a direct impact of information warfare, it certainly meets the criteria of Proportionality. Moreover, since the scale of information warfare can be tailored to the specific environment, states can modify their approaches to remain beneath a threatening threshold and avoid war while still advancing the common good. That said, information warfare must still be governed by the same ethical boundaries as other tools of national power, and, considering the moral and operational consequences of unethical information activities, extra care must be taken to ensure that the highest standards are made clear and always adhered to.

Morality in Information Warfare

As mentioned, information presents a highly ethical means of advancing national interests and promoting peace, justice, and stability around the globe. Uniquely, information activities can be used to counter many of the immoral gray-zone tactics like propaganda and disinformation employed by adversarial nations and actors, as well as disrupting their activities outside of the information domain and building resilience among civilian populations. To be effective, however, information warfare must adhere to strict ethical guidelines. All information campaigns must seek to promote the common good and not seek to manipulate for self-serving or exploitative reasons, lest they be perceived as predatory. An audience’s loss of trust in a messaging campaign would immediately degrade credibility in the sources of information and undermine the effectiveness of future operations. An exception to this guideline is the use of deception in military operations, which seeks to influence enemy decision-making. In these cases, deception can be morally justified as it seeks to protect friendly forces’ lives and leads to a greater chance of operational success. This differs from strategic misinformation, which suppresses or distorts truth among civilian populations, denying them the fundamental human right to truthful information.

As seen, information, whether truthful or deceitful, does have the capacity to cause both direct psychological harm and, indirectly, can lead to real physical damage. The second and third-order effects of a given information activity should be wargamed and adjustments made to ensure that any harm that could arise is proportional to the good achieved. Despite risks, information affords the opportunity to achieve strategic objectives with far less harm done to innocent parties than kinetic activities, and every effort should be made to reduce risks to civilians while still placing adversaries at a disadvantage.

Finally, a unique aspect of ethical information activities is the requirement to be culturally attuned. Culturally misaligned information operations alienate audiences, as was seen in some psychological operations (PSYOP) products utilized in Afghanistan, and give the adversary an opening to turn the information environment in their favor. Conversely, messaging that aligns with cultural norms builds credibility and shows respect for local customs and values, increasing the potential for effectiveness in future messaging. This can include messaging conducted in the target language, utilizing images and themes that resonate with local mythologies or values, or otherwise appealing to local senses of social or cultural identity. For example, PSYOP forces during the Korean War relied on themes of a shared national identity to encourage defection from North Korea to the South. This creates a requirement for cultural and linguistic training for information warfare practitioners and analysts, and benefits further from integration with local experts and organizations that can verify the cultural alignment of messages before they are published.

Addressing Risks, Accountability, and Measuring Effectiveness

History is rife with examples of information activities used to harm populations, such as the works of the infamous Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels and the modern-day North Korean propaganda state, as well as the aforementioned instances where information activities have backfired. These risks are compounded when using disinformation as a means of influence, which dramatically degrades credibility and alienates populations. If planned or executed poorly, the use of information can escalate tensions with adversaries or nudge neutral parties toward an adversarial position, all of which complicate the chances of avoiding conflict or reaching national goals. To prevent this conundrum, information activities should be subject to rigorous oversight, and policy should be crafted at the highest levels of government to provide clear themes and ethical guidelines governing the use of information. Internal reviews at various levels in the chain of command should assess the ethics of information activities and ensure they align with strategic objectives. International cooperation in information operations, too, is paramount to enable a unified commitment to ethical norms. Both domestically and internationally, visibility should be maximized wherever possible in the pursuit of accountability to the citizenry. While operational security concerns demand a degree of secrecy as to the details of ongoing information activities, the population of a country seeking to exercise information warfare should have the right to demand that their government do so ethically and in pursuit of goals that benefit the common good.

The effectiveness of information activities should be measured as accurately as possible to ensure proper use of resources. Assessment results should then be reported to department-level headquarters at the Department of State, Defense, or intelligence agencies undertaking information activities, and wherever possible, should be shared with Congress for a further layer of accountability. Analyzing the effectiveness of messaging campaigns can be accomplished in direct means, such as behavioral observation or surveys of target audiences, or even through sentiment analysis on social or mass media. That said, measuring shifts in attitudes and perceptions, especially in potentially adversarial environments, is incredibly difficult. In such cases, effectiveness can be viewed in a theory-of-victory approach in which information activities and products, coupled with informed assumptions, account for subjectivity in assessments and can still be considered successful despite a lack of concrete evidence.

Additionally, as the global information environment becomes more complex, international cooperation will become crucial to building effective ethical information campaigns. Allies and partners around the globe should discuss and codify ethical regulations governing information warfare and seek to maximize the interoperability of their information activities. This way, multiple parties can present a cohesive, unified narrative to counter other states or groups who seek to undermine the stability of the global order.

Finally, future innovations in information warfare can be fueled by artificial intelligence, big data, and other emerging technologies, which make messaging more precise, effective, and reduce the risk of harm to innocent populations. By leveraging big data and artificial intelligence (AI) tools, practitioners can glean insights as to which messages might resonate with a given audience, as well as streamlining the planning and message development processes to maintain operational tempo. Of course, AI and big data usage come with their own considerations. Any use of these tools must respect the privacy and rights of civilians, and all AI-created plans or messages should be vetted by human approval authorities prior to publication to ensure all ethical guidelines are being met.

Conclusion

In a complex global environment where conventional war presents immeasurable costs, America and its allies have a moral obligation to pursue every possible nonviolent means to promote peace and stability. Information warfare, especially when informed by sound ethical principles, presents precisely the tool required to navigate international challenges and promote the common good. By remaining below the threshold of conflict, information activities create a venue for truth and freedom while simultaneously countering adversarial narratives and avoiding deadly conflict. While the risk of war will never be zero, and a strong defense posture should be maintained to respond to global threats, American policymakers, strategists, and ethicists alike prioritize the ethical use of information to promote national interests and ensure a just, stable global order.

Tags: ethics, gray-zone conflict, information warfare, Just War Theory, National Power

About The Author

C.B. Duncan
C.B. Duncan is a student of international relations, concentrating on North Korea policy and defense strategy.

16. Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data

Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data

With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted.

https://www.wired.com/story/satellites-are-leaking-the-worlds-secrets-calls-texts-military-and-corporate-data/?utm

Wired · Andy Greenberg · October 14, 2025

Satellites beam data down to the Earth all around us, all the time. So you might expect that those space-based radio communications would be encrypted to prevent any snoop with a satellite dish from accessing the torrent of secret information constantly raining from the sky. You would, to a surprising and troubling degree, be wrong.

Roughly half of geostationary satellite signals, many carrying sensitive consumer, corporate, and government communications, have been left entirely vulnerable to eavesdropping, a team of researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Maryland revealed today in a study that will likely resonate across the cybersecurity industry, telecom firms, and inside military and intelligence agencies worldwide.

For three years, the UCSD and UMD researchers developed and used an off-the-shelf, $800 satellite receiver system on the roof of a university building in the La Jolla seaside neighborhood of San Diego to pick up the communications of geosynchronous satellites in the small band of space visible from their Southern California vantage point. By simply pointing their dish at different satellites and spending months interpreting the obscure—but unprotected—signals they received from them, the researchers assembled an alarming collection of private data: They obtained samples of the contents of Americans’ calls and text messages on T-Mobile’s cellular network, data from airline passengers’ in-flight Wi-Fi browsing, communications to and from critical infrastructure such as electric utilities and offshore oil and gas platforms, and even US and Mexican military and law enforcement communications that revealed the locations of personnel, equipment, and facilities.

“It just completely shocked us. There are some really critical pieces of our infrastructure relying on this satellite ecosystem, and our suspicion was that it would all be encrypted,” says Aaron Schulman, a UCSD professor who co-led the research. “And just time and time again, every time we found something new, it wasn't.”

The group’s paper, which they’re presenting this week at an Association for Computing Machinery conference in Taiwan, is titled “Don’t Look Up”—a reference to the 2021 film of that title but also a phrase the researchers say describes the apparent cybersecurity strategy of the global satellite communications system. “They assumed that no one was ever going to check and scan all these satellites and see what was out there. That was their method of security,” Schulman says. “They just really didn't think anyone would look up.”

The researchers say that they’ve spent nearly the past year warning companies and agencies whose sensitive data they found exposed in satellite communications. Most of them, including T-Mobile, moved quickly to encrypt those communications and protect the data. Others, including some owners of vulnerable US critical infrastructure whom the researchers alerted more recently—and declined to name to WIRED—have yet to add encryption to their satellite-based systems. Researchers have pointed to the surveillance dangers of unencrypted satellite connections before, but the scale and scope of the new disclosures appear unrivaled.

UCSD and UMD researchers pose with their satellite receiver system on the roof of a university building in San Diego. From left to right: Annie Dai, Aaron Schulman, Keegan Ryan, Nadia Heninger, Morty Zhang. Not pictured: Dave Levin.

Courtesy of Ryan Kosta

The researchers’ work looked at only a small fraction of geostationary satellites whose signals they could pick up from San Diego—roughly 15 percent of those in operation, by the researchers’ estimate. This suggests vast amounts of data are likely still being exposed over satellite communications, says Matt Green, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University who focuses on cybersecurity and reviewed the study. Large swaths of satellite data will likely be vulnerable for years to come, too, as companies and governments grapple with whether and how to secure outdated systems, Green says.

“It's crazy. The fact that this much data is going over satellites that anyone can pick up with an antenna is just incredible,” Green says. “This paper will fix a very small part of the problem, but I think a lot of it is not going to change.”

“I would be shocked,” Green adds, “if this is something that intelligence agencies of any size are not already exploiting.”

Half Conversations, Broadcast From Space

The phone calls and text messages the researchers obtained, in particular, were exposed due to telecoms’ often overlooked use of satellite communications for offering cellular coverage to normal phone users who connect to cell towers in remote locations. Some towers in desert or mountainous regions of the US, for instance, connect to a satellite that relays their signals to and from the rest of a telecom’s core cellular network, the internal communications of the network known as “backhaul” traffic.

Anyone who sets up their own satellite receiver in the same broad region as one of those remote cell towers—often as far as thousands of miles away—can pick up the same signals meant for that tower. Doing so allowed the research team to obtain at least some amount of unencrypted backhaul data from the carriers T-Mobile, AT&T Mexico, and Telmex.

The T-Mobile data was particularly significant: In just nine hours of recording T-Mobile backhaul satellite communications from their single dish, the researchers collected the phone numbers of more than 2,700 users as well as all the phone calls and text messages the researchers received during that time. They could, however, only read or hear one side of those conversations: the content of the messages and calls sent to T-Mobile’s remote towers, not sent from them to the core cell network, which would have required another satellite dish near the one T-Mobile intended to receive the signal on the other end.

Cellular towers in remote regions sometimes connect to a satellite that relays their signals to and from the rest of a telecom’s core cellular network—the internal communications of the network known as “backhaul” traffic. Anyone who sets up their own satellite receiver in the same broad region as one of those remote cell towers—often as far as thousands of miles away—can pick up the same signals meant for that tower.

Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images

“When we saw all this, my first question was, did we just commit a felony? Did we just wiretap?” says Dave Levin, a University of Maryland computer science professor who co-led the study. In fact, he says, the team didn’t actively intercept any communications, only passively listened to what was being sent to their receiver dish. “These signals are just being broadcast to over 40 percent of the Earth at any point in time,” Levin says.

Mexican telecom Telmex also transmitted unencrypted voice calls, the researchers found. The researchers further discovered that AT&T Mexico transmitted raw data over satellites that included users’ internet traffic—most of which was encrypted with HTTPS by the apps or browsers they used—but also some calling and texting metadata. They also found decryption keys that the researchers believe could likely have been used to decipher other sensitive information the AT&T Mexico network transmitted—though they didn’t attempt this.

Starting in December 2024, the researchers began contacting the affected telecoms. T-Mobile responded by encrypting its satellite transmissions within weeks, but responses from other cell carriers were mixed.

“Last year, this research helped surface a vendor's encryption issue found in a limited number of satellite backhaul transmissions from a very small number of cell sites, which was quickly fixed,” a T-Mobile spokesperson says, adding the issue was “not network-wide” and that the company has taken steps to “make sure this doesn't happen again.” In another statement after this story was published, T-Mobile noted that it has also added Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) encryption for all customers across the US “to further protect signaling traffic as it travels between mobile handsets and the network core, including call set up, numbers dialed and text message content.”

A spokesperson for AT&T says the company “promptly” fixed the issue. "A satellite vendor misconfigured a small number of cell towers in a remote region of Mexico,” they say. Telmex did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Whether other cellular carriers around the US and world—outside the visibility of the researchers’ satellite dish—have encrypted their satellite-based network backhaul data remains an open question. The researchers say they didn’t see any unencrypted Verizon or AT&T US traffic from their dish.

The AT&T spokesperson says that its US and Mexico networks are separate, and it is “rare” to use satellites for cellular backhaul. "We typically route traffic on our closed, secure backhaul network,” the spokesperson says. “On those rare instances where data must be transmitted outside our closed network, it is our policy to encrypt it." Verizon did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Beyond just cell towers in remote locations, it’s possible that a lack of encryption for cellular backhaul data could make anyone on the same network vulnerable, points out Johns Hopkins’ Green. Hackers might be able to perform a so-called relay attack with a spoofed cell tower—using the surveillance hardware sometimes called a stingray or IMSI catcher—and route any victim’s data to a cell tower that connects to a satellite uplink. “The implications of this aren't just that some poor guy in the desert is using his cell phone tower with an unencrypted backhaul,” says Green. “You could potentially turn this into an attack on anybody, anywhere in the country.”

Military Helicopters and Power Grids, Exposed

The researchers’ satellite dish also pulled down a significant collection of unprotected military and law enforcement communications. They obtained, for instance, unencrypted internet communications from US military sea vessels, as well as the vessels’ names. (A spokesperson for the US Defense Information Systems Agency acknowledged WIRED’s request for comment but had not provided a response at the time of writing).

For Mexican military and law enforcement, the exposures were far worse: The researchers say they found what appeared to be unencrypted communications with remote command centers, surveillance facilities, and units of the Mexican military and law enforcement. In some cases, they saw the unprotected transmission of sensitive intelligence information on activities like narcotics trafficking. In others, they found military asset tracking and maintenance records for aircraft like Mil Mi-17 and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, sea vessels, and armored vehicles, as well as their locations and mission details. “When we started seeing military helicopters, it wasn’t necessarily the sheer volume of data, but the extreme sensitivity of that data that concerned us,” says Schulman. The Mexican military did not immediately respond to WIRED’s requests for comment.

Just as sensitive, perhaps, were industrial systems communications from critical infrastructure like power grids and offshore oil and gas platforms. In one case, they found that the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), Mexico’s state-owned electric utility with nearly 50 million customers, was transmitting its internal communications in the clear—everything from work orders that included customers’ names and addresses to communications about equipment failures and safety hazards. (A CFE spokesperson acknowledged WIRED’s request for comment but didn't provide a response before publication.)

In other cases they have yet to publicly detail, the researchers say they also warned US infrastructure owners about unencrypted satellite communications for industrial control system software. In their phone calls with those infrastructure owners, some owners even expressed concerns that a malicious actor might have the ability to not only surveil the control systems of their facilities, but also, with enough sophistication, potentially disable or spoof them to tamper with the facility’s operation.

The researchers obtained a vast grab bag of other miscellaneous corporate and consumer data: They pulled down in-flight Wi-Fi data for Intelsat and Panasonic systems used by 10 different airlines. Within that data, they found unencrypted metadata about users’ browsing activities and even the unencrypted audio of the news programs and sports games being broadcast to them. They also obtained corporate emails and inventory records of Walmart’s Mexican subsidiary, satellite communications to ATMs managed by Santander Mexico, as well as the Mexican banks Banjercito and Banorte.

A spokesperson for Panasonic Avionics Corporation said they “welcome the findings” from the researchers, but claim it “has found that several statements attributed to us are either inaccurate or misrepresent our position.” When asked, the spokesperson did not specify what the company considered was inaccurate. “Our satellite communications systems are designed so that every user data session follows established security protocols,” the spokesperson says.

“Generally, our users choose the encryption that they apply to their communications to suit their specific application or need,” says a spokesperson for SES, the parent company of Intelsat. “For SES’s inflight customers, for example, SES provides a public Wi-Fi hot spot connection similar to the public internet available at a coffee shop or hotel. On such public networks, user traffic would be encrypted when accessing a website via HTTPS/TLS or communicating using a virtual private network.”

The researchers reported the swaths of unencrypted satellite communications from the Mexican government and Mexican organizations to CERT-MX, the country’s incident response team, which is part of the government’s National Guard, in April this year, before separately contacting companies. CERT-MX did not respond to WIRED’s repeated requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Santander Mexico says that no customer information or transactions were compromised, but confirmed that the exposed traffic was linked to a “small group” of ATMs used in remote areas of Mexico where using satellite connections is the only option available. “Although this traffic does not pose a risk to our customers, we took the report as an opportunity for improvement, implementing measures that reinforce the confidentiality of technical traffic circulating through these links,” the spokesperson says.

“While we cannot share specifics, we can confirm that our communications lines have been evaluated and confirmed secure,” a spokesperson for Walmart says. (The researchers confirm that they observed Walmart had encrypted its satellite communications in response to their warning.)

“The information of our customers and infrastructure is not exposed to any vulnerability,” a spokesperson for Grupo Financiero Banorte says. Banjercito could not be reached for comment.

“SIA and its members remain diligent in monitoring the threat landscape and continue to participate in various security efforts with government agencies, industry working groups, and international standards bodies,” says Tom Stroup, the president of the Satellite Industry Association, adding that it does not comment on specific company issues.

Time to Look Up

The amount of Mexico-related data in the researchers’ findings is, of course, no coincidence. Although their satellite dish was technically able to pick up transmissions from around a quarter of the sky, much of that swath included the Pacific Ocean, which has relatively few satellites above it, and only a small fraction of the transponders on the satellites it did see were transmitting data in the direction of its dish. The result, the researchers estimate, was that they examined only 15 percent of global satellite transponder communications, mostly in the western US and Mexico.

Geostationary satellites ring the Earth’s equator. The researchers’ satellite dish on the roof of their UC San Diego building was in a position to pick at least some signals from about a quarter of that ring. But because many of the satellites’ signals weren’t transmitted towards San Diego—and a large part of their coverage was over the Pacific Ocean, with relatively few satellites—they only received an estimated 15 percent of all geostationary satellite signals. That also means that other dishes placed elsewhere in the world would likely find entirely different signals transmitting different sensitive data.

Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images

That suggests anyone could set up similar hardware somewhere else in the world and likely obtain their own collection of sensitive information. After all, the researchers restricted their experiment to only off-the-shelf satellite hardware: a $185 satellite dish, a $140 roof mount with a $195 motor, and a $230 tuner card, totaling less than $800.

“This was not NSA-level resources. This was DirecTV-user-level resources. The barrier to entry for this sort of attack is extremely low,” says Matt Blaze, a computer scientist and cryptographer at Georgetown University and law professor at Georgetown Law. “By the week after next, we will have hundreds or perhaps thousands of people, many of whom won’t tell us what they’re doing, replicating this work and seeing what they can find up there in the sky.”

One of the only barriers to replicating their work, the researchers say, would likely be the hundreds of hours they spent on the roof adjusting their satellite. As for the in-depth, highly technical analysis of obscure data protocols they obtained, that may now be easier to replicate, too: The researchers are releasing their own open-source software tool for interpreting satellite data, also titled “Don’t Look Up,” on Github.

The researchers’ work may, they acknowledge, enable others with less benevolent intentions to pull the same highly sensitive data from space. But they argue it will also push more of the owners of that satellite communications data to encrypt that data, to protect themselves and their customers. “As long as we’re on the side of finding things that are insecure and securing them, we feel very good about it,” says Schulman.

There’s little doubt, they say, that intelligence agencies with vastly superior satellite receiver hardware have been analyzing the same unencrypted data for years. In fact, they point out that the US National Security Agency warned in a 2022 security advisory about the lack of encryption for satellite communications. At the same time, they assume that the NSA—and every other intelligence agency from Russia to China—has set up satellite dishes around the world to exploit that same lack of protection. (The NSA did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment).

“If they aren't already doing this,” jokes UCSD cryptography professor Nadia Heninger, who co-led the study, “then where are my tax dollars going?”

Heninger compares their study’s revelation—the sheer scale of the unprotected satellite data available for the taking—to some of the revelations of Edward Snowden that showed how the NSA and Britain’s GCHQ were obtaining telecom and internet data on an enormous scale, often by secretly tapping directly into communications infrastructure.

“The threat model that everybody had in mind was that we need to be encrypting everything, because there are governments that are tapping undersea fiber optic cables or coercing telecom companies into letting them have access to the data,” Heninger says. “And now what we're seeing is, this same kind of data is just being broadcast to a large fraction of the planet.”

Updated 1pm ET, October 14, 2025: Added additional information from T-Mobile about the encryption the company added to its cell network following the researchers' discoveries.

Wired · Andy Greenberg · October 14, 2025

17. Book Review | William Spears’ Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy: Insights on the Morality of Military Service

I am a student of the Stoics. Just pre-ordered this to add to my "to read pile." (Available Nov 13th from Amazon)

Excerpt:

To conclude, William Spears’ Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy constitutes a valuable resource for any service member or scholar seeking a deeper understanding of ancient Stoic philosophy. This text is infinitely superior to Nancy Sherman’s Stoic Warriors, in discussing ancient Stoicism and the modern service member. It is obvious Spears invested significant time and attention to detail in his research, attempting to reconcile contemporary military service and this incredibly powerful philosophy. The hope is that Spears’ example will inspire other service members to dare to be military philosophers to further advance the profession of arms.

Book Reviews| The Latest

Book Review | William Spears’ Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy: Insights on the Morality of Military Service

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/10/15/book-review-william-spears-stoicism/

by Franklin Annis

10.15.2025 at 06:00am

Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy: Insights on the Morality of Military Service. William Spears. Casemate, 2025, ISBN 978-1636246239, pp. 288. $19.95.

Typical works on Stoic philosophy focus their attention on Stoic ethics. This might be argued to be the enduring wisdom of the ancient philosophy that still holds value in our contemporary era. However, William Spears examines ancient Stoicism in its entirety, including discussions on Stoic logic and physics.

As explained by Spears, Stoic logic serves as the foundation of their philosophy. It places emphasis on the importance of reason and rational thinking. Stoic philosophy held that discerning and reasoned thought enables a more profound understanding of the world, thereby facilitating sound decision-making. The Stoics formulated an intricate system of logic encompassing theories of perception, language, and knowledge. This rational method was vital for discerning between valid and invalid beliefs, essential for attaining wisdom.

Within philosophy, physics denotes the examination of the natural world and the universe. The Stoic perspective held that the universe exists as a rational and interconnected whole, subject to divine reason, or logos. They posited that all events occur in accordance with natural laws, and comprehension of these laws facilitates personal alignment with the natural order. This viewpoint cultivates acceptance and serenity, acknowledging events are uncontrollable and should be met with composure.

Ethics constitutes the applied dimension of Stoic philosophy. It emphasizes the importance of virtuous living, guided by reason and nature. Stoic philosophers recognized four principal virtues: wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance. Through the cultivation of virtue, individuals may attain eudaimonia (happiness), leading to a flourishing existence. Stoic ethics posit that genuine happiness originates internally and remains independent of external factors. This internal strength allows people to safeguard their moral compass and inner harmony, no matter the trials of life.

While Spears’ comprehensive examination of ancient Stoicism provides significant strength to this book as an academic work, it may be a weakness in exploring Stoic ideas through time. Spears wrote a book specific to ancient Stoicism, a philosophical school locked within a specific timeframe. This unfortunately hampers some of his discussions later in his work trying to relate Stoicism to the needs of modern warriors. While he relates ancient Stoicism to the warrior’s responsibilities to follow the laws of war, Spears misses the opportunity to discuss how the laws of war grew out of the NeoStoic tradition. NeoStoicism was a philosophical movement, started in the late 16th century by Justus Lipsius, who reconciled ancient Stoic ethics with Christian theology. The NeoStoic Hugo Grotius, “the father of international law,” wrote the “first general comprehensive modern work grounded on reason and natural law” with his De jure belli ac pacis (On the Law of War and Peace). Spears should not be faulted here because there is only so much one can put into a single book. The quality of Spears’ research on ancient Stoicism is more than sufficient to make his work a valuable resource for anyone interested in military Stoicism.

While Spears advocates the self-study of Stoic philosophy, he does not promote the military teaching this philosophy as a standardized course. In my private conversations with Stoic educators, there has been a genuine fear expressed that instructors who are not invested in this philosophy would do a poor job of explaining it to new recruits. This could cause service members to reject the philosophy out of the failures to motivate learners common with military instruction. Spears also is hesitant to deal with the theological references in ancient Stoic physics. Modern Stoicism (a philosophical school developed in the last 60 years) does not take as full of a look at the philosophy as Spears, as previously discussed. Modern Stoic materials typically address Stoic ethics which could resolve some of these issues. There are surely forms of modern Stoicism that can support the range of religious beliefs from atheism to polytheism. The Stoic-based Before Operational Stress (BOS) program developed by Dr. Megan McElheran of Wayfound Mental Health Group might be a powerful example for the military in how Stoic instruction might be best integrated into a psychological resiliency program.

If placed on the continuum of Stoic materials for a new student of this philosophy, Spears’ Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy it would certainly be towards the middle, between popular light reads and heavy academic investigations. While this could be used as an introduction to Stoicism, the depth of this work would probably be better suited to someone that had already read a contemporary intro to Stoicism like Donald Robertson’s How to Think Like a Roman Emperor and at least a few of the primary sources, like Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Epictetus’ Enchiridion, and Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic. Nonetheless, Spears’ work is worth to reading before exploring the effects of Stoicism on the creation of the American Republic, as is found in works such as Goodman and Perkins’ Rome’s Last Citizen. For further information on the influence of Stoic philosophy on early American military education, Controversial History & Educational Theories of Captain Alden Partridge (Marching with Spartans: The Life and Works of Alden Partridge VOL I) provides further materials on the evolution of Stoic thought that wasn’t included in Spears’ work.

To conclude, William Spears’ Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy constitutes a valuable resource for any service member or scholar seeking a deeper understanding of ancient Stoic philosophy. This text is infinitely superior to Nancy Sherman’s Stoic Warriors, in discussing ancient Stoicism and the modern service member. It is obvious Spears invested significant time and attention to detail in his research, attempting to reconcile contemporary military service and this incredibly powerful philosophy. The hope is that Spears’ example will inspire other service members to dare to be military philosophers to further advance the profession of arms.

Tags: Stoicism; Military Service; Book review

About The Author

Franklin Annis
Franklin C. Annis is a military philosopher, historian, and educational theorist. On Twitter @EvolvingWar and www.YouTube.com/TheEvolvingWarfighter
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18. Two Dangerous Assumptions in U.S. Defense Planning and How to Fix Them

Conclusion:

With the right analytically informed actions, stand-in forces can bolster deterrence and joint and combined warfighting. It’s a tough challenge, but a solvable one. The United States got the big planning questions right leading up to World War II, but just five years later, in the same theater, it underestimated the adversary at the beginning of the Korean War — resulting in the destruction of Task Force Smith, among other tragedies. To repeat the success of World War II and avoid the failure of the initial stages of the Korean War, we need service and joint analysis — especially modeling and simulation — that repeatedly examines the hard questions, challenges untested assumptions (Not just ready, but ready for what, when, where, and for how long?), and quantifies the physical challenges (time, distance, movement, maneuver) associated with a big war far from home. No more Task Force Smiths! Stand-in forces and stand-in citizens (contractors, dependents) deserve nothing less.

Two Dangerous Assumptions in U.S. Defense Planning and How to Fix Them

Noel Williams

October 15, 2025

warontherocks.com · October 15, 2025

Decades of dominance leaves a mark: It shapes the beliefs and behaviors of a nation and its military. Extended periods of hegemony for a nation, like long-standing market dominance for a business, encourages blind spots for changing markets, technologies, and competitors. Sustained success breeds complacency born of self-satisfaction. Under-examined strategy and policy assumptions are a particular concern for businesses and governments as a longstanding status quo becomes dogmatically locked in as received wisdom.

U.S. defense planning suffers from two under-examined assumptions. The first is that U.S. military force posture, capabilities, and capacities will be sufficient to seamlessly transition from deterrence to war in the first island chain, which stretches from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines down to Borneo, forming the front edge of Asia facing the Pacific. The second assumption is that lines of communication to the western Pacific will be sustained to enable forward forces, the safety of U.S. civilians and military families with them, and timely reinforcements.

Critically, this is not an argument against forward-stationed and forward-positioned U.S. forces. It is an argument to ensure the Defense Department has realistically assessed the mobility, protection, and sustainment needs of these forces. A resilient force posture is essential, one that is fit for purpose in the most efficient manner possible given security, sustainment, and follow-on force demands. This is an instance where more is not necessarily better — at least initially.

World War II

In the decades leading up to World War II, the U.S. Naval War College held a series of wargames exploring potential war with Japan that contributed to the evolution of War Plan Orange, a plan that laid the foundation for the coming war in the Pacific. A major focus of the debate centered around how to protect U.S. assets in the Philippines should a war occur. There were two major schools of thought: first, rush the fleet to defend the Philippines; or second, take an incremental stepping stone approach across the Pacific. The former had the benefit of speed, while the latter provided time to build fighting and logistics capacity while concurrently challenging the adversary by extending their lines of communication and diminishing their military through attrition.

The most viscerally appealing option came to be known as the “through ticket”, where the fleet rushed directly to defend the Philippines — where the United States had substantial reputational and economic interests, given that it was a U.S. commonwealth during this period. The U.S. military had roughly 31,000 U.S. Army regulars, 277 aircraft, 14 surface ships, and 29 submarines. While the naval forces were antiquated, U.S. Army aircraft were modern, including 107 P-40 fighters and 35 B-17 bombers.

It was natural, therefore, for military operators to favor damning the torpedoes and rushing to defend the Philippines, and this perspective might well have held sway if not for the wargaming and analysis done at the Naval War College. This work demonstrated that the “through ticket” was not logistically feasible, the timing to intervene to counter an attack was a challenge, and a full-strength Japanese military in relative proximity to home waters could be overwhelming.

Similar dynamics are in place today. The United States has an even larger military presence across Japan, South Korea, and Guam and significantly greater diplomatic and economic interests throughout the region that are challenged by a rapidly expanding Chinese military. This environment suggests the need for a robust steady-state deterrence posture coupled with substantial rapid response capabilities should deterrence fail. Like the 1930s, the 2020s demand wargaming, modeling, and simulation to ensure U.S. instinctive responses are modulated by analysis, ensuring the most effective — vice the most emotionally appealing — strategy is selected.

Recent History

While the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review acknowledged the need to begin rebalancing the Department of Defense beyond the Middle East and the global war on terrorism, it was not until publication of the 2018 National Defense Strategy that there was unequivocal guidance to focus on great power competition, especially with regard to China, which was belatedly acknowledged as a near-peer competitor. Today’s national security and military planners are the product of this transition period and more broadly, part of the larger post-Cold War era when domain dominance and military overmatch were taken as a given.

Eight years after the 2018 National Defense Strategy, it is now generally accepted that China is not just a near-peer but a peer military power, particularly in the Asia-Pacific. Yet, even with this recognition of increased Chinese capability and capacity, beliefs and habits regarding the correlation of forces remain colored by past assumptions of overmatch. It is therefore important that U.S. analysts and planners guard against such preconceived notions of dominance born of decades of hegemony that may have created a cultural blind spot, leading to spurious conclusions like those of the “through ticket” advocates of the previous century. The Defense Department should do the hard analytical work to ensure it can flow requisite follow-on forces and sustain them once in place.

Given that China is presently more predominant in key military areas, in relative terms, than Japan was at the outset of World War II, it would be a mistake to simply assume the United States can adequately reinforce its forward bases, allies, and partners should conflict arise. War Plan Orange assumed 80,000 troops and 26,000 civilians in Bataan could resist for at least six months. These calculations were based on bad assumptions. After Pearl Harbor these forces were immediately placed on half rations. To avoid such a miscalculation in the future, planners should consider worst-case scenarios and plan courses of action that include the ability of surge forces to roll back Chinese forces, shape the theater for the introduction of additional follow-on forces, and open lines of communication for sustainment of forces and U.S. citizens (e.g., dependents, Department of Defense contractors) in the first island chain.

Service and joint planners should look at the numbers for lift, mobility, maneuver, and sustainment. Doing this due diligence is important for understanding both challenges and opportunities, especially the time, distance, and throughput requirements regardless of whether worst-case scenarios eventuate or not. Just taking amphibious ships as an example, the currently planned 31 amphibious ship inventory would require 100 percent readiness to lift the assault echelons of two Marine expeditionary brigades, yet current readiness is approximately 50 percent. Even with 100 percent amphibious ship readiness, ships would need to be transferred from other global commitments, thus exacerbating the challenge of mustering lift for an out of theater Marine expeditionary force. Certainly, maritime prepositioned shipping and strategic and tactical airlift contribute significantly in moving materiel, and there is additional common user shipping within Military Sealift Command, but that pool of ships is in decline as well. The primary point is not that marines need more amphibious ships or that other forms of sealift need to increase (which they do), but rather that in the near-term these structural problems cannot be resolved. If the military is to be effective in the near- to mid-term, planners should account for actual vice desired mobility assets (air, sea) and develop force postures and concepts of employment that work within these confines. Bounding a problem is the best way to drive creative solutions to daunting military problems like fighting a peer conflict without a preceding period of mobilization.

There are practical force design and development implications for getting the strategy wrong. The design of the nucleus of the World War II U.S. Fleet was influenced heavily by the treaty system that limited expansion of Pacific basing — the fortification clause of the Washington Naval Treaty. This restrictive clause turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it forced innovation in how maintenance and repairs were performed with limited permanent infrastructure. This was a powerful positive restraint that drove the creation of mobile dry docks, long-range submarines, and expeditionary water production capabilities among others. It also led the General Board to recognize the importance of advanced base and mobile base operations, such that the 1924 War Plan Orange document included a secret mobile base appendix. Accurately assessing capability and capacity requirements such as air and sea mobility, munitions availability, capacity of the defense industrial base, the national economy’s ability to absorb large increases in defense spending, the resilience of U.S. bases in the western Pacific, and the implications of tens of thousands of U.S. civilians located in the adversary’s primary weapons engagement zone could serve a similar purpose as the fortification clause by clarifying requirements and spurring innovative solutions that can work within real world strictures.

Current Planning

In April of this year, U.S. Army Pacific published a strategy focused on achieving positional advantage in the western Pacific, followed in May by a similar Marine Corps document, Pacific Marines Strategy 2025. The latter strategy calls for two Marine expeditionary forces (I and III Marine Expeditionary Force) “abreast” within the first island chain. This is a much larger force posture than was originally assumed in the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030, which called for smaller, lethal, low signature, mobile, and sustainable forces able to operate over the competition continuum.

I Marine Expeditionary Force, located in California, presents an especially difficult mobility challenge given the shrinking amphibious, combat logistics, military sealift, and merchant marine fleets. If, for argument’s sake, one stipulates that two Marine expeditionary forces could be delivered, positioned (III Marine Expeditionary Force is already in the first island chain but not positioned optimally), and sustained, one should then ask the question: What relevant combat power do these large ground and aviation formations provide in the initial stages of the campaign? For example, a Marine expeditionary force in the Philippines would contribute combat power primarily through its aviation wing operating from a mix of fixed and expeditionary bases. Given that stand-in forces should be nested within a larger joint force that provides key enabling capabilities, planners should assess the correlation of forces between this joint force posture and the adversary. Analysts may determine that overmatch exists, just not in U.S. joint forces’ favor.

Given Air Force plans to redistribute forward stationed squadrons away from where they are most vulnerable and Navy plans to move surface ships away from the first island chain, service and joint planners should assess the contribution of a second U.S.-based Marine expeditionary force or additional Army elements against the overall U.S. force laydown in the initial stages of a conflict. All elements of the U.S. military should be tested for fitness within realistic mobility and logistics constraints. In the case of I Marine Expeditionary Force, what tradeoffs across the military are required to move this force as opposed to other force elements, and does it contribute favorably with relevant combat power?

Combatant command planners especially should ask, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” If yes, what joint interdependencies such as Army air defense, Air Force airbase enablers, and Navy sensors and communications assets should be preserved in the first island chain to enable them? If the answer is no, plans should refocus on a more expeditionary stand-in force posture.

As originally conceived in Force Design 2030, Marine littoral regiments can be survivable and provide capabilities highly relevant to Indo-Pacific Command. These smaller, distributed forces will be seen and thus targetable, yet with the proper operational arrangements, they can be quite resilient. The objective for these units is not to defeat enemy surveillance that ranges from space-based sensors to individuals with cellphones, but rather to maintain adequate standoff, operate in complex terrain, employ military deception, and implement well-practiced tactics, techniques, and procedures for movement and displacement, all informed by robust early warning systems. These forces can provide situational awareness, close kill chains, offer cyber, space, and electronic warfare options to the combatant commander, and employ fires that would enhance host nation defenses. They clearly provide a demonstration of U.S. commitment to the region and contribute to deterrence against Chinese aggression toward Taiwan, while also establishing a firm perimeter against additional Chinese opportunistic aggression against Japanese or Philippine territory.

Marine Corps stand-in forces can be made more expeditionary by leveraging joint force and host nation interdependencies. Some view interdependencies as a weakness, and there is a certain logic to this if there are no resource constraints, but this is not the world the joint force inhabits. When the Marine Corps chooses to minimize joint interdependencies, it should assess the costs and benefits of this greater independence. Army logistics and air defense, Air Force airspace management, and Navy long-range precision fires and kill web command and control enable more agile, expeditionary employment options for Marine forces, thereby reducing the need for U.S.-based Marine expeditionary force enablers. Which approach provides combatant command-relevant capability most efficiently, sooner? Additional analysis is required.

Less can be more when it means providing efficient and achievable combat power without initiating a death spiral of protection and logistics requirements, where increases in one category demand increases in the other. In short, be relevant, be resilient, be practical.

Iterative wargaming and modeling and simulation are required to explore a wide range of possible conflict scenarios to ensure planners don’t assume a “through ticket”, when geography, resources, economics, and correlation of forces suggest a series of local tickets for surge forces to get to their final destination might be better. The military should honor the substantial challenges of a general war, and by so doing, develop concepts of employment for deterrence and conflict that are effective and achievable within plausible resource and capability levels.

Location, Location, Location

Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps strategies addressed above are right to emphasize the benefits of positional advantage on the ground, as well as the benefits of being close to allies and partners, but how this is accomplished matters. All stand-in and follow-on forces should pass the relevant combat power test and be configured for movement within available air and sealift limitations (no fairy dust). They should be survivable and resilient. They should also be highly trained in large-scale joint and combined arms operations.

All-domain training is essential for the joint force, and force posture is a critical determinant of how this is accomplished. Forces should be positioned to facilitate joint and combined arms training affordably and with the requisite training areas for conducting maneuver, fires, and electromagnetic spectrum operations. Joint and combined exercises are essential, but full-spectrum live fire training cannot be done in the first island chain. Locating large formations outside the first island chain offers better, cheaper training opportunities with the added benefit that they are not as susceptible to manipulation by the adversary should they intentionally trigger indications and warnings that would cause U.S. and allied forces to take reactive defense measures. This type of manipulation can be done much more easily to a force located in the adversary’s primary weapons engagement zone, such that U.S. forces will need to execute defensive tactics, techniques, and procedures including dispersal of forces to other locations within and beyond the first island chain.

In any major conflict, follow-on forces will be essential. Fortunately, controlling time, tempo, and place of engagement is best accomplished by forces located initially beyond the first island chain. Marine Corps crisis response forces and the larger joint force should be configured to act as highly trained surge forces. For example, Marine expeditionary units could be configured with Marine littoral regiment-like capabilities and key enablers currently provided by the larger Marine expeditionary force formations. These forces should fit as seamlessly as possible within Army, Air Force, and Navy command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, air defense, and logistics networks.

Conclusion

“Can do” thinking won’t do when it comes to war with a peer adversary. Like the planners of the 1920s and 30s, today’s planners should do rigorous wargaming and analysis to explore under-examined assumptions and second-order effects that may be the product of belief systems formed in an era of unquestioned overmatch.

Stand-in forces are critical for deterrence and warfighting and therefore need to be relevant, sustainable, and survivable in even worst-case scenarios. This will almost surely mean these forces will need to be light, mobile, and expeditionary while being complementary to highly trained and ready surge-forces pre-allocated to mobility platforms — thus able to rapidly shape the theater and roll back key Chinese capabilities, all while leveraging stand-in forces’ abilities to sense, cue, shoot, and perform cyber and electronic warfare operations. Using the traditional amphibious vernacular, Marine stand-in forces conduct advanced force operations, while rapid response (specific timing dictated by mission, enemy, terrain) naval forces provide the screening force for the fleet and additional surge capabilities.

With the right analytically informed actions, stand-in forces can bolster deterrence and joint and combined warfighting. It’s a tough challenge, but a solvable one. The United States got the big planning questions right leading up to World War II, but just five years later, in the same theater, it underestimated the adversary at the beginning of the Korean War — resulting in the destruction of Task Force Smith, among other tragedies. To repeat the success of World War II and avoid the failure of the initial stages of the Korean War, we need service and joint analysis — especially modeling and simulation — that repeatedly examines the hard questions, challenges untested assumptions (Not just ready, but ready for what, when, where, and for how long?), and quantifies the physical challenges (time, distance, movement, maneuver) associated with a big war far from home. No more Task Force Smiths! Stand-in forces and stand-in citizens (contractors, dependents) deserve nothing less.

BECOME A MEMBER

Noel Williams is a fellow at Systems Planning and Analysis. His work is focused on Marine Corps strategy, policy, and force design.

The views in this article are those of the author and not those of the Marine Corps, the Defense Department, or any part of the U.S. government.

**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: Cpl. Joseph Helms via U.S. Marines

warontherocks.com · October 15, 2025

19. The Dilemma of Duty Under Trump

I expect that this will generate a lot of hate mail.

Excerpts:

In figuring out whether they should follow commands that undermine U.S. democracy, senior officers should consider an open letter published in 2022 by a group of eight former secretaries of defense and five former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including Mattis and Esper. Although Trump’s name was never mentioned, his first term clearly informed every sentence.

The first paragraph noted: “Military professionals confront an extremely adverse environment characterized by the divisiveness of affective polarization that culminated in the first election in over a century when the peaceful transfer of political power was disrupted and in doubt.” The letter went on to lay out the “the core principles and best practices” that should govern “healthy American civil-military relations.” The first of these, naturally, was “civilian control of the military,” but the former officials emphasized that this control must be exercised “within a constitutional framework under the rule of law” and that both the legislative and judicial branches had an important role to play. Although the letter noted that “military officials are required to carry out legal orders the wisdom of which they doubt,” it also said that “civilian officials should provide the military ample opportunity to express their doubts in appropriate venues.”

In other words, if military leaders are being ordered to do things they should not be doing, they need to let the people and their elected representatives know. “Appropriate venues” can include not only internal executive branch deliberations but also congressional testimony or even media interviews. Although this option was not mentioned in the open letter, in the worst case, senior officers could threaten to resign in protest.

There is, admittedly, no tradition in U.S. history of military leaders resigning in protest, but there is also little precedent for the kinds of orders that Trump and Hegseth are now issuing. Ideally, Congress and the courts, the press, and the public will ultimately mobilize to protect the professionalism of the armed forces, but so far, the Republican-controlled Congress has been MIA in overseeing administration misconduct. In the short run, therefore, the troops will have to fend for themselves as best as they can. They should recall what Mattis used to tell his marines: “Carry out your mission and keep your honor clean.”

The Dilemma of Duty Under Trump

Foreign Affairs · More by Max Boot · October 15, 2025

What His Assault on the U.S. Military Means for America

Max Boot

October 15, 2025

A member of the Louisiana National Guard on patrol in Washington, D.C., September 2025 Daniel Becerril / Reuters

MAX BOOT is Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Reagan: His Life and Legend.

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It might be difficult to remember now, but U.S. President Donald Trump delivered his first blow to American civil-military relations in 2017, when he first started talking about “my generals.” He had appointed a former Marine general, James Mattis, as secretary of defense, which is a position typically reserved for civilians to preserve civilian control of the military. Mattis became the first former general to serve as defense secretary since George Marshall in 1950, and he needed to secure a congressional waiver in order to take the job.

Trump also appointed other high-ranking military officers to civilian posts, including former Marine General John Kelly (who served first as secretary of homeland security and then as White House chief of staff) and his first two national security advisers: Michael Flynn, a retired three-star general, and H. R. McMaster, an active-duty three-star general. Even Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser was a retired army lieutenant general: Keith Kellogg (who is now special envoy for Ukraine). Few, if any, previous U.S. presidents had so brazenly tried to benefit from proximity to the U.S. military. Appointing so many generals to such high offices is more typical of a military junta than of a constitutional republic. But Trump reveled in the aura of toughness conveyed by these military men; he delighted, for example, in referring to Mattis as “Mad Dog,” a nickname that the cerebral general hated.

It did not take Trump long to become disenchanted with his generals. Within two years, he fired almost all of them, insulting most on their way out the door. He later said that Army General Mark Milley, his handpicked choice for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (and one of the few Trump kept until the end of his term), should have been executed for treason because he had called his Chinese counterpart to offer reassurances that the United States was not planning to start a war after the storming of the Capitol by Trump’s supporters on January 6, 2021.

When Trump came into office for a second time this past January, he was deeply suspicious of the uniformed military, believing that the retired and active-duty generals he had appointed during his first term had stymied his unilateralist and isolationist instincts. Trump came to see all these generals as part of a “deep state” cabal frustrating his MAGA mandate, and he was determined not to fall into the same trap in his second term.

As a result, Trump went much further down the chain of command to choose his current secretary of defense, selecting Pete Hegseth, a Fox News weekend host who had never risen above the rank of major in the Army National Guard and who had never run any large organization. His chief qualification appears to be unquestioning subservience to Trump, and he has subjected the military to a culture war agenda, highlighted by his recent dressing down of admirals and generals at Quantico, Virginia, in which he promised to purge “woke garbage.”

Among other steps, Hegseth is returning Confederate names to military bases and styling himself as “secretary of war” after Trump issued an executive order to rename the Department of Defense to the less “wokey” Department of War. (Trump does not have the legal authority to rename the Department of Defense with an executive order.) Both Trump and Hegseth have subjected service members—ranging from junior troops to senior generals—to political lectures that are inappropriate in military settings. In an early October speech, for instance, to mark the navy’s 250th birthday, Trump referred to Democrats as a “little gnat that’s on our shoulder” while Hegseth looked on approvingly. Among the steps that Trump and Hegseth have taken to bend the armed forces to their will, the most worrisome include firing more than a dozen respected general officers (many of them women and minorities) for no good reason, imposing its ideology on military classrooms and websites, and deploying the armed forces for legally dubious missions both domestically and internationally as part of its undeclared war on crime.

By being so slavish in serving the president, Hegseth has managed to keep his job despite widespread reports of infighting and dysfunction in his office, as well as his willingness to share highly sensitive details of upcoming airstrikes in an unsecure Signal chat that included a prominent journalist. But his job tenure has come at high cost to the armed forces—and the country.

It’s easy to lose sight of how radical the MAGA military agenda is when focusing on each action in isolation. Only by glancing at the entirety of what Trump and Hegseth have wrought can one see what a far-reaching assault they are mounting on the apolitical professionalism that has made the U.S. armed forces one of the most admired institutions in American society—and one of the most emulated and envied militaries around the world. Indeed, the attempt by Trump and Hegseth to roll back military professionalism and to politicize the armed forces is not just a question of degrading military morale and effectiveness, hurting recruiting and retention, and distracting the armed forces from their primary mission (such as countering Russian and Chinese aggression), although those are all real concerns. What Trump and Hegseth are doing also represents a threat to democracy—and a profound test for service members, who do not swear a personal loyalty oath to the president but swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

HEADS WILL ROLL

The Trump administration wasted no time stamping the MAGA brand on the U.S. armed forces. On January 21, one day into the new presidency, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security fired Admiral Linda Fagan, the first female commandant of the Coast Guard, without stating a reason. Administration officials leaked on background that she was relieved for, among other offenses, a supposedly “excessive focus” on diversity and inclusion efforts. Four days later, Trump fired inspectors general at 15 federal agencies, including the Department of Defense. These are the internal watchdogs who are supposed to root out fraud, abuse, inefficiency, and other problems, thereby serving as a check on executive branch leaders. Getting rid of the incumbents signaled that scrutiny of administration actions would not be welcome in the future. Four days after that, Hegseth revoked the security detail protecting Milley, by now retired, even though Tehran had placed a price on his head after the U.S. armed forces killed the commander of Iran’s Quds Force during Trump’s first term.

Less than a month later, on a Friday night in February, Trump fired General C. Q. Brown, the second Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to rise to chief of naval operations. Again, no reason was given, leading to widespread suspicion that Brown’s race and Franchetti’s sex had a lot to do with their fate. (Trump also simultaneously fired General James Slife, a white man who was vice chief of the U.S. Air Force.) Brown, a low-key but widely respected leader, was said to have incurred the administration’s wrath by making a video in 2020, during the George Floyd protests, talking about the discrimination he had faced during his rise through the ranks. Hegseth had also suggested in the past that Brown, who had previously served as chief of staff of the air force, had been promoted because of his skin color.

While the president was personally relieving these senior officers, Hegseth was firing the judge advocates general (JAGs) of the army, air force, and navy. These are the senior officers charged with ensuring that their services comply with the law. Their dismissal was to be expected given Hegseth’s long-standing contempt for “jagoffs,” his derisive nickname for the JAGs. Hegseth has previously defended service members accused of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, convincing Trump to pardon several of them during his first term. More recently, Hegseth has said that he wants the “War Department” to focus on “maximum lethality, not tepid legality,” thereby issuing a de facto invitation to the troops to engage in unlawful conduct.

A senior military officer at a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, September 2025

Brown’s replacement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs was an unusual choice: Dan “Razin” Caine, a retired air force three-star general who was brought back to active duty and promoted to full general. He did not meet the statutory requirements to be chairman—by law that post is supposed to be filled by a four-star general who was previously vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a service chief, or a combatant commander. But Trump convinced the Senate to waive the rules and confirm Caine because he was evidently convinced that the general was one of his political supporters. Trump often told the story—which is denied by Caine and those who know him—that the general had donned a MAGA hat and pledged unwavering loyalty when he met with Trump in Iraq in 2018.

In fact, Caine has been careful to act apolitically since being confirmed. For example, at a June 22 press conference about the U.S. airstrikes on the Iranian nuclear program, Hegseth lavished praise on Trump and echoed his unproven assertions about the Iranian nuclear program being “obliterated,” while Caine stuck to praising U.S. military personnel and offered more measured bomb-damage assessments. But Caine’s very selection is a message about how Trump demands political loyalty above all else in his generals—and how little he values diversity.

In the months since the initial round of firings, the Trump purge has claimed two other well-respected female general officers: Navy Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, a former president of the Navy War College, was relieved in April as the U.S. representative to the NATO Military committee, and Vice Admiral Yvette Davis was removed in July as the superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy after only a year in the job. (Superintendents typically serve three to four years.) Apparently, Chatfield’s offense was saying “Our diversity is our strength,” which Hegseth has called “the single dumbest phrase in military history.”

FALL IN LINE

Hegseth denies that race or gender played a role in these removals—he routinely claims that every move he makes is designed to promote “lethality”—but such claims ring hollow given how much emphasis the defense secretary has placed on removing all traces of diversity, equity, and inclusion from the military, an institution that helped lead the desegregation of American society. Hegseth, for instance, ended celebrations of Black History Month and Women’s History Month and demanded that any “DEI” material be scrubbed from Department of Defense schools, military academies, and websites. This led to the removal of any mention of the Tuskegee Airmen (the Black pilots of World War II), the Navajo Code Talkers (the Native Americans who were integral to Marine Corps operations in the Pacific), and Jackie Robinson (the first Black major league baseball player, who also served in the army). A navy tanker named for Harvey Milk, the slain gay rights leader and navy veteran, was renamed. Some—but not all—of these Orwellian erasures were subsequently rescinded, such as the purging of images, presumably because of the word “gay,” of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan and which was named after the pilot’s mother. Many of the 381 volumes that were initially removed from the shelves of the Naval Academy library were also eventually returned. But not everything was restored, and the pressure on the military to hew to the MAGA agenda remains.

For instance, in July, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll ordered West Point to rescind an offer of employment to Jen Easterly, an army veteran and West Point alumna who had led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during the Biden administration. Then, in September, the West Point alumni group canceled a ceremony to present the actor Tom Hanks with the Sylvanus Thayer Award, conferred annually on an “outstanding citizen” who exemplifies the academy’s devotion to “Duty, Honor, Country.” Hanks—who has made numerous films and TV shows celebrating U.S. military valor and helped raise money for military memorials and veterans—was a supporter of former President Joe Biden and a critic of Trump. Trump, in turn, celebrated the decision on social media, writing, “We don’t need destructive, WOKE recipients getting our cherished American Awards!!!” West Point has also closed down clubs for minority cadets such as the Asian-Pacific Forum Club, the Latin Cultural Club, and the National Society of Black Engineers Club. In May, the philosophy professor Graham Parsons wrote in a New York Times op-ed that he was leaving the faculty because West Point was “eliminating courses, modifying syllabuses and censoring arguments to comport with the ideological tastes of the Trump administration.”

Trump demands political loyalty above all else in his generals.

As part of his anti-“woke” agenda, Hegseth has also restored the Confederate names of military bases that were dropped as a result of legislation that Congress passed over Trump’s veto in January 2021. Hegseth is skirting the law by renaming the bases after veterans who have the same last names as the Confederates they were originally named after. Thus, Fort Liberty again becomes Fort Bragg—this time supposedly named not for Confederate General Braxton Bragg but for Private Roland L. Bragg, a hitherto obscure infantryman who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. This legerdemain combines Hegseth’s opposition to “wokeness” with his contempt for the rule of law.

That same impulse is evident in the air force’s decision to grant a funeral with full military honors to Ashli Babbitt, an air force veteran who was killed by police while trying to break into the House chamber during the January 6, 2021, insurrection instigated by Trump. Retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling wrote in The Bulwark that he was “infuriated” by the decision because “she did not die defending the Constitution. She died trying to overturn it.”

After the assassination of the prominent Trump supporter Charlie Kirk on September 10, Hegseth ordered his aides to find and punish any military members or Pentagon civilians who posted anything online that appeared to “celebrate or mock” his death. Online vigilantes joined in by posting on X under the hashtag #RevolutionariesintheRanks to uncover supposed offenders. Many of the highlighted comments did not actually condone the murder but simply took issue with some of Kirk’s controversial statements. As of early October, The Washington Post reported, the Defense Department had investigated nearly 300 employees, both uniformed and civilian, resulting in a number of disciplinary actions, including firings.

Hegseth has also tried to stifle critical press coverage by demanding that all media organizations accredited to cover the Pentagon sign an agreement that they will not report or solicit any information they are not explicitly authorized to have by department leaders. The Pentagon press office threatened to revoke media credentials for any organizations that refused to sign this agreement, which media organizations argue impinges on their First Amendment rights.

GROUPTHINK

Meanwhile, Hegseth has continued purging senior officers for blatantly political reasons. On April 3, he fired General Timothy Haugh, the head of Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, along with the civilian deputy director at the NSA, Wendy Noble. No explanation was offered, but Laura Loomer, a Trump supporter and avid conspiracy theorist, claimed credit by saying that she had denounced the two senior officials during a meeting with Trump. Loomer argued they were both “disloyal” to the president because Haugh was supposedly “handpicked” by Mark Milley in 2023, when Milley was still chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There is no accusation that Haugh and Noble were not doing a good job and no evidence that they were subverting the president.

A few months later, in August, Hegseth got rid of more senior officers, firing Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; Vice Admiral Nancy Lacore, the chief of the Navy Reserve; Rear Admiral Milton Sands, a Navy SEAL officer who oversees Naval Special Warfare Command; and General David Allvin, the chief of staff of the air force, who will be retiring two years into a four-year term. It wasn’t clear why all these leaders were cashiered, beyond the obvious fact that Lacore is a woman and Kruse presided over an agency that issued a preliminary intelligence estimate that found that Iran’s nuclear facilities were not “obliterated” by a U.S. airstrike, as Trump had claimed. That Kruse was fired for having his agency offer a good-faith intelligence estimate strongly signals that truth telling from either the armed forces or the intelligence community is not welcome in this administration—at least not when the truth conflicts with the president’s spin.

Presidents, of course, have the right to fire general officers and have done so in the past. Harry Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur for defying his decision not to extend the Korean War to China, and Barack Obama relieved General Stanley McChrystal after his staff members were quoted in a magazine article disparaging Obama and Biden, his vice president. But there is no precedent for the rapid dismissal of so many senior officers without any real explanation, evidence of failings, or misconduct. This looks like an attempt by Trump and Hegseth to install compliant general officers who will do the president’s bidding, no matter what, even if the president is demanding actions that are unwise, unethical, or illegal—or all three. The message they are sending is that any officers who question the president’s whims will find themselves in civilian clothes in short order.

The purge of honest and independent officials will have serious repercussions for U.S. foreign policy. In the future, when the president and his top aides are making vital national security decisions, they are less likely to have access to a full range of intelligence and opinions about the merits of various courses of action, because the professionals at the Defense Department and in the intelligence community will know they are only supposed to tell the president what he wants to hear. It is a recipe for the kind of groupthink that got the United States into the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

DUBIOUS DEPLOYMENTS

The worrisome impact of such moves can already be seen in the administration’s dubious deployments of the military both domestically and internationally for missions far removed from traditional warfighting. One wonders, for instance, if senior military officials raised concerns about Trump’s decision to send the armed forces into what the president calls “Democrat-run” cities. Since the start of his term, Trump has ordered National Guard troops into Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Memphis, and Portland, while also proposing deployments in Louisiana. In his September speech to generals and admirals, Trump said, “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” Trump cites as a rationale supposed crime “emergencies,” even though crime rates have been falling across the country and there is no indication that local law enforcement has lost control. In June, for instance, Trump federalized the California National Guard over the objections of Governor Gavin Newsom and deployed 4,000 National Guard troops, along with 700 active-duty marines, to Los Angeles in response to protests caused by the administration’s massive immigration roundups. This was the first time since 1965 that a president had federalized the National Guard over the objections of a governor.

Newsom filed a lawsuit, and U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, in San Francisco, ruled in September that the deployment was a violation of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the use of the military for domestic law enforcement in most situations. “There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence,” the judge wrote. “Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.” Trump’s efforts to deploy the guard to Portland and Chicago have also run into legal difficulty. When Trump tried to nationalize Oregon’s guard, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut—whom Trump himself appointed—slapped the effort down as an illegal federal power grab. When Trump then tried to send in the California guard as a workaround, Immergut issued another injunction. In the case of Chicago, U.S. District Judge April Perry issued an injunction to prevent the deployment of the National Guard—an action upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Both Immergut and Perry suggested that the administration was being less than truthful about the reasons for the deployments, with Perry citing a “potential lack of candor” among officials.

Trump, however, is undeterred. The administration is appealing all these decisions. And his Defense Department is transparently trying to find excuses to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which allows the White House to use the military if there is a rebellion, or if civilian law enforcement cannot enforce the law. The president, it seems, will stop at nothing to get his way with American troops. Randy Manner, a retired army two-star general and former acting vice chief of the National Guard, told The Washington Post that the moves were “absolutely nothing more than a political grab of power” by Trump.

“THE HIGHEST AND BEST USE OF OUR MILITARY”

Just as worrisome as these domestic deployments is the use of the military in Trump’s undeclared war against drug cartels. On September 3, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that U.S. forces had blown up a speedboat in the Caribbean that was allegedly full of Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members and illicit drugs. Eleven people on board died. The administration claimed to have ordered the lethal strike under the president’s Article 2 authority as commander in chief, with Rubio arguing that “the president has a right to eliminate immediate threats to the United States.” But it is not clear how the boat posed an “immediate threat,” even if it was full of drugs. Rubio even said that the boat was actually headed for Trinidad, and it subsequently emerged that the boat had already turned back toward Venezuela by the time it was attacked. The military sank it anyway, with a military aircraft—apparently a drone—launching multiple attacks until no one was left alive.

The administration did not provide much more information about the incident, leading some veterans of counternarcotics operations to speculate that the boat might have been carrying migrants rather than drugs. Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, said after his staff received an administration briefing on the attack: “They have offered no positive identification that the boat was Venezuelan, nor that its crew were members of Tren de Aragua or any other cartel.”

Since that initial strike, the Defense Department has announced that it has blown up four more vessels that were allegedly smuggling drugs, killing 16 more people. The administration has not offered much information about any of these incidents and has not publicly released any evidence that the boats were actually full of illicit narcotics or where they were heading.

Trump speaking to senior military leaders, Quantico, Virginia, September 2025 Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

The Trump administration has designated Tren de Aragua and other drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, but that doesn’t give the president permission to kill its members on sight. That would be akin to telling military personnel to shoot suspected drug dealers without benefit of trial—a crime for which former Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte is now on trial before the International Criminal Court. Trump has expressed his admiration for Duterte and advocated the death penalty for drug dealers, but Congress has not passed any authorization for the use of military force that would allow such an attack.

If this was not a lawful use of force, as many experts have concluded, then it was an extrajudicial killing—a potential war crime. Yet some senior officials are celebrating it regardless. Vice President JD Vance, posting on X, called the attack on the alleged drug smuggling boat “the highest and best use of our military.” When an online critic argued that “killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime,” Vance replied, “I don’t give a shit what you call it.”

Vance may not care, but the service members involved and their civilian superiors should. The Supreme Court has granted presidents immunity from prosecution for official acts, but that immunity does not extend to anyone else involved in the operation—or in subsequent such attacks that the president is threatening to carry out.

A MAGA MILITIA?

It is disturbing to see the U.S. military employed in such a potentially unlawful fashion. But it is also disturbing to note that, so far, there has been no public protest from anyone in uniform.

On the one hand, this is to be expected: the U.S. military is supposed to be apolitical and does not make a habit of criticizing commanders in chief. Attempts by senior officers to fight back against improper and illegal commands may lead to an even bigger civil-military crisis and potentially draw the armed forces deeper into the political mire—the last place they want to be. The good news is that the U.S. armed forces have a long, deeply inculcated tradition of protecting and defending the Constitution, and that the military is a vast institution, most of it based mercifully far from Washington. It will be impossible for Trump and Hegseth to undo in one presidential term the principles that have been inculcated in the armed forces for centuries.

But by trying to politicize the military, the Trump administration is breaking trust with the men and women in uniform and driving talented leaders out of the force. The dearth of military pushback, then, begs the question of how effectively Trump and Hegseth have cleaned house, rooting out those who might disagree with them. It is unclear if there are senior officers still objecting behind closed doors, or if everyone is keeping silent in order to save their jobs. This uncertainty will have profound effects on the public’s confidence in the nation’s armed forces. Going forward, even perfectly appropriate and legal military actions may be viewed through the prism of the administration’s attempts to turn the armed forces into a MAGA militia.

The purge of honest and independent officials will have serious repercussions.

That is not fair to the troops, and it tampers with the fundamental principles that have made the American military such a successful fighting force for so long. Moreover, Trump’s actions threaten to set off a chain reaction that will damage the armed forces long after he leaves office. If today’s military leaders are perceived as “MAGA” generals, then a future Democratic administration will be tempted to appoint its own stalwarts, who in turn will be dismissed by the next Republican president. Generals and admirals may become known as political partisans, and the U.S. military could be subjected to high leadership turnover.

The most generous explanation of the silence of the general officers is that they are hoping to keep their heads down for now, hedging that they will be in a position to serve as a check on presidential overreach if and when the situation gets truly dire. And some officers may, indeed, find themselves in that position. Trump is an aspiring authoritarian who has already done much to undermine the rule of law and democracy. He is likely to up the pressure in the months and years ahead. In 2020, he asked the military to shoot peaceful protesters, according to then Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Esper and Milley refused, and the idea was abandoned. Later, after Trump lost the November election, the disgraced former general Michael Flynn reportedly advocated using troops to seize ballot boxes and overturn the election results. Even if Trump had tried to implement this idea (and there is no evidence that he did), it’s extremely unlikely that Esper or Milley would have gone along.

But it is unclear if Caine and other top military officials will say no if Trump makes similar requests. Will senior leaders handpicked by Trump resist, or will they salute and obey? On that question could hang the fate of the republic.

CLEAN HONOR

In figuring out whether they should follow commands that undermine U.S. democracy, senior officers should consider an open letter published in 2022 by a group of eight former secretaries of defense and five former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including Mattis and Esper. Although Trump’s name was never mentioned, his first term clearly informed every sentence.

The first paragraph noted: “Military professionals confront an extremely adverse environment characterized by the divisiveness of affective polarization that culminated in the first election in over a century when the peaceful transfer of political power was disrupted and in doubt.” The letter went on to lay out the “the core principles and best practices” that should govern “healthy American civil-military relations.” The first of these, naturally, was “civilian control of the military,” but the former officials emphasized that this control must be exercised “within a constitutional framework under the rule of law” and that both the legislative and judicial branches had an important role to play. Although the letter noted that “military officials are required to carry out legal orders the wisdom of which they doubt,” it also said that “civilian officials should provide the military ample opportunity to express their doubts in appropriate venues.”

In other words, if military leaders are being ordered to do things they should not be doing, they need to let the people and their elected representatives know. “Appropriate venues” can include not only internal executive branch deliberations but also congressional testimony or even media interviews. Although this option was not mentioned in the open letter, in the worst case, senior officers could threaten to resign in protest.

There is, admittedly, no tradition in U.S. history of military leaders resigning in protest, but there is also little precedent for the kinds of orders that Trump and Hegseth are now issuing. Ideally, Congress and the courts, the press, and the public will ultimately mobilize to protect the professionalism of the armed forces, but so far, the Republican-controlled Congress has been MIA in overseeing administration misconduct. In the short run, therefore, the troops will have to fend for themselves as best as they can. They should recall what Mattis used to tell his marines: “Carry out your mission and keep your honor clean.”

Foreign Affairs · More by Max Boot · October 15, 2025

20. Russia’s Hybrid Warfare Triggers Logistics, Comms & Operational Disruption

It takes more than the military instrument of power to address these threats (and most of the time the military by itself is either inappropriate or insufficient). Can we leave this only to the private sector to defend their supply chains, comms networks, etc.? If not, then who in the US government is orchestrating a whole of government and whole of society response (as well as offensive actions to defeat these threats)?

Excerpts:

To mitigate supply chain risks, some companies have responded by mapping their networks to identify suppliers exposed to geographic, customer or digital vulnerabilities. This kind of analysis can help with qualifying alternative partners and structuring contracts for flexibility, which allows for rapid renegotiation if disruptions should occur.

Some companies are considering placing regular trial orders with backup suppliers to help test their readiness and ensure that standards can be met under pressure. This way they would be able to maintain safety stock of critical components at secure, dispersed locations, provided they can manage the additional storage costs this entails.

On the logistics side, companies have found that diversifying transport modes and routes, investing in real-time inventory tracking and leveraging advanced platforms can enhance their visibility and agility. Combined with scenario planning, live exercises that equip staff with the expertise to respond to crises and continuous engagement with logistics providers, industry groups and authorities, companies have taken these measures to assist in creating a more responsive and resilient supply chain.

Russia’s Hybrid Warfare Triggers Logistics, Comms & Operational Disruption

US companies supporting Ukraine's war effort or operating in defense sectors face sharply elevated risk of sabotage designed to delay military aid

by Richard Gardiner October 14, 2025 in Risk

corporatecomplianceinsights.com · Richard Gardiner · October 14, 2025

https://www.corporatecomplianceinsights.com/russia-hybrid-warfare-triggers-disruption/?utm

Russia’s “gray zone” tactics are a manifestation of growing geopolitical risk by sabotaging and disrupting critical systems throughout the communication and supply chain. Companies and suppliers are stepping up mitigation efforts. Richard Gardiner of consultancy S-RM examines how organized crime proxies acting on behalf of Russian intelligence services provide the Kremlin with plausible deniability for unsophisticated attacks.

While propagandist social media posts and drone incursions are a more visible form of attack, at a more covert level, logistics chokepoints and digital infrastructure are among the most vulnerable targets of Russian hybrid warfare.

The likelihood of US companies’ logistics systems or digital networks being targeted rises sharply if they support Ukraine’s war effort or operate in the defense sector, particularly where they contribute to strengthening European security. By sabotaging or disrupting these businesses, Russian actors seek to delay military aid deliveries, weaken supply chains and undermine the broader war effort.

Such attacks are often carried out by organized crime proxies acting on behalf of Russian intelligence services, providing the Kremlin with plausible deniability. As a result, the tactics used are typically unsophisticated, ranging from arson at warehouses to incendiary devices sent to distribution centers and designed to detonate in transit.

Operational and communications threats

Against this backdrop, operations leaders can alert themselves to several early warning signs that proxy-perpetrated instability could affect their production and supply continuity. One sign is the sudden targeting of well-known US companies through mass disinformation campaigns, efforts specifically designed to erode the reputation and stakeholder confidence of iconic brands. Another indicator is a marked rise in cyberattacks, especially those focused on logistical, communications or industrial control networks, with notable spikes in phishing, ransomware or DDoS incidents. A surge in suspicious arson or vandalism at key European facilities — including warehouses, factories, ports and supply hubs — often shows evidence of coordinated covert activity. Finally, disruptions to critical infrastructure, whether outages in telecoms, power grids, underwater cables or transport networks, are signs that further sabotage attempts may come next, with the intent to paralyze infrastructure.

US companies in Europe could also be affected indirectly through Russian hybrid attacks on critical infrastructure. Likely targets include — and we have seen some of these already — energy and telecommunications systems in NATO member states that are strong supporters of Ukraine, such as Poland, Baltic states, the UK, France and Germany. Disruptions of this kind can trigger knock-on effects for private businesses. For example, the sabotage of undersea internet cables could isolate or severely slow connectivity, disrupting data transmission and operations for companies reliant on transcontinental networks. Similarly, cyberattacks or physical assaults on power grids could cause outages that affect data centers, cloud services and network operations, particularly in areas where companies maintain infrastructure or serve clients.

Risk

War & Peace: What You Need to Know About the Defense Production Act

Korean War-era law has been applied in array of sectors under administrations of both parties

Implications for US companies and diplomatic policy

On a broader geopolitical level, the frequency of hybrid incidents directly reflects strategic shifts. For instance, in the first half of 2025, incidents linked to Russian actors declined; this downturn likely resulted from intensified NATO naval and air patrols in the Baltic Sea and the adaptation of proxy groups as their tactics evolved. It may also reflect a political calculation by the Kremlin: Escalating hybrid activities against US or US-linked companies could undermine its diplomatic leverage with the US, especially in light of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and the ongoing recalibration of US-Russia relations.

If hybrid incidents begin to resurge, there are several plausible triggers for operational disruption. One main risk would be a sharp deterioration in US-Russia relations, for example the collapse of US efforts to broker peace in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Even if unlikely under the current administration’s diplomatic stance, public commitments by Trump to increase military aid to Ukraine could provoke Russia to intensify hybrid actions targeting US business interests to undermine the US government’s position.

Safeguarding supply chains

To mitigate supply chain risks, some companies have responded by mapping their networks to identify suppliers exposed to geographic, customer or digital vulnerabilities. This kind of analysis can help with qualifying alternative partners and structuring contracts for flexibility, which allows for rapid renegotiation if disruptions should occur.

Some companies are considering placing regular trial orders with backup suppliers to help test their readiness and ensure that standards can be met under pressure. This way they would be able to maintain safety stock of critical components at secure, dispersed locations, provided they can manage the additional storage costs this entails.

On the logistics side, companies have found that diversifying transport modes and routes, investing in real-time inventory tracking and leveraging advanced platforms can enhance their visibility and agility. Combined with scenario planning, live exercises that equip staff with the expertise to respond to crises and continuous engagement with logistics providers, industry groups and authorities, companies have taken these measures to assist in creating a more responsive and resilient supply chain.

corporatecomplianceinsights.com · Richard Gardiner · October 14, 2025

21. Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg Are Putting Cat Ears on the US Military

Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg Are Putting Cat Ears on the US Military

Gizmodo · AJ Dellinger · October 14, 2025

Artificial Intelligence

The UwU-ification of war.

Published October 14, 2025

https://gizmodo.com/palmer-luckey-and-mark-zuckerberg-are-putting-cat-ears-on-the-us-military-2000672116

reading time 2 minutes

Comments (4)

Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg never quite cracked virtual reality headsets for consumers, but they’re taking another crack at it with the US military as their new audience. On Monday, Luckey’s military tech company Anduril announced its AI-powered mixed reality system EagleEye, which will put hardware right into the helmets of Army soldiers and provide them with a heads-up display to view information in real-time.

“We don’t want to give service members a new tool—we’re giving them a new teammate,” Palmer Luckey, Anduril’s founder, said in a statement. “The idea of an AI partner embedded in your display has been imagined for decades. EagleEye is the first time it’s real.”

According to Anduril, EagleEye is a modular system that includes configurations for helmets, visors, and glasses. The company also claims its system will balance weight by reducing the “bulk of traditional night vision goggles” while introducing sensors “aligned with a warfighter’s center of gravity.”

The helmet module, notably, gives soldiers tactical cat ears. Frankly, we live in a time where it’s entirely impossible to know if that is the most efficient design for the effort or if it’s just another CEO with the sense of humor of a 13-year-old doing a multi-million dollar meme, a la Elon Musk running a government project named after a memecoin or making Tesla models spell out the word “SEXY.” Luckey used the announcement that his company was taking over a multi-billion-dollar mixed-reality goggles contract with the Army earlier this year to re-create his famous and meme-ified TIME Magazine cover, so it’s not like he’s above that kind of thing.

The heads-up display is perhaps the most marketable part of Anduril’s project, which was made in part with the help of Mark Zuckerberg and Meta, and the company showed it off with a preview video that looks like it was ripped right out of Call of Duty. The display will reportedly give soldiers access to information like mission briefings, map overlays, and real-time insights like identifying the positioning of other actors in the field.

EagleEye is something of a culmination of Anduril’s work on the Army’s Soldier Borne Mission Command (SBMC) and Soldier Borne Mission Command–Architecture (SBMC-A) programs, which is a rebrand of the Integrated Visual Augmentation System the company took over from Microsoft. Last month, the Army announced that Luckey’s Anduril and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta received contracts from the Army to produce prototype mixed-reality combat goggles. We’ll see if they have any other plans to UwU-fiy the military.

Explore more on these topics

Anduril emerging technologies Mark Zuckerberg META Mixed reality Palmer Luckey Virtual reality

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Gizmodo · AJ Dellinger · October 14, 2025

22. DOJ seizes $15 billion bitcoin in SE Asia crypto scam bust

Graphics at the link.

Excerpts:

Today’s action represents the largest-ever coordinated effort targeting crypto-enabled scam networks in Southeast Asia, including a historic $15 billion bitcoin seizure. This landmark recovery demonstrates the growing capability of law enforcement to trace and seize illicit cryptocurrency assets, which Chainalysis estimates could amount to hundreds of billions of dollars globally.

To protect against these types of scam networks, crypto businesses should screen transactions against newly designated entities and individuals, monitor for typical “pig butchering” scam patterns, and be alert to connections with Huione Group, which is now cut off from the US financial system.

DOJ seizes $15 billion bitcoin in SE Asia crypto scam bust - Asia Times

Record seizure targets web of companies for money laundering, investment fraud, forced labor and other crimes across SE Asia

https://asiatimes.com/2025/10/doj-seizes-15-billion-bitcoin-in-se-asia-crypto-scam-bust/

asiatimes.com · Chainalysis Team · October 15, 2025

OFAC has designated the Prince Group TCO and 146 associated targets for operating massive “pig butchering” scam operations, including individual Chen Zhi.
The network’s crypto operations include bitcoin mining through Warp Data Technology and the laundering of scam proceeds.
Huione Group, a key financial services provider, has been cut off from the US financial system after laundering over US$4 billion in illicit crypto proceeds, and has processed over $98 billion of total cryptocurrency inflows over the past four and a half years.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) launched a record-breaking forfeiture case involving $15 billion in bitcoin held in US custody.

On October 14, 2025, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), in coordination with the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), took action against cryptocurrency-enabled scam networks operating in Southeast Asia.

The designation includes the Prince Group Transnational Criminal Organization (TCO) and its vast network of companies and individuals, including Chen Zhi, involved in cryptocurrency scams, mining operations, and money laundering.

As part of the broader network, the UK’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) also sanctioned Byex Exchange, a cryptocurrency exchange platform with links to both Jin Bei Group Co Ltd and Prince Group.

As part of the action, Huione Group, which was subject to a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) on May 1, 2025, has now been designated under FinCEN’s Special Measures as a primary money laundering concern under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, officially severing the firm’s access to the US financial system.

In addition, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has unsealed an indictment against Chen Zhi, also known as “Vincent,” the founder and chairman of Prince Holding Group (Prince Group). The DOJ also filed a historic $15 billion civil forfeiture complaint involving approximately 127,000 bitcoin linked to the fraudulent schemes.

Cryptocurrency at the center of operations

A luxury hotel and casino operation tied to the Prince Group, Jin Bei Group Co. Ltd., has been linked to a series of criminal activities across Cambodia, including extortion, forced labor, large-scale scamming, and the brutal 2023 murder of a 25-year-old Chinese national.

In 2022, in a US takedown of a Chinese money laundering network, the FBI identified 259 Americans who lost a total of $18 million to scammers operating within Jin Bei compounds, which is just a fraction of the broader financial harm attributed to the group.

Despite efforts by Prince Holding Group to disassociate itself, public records and a June 2025 Cambodian government press release confirm that it owns Jin Bei Casino, with Chen Zhi named as CEO.

Chen Zhi and a network of high-ranking associates used a web of companies and subsidiaries to coordinate money laundering, investment fraud, forced labor, and other serious crimes across Southeast Asia.

Individuals close to Chen Zhi, including real estate executives, financial operatives, and shell company owners are accused of moving illicit funds, overseeing scam compounds, and facilitating violence to maintain control.

Prince Group’s reach extends far beyond Cambodia, including into Palau, where it reportedly attempted to launder its image through high-end resort development. With the help of Rose Wang, a Palau-based figure linked to organized crime, Prince Group secured a 99-year lease on Ngerbelas Island to build a luxury resort under a front company called Grand Legend.

The OFAC press release highlights that this expansion was part of a broader effort to legitimize profits from criminal enterprises while maintaining deep ties to known underworld figures.

At the heart of the operation were four bitcoin addresses directly controlled by Chen Zhi, the organization’s leader, amassing over $1.77 billion in bitcoin over the past two and a half years:

bc1qeth6n6ryxexvkx34wnx3nuynun4474h3j0gkhw
bc1q2we5eqjj8je6lz9xwjattpc3pn4jejc5h0s70f
bc1qnujzvts45qka3cr2eqqw8ur3q6g6s0ze2wlk5m
bc1qw4fxztd5u3sl7vrcqwk2a8v5zh5dllvckx3tlt

The organization also operated a dedicated bitcoin mining operation in Laos through Warp Data Technology, which funneled large quantities of bitcoin to wallets controlled by Chen Zhi.

This mining operation worked in concert with the group’s “pig butchering” scams, where victims were convinced to invest in fraudulent crypto platforms, and their complex money laundering operations conducted through a network of over 100 shell companies. As seen in the Chainalysis Reactor graph below, Chen Zhi’s wallets received extensive inflows indirectly from a mining pool:

The scale of the crypto-enabled fraud is staggering. Through Huione Group alone, authorities identified over $4 billion in illicit proceeds laundered between August 2021 and January 2025, including $37 million from North Korean cyber heists, $36 million from crypto investment scams, and $300 million from other cyber scams.

Huione Group has also processed over $98 billion of total cryptocurrency inflows within that time frame, including to a host of illicit actors, as we’ve previously highlighted, including money launderers, escort services, drug vendors, and more.

The above graph only scratches the surface of Huione Group’s facilitation of illicit activity, which has extended to sanctioned entities, jurisdictions, and a host of various illicit cryptocurrency-related activity.

Lastly, OFSI’s action against Byex Exchange further highlights the network utilized by Prince Group and Jin Bei. As seen in the Reactor graph below, Byex has interacted directly with Huione; and facilitated pig butchering scam payments, scam technology vendors such as social media targeting and SMS account vendors, and money movement services which help facilitate laundering of illicit proceeds.

Impact on cryptocurrency compliance and asset recovery

Today’s action represents the largest-ever coordinated effort targeting crypto-enabled scam networks in Southeast Asia, including a historic $15 billion bitcoin seizure. This landmark recovery demonstrates the growing capability of law enforcement to trace and seize illicit cryptocurrency assets, which Chainalysis estimates could amount to hundreds of billions of dollars globally.

To protect against these types of scam networks, crypto businesses should screen transactions against newly designated entities and individuals, monitor for typical “pig butchering” scam patterns, and be alert to connections with Huione Group, which is now cut off from the US financial system.

This article first appeared on Chainalysis and is republished with kind permission. Read the original here. To learn more about Chainalysis products, click here.

Disclaimer: This article contains links to third-party sites that are not under the control of Chainalysis, Inc. or its affiliates (collectively “Chainalysis”). Access to such information does not imply association with, endorsement of, approval of, or recommendation by Chainalysis of the site or its operators, and Chainalysis is not responsible for the products, services, or other content hosted therein.

This material is for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide legal, tax, financial or investment advice. Recipients should consult their own advisors before making these types of decisions. Chainalysis has no responsibility or liability for any decision made or any other acts or omissions in connection with recipient’s use of this material.

Chainalysis does not guarantee or warrant the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability or validity of the information in this report and will not be responsible for any claim attributable to errors, omissions or other inaccuracies of any part of such material.

asiatimes.com · Chainalysis Team · October 15, 2025

23. How America Can Win the Biotech Race: To Outcompete China, Washington Must Unleash the Private Sector

Excerpts:

The United States has learned the lesson of technological complacency before—and paid dearly for it. Semiconductors, much like biotechnology, were an American invention, first soldered together in garages in Palo Alto. For years, however, China moved aggressively to close the gap. In 2022, Congress passed the landmark CHIPS and Science Act, which aimed to spur the production of semiconductors on U.S. and allied soil and to use export controls to prevent the most advanced semiconductor technology from getting into adversaries’ hands. This policy is succeeding. The United States is again becoming the leading global hub for advanced chip manufacturing, while its restrictions on adversaries’ access to semiconductors have set back China’s chip-making.

The United States can win the biotechnology race. By harnessing two of the United States’ greatest strengths—its dynamic private sector and its unmatched network of allies and partners across the world—Congress and the Trump administration can ensure that the United States, not China, leads the biotechnology age. Strategic action now is the difference between controlling the biotechnology future or being controlled by it.

How America Can Win the Biotech Race

Foreign Affairs · More by Todd Young · October 15, 2025

To Outcompete China, Washington Must Unleash the Private Sector

Todd Young

October 15, 2025

Conducting biopharmaceutical research at a new laboratory in Pasadena, California, April 2023 Sarah Reingewirtz / MediaNews Group / Los Angeles Daily News / Getty Images

TODD YOUNG is a Republican Senator from Indiana.

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In September 2024, Akeso, a little-known Chinese biopharmaceutical company, announced that clinical trials had shown that its new drug could halt the progression of a type of lung cancer for nearly a full year. These results sent shock waves through the pharmaceutical industry: the previous best-in-class drug, produced by the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Merck, delayed new tumor growth for only six months.

Spurred by breakthroughs like this, China is becoming a world-leading biotechnology innovator. Western biopharmaceutical companies are clamoring to ink deals with their Chinese counterparts. Over the last five years, the number of agreements struck by Chinese companies producing cancer drugs to license their intellectual property has more than doubled. The total market capitalization of China’s publicly listed biotech firms has reached $1.5 trillion, second only to that of the United States.

As China surges, many traditional American strengths have atrophied. The United States lacks a targeted federal strategy for biotechnology, and its policymaking is fragmented and uncoordinated. Federal research funding has stagnated, while skittish investors are avoiding cutting-edge projects. Regulatory burdens slow down innovators who want to go from lab to market. And the United States’ research infrastructure, biological data reserves, and workforce development pipeline are not just faltering—they are being left in the dust by Beijing.

The United States cannot, and should not, try to beat China by being more like China, which relies on subsidizing handpicked firms. Instead, the United States should lean into its existing advantages, especially its private sector. By proactively remedying market failures, the federal government can help unleash private-sector capital to fuel the country’s world-class biotechnology industry. If the United States successfully reasserts its biotech leadership, it can ensure that the new technology makes everyone safer, healthier, and more secure. But if the United States remains passive, China will shape how biotechnology develops, threatening not only U.S. dominance in this vital sector but also its national security.

THE NEW BIOTECH ERA

China is gaining ground in biotechnology just as the field is entering a fundamentally new age. Thanks to breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, engineering, and automation, researchers can now model extraordinarily complex biological systems without needing to fully understand how those systems work. In 2021, for instance, researchers from Google’s AI lab, DeepMind, solved the previously impossible challenge of understanding and predicting how proteins fold. Before AI, enumerating all possible shapes of a single protein would have taken longer than the age of the known universe. DeepMind’s AlphaFold system, in contrast, can accurately predict the shape of a protein in minutes.

Humans are now on the cusp of understanding and programming cells as easily as they program computers. AI models are learning how to become fluent in the language of DNA, just as they can communicate easily in English or Mandarin. Technology is also democratizing biotechnology, in much the way that personal computers became more affordable in the 1990s. The cost of sequencing a human genome, for example, has dropped from hundreds of millions of dollars in the early 2000s to hundreds of dollars today.

As biotechnology becomes more accessible, its applications are multiplying by the day. Noninvasive genetic testing has existed for decades; breakthroughs in genomics are now transforming how doctors treat previously incurable diseases. In 2023, for example, researchers developed the first FDA-approved gene therapy based on CRISPR-Cas9 technology, using a patient’s own edited stem cells to treat sickle cell disease. Research labs are deploying AI to further develop these biotechnologies, which could lead to new treatments and medicine for a range of life-threatening diseases.

THE BIOTECH BATTLEFIELD

Emerging biotechnology has major ramifications for national security and geopolitical competition. It has the potential to reshape every strategic sector, including defense, agriculture, energy, and manufacturing. In the realm of the military, biotechnology could allow countries to reshore the production of chemicals used in munitions. Soldiers could synthesize food, medication, and other battlefield essentials on the frontlines by using technologies that fit inside a backpack.

Manufacturers could also use custom-designed proteins to separate critical minerals from waste in the mining process, which could lower the costs of extracting such minerals, increase their production, and reduce dependence on unreliable supply chain partners. Farmers could grow drought- and pest-resistant crops. Biotechnology could even change the future of computing power by replacing silicon-based storage hardware with a synthetic, biological alternative that could hold significantly more data in less space.

These innovations could help a country thrive—or be used to hurt a rival. A military could exploit human enhancements to outmaneuver and overwhelm an adversary. Modified pathogens could be developed and unleashed into an enemy’s agricultural system, wiping out farmers’ livelihoods and causing prices at the grocery store to skyrocket. And adversaries could weaponize dependencies on pharmaceuticals to disrupt a country’s supplies of vital medications.

The country that leads global biotechnology will determine how and to what ends this transformative technology is used. For most of the twentieth century, the United States dominated the field. In the 1940s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in partnership with the private sector, discovered and mass-produced new strains of penicillin. In the 1970s, American biochemists discovered how to cut and splice DNA fragments, paving the way for the development of synthetic medicines. In the 1990s, the United States led the effort to sequence the full human genome for the first time. To this day, the United States has more biotechnology patents, companies, and Nobel Prize winners than any other country.

CHINA’S CHAMPIONS

But China is swiftly closing the gap. For nearly 20 years, China has made biotechnology a strategic priority, implementing a comprehensive package of financing, subsidies, and diplomatic support for its domestic industry. In 2020, Chinese leader Xi Jinping stressed the need to incorporate biosecurity into the country’s national security system, pushing for more independent scientific innovation so that China would not need to depend on the United States.

Both the Chinese Communist Party and the army have taken Xi’s charge to heart. They have launched a so-called whole-of-nation effort—centralizing control of science and technology efforts and leveraging all available state resources at their disposal—to develop cutting-edge biotechnologies to advance their military and economic objectives. Beijing is investing heavily in gene editing, bionic robots, human-machine teaming (that is, collaboration between humans and machines), and biomanufacturing. It has collapsed the barriers between civilian and defense research so that ostensibly private Chinese companies, such as the biotechnology giant BGI Group, serve the CCP’s military and technology research goals. It is no coincidence that BGI also manages the China National GeneBank, which stores genetic data and biological samples.

Beijing has turned to a familiar playbook to promote its biotech goals. It lavishes subsidies on its chosen champions and helps them acquire U.S. companies that are developing promising technologies. In 2013, for instance, BGI purchased the U.S.-based company Complete Genomics, which made BGI the world leader in genetic sequencing. Market dominance and scale make it possible for BGI to box out promising U.S. startups. The Chinese company WuXi AppTec—whose market share in biotech mirrors Huawei’s commanding position in telecommunications—has gobbled up U.S. firms to gain access to their intellectual property. Today, the vast majority of U.S. biopharmaceutical companies depend on WuXi and similar Chinese firms for everything from drug discovery research services to manufacturing of finished pharmaceuticals.

The Chinese government supports biotech with investments in both physical and human capital. Beijing has built and funded over 100 world-class biotechnology parks with state-of-the-art lab space for companies. China’s state-owned enterprises are investing in biotech firms, and several have begun making acquisitions to expand overseas. Authorities have also urged venture capital firms to fund biotech ventures and companies. And an increasing number of Chinese students trained abroad are returning home, bolstering China’s rising competitiveness in the global race for scientific talent.

CAUSE FOR CONCERN

Beijing’s strategy is working. From 2016 to 2021, the market value of Chinese biotech firms grew 100-fold to $300 billion. By 2023, China’s investment in biopharmaceutical research and development had soared to $15 billion, from $35 million in 2015. From January to July 2025, the Hang Seng Biotech Index, which tracks the top 30 biotechnology, medical device, and pharmaceutical companies listed in Hong Kong, rose more than 60 percent, far outpacing the three percent gain in the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index over the same time frame.

China’s dominance goes beyond market gains. In 2024, China surpassed the United States in world-class cancer research output, as measured by the Nature index of top journals in science and health. In synthetic biology, too, China has upstaged the United States as the top source of research. In 2010, researchers based in the United States published 45 percent of the most-cited research papers in the field, while those in China accounted for 13 percent. In 2023, researchers in China published 60 percent, while their U.S. counterparts produced only seven percent.

Beijing’s biotech strategy is working.

China has now surpassed the United States in drug clinical trials, registering more than 7,100 in 2024, to the United States’ 6,000. Offering government-backed scale and low prices, the global share of China’s pharmaceutical output quadrupled from 2002 to 2019. U.S. and foreign drug manufacturers are increasingly dependent on Chinese sources for the raw materials and intermediate inputs for active pharmaceutical ingredients, and on fully Chinese-made active ingredients, as well.

Beijing’s biotechnology success is both an impressive achievement and a cause for deep concern for the United States and its partners. China’s biotech industry operates with fewer ethical guardrails, which could cause irreversible damage. In 2018, a Chinese biophysicist used the CRISPR-Cas9 technology to edit the genomes of human embryos, which broke global norms and opened up a Pandora’s box of unknown consequences. The scientist was fired and sentenced to three years in prison, but he is already back in the lab. Yet rogue scientists are not the only abusers of biotechnology. Journalists have documented how Chinese authorities are methodically collecting genomic data on millions of Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group, and using it to support a campaign of mass repression that the United States government has formally designated as genocide.

In 2021, Reuters revealed that a commercially available prenatal test developed by BGI that had been used by more than eight million women across at least 52 countries had been created in partnership with researchers connected to the Chinese military. BGI has worked closely with the People’s Liberation Army and its affiliated medical universities on multiple other projects, including research that could have implications for improving the battlefield performance of Chinese soldiers. The CCP has given the world few reasons to trust that its biotechnology ambitions are benevolent.

ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL

The U.S. biotech industry is poised to grow, but it needs private capital to get off the sidelines and fuel the next wave of breakthroughs. While China provides its leading companies with cheap capital through government subsidies and investments, America’s strong private markets remain its core advantage. The U.S. government needs to empower those markets to do their job by addressing the obstacles biotechnology companies face in scaling up innovations: complex regulations, underutilized capital, and insufficient protections against dangers such as intellectual property theft.

Since its creation in 2022, the bipartisan National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, on which I serve as chairman, has searched for ways to advance U.S. leadership in biotechnology. Most important, the United States needs a private-public partnership to develop the domestic biotechnology industry so it can reach its full potential. Such an alliance would remedy the market failures that inhibit American innovators, investors, and entrepreneurs from achieving breakthroughs in the field. Supply-side actions such as research prizes and infrastructure investments can accelerate R & D, while targeted demand-side policies can reduce financial risks and regulatory bottlenecks and make the U.S. government a better customer for biotechnology products.

This spring, I helped introduce the bipartisan National Biotechnology Initiative Act of 2025, which would enshrine some of the commission’s recommendations in federal law, including streamlining biotech regulations and establishing an office to coordinate national biotechnology strategy. I am also working with my colleagues to advance legislation to create an Independence Investment Fund that would invest in technology startups that strengthen U.S. national and economic security; authorize and finance a network of manufacturing facilities across the United States to scale up bioindustrial products before they are fully commercially viable; make investments to improve the effectiveness and reach of the popular Small Business Innovation Research/Technology Transfer program to support early-stage innovation; and use advance market commitments—promises to buy biotechnology products if they are successfully produced—and purchase agreements to smooth out unpredictable or inconsistent demand, among many other policies.

A TEAM EFFORT

If the United States is to reassert its global biotechnology leadership and shape a secure, safe, and ethical biotechnology future, the U.S. government must work with allies. The United States and its likeminded partners must set the standards for how biotechnology is developed and used rather than wait for China to build a system that allows unethical gene editing and biotech-powered mass surveillance and repression.

The United States must show the world that Beijing’s tactics are not aimed at mutually beneficial international partnerships, but at global biotechnological control. That pursuit of dominance will not be limited to overtaking the United States; the CCP’s strategy is to use its growing biotech dominance as economic and geopolitical leverage around the world.

Whereas the Chinese party leadership appears to view other countries’ bioeconomies as threats to be contained, the United States should view them as opportunities to secure and expand a shared biotechnological future. As with defense and economic alliances, the United States must work with partners to foster a collective security outlook that standardizes the approach to biotechnology protection. Specifically, the United States and its allies need to establish a unified approach to data security, export controls, and whether and how to accept investment from adversaries. Reciprocal biological data-sharing agreements would both advance collaborative research and implement and enforce secure, fair, and transparent data standards—especially when China has built its own large biodata repository, as its government has done in collaboration with BGI.

The United States must set the standards for how biotechnology is developed.

Advancing biotechnology also requires the United States to identify allies and partners that have complementary goals, capabilities, and expertise. Nearly every country has something valuable to offer, whether advanced manufacturing capabilities, computational biology prowess, or biobased chemicals and advanced therapeutics. Today, the State Department’s International Technology Security and Innovation Fund, which finances partnerships to improve global supply chains, does not cover biotechnology; that must be remedied immediately. The Trump administration should also expand its diplomatic efforts to promote American biotechnology, reaching out to partners to expand market access and boost aggregate demand for U.S. biotechnology products.

The United States has learned the lesson of technological complacency before—and paid dearly for it. Semiconductors, much like biotechnology, were an American invention, first soldered together in garages in Palo Alto. For years, however, China moved aggressively to close the gap. In 2022, Congress passed the landmark CHIPS and Science Act, which aimed to spur the production of semiconductors on U.S. and allied soil and to use export controls to prevent the most advanced semiconductor technology from getting into adversaries’ hands. This policy is succeeding. The United States is again becoming the leading global hub for advanced chip manufacturing, while its restrictions on adversaries’ access to semiconductors have set back China’s chip-making.

The United States can win the biotechnology race. By harnessing two of the United States’ greatest strengths—its dynamic private sector and its unmatched network of allies and partners across the world—Congress and the Trump administration can ensure that the United States, not China, leads the biotechnology age. Strategic action now is the difference between controlling the biotechnology future or being controlled by it.

Foreign Affairs · More by Todd Young · October 15, 2025

24. US wades deeper into rising Philippine-China sea tussle

"Tussle?"

Excerpts:

“All of these Chinese Coast Guard vessels actually entered the territorial sea of Pag-asa Island,” Tarriela said. One of the Filipino vessels, Datu Pagbuaya, was also damaged by the “intentional ramming” of the CCG, he said.

“All of those incidents happened between 1.6 to 1.8 nautical miles off the coast of Pag-asa Island. That means all of these incidents happened within the territorial sea of Pag-asa,” he said. “Very, very close to Pag-asa.”

Separately, the National Maritime Council, which was created by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr last year to monitor and increase security in the West Philippine Sea, strongly condemned China’s aggression. The proximity of the Chinese ships to Pag-asa “is of grave concern to the Philippines,” it said in a statement on Sunday.

“The Philippines will undertake the appropriate diplomatic action to convey its strong objections to the aggressive and illegal actions of China, and urges it to immediately cease these actions, respect international law, particularly the 1982 UNCLOS and the 2016 Arbitral Award, and avoid further escalation in the region,” the statement said.

“China must be sincere and hold true to its call for dialogue and consultation by demonstrating constructive actions and desisting from all provocative actions,” the council said. “The Philippines is clearly within its rights to conduct routine maritime operations in and around Pag-asa Island, and will continue to do so.”

US wades deeper into rising Philippine-China sea tussle - Asia Times

US sternly reaffirms commitment to defend Manila after China uses water cannons, rams Philippine vessels near Thitu Island

https://asiatimes.com/2025/10/us-wades-deeper-into-rising-philippine-china-sea-tussle/

asiatimes.com · Jason Gutierrez · October 14, 2025

MANILA – The United States said on Tuesday (October 14) it was prepared to provide military aid to the Philippines if it came under Chinese attack in the hotly contested South China Sea.

The stern and clear statement came shortly after Manila accused China Coast Guard ships of intensifying their harassment in the disputed maritime region by firing water cannons at Philippine Bureau of Fisheries boats over the weekend and deliberately ramming one of the vessels.

The incident occurred just 1.8 nautical miles off Thitu Island, the largest of the nine Philippine-controlled features and the second naturally occurring island in the disputed Spratly Islands chain.

While it is beyond the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, Thitu, known locally as Pag-asa and by China as Zhongye, forms a part of the Kalayaan Island Group of Islands that is part of Palawan island-province, which geographically juts deeply and strategically into the South China Sea.

“The United States condemns China’s October 12 ramming and water cannoning of a Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources vessel close to Thitu Island in the South China Sea,” Department of State deputy spokesman Thomas Pigott said in a statement.

“China’s sweeping territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea and its increasingly coercive actions to advance them at the expense of its neighbors continue to undermine regional stability and fly in the face of its prior commitments to resolve disputes peacefully,” he said.

Washington’s 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines binds the two allies to come to each other’s aid in times of hostility or war. Pigott said that the treaty “extends to armed attacks on Philippine forces, public vessels or aircraft – including those of its coast guard – anywhere in the South China Sea.”

The China Coast Guard, meanwhile, claimed the Philippine vessels had illegally entered Chinese waters near a cluster of sandbars known as Sandy Cay, which lies between Thitu and China’s artificial island base of Subi. It accused Manila of “ignoring repeated stern warnings from the Chinese side and said it “took control measures against the Philippine vessels in accordance with the law and resolutely drove them away.”

Despite China’s ramped-up harassment of Filipino vessels in the sea region, Manila has so far sought to defuse the situation, preferring to deploy diplomatic over military means, including through a name-and-shame strategy aimed at generating international publicity and sympathy in its favor.

At the same time, Filipino officials have often rejected certain calls to overtly invoke the MDT, which could further inflame the situation through greater US involvement and give China a reason to pull out of ongoing dialogues to settle the two sides’ overlapping claims.

China claims nearly all of the mineral and energy-rich region, including up to the territorial shores of its smaller neighbors through its ten-dash line claim.

Thitu is the largest of nine islands, islets and reefs inhabited by Philippine forces and a Filipino fishing community. It rests in the Spratly archipelago, the most fiercely disputed region of the South China Sea, where China has turned seven barren reefs into island bases protected by a missile system.

Three of the artificial islands have runways, including Subi, which lies a mere 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Thitu, which China also claims.

In 2016, an international tribunal at The Hague ruled in favor of Manila’s claims over Beijing’s, a ruling China ignored and has criticized as illegitimate. The US-led international community applauded the UNCLOS-based decision, and the Philippines has received encouragement from its allies who partner with it in joint sails that have put China on notice.

On Monday, the Philippines Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela accused China of deploying a large flotilla to harass a Philippine humanitarian mission near Thitu, an indication of Beijing’s increasing boldness.

He said five CCG vessels, backed by at least 15 Chinese maritime militia vessels, a People’s Liberation Army-Navy ship and a helicopter harassed Philippine Bureau of Fisheries vessels while they were as close as 1.6 miles from Thitu.

The Chinese were in the area apparently to block the Philippine flotilla, which included six fisheries vessels that were water cannoned as they attempted to deliver aid to local fishermen in the area.

Tarriela said the “mission objectives” of the activity were to support the fishermen and ensure their safety because they are routinely subjected to “harassment and bullying activities of the Chinese Coast Guard.”

The Filipino vessels were subjected to water cannons by the CCG, while a Chinese helicopter flew overhead.

“All of these Chinese Coast Guard vessels actually entered the territorial sea of Pag-asa Island,” Tarriela said. One of the Filipino vessels, Datu Pagbuaya, was also damaged by the “intentional ramming” of the CCG, he said.

“All of those incidents happened between 1.6 to 1.8 nautical miles off the coast of Pag-asa Island. That means all of these incidents happened within the territorial sea of Pag-asa,” he said. “Very, very close to Pag-asa.”

Separately, the National Maritime Council, which was created by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr last year to monitor and increase security in the West Philippine Sea, strongly condemned China’s aggression. The proximity of the Chinese ships to Pag-asa “is of grave concern to the Philippines,” it said in a statement on Sunday.

“The Philippines will undertake the appropriate diplomatic action to convey its strong objections to the aggressive and illegal actions of China, and urges it to immediately cease these actions, respect international law, particularly the 1982 UNCLOS and the 2016 Arbitral Award, and avoid further escalation in the region,” the statement said.

“China must be sincere and hold true to its call for dialogue and consultation by demonstrating constructive actions and desisting from all provocative actions,” the council said. “The Philippines is clearly within its rights to conduct routine maritime operations in and around Pag-asa Island, and will continue to do so.”

Jason Gutierrez was head of Philippine news at BenarNews, an online news service affiliated with Radio Free Asia (RFA), a Washington-based news organization that covered many under-reported countries in the region. A veteran foreign correspondent, he has also worked with The New York Times and Agence France-Presse (AFP).

asiatimes.com · Jason Gutierrez · October 14, 2025

25. Trump, China, and Declining US Influence in Asia

Excerpt:

In sum, under the second Trump administration, China overall is in a better position to spread its influence in competition with the United States in the Indo-Pacific. Most immediately, China will gain relative influence as U.S. allies and partners alienated by Trump administration demands adverse to their interests will be less likely to collaborate enthusiastically in efforts to counter Chinese challenges. Instead, the U.S. is increasingly seen as a domineering superpower, with its leader exerting extraordinary power in unpredictable ways that are often adverse to other states’ interests.

Trump, China, and Declining US Influence in Asia

Under the second Trump administration, China overall is in a better position to spread its influence in competition with the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific.

By Robert Sutter

October 14, 2025

https://thediplomat.com/2025/10/trump-china-and-declining-us-influence-in-asia/

U.S. President Donald Trump gaggles with the press on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding HMX-1 to begin traveling to the United Kingdom on Sep. 15, 2025.

Credit: Official White House Photo by Harrison Koeppel

The clashing interests of the United States and China sustain their continuing rivalry in Asia, the main determinant of regional dynamics. The struggle focuses on the Indo-Pacific countries ranging from India in the west to Japan in the northeast, and Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands in the southeast. Other factors in regional dynamics – such as North Korea’s threats and the ongoing civil war in Myanmar – remain secondary.

The major escalation of superpower competition in Asia began with hardened U.S. policies countering the multifaceted adverse challenges from China. These polices began during the first Trump administration (2017-2021) and developed strongly during the Biden administration (2021-2025). To the United States, a hostile China gaining regional leadership and dominance would represent an existential threat comparable to the threat posed by Imperial Japan in the dark days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. For 70 years, major U.S. sacrifices to avoid such dominance by an adversary included very costly wars in Korea and Vietnam.

A centerpiece in President Joe Biden’s argument for re-election – and, following his withdrawal from the race, the election of his vice president, Kamala Harris – in 2024 was his administration’s achievement in building U.S. economic, high technology, and military strengths at home while strengthening growing U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific region to counter China’s adverse ambitions. He repeatedly claimed to have “checked” China.

Indeed, Biden strengthened the United States domestically with legislation worth $2 trillion supporting modern infrastructure and high technology development. He sustained Trump administration tariffs on Chinese imports and added to them in the fields of high technology and advanced industry. He curbed the sale of U.S. highly advanced semiconductor technology, significantly complicating China’s high technology ambitions.

He and his administration went on the offensive in supporting multilateral international arrangements countering China, including the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan; the AUKUS security and high technology agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom; the Japan-South Korea-U.S. cooperative framework; and various other bilateral and multilateral arrangements. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and China’s support for Russia saw Biden lead Western and Indo-Pacific allies and partners in supporting Ukraine, sanctioning Russia, and deterring Chinese expansionism in Asia.

The Trump Shock in the Indo-Pacific

During the presidential election campaign in 2024, governments and opinion leaders in the Indo-Pacific region were broadly negative in their assessments of candidate Donald Trump. That said, those leaders commonly judged they had successfully weathered the demands of the first Trump government for more equitable trade relations and greater defense contributions. They worked cooperatively with sympathetic administration officials, praised Trump, and used bilateral negotiations to reach agreements less costly than previously anticipated. Following Trump’s re-election, they prepared to do the same in 2025.

This sanguine view disappeared amid the regional shock over dramatic Trump actions reflecting the incoming president’s much greater power and control over the federal government, along with Republican majorities in Congress and control over the Supreme Court, where six out of nine justices were appointed by Republicans, with three of the six appointed by Trump himself. And unlike Trump’s first term, there appeared to be no senior White House or administration leaders prepared to differ with the president in dealing with regional counterparts.

The first weeks of the new administration saw waves of executive orders prompting sweeping changes in U.S. governance. Subsequent tariffs were much worse than anticipated. Allies and partners were treated as harshly as others, with India getting extraordinarily negative treatment. Past U.S. commitments in free trade and other agreements with allies and partners now meant little to nothing.

Abrupt and severe cut backs in U.S. foreign aid were widely criticized in the Indo-Pacific, as were Trump’s demands for control of the Panama Canal, Greenland, and Canada, as well as his disputes with leaders of South Africa, Brazil, India, and other countries. He was seen routinely ignoring practices of global governance regarding sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the rules-based order that the United States had long supported, and which allies, partners, and others in the Indo-Pacific depended on for security and well-being.

Trump administration policies restricted and reversed the Biden approach of consultative cooperation with Indo-Pacific allies and partners, as well as NATO and G-7 nations, in countering Chinese challenges. Trump and administration leaders repeatedly complained about allies and partners taking advantage of the United States in national defense, foreshadowing specific Trump demands for substantial increases in their defense spending and payments in military burden sharing agreements. Trump’s harsh treatment of Ukraine and support for Russia’s position on ending the war seriously alarmed the many Indo-Pacific countries that depend on sustained U.S. support in the face of dangerous challenges coming from China, and for some, North Korea.

Rewriting U.S. Indo-Pacific Policy

The second Trump administration has changed, to varying degrees, three longstanding U.S. rationales for constructive engagement with Asia.

First is the security rationale noted above: the United States seeks to avoid the Indo-Pacific region being dominated by a hostile power, thereby posing a direct threat to Washington. Second is the need for constructive U.S. engagement with regional economies, often seen as the post-Cold War world’s most important economic region. And third is the judgment that the United States is well served by sustaining commitments in working cooperatively with allies and partners in supporting a rules-based international order.

In practice, the first rationale was prominent in the first Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and has been strongly supported this year by top administration national security officials. Though Trump personally continues past practice and rarely comments on this strategy, for now the administration seems generally supportive of this rationale.

The second rationale, however, has been explicitly rejected by the Trump administration, which views the past U.S. policy of constructive economic engagement as a major failure with very serious negative implications for U.S. security and economic well-being. As the Trump administration attempts to solve this problem, some forecast that the U.S. will decouple from the region, returning to the relative isolationism seen a hundred years ago. In fact, the explanations of senior leaders show that the administration’s tariffs and other measures are designed to make U.S. economic engagement with the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere truly favorable for the United States, thereby warranting continued close U.S. economic interaction with the region.

Trump personally has long been disinclined to support the third rationale. Though some senior officials cooperate with allies and partners in seeking national defense objectives to deter China in the Indo-Pacific, the Trump administration has scrapped the heavy positive emphasis on allies and partners in both Europe and Asia seen during the Biden years. And as noted, Trump’s demands for control of the Panama Canal, Greenland, and Canada are among the most egregious affronts to the rules-based international order voiced by a U.S. president since the Cold War.

Advances in U.S. Influence in the Indo-Pacific

It’s easy to exaggerate the negatives in Trump’s policy for U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific. On the one hand, bundles of opinion pieces, surveys, and other public documents sharply critical of Trump government initiatives show U.S. influence in the region in steep decline. The dramatic proposed 100 percent escalation of Trump’s tariffs on China announced on October 10 in response to China’s comprehensive restrictions on the export of rare earth products is sure, if implemented, to negatively impact regional economic growth and U.S. regional influence.

However, Trump’s often highly disruptive policies have not yet led to a discernible regional shift against the United States and in favor of China among regional governments. Based on my interviews and consultations with 250 regional specialists since July 2024, government leaders in the Indo-Pacific generally are much more pragmatic in dealing with Trump initiatives than their national media and public opinion.

Any assessment of the cumulative impact of Trump administration actions for U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific rivalry with China can start with a major positive: the Trump government’s success in leveraging the importance of access to the U.S. market through the use of massive and widespread tariffs. The Trump policies have compelled U.S. allies and partners, many regional governments closer to China than to the United States, and also China itself to seek bilateral negotiations with Washington in order to ease the tariff burden. China has rightly said that its talks with the U.S. reflect mutual agreement, but the talks wouldn’t have happened without the initial waves of Trump tariffs.

These talks and resulting bilateral agreements have benefited U.S. interests by providing much better U.S. access to foreign markets, large actual and promised investments in the United States, large purchases of U.S. advanced manufactured goods and natural resources, and commitments to assist the lagging U.S. shipbuilding industry. These benefits come along with substantially increased U.S. government revenue resulting from the increased tariffs. The revenue benefits the Trump government by helping to pay for the growing U.S. government spending deficit exacerbated by the passage into law in July 2025 of the massive tax cuts and appropriations seen in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was a top priority of the Trump government. Experts critical of tariffs, however, see such benefits offset by reduced U.S. economic growth caused by the tariffs.

Meanwhile, once the Trump government makes clear its demands that allies and partners increase defense spending and share more of the costs of U.S. forces in the region, those payments will be of significant benefit to the United States.

Trump’s success in highlighting the importance of access to the U.S. market also has worked to U.S. advantage in competition with China, which heretofore had the image as the region’s undisputed dominant economic leader. Today, the U.S. economy is a lot more prominent in the calculations of regional businesses, governments, and expert commentators. And China is comparatively less important, especially as a consumer of regional exports.

For one thing, much of China’s imports of regional goods are inputs used in the production of completed manufactured goods for export to foreign markets, notably the United States. U.S. tariffs reducing such Chinese imports are likely to have a direct negative impact on the regional suppliers, highlighting their awareness that the United States may be as important as China in such transactions. More importantly, China’s weakness as a consumer of regional goods reflects stalled Chinese consumer spending amid widespread angst caused by lost equity in the fraught real estate market, continued weak government support programs for a rapidly aging society, and consistently low interest payments on public savings accounts in Chinese banks.

Making matters much worse for regional exporters, Beijing is in the midst of a major campaign promoting exports of Chinese manufactured goods in order to meet overall economic growth targets. As a result, regional and other foreign leaders and exporters restricted from U.S. markets find that other world markets, including their own country markets, are often flooded with Chinese exports.

Many regional governments also are well aware that Chinese manufactured goods exported abroad are the result of strong protectionism, government support, and heavy subsidies to produce high quality products at prices undercutting foreign competitors, including those in the Indo-Pacific. A bottom line in the calculus of Indo-Pacific and other foreign exporters is that China does not offer an alternative market for the goods they previously sold to the United States. Rather, making matters worse for them, Beijing is pressing ahead with selling the products it previously sold to the United States to foreign markets in acute competition with other foreign exporters in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere.

Finally, as noted, the fact remains that for all the disruption and regional anxiety promoted by Trump policies, there has as yet been no discernible regional shift against the United States and favoring China. An important reason for this stasis is Chinese behavior. U.S. allies and partners have increasingly aligned with the United States because they all have had very negative experiences with Xi Jinping’s government applying pressures to force them to accommodate Chinese preferences.

For many, the U.S. alliance and/or support are essential to preserving their vital interests in the face of Beijing’s pressure tactics. And these governments have found that despite friendly words and posturing, China remains unflinching in pursuing its ambitions at their expense. In interview after interview, regional officials and opinion leaders told me that they look in vain for Chinese actions, not words, that would show accommodation of their differences with China.

Privately, Chinese officials acknowledge Beijing’s wariness in the face of Indo-Pacific governments aligned with the United States that are now seeking better ties with China in reaction to Trump affronts. They judge these states tended to “swing” in the past toward Washington, and may be recently shifting toward China, but they could easily shift back to the United States, to China’s detriment.

Setbacks for U.S. Influence

While some Trump policies are strengthening U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific in its competition with China, the damage to U.S. influence caused mainly by the negative impact of Trump policies in the region is more substantial. For starters, only two Indo-Pacific governments, the Philippines and Pakistan, have been publicly enthusiastic about U.S. policy under Trump 2.0. Cambodian leaders have also shown enthusiasm for Trump policies, but skeptics see this as an insincere tactic by a very pro-China, one-party government using well controlled leaders and public outlets to manipulate Trump to favor Cambodia. Much more common in the region are regional governments grudgingly dealing pragmatically with adverse Trump government initiatives in ways that strive as much as possible to reduce costs for them and preserve their interests.

Other evidence of declining U.S. influence includes the sharp criticisms of Trump policies that are evident in waves of regional media coverage, opinion pieces, surveys, and interviews with regional officials. As noted, Trump’s proposed 100 percent tariff increase on Chinese imports would, if implemented, strongly reinforce this negative trend for U.S. regional influence. Private interviews with experts from Japan, Australia, and other countries close to and dependent on the United States revealed a common judgment that Trump is in the process of weakening the United States in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere through poorly considered and implemented policies with inadequate consideration of their consequences, making them subject to reversal.

A commonly cited example was Trump’s initial controversial outreach to Russia in seeking a settlement of the Ukraine war, which was eventually reversed in favor of a tougher posture toward Putin, only to be seemingly reversed again in the Putin-Trump summit in August, and reversed again in September. Another example discussed in expert interviews was the abrupt announcement of world wide tariffs in April, which quickly escalated to a trade war with China before serious turbulence in international financial markets caused Trump to pause the tariffs and call for talks.

Experts from Australia and Japan pointed out that their countries’ security and prosperity in the face of Chinese challenges has depended heavily on their alliance or close relationship with the United States, and Trump’s actions have been compromising U.S. power and influence needed to counter Chinese pressures.

As noted, the tariff negotiations have been full of hard choices for regional governments. These unequal talks, which cast the other party as the supplicant to the United States, build widespread alienation and resentment by these governments, friends and foes alike, in their overall grudging accommodation of Trump’s demands.

For allies and partners – notably Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Singapore – the general unease is accompanied by alienation caused by the U.S. government putting aside previously negotiated trade and economic agreements in imposing tariffs. This underscores the administration’s low priority to international commitments in a rules-based order where U.S. partners can count on the United States meeting its agreed upon obligations. And some targeted countries, like Australia, already run large trade deficits with the United States.

Moreover, the Trump government tariffs make little distinction between allies and partners versus opponents or those countries more aligned with China. India has been singled out by Trump for harsh criticism and massive tariffs, despite close ties with the first Trump administration in line with a longstanding U.S. policy to support India as a counterweight to China. The treatment contrasts with the Trump government rapidly advancing ties in a reset of relations with Pakistan, India’s longstanding regional rival strongly aligned with and supported by China.

Singapore is not alone in complaining of the adverse impact the Trump government’s disregard for past commitments in support of a rules-based order has had on its security and prosperity. Meanwhile, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and others anticipate soon more hard choices in the future amid U.S. demands for them to do more on defense spending, burden sharing, and military alignment with the U.S. with a focus on China.

The overall judgment that Trump policies have not led to a discernible regional shift against the United States and favoring China does not disguise the fact that regional governments disagree with Trump administration judgments of fairness in trade relations and defense matters. Rather, Indo-Pacific governments have been compelled to accommodate Trump, as U.S. allies and partners in particular seek to preserve their alliances with the United States amid major dangers from China, and in some cases, North Korea. However, serious alienation of these governments from the Trump government has occurred. One result is these allies and partners and others are much less enthusiastic in support for the U.S.-led efforts targeting China than seen during the Biden government.

It is important to add that a number Indo-Pacific countries have not experienced strong negative pressure from Beijing and can benefit by positioning themselves in China’s sphere of influence with a subservient role in China-focused production chains. Important examples are Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji. China is steady and consistent in pursuing its advantage, which in the case of these countries can be seen more positively than the Trump government’s erratic changes and unilateral imposition of new policies adverse to regional countries.

Conclusion

Authors

Guest Author

Robert Sutter

Robert Sutter is Professor of Practice of International Affairs at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and author of “Congress and China Policy: Past Episodic, Recent Enduring Influence” (Lexington Books, 2024).

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

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."

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The Ethical Imperative of Information: Just War Considerations for Global Information Strategy

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