Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

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"There are two threats to reason, the opinion that knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is no truth about them. Both of these opinions are fatal to philosophy; the first asserts that the quest for truth is unnecessary, while the second asserts that it is impossible. The Socratic knowledge of ignorance, which I take to be the beginning point of all philosophy, defines the sensible middle ground between two extremes.

– Allan David Bloom

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."

– Albert Camus

"You can also commit injustice by doing nothing."

– Marcus Aurelieus

1. Palantir Has Lots of Enemies. Do They Even Know What It Does?

2. U.S. Attacks More Boats as Tensions With Venezuela Rise: What’s Happened So Far

3. Trump Officials Ratchet Up Pressure on Israel and Hamas

4. Trump Says Ukraine Summit With Putin Would be a ‘Waste of Time’

5. Colombia’s Ex-Guerrilla President Is Relishing a Fight With Trump

6. China’s Big London Spy Platform

7. Saudi Crown Prince Plans First White House Visit Since 2018

8. How America Spends a Fortune Creating World-Class Leaders and Then Forgets They Exist

9. Trump nominates new Vice Chief of Army, moving Mingus out after less than two years

10. The Rebirth of War Under New Rules

11. Alarm Raised Over “An American KGB” Run Out of Gabbard’s National Intelligence Office

12. EXCLUSIVE: Pentagon clamps down on military interactions with Congress

13. The U.S. Is Trying to Drive a Wedge Between Argentina and China

14. Command Through Collapse: A Division’s Fight on the Eastern Flank Deterrence Line

15. What the Military Does

16. Small Drones, Big Limits: A Smarter Drone Strategy

17. The China Model’s Fatal Flaw – Why Beijing Can’t Overcome Overcapacity

18. Putins All the Way Down – How Russia Was Remade (Review Essay)

19. Taiwan Is Not for Sale – America Can Make a Good Deal With China Without Abandoning the Island

1. Palantir Has Lots of Enemies. Do They Even Know What It Does?

Long read.

Excertps:

In that respect, Palantir is a pretext for deeper critiques of the American national security establishment, as if it is the job of a government contractor to decide which wars to fight or policies to enact.

Palantir rejects the idea that its government partnerships should supersede democratically elected policy. Palantir refused to take part in the UK’s government’s digital ID program because such a policy “needs to be decided at the ballot box, not in the company boardroom,” said Louis Mosley, head of Palantir’s operations in the UK.

That way of thinking is a problem for Michael Posner, director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University and a former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Making a business decision to work with an agency like ICE that is “violating core principles of human rights and due process of law” is “devoid of ethical consideration,” Posner told me. In Posner’s telling, while Palantir doesn’t determine Trump’s immigration policy, that doesn’t mean it bears no moral responsibility for the government actions it helps effectuate.

“Assume we’re talking about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany,” Posner added. “There is a decision to enter into a contract with the SS, and one of the things they’re using the information for is to gather the names of all the Jewish people in Poland. Is that something that the company would say: ‘We just sell technology, we sell data, and we don’t make ethical judgments about what’s an appropriate use of the technology?’ ”

Later, Posner wrote an email to me that said he “in no way” equates “the Nazi horrors of the 1930s and 1940s with what is happening in this country today.”

When I asked Karp what he thought of the comparison, he replied: “When it comes to Palantir, the self-appointed aristocracy of justice suffers from a kind of neuralgia. And one of the symptoms is abject laziness: If they think Palantir poses such a threat, why don’t they spend 20 minutes trying to understand our product?”

In The Lord of the Rings, the seeing stone that allows users to watch distant places eventually falls into the wrong hands.

“The Most Dangerous Corporation in America” is how Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s labor secretary, described Palantir in a Substack article in June. He cited a letter from 13 former Palantir employees who accused the company of being “increasingly complicit” and “normalizing authoritarianism.” The palantir in The Lord of the Rings was a surveillance tool for the villains, Reich wrote.

“Tolkien’s palantir fell under the control of Sauron,” he wrote. “Thiel’s Palantir is falling under the control of Trump.”

“Palantir makes for a convenient bogeyman,” responded Jordan Hirsch, senior counselor in the CEO’s office at Palantir. “People don’t understand software in general. They’re afraid of what it can do. And people often fear things they don’t understand.”

Hirsch said joining Palantir was a leap of faith. “Like deciding to marry my wife,” he told me. “It’s an act of faith. For us, it’s a holy war.”

Palantir Has Lots of Enemies. Do They Even Know What It Does?

It’s hard to explain something that can put chicken nuggets in Walmart and kill Osama bin Laden. Palantir can do both.

By Maya Sulkin

10.21.25 —

Tech and Business

Coverage of Silicon Valley and beyond, with a curious eye.

https://www.thefp.com/p/palantir-alex-karp-critics-ice

(Illustration by The Free Press; image via Getty)

0:00

-18:03

“Are they worried I’m too crazy or too evil?” Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, recently asked me.

He was disarmingly blunt, pacing around his office swinging a tai chi saber over his head.

His question came in response to one I asked about the criticism his company attracts—criticism that has reached a fever pitch over the past several months as Palantir signed a $10 billion deal with the U.S. Army and became one of this year’s top-performing stocks.

So what’s the answer to Karp’s question? A bit of both.

The left’s critique of Palantir goes something like this: Palantir is a shadowy company with operations across the globe, working with governments and corporations that give Palantir access to private data, which it uses to achieve whatever its clients ask—ethical concerns be damned. In other words, these critics say, Palantir uses data collection and aggregation to do things like identify illegal immigrants for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or allegedly kill aid workers in Gaza with its advanced targeting software.

Watch

WATCH: Alex Karp’s Fight for the West

But it’s not just the political left. Figures on the woke right—conspiracy-theorist entertainers like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens—have lambasted the company for some of the same reasons, including Palantir’s connections to Israel.

And Republicans who want America to pull back from the world, like Congressmen Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, have sounded the alarm about the danger of Palantir’s connection to the so-called “deep state,” pointing to secretive government contracts that they fear will lead to mass surveillance.

Some refuse to put their name next to their criticism, like this Republican aide who told Semafor: “These guys are freaks with no sense of humor and a very disturbing sense of morality—and now they have all the data. Someone should do something.”

But do what, exactly?

Many of the critics can’t tell you. Part of the problem is that Palantir is impregnable and hard to understand, fueling the sense that it must be up to something nefarious. Which, in part, may explain why The New York Times, in an article in May, speculated that because Palantir works with multiple government agencies, President Donald Trump might soon be able to “compile a master list of personal information” about every American.

That’s not true, according to Palantir. One executive in its government division told me the accusation of data sharing would be “like saying if the IRS uses Microsoft Excel/Office 365 and the CDC uses Microsoft Excel/Office 365, all of a sudden I have one system and I can see everything in one Excel.”

But the mere possibility of that scenario deepens suspicion. Michael Steinberger, the author of a Karp biography being published next month, said that “if you don’t think well of Donald Trump, if you don’t think well of the people around him, if you think that these are people who might abuse personal data, then you’re going to, by extension, be concerned about Palantir. But it’s not a Palantir issue.”

The first question I asked Palantir employees at their office in Washington, D.C., was simple: What do you do for a living?

The answers almost always came back as a metaphor.

One engineer told me to think of Palantir as capable of finding a moving needle in a haystack the size of a small country.

Others told me to imagine a series of tangled garden hoses in your backyard, with the hoses representing various pieces of data. If your organization is the U.S. Army, those hoses might represent ammunition sources, troop locations, medical supplies, intel from a spy on the ground, or the signals and behaviors of the enemy. Palantir’s software untangles the hoses and makes sure all of the water is going to and coming from the correct place, so that the general or colonel can make sense of the data as quickly as possible, and make the most informed decision.

“Terror suspects leave patterns that they don’t really realize they’re leaving. At least one U.S. agency reported that hundreds of terror attacks around the world have been stopped with our product.” —Alex Karp

Here is how I described Palantir to my mom, who doesn’t know what a large language model (LLM) is: It is a very advanced data-analysis company. Governments, the military, and big companies give Palantir their information—everything from Post-it notes to satellite images to spreadsheets. In disparate pieces, all that data is overwhelming and hard to make sense of, mostly because those pieces of data aren’t in conversation with each other. Palantir’s software organizes it, connects the dots, and highlights patterns that humans might miss.

Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir. (Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images)

In Karp’s words, Palantir’s software “analyzes data and finds hidden patterns.”

The people who work there—“Palantirians,” they call themselves—believe they are saving the world. And many of them believe they are the only people capable of doing so.

The engineers there described themselves to me as “some of the best coders in the world,” “real-world geniuses,” and “the most talented people you’ll ever meet in your life.” They also threw around phrases like “fail forward and leverage your spike” and “artist colony of entrepreneurs.” They call engineers “coding warriors.”

To some people, all that can sound cult-like and self-aggrandizing. To others who believe as Karp does that Palantir is defending the West, it sounds like a culture where people believe in what they are doing. The company’s onboarding program is called “Indoc”—short for indoctrination, though employees swear it’s just a “pretty corporate” orientation. Palantir’s leaders sign their emails with “save the Shire,” a reference to The Lord of the Rings, and they call each other “hobbits.” (Palantir itself is named for the seeing stones in the J.R.R. Tolkien novel.)

I met a Stanford University graduate in his early 20s with the title “Head of Jagged Failure.” His job, or part of it, is to assure his team of young employees that it’s okay to fail.

If all this seems over the top, consider the fact that it’s hard to explain the mechanics of software that can both help put chicken nuggets in Walmart and help kill Osama bin Laden. And Palantir can do both.

Palantir was founded in 2003 by Alex Karp, Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, Nathan Gettings, and Stephen Cohen. Karp and Thiel were law-school buddies who envisioned a company that could build powerful software to serve the West—especially its intelligence agencies and military. The idea was born in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when U.S. intelligence agencies were criticized for failing to “connect the dots” of the hijackings despite having data that could have—indeed, should have—revealed the plot.

The idea of partnering with the government has long been considered divisive and highly unfashionable in Silicon Valley. In 2018, Google backed out of a Department of Defense contract for Project Maven—the Pentagon’s central artificial intelligence initiative—after thousands of Google employees protested, and a few dozen resigned, petitioning that “Google should not be in the business of war.” Google ultimately acquiesced. Thiel, for his part, accused Google of making “the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the U.S. military.”

Palantir was all too happy to step into the breach. In picking up the Maven mantle, Palantir was pilloried as a band of warmongering ideologues in bed with the U.S. government. When news of the contract broke in 2019, one report compared its software to “mustard gas” and “white phosphorus”—a technology so “inhumane” and “unethical” that it shouldn’t be used. (In fact, its software used by the Pentagon is for AI integration in the military.)

That crucial decision has paid off. Palantir’s annual revenue from government customers jumped about 150 percent between 2020 and 2024. In July, the U.S. Army awarded Palantir a deal worth up to $10 billion over the next decade. Within weeks of that deal, the Pentagon expanded Palantir’s role in Project Maven through a contract valued at $795 million. Since January, Palantir has racked up more than $300 million in new and expanded contracts with agencies ranging from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Aviation Administration to the Internal Revenue Service and Fannie Mae.

Now, there are some 4,000 people who work at Palantir in offices around the globe.

Part of the noise around Palantir has nothing to do with its software and more to do with its leader. Karp is no ordinary CEO.

He is half black and half Jewish, and was raised by progressives in Philadelphia who took Karp to civil-rights marches as a young boy. He has a PhD in philosophy from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. Karp, 57, has never been married and complains that bodyguards make it hard for him to flirt. He doesn’t drive because he was “too poor” and then “too rich.” His hair has an X account. Last month, Palantir’s online merchandise store began selling T-shirts printed with Karp’s face and the word DOMINATE. They are now sold out.

Karp, who became CEO in 2005, has described himself as a socialist. He is also unabashedly pro-West and something of a philosopher king. One colleague likened him to a cross between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. He walks the floors of the office, striking up conversations with engineers. His curtains, I was told, are only ever drawn when he is changing from his typical ensemble of a white T-shirt and athletic joggers into a suit.

“I’ve been very open about what we stand for,” Karp told me. “We’re pro-West. For us, the West is led by America, but also includes allies, including Israel.”

In April at the Hill & Valley Forum, a conference focused on combating China’s influence on the U.S. technology industry, a protester interrupted Karp’s interview, yelling that “Palantir kills Palestinians with their AI and technology.” Karp invited her to hear his response. He said that Palestinians were dying because of Hamas. Unimpressed, she shouted back that he was getting wealthy from the killing.

Karp, unblinking, responded: “Mostly terrorists, that’s true.”

When I asked Karp about Israel’s war against Hamas, he said: “Either you master something they can’t master and you set a higher moral standard, or you meet them at the level they’re at. And I don’t want that. If you have superior technology, you don’t have to obviate our morals to beat them.”

“We have built the most civil liberties–empowering software platform ever built. And you know, we’re not obfuscating who we are or what I’m doing. And if you don’t like that, that’s totally fine. Don’t buy our product, don’t invest in us.”

Although Palantir’s work with the U.S. government is what gets all the attention, it accounts for less than half of the company’s revenue. The bulk of its business comes from commercial clients and foreign governments.

For Tyson Foods, Palantir’s software tracks everything from grain prices, a key cost in raising chickens, to the delivery of frozen nuggets to Walmart.

Palantir was also called in last year to help at Tampa General Hospital in Florida. “We heard that the Palantir technology may or may not have contributed to finding Osama bin Laden,” said Scott Arnold, the hospital’s chief digital and innovations officer. “So we thought—what if we could take something that powerful and put it into medicine?”

Tampa General’s focus: sepsis, the leading cause of death in American hospitals.

Palantir’s team, working with Tampa General doctors, built an algorithm based on 17 clinical indicators monitored around the clock by a rapid-response nurse unit. If something looks off, the system sounds an alarm, and a diagnostic team is dispatched immediately.

The whole operation cost around $3 million, Tampa General CEO John Couris said, and has saved about 600 lives so far.

When I asked Jeremy David, who co-leads Palantir’s healthcare work, why the company is so controversial despite most of its business having nothing to do with the government or war, he smiled. “It’s like: Nukes work,” he said. “They’re scary. They could be misused.”

True. But it is also true that the public hears almost nothing about Palantir’s non-defense business—while its defense business is regularly in the news. Consider Maven, Palantir’s military AI platform. Maven is used by the entire U.S. military, and international allies like the UK and Ukraine, for everything from ship supply counts to targeting decisions.

Palantir is a pretext for deeper critiques of the American national security establishment, as if it is the job of a government contractor to decide which wars to fight or policies to enact.

“Maven helps fewer good guys kill more bad guys,” said Mike Gallagher, Palantir’s head of defense and a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin.

In the pre-Maven era, explained Gallagher, a former intelligence officer in the Marine Corps, intelligence officers were more like human data analysts than strategic assets. Now, Maven ingests satellite images, battlefield signals, live tracking, and readiness reports—and displays it all on a single live map, allowing everyone from the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to foot soldiers to make decisions as quickly as possible, using the most up-to-date data.

In Palantir’s D.C. office, I watched a notional demo. The screen showed the Russia–Ukraine border, dotted with green and red icons.

“Everything you see on this map is live data,” Patrick Dods, a Maven engineer and former Navy nuclear submarine officer, told me. “Behind every pixel are thousands of data integrations: where a ship is, how much food it has, what equipment is broken. A commander can click on a unit and instantly see its assessed combat power and readiness.”

In Karp’s words, Palantir is “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine.” Another employee described the software as integral, critical, and indispensable to fighting Putin’s Russia.

Palantir applies a similar approach when tracking down terrorists. This became clear in 2011, when Palantir provided the intelligence community with software that contributed to the identification of bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan. “Terror suspects leave patterns they don’t really realize they’re leaving, and you can use our product to find those patterns,” Karp told me. “At least one U.S. agency reported that hundreds of terror attacks around the world have been stopped with our product.”

Some things, however, Palantir wouldn’t talk about—though you can draw your own conclusions.

Karp told me that he was “proud that the Israelis use the software” but didn’t go into much detail. (Steinberger’s book confirms that Palantir works directly with Mossad.)

When Vice President J.D. Vance congratulated CENTCOM’s commander, General Michael Kurilla, and others involved in the June attack on Iran’s nuclear sites—and Palantir engineers declined to comment—you didn’t need much imagination to fill in the gaps.

One criticism of Palantir that unites the left and right is that the company is conducting mass surveillance of the American public. That criticism intensified when President Trump tapped Palantir in March to “eliminate information silos” in government.

Some Americans took that to mean every government agency would input all of its data on each of us into Palantir, and track our every move.

“Palantir is not, will not, and has no interest in doing mass surveillance on U.S. citizens. And if anyone thinks we’re doing it, let me know, and I will shut it down,” Karp said.

Demonstrators blocked the entrance to Palantir’s offices in New York City in July 2025, chanting “No ICE, no Palantir!” (Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images)

When I asked Karp if an ICE agent would be able to find the address of an illegal immigrant through shared data with the IRS, he told me that “any platform in the world could do that. The difference between our platform and everyone else’s is you couldn’t do that and hide it. Every single action would be traceable, and not just to engineers, but to a third party.” Indeed, when Michael Cohen’s tax information was leaked by an IRS agent in 2018, the leaker’s trail was discovered with the help of Palantir’s software.

So what does Palantir do with ICE?

ICE uses Palantir’s software to ensure the agency has the most accurate address for people with final removal orders, using information that ICE already has. (Palantir does not provide ICE with data.) The company also helps ICE keep track of those who are being detained or deported, and all of the logistics involved in that process. The more precise the data is, the more effective the operation is, which includes limiting collateral interactions with everyday citizens who are not meant to be ICE targets.

Another criticism of Palantir that unites both ends of the political horseshoe is the company’s association with Israel. While the critiques from the left are predictable, on the right, Palantir has become an indicator of what kind of conservative you are. That faction—anti-neoconservatives who define themselves in opposition to the failed so-called forever wars of past Republican administrations—has only grown in influence.

In that respect, Palantir is a pretext for deeper critiques of the American national security establishment, as if it is the job of a government contractor to decide which wars to fight or policies to enact.

Palantir rejects the idea that its government partnerships should supersede democratically elected policy. Palantir refused to take part in the UK’s government’s digital ID program because such a policy “needs to be decided at the ballot box, not in the company boardroom,” said Louis Mosley, head of Palantir’s operations in the UK.

That way of thinking is a problem for Michael Posner, director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University and a former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Making a business decision to work with an agency like ICE that is “violating core principles of human rights and due process of law” is “devoid of ethical consideration,” Posner told me. In Posner’s telling, while Palantir doesn’t determine Trump’s immigration policy, that doesn’t mean it bears no moral responsibility for the government actions it helps effectuate.

“Assume we’re talking about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany,” Posner added. “There is a decision to enter into a contract with the SS, and one of the things they’re using the information for is to gather the names of all the Jewish people in Poland. Is that something that the company would say: ‘We just sell technology, we sell data, and we don’t make ethical judgments about what’s an appropriate use of the technology?’ ”

Later, Posner wrote an email to me that said he “in no way” equates “the Nazi horrors of the 1930s and 1940s with what is happening in this country today.”

When I asked Karp what he thought of the comparison, he replied: “When it comes to Palantir, the self-appointed aristocracy of justice suffers from a kind of neuralgia. And one of the symptoms is abject laziness: If they think Palantir poses such a threat, why don’t they spend 20 minutes trying to understand our product?”

In The Lord of the Rings, the seeing stone that allows users to watch distant places eventually falls into the wrong hands.

“The Most Dangerous Corporation in America” is how Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s labor secretary, described Palantir in a Substack article in June. He cited a letter from 13 former Palantir employees who accused the company of being “increasingly complicit” and “normalizing authoritarianism.” The palantir in The Lord of the Rings was a surveillance tool for the villains, Reich wrote.

“Tolkien’s palantir fell under the control of Sauron,” he wrote. “Thiel’s Palantir is falling under the control of Trump.”

“Palantir makes for a convenient bogeyman,” responded Jordan Hirsch, senior counselor in the CEO’s office at Palantir. “People don’t understand software in general. They’re afraid of what it can do. And people often fear things they don’t understand.”

Hirsch said joining Palantir was a leap of faith. “Like deciding to marry my wife,” he told me. “It’s an act of faith. For us, it’s a holy war.”

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Maya Sulkin is a reporter for The Free Press, covering breaking news, politics, education, Gen Z, and culture. Before that, she served as the company's Chief of Staff.

2. U.S. Attacks More Boats as Tensions With Venezuela Rise: What’s Happened So Far

U.S. Attacks More Boats as Tensions With Venezuela Rise: What’s Happened So Far

The Trump administration is ratcheting up pressure on the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, while striking vessels that it says are trafficking drugs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/us/trump-attacks-venezuela-boats.html

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U.S. Marines during a training exercise last week in Arroyo, Puerto Rico.Credit...Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters

By Charlie Savage

Charlie Savage writes about national security, presidential power and legal policy. He reported from Washington.

Oct. 21, 2025, 6:27 p.m. ET

Tensions between the United States and Venezuela continue to escalate as the U.S. military keeps attacking boats in the Caribbean Sea that it says are suspected of smuggling drugs for cartels and criminal gangs the Trump administration has labeled terrorists.

The administration has focused its rhetoric on President Nicolás Maduro, the authoritarian leader of Venezuela, who was indicted on drug trafficking charges in the United States in 2020. President Trump has authorized C.I.A. operations in Venezuela, and the administration is weighing land strikes as some of his aides push to oust Mr. Maduro.

But the boat attacks have not been limited to Venezuelan targets, and turbulence over them is spreading to other countries, especially Colombia.

Here is the latest on the U.S. military operations:

What’s the latest on the attacks?

On Mr. Trump’s orders, the U.S. military began attacking vessels in the Caribbean in early September. The Trump administration has maintained that the operations have taken place in international waters and that the passengers were members of drug cartels who it says were trafficking narcotics. It has cited intelligence but not offered evidence for its accusations.

By official estimates, seven strikes have killed 32 people so far:

Sept. 2: The first U.S. first strike on a boat killed 11 people, according to Mr. Trump. He said they were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which his team has deemed “terrorists.” U.S. officials later said the boat appeared to have turned around before the attack.
Sept. 15: A second strike killed three people, according to Mr. Trump, who called them “narcoterrorists from Venezuela” but did not identify a specific group. President Gustavo Petro of Colombia later said one was a Colombian fisherman and accused the United States of murder.
Sept. 19: Mr. Trump announced that the military had attacked a third boat in the Caribbean, killing three people, without providing details. The authorities in the Dominican Republic later said they recovered cocaine.
Oct. 3: In a fourth strike, the military killed four men. Mr. Petro later said the boat had been carrying Colombian citizens.
Oct. 14: In the fifth strike, the military killed six people in international waters but “just off the coast of Venezuela,” according to Mr. Trump. Relatives of a 26-year-old from Trinidad and Tobago said he and a neighbor were killed in the attack.
Oct. 16: The sixth strike targeted a semi-submersible vessel, killing two people, Mr. Trump later said. The Navy rescued two survivors and repatriated them to Colombia and Ecuador.
Oct. 17: In the seventh strike, the military killed three men accused of smuggling drugs for a Marxist insurgent group in Colombia known as the E.L.N., which the State Department designated as terrorists in 1997.

Why is Trump taking military action in the Caribbean?

The Trump administration has justified the boat attacks as a matter of national self-defense at a time of high overdose deaths in the United States. But the surge in overdoses has been driven by fentanyl, which comes from Mexico. South America is instead a source of cocaine, much of which originates in Colombia.

The administration has moved a large amount of naval firepower into the Caribbean — far greater than is commensurate with the task of destroying small boats — and is weighing an operation to remove Mr. Maduro, whom it calls a drug cartel leader. The proponents of a regime-change push include Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser, and the C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe.

Image

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has called the strikes a “heinous crime.”Credit...Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters

How has Venezuela responded?

Mr. Maduro has called the strikes a “heinous crime” and “a military attack on civilians who were not at war and were not militarily threatening any country.” He said that if the United States believed that boat passengers were drug traffickers, it should arrest them.

Mr. Maduro has also warned that he will respond to any U.S. military action with an “armed fight.” In mid-October, his administration said it had launched a broad military mobilization and started training civilians for defensive combat against a potential U.S. invasion.

Are the attacks legal?

A broad range of specialists in the laws governing the use of force have disputed the Trump administration’s contention that it can lawfully kill people suspected of drug trafficking as if they were enemy troops in a war. The United States has traditionally dealt with maritime drug smuggling as a law enforcement matter, including Coast Guard interdictions.

Trump Administration: Live Updates

Updated

Oct. 21, 2025, 7:07 p.m. ET1 hour ago

The Trump administration has asserted that the killings are legal. In a letter to Congress after the first strike, Mr. Trump justified it as “self-defense.” In a notice to Congress about the Sept. 15 strike, the White House said Mr. Trump had “determined” that the United States was now in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels that his team has deemed terrorist organizations.

The administration has resisted requests that it provide a legal theory or analysis that supports its conclusion that the situation qualifies as an armed conflict, including how it is bridging the conceptual gap between drug trafficking crimes and armed hostilities.

Does Trump need Congress’s approval?

Congress has not authorized any armed conflict with drug cartels. Apart from whether it is lawful to summarily kill those suspected of smuggling drugs, the question of whether or when any president needs congressional authorization for military operations is murky.

Under both parties, the Justice Department has opined that a president, as commander in chief, may carry out limited strikes in the national interest on his or her own, so long as the anticipated nature, duration and scope fall short of “war” in the constitutional sense.

As one-off strikes evolve into lengthier military campaigns, however, pressure to obtain congressional approval tends to mount. The War Powers Resolution, a Vietnam-era law, says presidents must end deployments in congressionally unauthorized hostilities after 60 days.

Trump administration increases pressure on Venezuela

Where the U.S. Is Building Up Military Force in the Caribbean

Oct. 17, 2025

Trump, Drug Cartels, Venezuela and War: What We Know

Oct. 6, 2025

Top Trump Aides Push for Ousting Maduro From Power in Venezuela

Sept. 29, 2025

Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.

3. Trump Officials Ratchet Up Pressure on Israel and Hamas

Excerpts:

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in law, Jared Kushner, delivered a strong message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a meeting on Monday: Israel must avoid escalation by ensuring responses to any alleged cease-fire violations by Hamas are proportional.

The warnings come amid violent clashes between the two sides that have erupted in recent days. Israel struck dozens of Hamas targets on Sunday following what it said was a Hamas attack that left two soldiers dead. Hamas denied any involvement in the attack and said it was carried out by a rogue cell. Arab mediators have put significant pressure on Hamas’s leadership to ensure that violations of the agreement aren’t repeated.

The current period is crucial, as mediators work to preserve the fragile cease-fire and move deeper into talks that would permanently end the war.

Trump Officials Ratchet Up Pressure on Israel and Hamas

Senior envoys are warning both sides to avoid escalation that could end the truce ahead of talks on the future of Gaza

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-officials-ratchet-up-pressure-on-israel-and-hamas-1e525492

By Anat Peled

, Summer Said

and Alexander Ward

Updated Oct. 21, 2025 5:42 pm ET

Gaza City this week Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua/Zuma Press

Hamas released the bodies of two more Israeli hostages on Tuesday as the group and Israel came under increasing pressure from the U.S. to avoid escalation that could collapse the cease-fire in Gaza, according to Israeli and Arab officials.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in law, Jared Kushner, delivered a strong message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a meeting on Monday: Israel must avoid escalation by ensuring responses to any alleged cease-fire violations by Hamas are proportional.

The warnings come amid violent clashes between the two sides that have erupted in recent days. Israel struck dozens of Hamas targets on Sunday following what it said was a Hamas attack that left two soldiers dead. Hamas denied any involvement in the attack and said it was carried out by a rogue cell. Arab mediators have put significant pressure on Hamas’s leadership to ensure that violations of the agreement aren’t repeated.

The current period is crucial, as mediators work to preserve the fragile cease-fire and move deeper into talks that would permanently end the war.

Palestinian mourners this week in Nuseirat, Gaza. Hamas has accused Israel of attacks it says killed civilians. Belal Abu Amer/APA Images/Zuma Press

Trump said Monday that Hamas was violating the cease-fire and warned that “they would be taken care of very quickly if they don’t straighten it out themselves.”

In a social-media post Tuesday, the president said a number of countries are ready to help crack down on Hamas if it continues to violate the accord. The comment is at odds with the message from countries in the region, which say privately they are deeply uncomfortable with acting as enforcer.

A number of countries have expressed interest in joining a stabilization force envisioned under Trump’s peace plan for a post-Hamas Gaza, people familiar with the matter said. The two sides have begun technical talks on the second stage of that plan, which will include thorny issues such as Hamas’s disarmament, Gaza’s postwar governance and the stabilization force.

Vice President JD Vance landed in Israel on Tuesday, where he visited a civil-military operation center monitoring the Gaza truce. He will meet with Netanyahu on Wednesday, according to an Israeli official.

Vance, Witkoff and Kushner said the cease-fire deal was on track, during a news conference from the operations center Tuesday.

Israeli troops deployed along the border between Israel and Gaza on Tuesday. jack guez/AFP/Getty Images

“Every time there is an act of violence, there is an inclination to say this is the end of the cease-fire,” Vance said. “It’s not the end. This is exactly how it has to happen when you have people who hate each other and have been fighting against each other for a very long time.”

The head of Egyptian intelligence, Major General Hassan Mahmoud Rashad, also arrived Tuesday to hold meetings with Witkoff and Israeli officials on the implementation of the cease-fire. Rashad met with Netanyahu on Tuesday, and he will also meet with Vance, said Israeli and Arab officials.

The cease-fire has been repeatedly challenged in recent days. Israel has thwarted attacks on its forces as well as dozens of attempts by Palestinians to cross the “yellow line” marking the extent of Israel’s withdrawal from the western part of Gaza, Israeli officials said.

Israeli officials have also criticized Hamas over the group’s slow handover of the bodies of dead hostages. Hamas has accused Israel of dozens of attacks, including some it says killed civilians.

Israeli mourners attended Tuesday’s funeral ceremony for slain Israeli hostage Ronen Engel near the border with Gaza after his body was repatriated. atef safadi/epa/shutterstock/Shutterstock

The U.S. approach appears to be working, with both Israel and Hamas signaling they aren’t interested in collapsing the deal.

Following Trump’s warnings, Hamas told mediators it would stop public executions of members of rival gangs after mediators argued those actions could give Israel an excuse to resume fighting, the Arab officials said.

Families in Tel Aviv Call for the Return of All Dead Hostages

Trump Says Ukraine Summit With Putin Would be a ‘Waste of Time’

Administration concludes Russia is clinging to territorial ambitions that make peace deal with Ukraine impossible

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/no-plans-for-second-trump-putin-summit-soon-as-preparation-stalls-913dbaa9

By Alexander Ward

, Robbie Gramer

and Alex Leary

Updated Oct. 21, 2025 5:29 pm ET

Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump before a joint press conference in Alaska in August. Jae C. Hong/AP

Quick Summary

The White House confirmed no immediate plans for a Trump-Putin summit on Ukraine, as Russia’s peace-deal stance remains unchanged.View more

WASHINGTON—President Trump said Tuesday that meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin would be a waste and that he would reveal his new thinking on the Ukraine war within two days.

“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting. I don’t want to have a waste of time til I’ll see what happens,” he said Tuesday at the White House.

Putin wants the war to end, he said, as does Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “I think it’s going to end,” he said.

Trump’s statement came hours after the White House said it no longer had immediate plans for a summit between Trump and Putin. Last week, Trump announced that he would imminently meet with Putin in Budapest for a second meeting between the two leaders in as many months.

A Monday call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov revealed that the Kremlin is clinging to its long-held positions, namely that Ukraine hand over control of the entire Donbas region as part of any settlement, the officials said. After the discussion, Rubio, who also serves as Trump’s national security adviser, briefed White House officials that an imminent summit with Putin would unlikely yield positive results in peace negotiations.

Lavrov on Tuesday told reporters that Russia’s view was firm. “I believe American officials have concluded that Russia’s position has remained largely unchanged over time and remains within the bounds of its initial maximalist demands,” he said, noting that Moscow’s stance was the same as when Trump and Putin met in Alaska two months ago without progress.

Russia still prefers a comprehensive peace agreement to a cease-fire, Lavrov said, a stance that critics say allows the Kremlin to keep fighting while failing to negotiate in good faith.

A senior administration official said Lavrov’s comments confirm what the administration already surmised: Russia is still not willing to make a deal. However, the official added that in last week’s call with Trump, Putin signaled that he was open to discussing some matters that could bridge the divide between the U.S. and Russian positions.

That provided some hope for a new Trump-Putin summit in the future, the officials said, even if it wouldn’t come as quickly as Trump first indicated after announcing a coming meeting in Budapest.

Trump had previously said that the war would be an easy conflict to solve quickly. After the Alaska summit, he had hoped that Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would meet and strike a final deal, but no meeting materialized. Trump has since sought to revive his high-profile diplomatic effort, expressing frustration that he has had success in brokering a cease-fire in Gaza before quieting the guns in Ukraine.

Both Rubio and Lavrov are slated to be in Malaysia later this month at a summit organized by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, but senior administration officials said there are currently no scheduled meetings between the two diplomats. These officials said Rubio and Lavrov will continue to engage each other to map out plans for a possible Trump-Putin summit.

Trump’s position on the war in Ukraine continues to shift. In recent weeks, he blamed Russia for prolonging the war and even weighed deliveries of long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, a sign that his patience with Putin had run thin. But Trump’s approach changed after the call with Putin last week, a day before Zelensky arrived at the White House.

In that meeting, Trump told Zelensky that his main priority was that the war end, urging a freeze of the conflict at the current battle lines—a position Ukraine has previously endorsed but less than what Russia wants. Russia, according to Trump, controls about 78% of the Donbas.

Trump also informed Zelensky that Ukraine wouldn’t receive Tomahawks soon.

Write to Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com, Robbie Gramer at robbie.gramer@wsj.com and Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com

5. Colombia’s Ex-Guerrilla President Is Relishing a Fight With Trump

Excertps:

The confrontation has placed Petro, a leftist former guerrilla fighter, on the kind of global platform he has coveted at a time when Trump has taken on neighbors like Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the Venezuelan strongman, Nicolás Maduro.

...

Some cooler heads are trying to get the Trump administration to back down for fear that the dust-up could improve Petro’s chances in the election.

“We urge you not to respond to the provocations of Gustavo Petro,” Mauricio Cárdenas, Colombia’s conservative presidential candidate and former economy minister, said in a letter to Trump. He asked that the U.S. drop the idea of tariffs as they would hurt Colombians and give Petro “a pretext to portray himself as a victim.”

The U.S. has begun to show some restraint.

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, suggested Monday that the White House may not move swiftly to impose tariffs on Colombia.

And Ramsey, the Atlantic Council analyst, said some American policymakers are cautious about punitive actions that would damage Colombia’s economy or compromise defense cooperation for Petro’s successor. The unpopularity of some of Petro’s policies suggest voters might favor a pro-U.S. candidate in the elections.

“Everyone realizes the relationship is bigger than the president,” Ramsey said.

Colombia’s Ex-Guerrilla President Is Relishing a Fight With Trump

Gustavo Petro uses clash with U.S. over strikes on alleged drug boats to cast himself as David vs. Washington’s Goliath

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/colombia-petro-trump-boat-strikes-9182264f

By Juan Forero

and Kejal Vyas

Oct. 21, 2025 12:00 pm ET

Colombian President Gustavo Petro is no stranger to tangling with adversaries. MAURICIO DUENAS CASTANEDA/EPA/Shutterstock

Quick Summary

President Trump called Colombian President Gustavo Petro a “lunatic” and an “illegal drug leader,” threatening to cut U.S. aid.View more

BOGOTA, Colombia—This country’s leader has suggested President Trump is a slave trader and compared him to Hitler. Most recently, President Gustavo Petro has taken aim at the Trump administration’s targeting of boats allegedly ferrying drugs to the U.S.

Now he is the latest Latin American leader to face Trump’s wrath.

On Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said Petro was the worst president Colombia has ever had, a “lunatic who has many mental problems.” Just hours before in a social-media post, he had called him “an illegal drug leader” and pledged new tariffs on Colombia, until recently Washington’s closest ally in the war on drugs.

Most important, Trump said he would cut off all foreign aid to Colombia, which has used $14 billion in U.S. funding over two decades to curb the flow of cocaine from South America to the world.

The confrontation has placed Petro, a leftist former guerrilla fighter, on the kind of global platform he has coveted at a time when Trump has taken on neighbors like Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the Venezuelan strongman, Nicolás Maduro.

Trump Feuds with Colombia’s Leader. Will It Undermine the Drug War?

Play video: Trump Feuds with Colombia’s Leader. Will It Undermine the Drug War?

WSJ’s South America bureau chief explains the possible impacts of President Trump’s threatened aid cuts to Colombia and attacks on its leftist president. Photo: Joaquin Sarmiento, Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Those who track Petro say it is a clash he relishes.

“Petro’s been desperate to present himself as the face of Latin American resistance to Trump,” said Geoff Ramsey, an expert in Colombian politics at the Atlantic Council policy advocacy group in Washington. “He’s been looking for a fight for months and Trump is finally giving it to him.”

It is unclear what finally triggered Trump. But Petro criticized the U.S. airstrikes on boats Trump alleges are leaving Venezuela with drugs. Then he accused the U.S. of homicide when he asserted that a Colombian fisherman had been among the crew of a boat destroyed in a September strike.

Trump struck back Sunday, calling Petro “a low rated and very unpopular leader, with a fresh mouth toward America.” Suddenly, the clash thrust Petro into a role that is garnering worldwide attention: David squaring off against the U.S.’s Goliath.

“For a guy like Petro, Colombia has always seemed sort of small. He’s always seen himself as a global leader,” said Kevin Whitaker, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia. “He’s been politically successful operating as a victim. That’s really been his political persona, as a senator and as president—the victim of the powers that be and the champion of the real people.”

Elected in 2022, the 65-year-old Colombian president is no stranger to tangling with adversaries. As a senator two decades ago, he asserted that a conservative president here led death squads. He has hurled insults at Argentina’s President Javier Milei for his free-market policies. For two years, Petro has railed against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza.

Since Trump took office, Petro has cast himself as a moral counterweight and a defiant voice from the developing world challenging what he considers Washington’s imperialism and power.

The Colombian leader’s quarrel isn’t with Americans, Petro said on X on Sunday, drawing a line between Americans and their leader. “The problem is with Trump,” he said, comparing the president to an organized crime boss.

“A mafioso is a human being who embodies the best of capitalism: greed,” Petro said. “And I am the opposite—a lover of life, and therefore an age-old guerrilla fighter for life.”

On Monday, he fired more volleys in an interview aired on Colombian media outlets and on Univision in the U.S., saying that for humanity’s sake, Trump needed to leave office. “Trump could do it himself, which would be easiest. If not, he must be removed,” Petro said.

The White House didn’t comment for this article. Petro’s communications team didn’t return calls seeking comment.

The broadsides began back in January, when Petro barred entry for two U.S. military planes loaded with deported Colombians, leading Trump to threaten tariffs while calling the Colombian leader a socialist. Petro quickly caved in, but he didn’t back down.

Migrants deported from the U.S. passed through the arrivals gate at El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá, Colombia, in January. Andres Moreno/Zuma Press

“He calls me a socialist; I’d rather be a socialist than a fascist,” Petro told Univision.

And he has fired more salvos since.

Speaking at the United Nations in September, Petro said Trump “only threatens and kills, and lets tens of thousands be killed” instead of talking about the climate crisis.

Analysts say Petro appears more concerned with scoring points on X or delivering fiery speeches abroad than addressing the fallout of his own policies at home. Armed groups took advantage of his cease-fires to amass weapons. The healthcare system is in disarray after his government began plans to dismantle it without a replacement.

“Petro is generating results that are adverse for Colombia and don’t change U.S. foreign policy toward Latin Americans, that don’t change anything for the Palestinians,” said Jorge Restrepo, a political analyst at Javeriana University in Bogotá.

César Caballero, director of the Colombian pollster Cifras y Conceptos, said Petro sees an opportunity to galvanize support ahead of next May’s presidential elections.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro addressed pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City last month. bing guan/Reuters

The president is barred from re-election but wants his increasingly unpopular left-wing coalition to remain in power. Petro has the support of a little more than a third of voters, polls show, but faces a growing conservative base among younger Colombians who blame the government for rising crime and drug production.

“Does fighting the U.S. help Petro? He thinks so. But it doesn’t help Colombia,” said Caballero. “He’s getting applause in his base, but outside that base, there’s a lot of concern over his discourse, which just seems unnecessary.”

Some cooler heads are trying to get the Trump administration to back down for fear that the dust-up could improve Petro’s chances in the election.

“We urge you not to respond to the provocations of Gustavo Petro,” Mauricio Cárdenas, Colombia’s conservative presidential candidate and former economy minister, said in a letter to Trump. He asked that the U.S. drop the idea of tariffs as they would hurt Colombians and give Petro “a pretext to portray himself as a victim.”

The U.S. has begun to show some restraint.

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, suggested Monday that the White House may not move swiftly to impose tariffs on Colombia.

And Ramsey, the Atlantic Council analyst, said some American policymakers are cautious about punitive actions that would damage Colombia’s economy or compromise defense cooperation for Petro’s successor. The unpopularity of some of Petro’s policies suggest voters might favor a pro-U.S. candidate in the elections.

“Everyone realizes the relationship is bigger than the president,” Ramsey said.

Write to Juan Forero at juan.forero@wsj.com and Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com

Appeared in the October 22, 2025, print edition as 'Colombian Leader Courts Trump Fight'.

6. China’s Big London Spy Platform

Didn't they try to do the same thing in Washington?

China’s Big London Spy Platform

Beijing wants a mega-embassy in Britain, but espionage risks abound.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/china-mega-embassy-london-beijing-keir-starmer-christopher-berry-christopher-cash-336960be

By The Editorial Board

Oct. 21, 2025 5:40 pm ET

The Royal Mint Court in London. Vuk Valcic/Zuma Press

Did Britain’s Labour government torpedo a spying case to appease Beijing? Prime Minister Keir Starmer finds himself on the defensive as the opposition claims his government prioritized economic ties with China over national security. One test will be whether his government approves a proposed Chinese mega-embassy in London despite the espionage risks.

The political brawl erupted last month after a much-publicized espionage case collapsed on a legal technicality. Prosecutors claimed British teacher and consultant Christopher Berry and parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash passed sensitive details to Beijing in violation of the 1911 Official Secrets Act.

A 2024 High Court ruling expanded the definition of “enemy” to include any country that poses a national-security threat to the U.K. But the Crown Prosecution Service says the Labour government failed to provide such an assessment about China despite repeated requests, and as a result “the case could not proceed.” Messrs. Cash and Berry denied wrongdoing and the charges were dropped.

Mr. Starmer has blamed the previous government for failing to issue such a designation against China. Under political pressure, he released statements by deputy national security adviser Matthew Collins outlining the evidence in the espionage case, including that British MPs critical of Beijing were among the targets.

Mr. Collins described how “Chinese Intelligence Services are highly capable and conduct large scale espionage operations against the UK to advance the Chinese state’s interests and harm the interests and security of the UK.”

Then why is the government still open to Beijing’s proposal to build a giant new embassy in London that would be China’s largest diplomatic outpost in Europe? In May Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith and other members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) told the White House National Security Council that the embassy’s location “presents serious risks to the UK and US economies.”

Their memorandum, which we’ve seen, warned that China’s 5.5-acre complex would be located directly over data cables that serve the financial industry. IPAC executive director Luke de Pulford says the risk is two-fold: If it gained access to the cables, China could monitor private and confidential flows of financial information, and in a crisis it could disrupt Western financial institutions.

In a February letter to Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Members of Congress Chris Smith of New Jersey and John Moolenaar of Michigan said the Chinese could also use the compound to expand the harassment of dissidents and critics. China’s monitoring and intimidation of overseas Chinese is well known.

Britain was supposed to make a decision on the Chinese embassy last month but has delayed it until December. If Mr. Starmer wants to prove his critics wrong, he can heed the warnings and tell Beijing no.

Appeared in the October 22, 2025, print edition as 'China’s Big London Spy Platform'.

7. Saudi Crown Prince Plans First White House Visit Since 2018

Excerpts:

With the first phase of the cease-fire now in place, discussions on Saudi-Israeli normalization are likely to speed up again early next year after a long hiatus during the war, the people familiar with the matter said.

A more immediate result could be a defense cooperation agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that would boost weapons sales, intelligence sharing and strategic planning on joint threats including terrorism and Iran.

The agreement falls short of the defense treaty long sought by Saudi Arabia. But it would be a first step that can be enacted by executive order, potentially during the crown prince’s visit.

While the U.S. and Israel sharply diminished the threat from Iran with a 12-day air campaign in June, Saudi Arabia has grown concerned with Israel’s willingness to use its powerful military, particularly after last month’s strike on Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital, Doha.

Trump signed an executive order extending defense guarantees to Qatar, which is already a U.S. major non-NATO ally, at the end of September.

Saudi Crown Prince Plans First White House Visit Since 2018

Mohammed bin Salman is seeking a defense pact, and normalization with Israel and Gaza reconstruction are likely on the agenda

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/saudi-crown-prince-plans-first-white-house-visit-since-2018-69d6b0ec

By Stephen Kalin

and Alexander Ward

Oct. 21, 2025 1:32 pm ET

President Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh in May. Molly Riley/Zuma Press

Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader will visit Washington next month and meet President Trump in the Oval Office, people familiar with the matter said, capping a multiyear effort to restore his international standing with a trip that could lay the groundwork for an eventual deal to establish ties with Israel.

The trip by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who last visited the U.S. in early 2018, is scheduled for Nov. 18 and 19, one of the people said. It would come a month after Trump negotiated a cease-fire to end Israel’s two-year war with Hamas in Gaza.

With the first phase of the cease-fire now in place, discussions on Saudi-Israeli normalization are likely to speed up again early next year after a long hiatus during the war, the people familiar with the matter said.

A more immediate result could be a defense cooperation agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that would boost weapons sales, intelligence sharing and strategic planning on joint threats including terrorism and Iran.

The agreement falls short of the defense treaty long sought by Saudi Arabia. But it would be a first step that can be enacted by executive order, potentially during the crown prince’s visit.

While the U.S. and Israel sharply diminished the threat from Iran with a 12-day air campaign in June, Saudi Arabia has grown concerned with Israel’s willingness to use its powerful military, particularly after last month’s strike on Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital, Doha.

Trump signed an executive order extending defense guarantees to Qatar, which is already a U.S. major non-NATO ally, at the end of September.

Israel targeted Hamas leaders in Doha, the capital of Qatar, last month. jacqueline penney/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Trump has said he expected an expansion soon of the Abraham Accords, the normalization deal the U.S. brokered during his first term between Israel and several Arab countries.

“I hope to see Saudi Arabia go in, and I hope to see others go in,” the president told Fox News in an interview conducted Oct. 16. “I think they’re going to all go in very soon.”

In the interview, Trump said he had conversations with the Saudis “even as recently as, like, yesterday” about their willingness to normalize relations.

The Biden administration came close to landing a deal that would have exchanged a U.S. defense treaty and support for a civilian nuclear program for the kingdom’s formal establishment of diplomatic ties with Israel.

The effort stalled after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which sparked the war and which President Joe Biden and some Middle East experts believed was aimed in part at disrupting progress on normalization. Concerned by the rising human toll of the war, Saudi Arabia said it couldn’t proceed with a deal until the fighting ended.

A breakdown in the fragile cease-fire, which has been stressed by outbreaks of fighting over the past week, would risk upending the effort again. Talks could also get snagged on Saudi Arabia’s demands around a Palestinian state.

Days before the war broke out, the Saudi crown prince said a normalization deal should “ease the lives of the Palestinians.” By last year, the kingdom was looking for a firm commitment to a political horizon for Palestinians. Now, it is demanding a more formal commitment to a Palestinian state, one of the people said.

Displaced Palestinians in the Gaza Strip after the cease-fire began. haitham imad/epa/shutterstock/Shutterstock

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes a Palestinian state, a position with wide support in Israel. The Oct. 7 attack has deepened Israelis’ mistrust of Palestinians, which will make concessions on statehood harder to secure.

Discussions on the nuclear-energy component of the deal are ongoing but may not be concluded ahead of the crown prince’s trip, in which case they could be folded into a later agreement.

The visit is an acknowledgment of the crown prince’s staying power. His last trip to the U.S. was months before men in his employ murdered dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who had U.S. residency, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The CIA assessed that the prince had likely ordered the killing, which he has denied.

The killing nearly ruptured U.S.-Saudi relations. While Trump stood by the crown prince at the time, Biden later took the royal to task over the kingdom’s human-rights record.

Biden visited the kingdom in 2022 in a failed bid to get Saudi Arabia to boost oil production and push down prices to squeeze Russia’s ability to finance its war in Ukraine.

Write to Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com

Appeared in the October 22, 2025, print edition as 'Saudi Crown Prince to Visit White House'.

8. How America Spends a Fortune Creating World-Class Leaders and Then Forgets They Exist

The $850 Billion Leadership Pipeline We're Completely Ignoring

How America Spends a Fortune Creating World-Class Leaders and Then Forgets They Exist

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-america-spends-fortune-creating-world-class-leaders-ryan-kuo-po3wc/?trackingId=pfcSvcswLJvn3dIwdTNaaw%3D%3D

Ryan Kuo

Private Equity & CPG Operator | Transforming Food & Beverage Businesses | Business Process Expert | Passionate About Helping Fellow Veterans

October 16, 2025

There's a scene that plays out thousands of times a year in corporate America. A 28-year-old veteran walks into an interview. They've led teams of 40+ people. Made decisions with million-dollar implications. Operated in environments where "getting it wrong" meant something considerably more serious than missing quarterly targets.

And then someone asks them: "But do you have corporate experience?"

Let me paint you a picture with numbers, because the data is almost comically absurd.

The Great Disappearing Act (That Never Reversed)

In 1980, if you looked at Fortune 500 boardrooms, you'd see a sea of military experience. 59% of CEOs had served. These were the people running General Motors, Procter & Gamble, Verizon—the companies that defined American business excellence.

By 2009: 8%.

Today, in 2024-2025? Still 8%.

That's an 86% collapse in representation that happened... and then just stayed there. For over 15 years, we've been stuck at this historically low level. The number stopped falling not because we solved the problem, but because it apparently hit some kind of floor.

But here's the kicker—it's not because military leadership got worse. If anything, it got better. Twenty years of active combat developing highly flexible and creative leaders ring a bell? Today's military leaders are operating with more sophistication, managing more complex technology, and navigating more ambiguous environments than ever before.

The Investment That Goes Nowhere

Let's talk money. The Department of Defense spends approximately $14 billion annually just on institutional training. That's not the full defense budget (which sits north of $850 billion). That's just the "let's make you an exceptional leader" budget.

For context, Harvard Business School's annual budget is about $1 billion. So we're spending 14x Harvard's entire annual budget every single year, creating leaders who've been tested in ways that make most corporate crises look like a missed Zoom call.

And then? These leaders transition out. About 200,000 per year. 20% want to start businesses. Many more want leadership roles.

The business world's response? "That's great, but what's your SAP experience?"

Or even worse, the question: "How does your military experience translate to the business world?"

------Intermission time for me to bang my head against my desk------

Where the Leaders Actually Go

Here's what's happening instead: Veterans own about 1.6 million businesses in America, generating over $1 trillion in revenue. That's impressive until you realize:

74% of these businesses are owned by people over 55
Younger veterans have LOWER entrepreneurship rates than non-veterans (this is new—post-WWII veterans started businesses at higher rates than civilians)
Veterans represent 6-7% of the population but make up only about 6% of business owners

In other words, we're maintaining rough parity at the small business level, but we've almost completely lost representation at the top. And that representation has been frozen at this low level for over a decade.

The Paradox That Should Bother Everyone

Studies (notably from Korn/Ferry) found that companies led by veteran CEOs delivered higher average returns than the S&P 500 over multiple time horizons. They outperformed. Consistently.

So let's review:

We invest billions in leadership development
The output consistently performs better
We've reduced utilization of that output by 86% at the executive level
And we've apparently decided that's... fine? Good enough?

If this were a manufacturing process, someone would have been fired decades ago.

Why This Isn't Just a Veterans Issue

Here's the part that should concern everyone: American businesses are currently experiencing what dozens of articles call a "leadership crisis." We can't find good leaders. Development programs aren't working. Succession planning is a disaster. MBA programs have lost their mojo.

Meanwhile, we have this massive, taxpayer-funded leadership development program that we're essentially ignoring the output of. And have been for 15+ years.

It's like complaining about the talent shortage while there's a line of qualified people outside the building, but we won't open the door because they're wearing the wrong shoes.

The Questions Worth Asking

This is going to be a series, because this topic has layers. But here are the questions I'm going to explore:

Translation Problem: Is there a language/cultural gap preventing veterans from effectively communicating their value?
Perception Problem: Do hiring managers harbor unconscious biases about military leadership styles?
Network Problem: Did the decline in veteran CEOs create a self-reinforcing cycle where fewer veteran leaders means fewer mentors and advocates for the next generation?
Structural Problem: Are there systemic barriers in how companies hire and promote that inadvertently screen out veteran candidates?
Utilization Problem: Are we failing to properly leverage the specific skills veterans bring, making it harder for them to demonstrate value?
Funding Problem: Where is the capital to support Veteran Entrepreneurs?
The Plateau Problem: Why has the number stayed flat at 8% for 15+ years? What invisible ceiling are we hitting?

Most importantly - do you truly appreciate veterans, or are you just thankful that it wasn't you that had to sacrifice? Veterans don't need your charity, they just need an opportunity.

The Bottom Line

American taxpayers are funding one of the most expensive and effective leadership development programs in human history. The output is demonstrably superior. We're barely using it after these heroes leave service. And we've apparently accepted this as the new normal.

That's not just bad for veterans. It's bad business. It's bad for shareholders. It's bad for the economy.

In the coming weeks, I'll be diving deep into each aspect of this puzzle. Because I believe we're sitting on a massive untapped resource—and the reasons we're ignoring it say more about corporate America's blind spots than they do about veteran capabilities.

If you're a veteran who's experienced this dynamic, I want to hear from you. If you're in leadership and have thoughts on why this gap exists, drop a comment. And if you think I'm completely wrong about this, definitely let me know.

This conversation is long overdue.

9. Trump nominates new Vice Chief of Army, moving Mingus out after less than two years

His statement in the subtitle indicates that we are losing another selfless officer.

Trump nominates new Vice Chief of Army, moving Mingus out after less than two years - Breaking Defense

Gen. Mingus “always intended” for this to be “his last job,” adding that “it is a little early, sure but not significant," an Army source told Breaking Defense.

By Carley Welch and Ashley Roque on October 21, 2025 12:10 pm

https://breakingdefense.com/2025/10/trump-nominates-new-vice-chief-of-army-moving-mingus-out-after-less-than-two-years/

breakingdefense.com · Carley Welch · October 21, 2025

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has nominated a new Vice Chief of Staff of the Army to replace Gen. James Mingus, who has served in the position since January of 2024.

According to the nomination posting, Trump nominated Lt. Gen. Christopher LaNeve for the position on Monday. LaNeve currently serves as an advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in his official capacity as the Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense.

Mingus has been the Vice Chief for less than two years, but an Army source told Breaking Defense that Mingus “always intended” for this to be “his last job,” adding that “it is a little early but not significant.”

A spokesperson from Mingus’ office did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Army public affairs or the Pentagon.

In a brief statement to Breaking Defense, Maj. Peter Sulzona, a spokesman for Mingus, said the service does not comment on pending nominations.

“Gen Mingus will continue to execute the duties & responsibilities of his position, focusing on warfighting and the wellbeing of soldiers,” Sulzona added.

Before taking his post at the beginning of last year, Mingus served as the J3, director for operations, and the Director of the Joint Staff in the Pentagon starting in 2020 under then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley. Prior to that, Mingus had stints serving as the deputy commander of the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson and commanding the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

During his time as vice serving under Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, Mingus helped oversee the Army Transformation Initiative, which has cut programs and rearranged funding in line with the service’s new priorities. Namely, the ATI has posed to put big ticket aviation programs on the chopping block, like the Gray Eagle drone, AH-64D Apaches, the Future Tactical Uncrewed Aircraft System competition and more. Mingus told the Army aviation community earlier this year that cuts “hurt,” but waiting to modernize is not an option, as Breaking Defense previously reported.

Mingus has also overseen the service’s sprawling Next Generation Command and Control — the service’s number one modernization priority that is meant to provide commanders and units a new approach to manage information, data, and command and control with agile and software-based architectures.

Meanwhile LaNeve, prior to advising Hegseth, served as the Commanding General of the Eighth Army in the Republic of Korea. Before that, he served as the Special Assistant to the Commanding General of Army Forces Command and the Commanding General of the 82nd Airborne Division.

It is not known currently when LaNeve’s nomination hearing will take place.

This article was updated on 10/21/2025 at 3:35pm Eastern with a comment from a spokesperson for Gen. James Mingus.

breakingdefense.com · Carley Welch · October 21, 2025

10. The Rebirth of War Under New Rules

Excerpt:

We’ve entered a world where lines blur, between soldier and contractor, state and corporation, war and business. The next decade belongs to those who can operate in that blur, adaptable, fast, and unsentimental. Nations will keep lying to themselves about “peacekeeping” and “stability operations.” But behind closed doors, the contracts are already written, the men are already trained, and the missions are already underway. The old world is dying. The new one belongs to those who understand that control is no longer about who governs, it’s about who moves.

The Rebirth of War Under New Rules

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rebirth-war-under-new-rules-aleksandar-o%C5%BEegovi%C4%87-envkf/

Aleksandar Ožegović

Chairman & CEO | Defence & High-Risk Logistics | Government Contracts | PMC Operations | Aviation & ISR Asset Sales

October 18, 2025

The world isn’t entering chaos, it’s reorganizing into a new kind of order. A quieter, colder one. Where power isn’t measured by alliances or treaties anymore, but by who controls the airfields, the ports, the routes, and the men willing to operate in the gray. Governments like to pretend they’re still in control. The truth is, the monopoly on force has already been broken, not by insurgents, but by economics. What’s happening globally is the systematic outsourcing of war itself. The actual state of play, as seen from the ground and through the lens of private operators, suppliers, and those still running the darker side of logistics.

Africa has always been written off by Western policymakers as a humanitarian case. Now it’s a strategic obsession. The entire continent is shifting under the weight of competing powers, Russia, China, the UAE, and various Western blocs all vying for influence, not through armies, but through contracts. The DRC is bleeding again, not over ideology, but cobalt and lithium. Gold from Sudan is funding both state militaries and rebel factions. Whoever secures the mineral belts between Congo, Zambia, and Tanzania effectively holds a stake in global tech, EV batteries, and defense production. The fight isn’t for land, it’s for logistics routes. Control the trucks, the roads, the ports, you control the flow of wealth. After Wagner’s internal restructuring, their influence didn’t vanish, it adapted. Their contractors remain embedded in Mali, Central African Republic, and Libya. Their model has become the template for hybrid influence: trade protection for mineral rights. With UN and Western forces scaling down, private operators like Tenebris, Amentum, and regional outfits are filling the gap. Infrastructure security, convoy management, extraction protection, and stabilization operations are becoming permanent fixtures. Africa is no longer a “developing market.” It’s the heart of the next global power competition and the fight is already in motion.

The Middle East isn’t “heating up”, it never cooled down. The headlines are just catching up. What’s happening there now is the transition from ideological conflict to structured proxy warfare.Iran doesn’t deploy divisions, it deploys networks. Its proxies operate like franchises: Hezbollah, the Houthis, Kata’ib Hezbollah, and the Syrian militias, all coordinated but decentralized. Drones, disinformation, and economic pressure are now Tehran’s main weapons. The Gaza conflict proved that information warfare is now just as powerful as firepower. Hamas turned every camera, every tweet, every civilian death into an operational tool. The battlefield isn’t just streets and tunnels anymore, it’s global media perception. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are no longer dependent buyers. They are building indigenous defense industries, training their own private cadres, and contracting globally for specialized skills. Their goal isn’t ideology, it’s deterrence through capability. They’ve studied every Western mistake, every failed counterinsurgency, and they’re applying it with money and precision. The Middle East is no longer a Western battlefield. It’s an ecosystem of self-sustaining power brokers, each with their own supply chains and private forces.

Ukraine has become a brutal showcase of modern warfare, where both sides are fighting with 21st-century surveillance and 20th-century attrition. Drones are the new artillery. What used to take a platoon and a week can now be done by one operator and a signal uplink. Ukrainian forces are manufacturing drones in basements, garages, and field depots faster than Western industries can produce standardized munitions. Sanctions hurt Moscow, but they didn’t paralyze it. Russia adapted by rerouting trade through Africa, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. Their arms production may be old-school, but it’s consistent, and that wins wars of endurance. Europe is unprepared for sustained warfare. Defense industries dismantled after the Cold War can’t meet demand. Ammunition shortages are chronic. The real question isn’t who’s winning militarily, it’s who will run out of industrial stamina first. Volunteers, contractors, and logistics specialists have quietly kept Ukraine’s rear operations running. This conflict has normalized what was once unspoken, private military participation as part of official defense ecosystems. The lesson is clear: wars are no longer won by armies alone. They’re won by those who can maintain logistics, supply, and adaptability under pressure.

The next global flashpoint isn’t Europe, it’s the Pacific. And it’s already happening, just without open declarations. The South China Sea is essentially militarized. Artificial islands, port deals, and fishing “fleets” that double as reconnaissance assets form a living blockade. Control of undersea internet cables and shipping routes gives Beijing leverage that no sanction can touch. Beijing won’t invade Taiwan unless it’s already won the war economically and digitally. The real siege is economic, choking supply routes, cyber operations, and psychological conditioning through disinformation. Small nations like the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Kiribati are now targets of major strategic investment. Whoever builds the airstrips, ports, and communication networks there controls Pacific access. The U.S. and Australia are trying to react, but they’re already behind schedule. The Pacific is no longer a theater of preparation. It’s a live operation conducted with trade agreements, satellite networks, and construction contracts.

The West isn’t collapsing because it’s weak militarily, it’s collapsing because it’s slow. Wars move faster than parliaments, and enemies don’t wait for committee votes. Western militaries can’t deploy what they can’t approve. Multi-year contracts, budget cycles, and endless oversight have made them predictable and slow-moving. The factories that built the Cold War arsenal are gone or privatized beyond government control. The defense sector depends on foreign raw materials and just-in-time supply chains, both fatal flaws in a real conflict. Social polarization has become a national vulnerability. It’s easier to destabilize a country from within than invade it from outside. The next wars in the West won’t be fought on borders, they’ll be fought in minds and data.

We’ve entered a world where lines blur, between soldier and contractor, state and corporation, war and business. The next decade belongs to those who can operate in that blur, adaptable, fast, and unsentimental. Nations will keep lying to themselves about “peacekeeping” and “stability operations.” But behind closed doors, the contracts are already written, the men are already trained, and the missions are already underway. The old world is dying. The new one belongs to those who understand that control is no longer about who governs, it’s about who moves.

11. Alarm Raised Over “An American KGB” Run Out of Gabbard’s National Intelligence Office

Alarm Raised Over “An American KGB” Run Out of Gabbard’s National Intelligence Office

https://www.spytalk.co/p/alarm-raised-over-an-american-kgb?utm

Group representing hundreds of former national security officials denounce ‘weaponization’ working group

Jeff Stein

Oct 21, 2025

∙ Paid

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard

An organization representing hundreds of former intelligence, law enforcement and State Department officials expressed alarm Tuesday over a report that the Office of National Intelligence was running a secretive group dedicated to identifying and rooting out perceived enemies of President Donald Trump.

The Steady State, founded in 2016 and composed of some 340 former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security, urged Congressional lawmakers to look into The Interagency Weaponization Working Group, whose activities were closely examined Monday in an exclusive report by the Reuters news agency. The group’s mission, it said, was “basically to go after ‘the Deep State,’” a term that Trump and his minions use to describe officials who have opposed the president’s positions and mandates, especially in the national security realm. Prime targets have been Justice Department officials, FBI agents and CIA officials who investigated the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia or prosecuted Jan. 6 rioters.

“Among those discussed by the interagency group,” according to veteran Reuters investigative reporter Jonathan Landay, citing a confidential source, “were former FBI Director James Comey; Anthony Fauci, Trump’s chief medical advisor on the COVID-19 pandemic; and former top U.S. military commanders who implemented orders to make COVID-19 vaccinations compulsory for servicemembers. Discussions of potential targets have ranged beyond current and former government employees to include former President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, the source said.”

Back in July, ODNI chief Tulsi Gabbard accused Obama adminsitration officials of engaging in a “treasonous conspiracy” to deny Trump the presidency in 2016.

Fox News Digital confirmed the existence of the group, saying in a headline that “Trump admin agencies [are] coordinating to expose Biden admin’s ‘prolific and dangerous’ weaponization of government.” It added: “The Interagency Weaponization Working Group (IWWG) is made up of officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA and more.”

In sharp contrast, The Steady State group labelled the revelation one of “the worst examples of intelligence politicization and misuse of security services in our history,” which “would represent a direct violation of the statutory and ethical boundaries designed to separate intelligence functions from domestic political operations.” If allowed to continue, the project would amount to a “transformation of our intelligence and law-enforcement institutions into a domestic surveillance or retribution mechanism—an American KGB—[that] would strike at the heart of our constitutional and democratic order,” it said.

In a letter to the top Republicans and Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence, judiciary and armed services committees, The Steady State called for swift, closed-door hearings with ODNI chief Tulsi Gabbard and Attorney General Pam Bondi “to determine the existence, authority and scope” of the interagency group.

The panels, it said, also should demand “all documents, communications, and membership lists” related to the group and “similar ‘weaponization’ initiatives,” and assess possible violations of the law and prohibitions on domestic intelligence activities.”

12. EXCLUSIVE: Pentagon clamps down on military interactions with Congress

I wonder what will be the rection of Congress? Of corure this will be panned by some while others might look at this as an opportunity. Theoretically this could make the Pentagon more responsive to Congress with the intent to "streamline activites" and "enhance compliance." Don't we all want enhanced compiliance?

Excertps:

The memo applies to senior department leaders, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff, combatant command heads, service secretaries and chiefs, directors of Defense Department agencies, and congressional affairs officials, amongst others.

However, the directive does not limit the authorities of the Pentagon’s comptroller, with the memo noting that the comptroller’s budget and appropriations affairs office will continue to service as the principal legislative liaison for the appropriations committees and the Congressional Budget Office. The authorities of the Pentagon’s general counsel also remain unchanged, and servicemembers and department employees still retain whistleblower protections and other rights granted by law to communicate with Congress, the memo states.

In addition to the new restrictions on congressional interaction, Hegseth and Feinberg have ordered the Pentagon’s assistant secretary of legislative affairs to conduct a comprehensive review of the department’s interactions with Congress. That report, which is expected in 90 days, should address “current issues, inefficiencies or misalignments in congressional engagement processes” and include proposals to “streamline activities” and “enhance compliance” in the realm of congressional affairs, the memo stated.

The memo authorizes the legislative affairs office to form working groups across the department to support the ongoing review. Meanwhile, Pentagon component heads and principal staff assistants have been given 30 days to provide contact information for the personnel supporting legislative affairs, organizational charts showcasing roles and responsibilities, and information on tools used to track congressional engagements.

EXCLUSIVE: Pentagon clamps down on military interactions with Congress - Breaking Defense

A Pentagon memo, obtained by Breaking Defense, now mandates that all communication with Congress be routed through its main legislative affairs office.

By Valerie Insinna and Theresa Hitchens on October 21, 2025 12:52 pm

breakingdefense.com · Valerie Insinna · October 21, 2025

WASHINGTON — Defense Department personnel will now have to coordinate all interactions with Congress through the Pentagon’s central legislative affairs office, according to a memo obtained by Breaking Defense — a change in policy that could further curb the flow of information streaming from the department to Capitol Hill.

In the Oct. 15 memo, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg direct Defense Department personnel — with the exception of the Pentagon’s inspector general office — to coordinate with the office of the assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs for all engagements and communication with Congress and state elected officials.

“The Department of War (DoW) relies on a collaborative and close partnership with Congress to achieve our legislative goals. This requires coordination and alignment of Department messaging when engaging with Congress to ensure consistency and support for the Department’s priorities to re-establish deterrence, rebuild our military, and revive the warrior ethos,” Hegseth and Feinberg wrote in the memo, which uses a secondary name for the Defense Department.

“Unauthorized engagements with Congress by DoW personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives,” Hegseth and Feinberg wrote later in the memo.

Under the terms of the directive, all interactions between Defense Department personnel and Congress or state elected officials, including those outside of the national capital region, require approval from the Pentagon’s legislative affairs office. Communication with Capitol Hill — including congressional reporting requirements, requests for information, drafting and technical assistance and legislative correspondence — must also be routed through the office.

The directive is a shift from previous policy, which allowed the military services, combatant commands and other Defense Department agencies to manage their own interactions with Congress — with senior leaders for those organizations often driving the level of engagement on Capitol Hill and each service having its own legislative affairs team.

Rep. George Whitesides, D-Calif, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told Breaking Defense that the move is unlikely to be received well on Capitol Hill.

“Congress decides who Congress will talk to, and the continued efforts of the secretary to wall off the department is not consistent with past tradition, and I frankly don’t think it’ll fly with the members or leaders of the committee,” he said.

One congressional aide told Breaking Defense that the new policy “could potentially backfire” on the department, especially as Congress hammers out details of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act and the corresponding appropriations bill. Sometimes, the staff writing those bills need information from the Pentagon, military services or combatant commands “within minutes.” If those details need to be cleared by the Pentagon’s main legislative affairs office, they may not arrive in time to impact pending legislation and may result in language that adversely impacts the military, the aide said.

After publication, Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement that the memo is a “pragmatic step” to internally review the department’s processes for communicating with Congress.

“The Department intends to improve accuracy and responsiveness in communicating with the Congress to facilitate increased transparency. This review is for processes internal to the Department and does not change how or from whom Congress receives information,” he said.

The memo applies to senior department leaders, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff, combatant command heads, service secretaries and chiefs, directors of Defense Department agencies, and congressional affairs officials, amongst others.

However, the directive does not limit the authorities of the Pentagon’s comptroller, with the memo noting that the comptroller’s budget and appropriations affairs office will continue to service as the principal legislative liaison for the appropriations committees and the Congressional Budget Office. The authorities of the Pentagon’s general counsel also remain unchanged, and servicemembers and department employees still retain whistleblower protections and other rights granted by law to communicate with Congress, the memo states.

In addition to the new restrictions on congressional interaction, Hegseth and Feinberg have ordered the Pentagon’s assistant secretary of legislative affairs to conduct a comprehensive review of the department’s interactions with Congress. That report, which is expected in 90 days, should address “current issues, inefficiencies or misalignments in congressional engagement processes” and include proposals to “streamline activities” and “enhance compliance” in the realm of congressional affairs, the memo stated.

The memo authorizes the legislative affairs office to form working groups across the department to support the ongoing review. Meanwhile, Pentagon component heads and principal staff assistants have been given 30 days to provide contact information for the personnel supporting legislative affairs, organizational charts showcasing roles and responsibilities, and information on tools used to track congressional engagements.

Updated 10/21/2025 at 8:50 p.m. ET with a statement from Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell .

Ashley Roque contributed to this report.

breakingdefense.com · Valerie Insinna · October 21, 2025

13. The U.S. Is Trying to Drive a Wedge Between Argentina and China

Then it would seem to make sense to bail them out and buy their beef.

The U.S. Is Trying to Drive a Wedge Between Argentina and China

The South American country is relying on the U.S. and Wall Street banks for a bailout

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/the-u-s-is-trying-to-drive-a-wedge-between-argentina-and-china-e4551dd7

By Brian Schwartz

Oct. 21, 2025 8:00 pm ET

Argentine President Javier Milei speaking in a meeting in the White House last week. Alex Wroblewski/Press Pool

Quick Summary

The Trump administration has held talks with Argentina to limit China’s influence in the country.View more

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is pushing officials in Argentina to limit China’s influence over the distressed South American nation at the same time the U.S. and Wall Street banks are working on a $40 billion lifeline for Buenos Aires.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has spoken in recent weeks with Luis Caputo, Argentina’s economic minister, about curbing China’s ability to access the country’s resources, including critical minerals. In addition, they have discussed granting the U.S. expanded access to the country’s uranium supply, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.

Administration officials are trying to counter Beijing’s influence by encouraging Argentina’s leaders to strike deals with U.S. companies as a way to jump-start infrastructure projects and investments in key sectors such as telecommunications, the people said.

China is Argentina’s second-largest trading partner after Brazil and the top buyer of its agricultural exports.

“Stabilizing Argentina is ‘America First,’” a Treasury Department spokesman said. “A strong, stable Argentina helps anchor a prosperous Western Hemisphere, which is explicitly in the strategic interest of the United States.”

A spokeswoman for Argentina’s Finance Ministry declined to comment. A spokesman for Argentine President Javier Milei didn’t respond to requests for comment.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, fourth from left, and Milei, center, at a meeting in Buenos Aires in April. Argentinian Presidency/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The conversations come as Argentina is increasingly turning to the U.S. for help. The administration of the libertarian Milei is grappling with significant obstacles to his ambitious economic overhaul agenda and fighting against runaway inflation. After cutting government spending and taking unpopular measures to narrow a budget gap, the Milei administration is now facing mounting debt payments next year and empty government coffers. Foreign currency reserves are also diminishing as Argentines rush to the safety of the dollar to hedge against economic turbulence risks ahead of Sunday’s midterm elections.

Milei has built close ties with President Trump, who has sought to boost Milei’s party’s political standing. Argentina launched talks with the U.S. after Milei’s party suffered a setback in a provincial election in September, causing the peso to plummet and signaling weakened public support for Milei’s pro-market overhauls.

Weeks after the election, Caputo flew to Washington to meet with Bessent to discuss options for financial assistance. The two sides have since agreed to a $20 billion currency swap with the Treasury Department and a separate $20 billion bank-led debt facility that has yet to be structured with assets or guarantees to ensure banks will get their money back.

A focal point of the discussions between Caputo and Bessent has been encouraging Argentina to push back on China’s growing presence in Milei’s country, the people said.

Command Through Collapse: A Division’s Fight on the Eastern Flank Deterrence Line - Modern War Institute

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/command-through-collapse-a-divisions-fight-on-the-eastern-flank-deterrence-line/

mwi.westpoint.edu · James J. Torrence · October 22, 2025

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Prologue: The Division Arrives Light

MoD Bunker, Warsaw

Day -6

1300L

Commanders from across NATO had already been gathered in Warsaw for the Future Land Forces Conference when the intelligence arrived: Russian formations in Belarus had begun shifting west, beyond their exercise corridors. The alert had not caught them off guard; it triggered a process long rehearsed. United States Army Europe and Africa (USAREUR-AF), working in close coordination with Joint Force Command Brunssum, had moved immediately to synchronize force posture and logistics while the Polish Ministry of Defense had identified a secure bunker beneath the city for military leaders to finalize war plans execution. Leaders across the alliance now turned quietly toward their purpose: to defend every inch of allied territory.

The bunker felt closed and airless, the sound of filtration steady under the briefers’ voices. A map of northeastern Europe filled the wall display, the Suwałki corridor marked in red and blue. Major General Jonathan Keller, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, stood with a notebook at his side as Joint Force Command Brunssum set the priority of effort for NATO’s Regional Plan Center.

United States Army Europe and Africa, as the Multinational Corps Land Component Command, tasked V Corps to hold a theater reserve for a counterattack and directed 4th Infantry Division to secure the corridor. The order carried no surprise. The corridor was the seam, and seams had to hold.

4th Infantry Division was not at full strength. Rotations had not aligned. One brigade was still in reception near Poznań, while another remained with V Corps along the Vistula River. The division would deploy as a composite force drawn from what was already forward: 2-66 Armor, 3-61 Cavalry, 4-42 Field Artillery, and sustainers from 64th Brigade Support Battalion, reinforced by Polish, British, and Lithuanian liaison teams.

Those three combat battalions had been reactivated to serve as NATO battle groups under division control, each configured as a battalion-plus formation with armor, infantry, and enablers to support NATO’s war plans. They were lean, connected to allied partners, and prepared to expand to brigade size at the time of need.

The design came from USAREUR-AF and V Corps. The heavier forces stayed pooled for the reserve. 4th Infantry Division would enter light by intent, tasked to fight with what the theater could spare and to test how well a headquarters could synchronize coalition partners under pressure.

Keller studied the map. There was little depth to trade, only time to gain. He underlined two words in his notes—“hold fast”—then folded a page and slid it beneath his watchband.

Around him, officers gathered their cables and tablets. The map dimmed to a standby glow, leaving the bunker gray and silent. Above, Warsaw moved in its evening rhythm, lights changing over traffic and shopfronts. Keller stepped into the stairwell and felt the air grow colder as he climbed.

Six days to move. A light division built for a heavy task. The decision was made.

Chapter 1: Notification and Preparation

Camp Boles, Bolesławiec

Day -4

1815L.

“The line we drew, the war we inherited.”

Keller stood in his operations center in Camp Boles while his staff briefed the plan for the division’s role in the Eastern Flank Deterrence Line (EFDL).Red threads from Kaliningrad wrapped Vilnius, Riga, and the Suwałki corridor; blue US battalions and green Baltic, Polish, German, and British formations interlocked along NATO’s eastern flank; translucent arrows showed reinforcement routes. Keller scribbled a note on a torn map margin—“make it real.” He folded it twice, and when the Polish liaison said “4th Infantry Division is the tempo setter, and if this breaks open you are the decisive point,” he circled the seams where coalition command and control would shear first.

He marked the finish on the corridor’s ridge. He framed the supporting efforts: counterbattery massed as the deep shaping effort, interdiction against crossings, deception signatures to draw sensors, and counterreconnaissance forward of the close area. He told sustainers to treat the support and consolidation areas as contested ground: dispersion, local security, displacement drills, short-range air defense, and C-UAS (counter-uncrewed aircraft systems) over every logistics node.

For the air picture he assumed the system would bend. The staff prebuilt lanes and time windows any headquarters could use if the polished plan cracked: airspace boxes for unmanned aircraft, short windows for time on target, and a conservative air order that could collapse to timed blocks when the sky turned noisy.

Two days later a secure burst from USAREUR-AF put the division in a heightened posture with four days to move and tightened emissions control. Keller’s critical information requirements fit on a card under his watchband.

* * *

Suwałki Ridge, South Approaches

Day -2

0930L

Air planners filed simple boxes over the ridge, an emergency high‑density zone for close air support if needed, and two deep corridors (North Ladder and Fox Line) for larger unmanned systems to range forward for targets and radar cues. Small drones stayed in local, low-altitude bands behind friendly lines. If jamming came, traffic would internally auto-sort based on time and altitude; updates to the air plan would ride on the half hour.

Captain Felix Márquez led the forward command-and-control team into Vilnius with a mix of old and new gear. Some sets rode the division’s mobile mesh network; others kept classic voice and satellite links alive. End‑user devices ran a common situational awareness app familiar to squads and scouts. The near‑term job was easy to say and hard to do: Link into Lithuania’s digital fires network without choking intelligence feeds, tie Polish logistics nodes into NATO reporting, and publish a communications plan with real fallbacks so one dead app didn’t take the whole picture down.

Orders from USAREUR-AF were straightforward: 4ID assumes Multinational Deterrent Sector 2, synchronizes with Poland’s 18th Mechanized Division and the British 3rd Division (UK 3 Div), ties to 1st German-Netherlands Corps, and anchors defense across Suwałki. Russian commercial-look satellites kept time like metronomes; swarms rehearsed from Kaliningrad; and offensive cyberspace operations probed US and NATO networks looking for weaknesses to exploit.

Márquez kept a laminated card in his left shoulder pocket and touched it when the room went loud. Two paths make one, one path makes none. He did not fear the enemy as much as the single point of failure that lives in peacetime networks.

Keller gave his orders: Isolate the approach corridors with countermobility and fires; dislocate armor with the Hill 47 attack and rapid repositioning; disintegrate enemy command and control by cutting spectrum and forcing procedural control; destroy units that remain in the registered kill areas. He told his division they “must move like a division, think like a joint headquarters, speak like a coalition node, and survive like a platoon in contact.”

Lieutenant Colonel Linda Martin, the division signal officer, sat with a Lithuanian cyber officer over spectrum plots and interface matrices. Lithuanian quadcopters rode C-band with LoRa wireless communication fallbacks; Polish Warmate loitering munition teams commanded through Poland’s TOPAZ fire control system; British command posts still pushed voice and data on the Bowman tactical communications system with Link-16 tactical data link gateways at division; US battalions were running an Integrated Tactical Network with tablets at the edge.

When Márquez called from a Polish tent that TOPAZ would not handshake with US Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS) unless they eased the Cross-Domain Solution (CDS) policy and normalized grids, Martin said they either trust and log the risk or shoot nothing. With two Polish and two US sergeants, they brought the Artillery Systems Cooperation Activities (ASCA) bridge up, patched the CDS rule to pass vetted fires metadata only, and hard-forced eight-digit grid precision regardless of sender.

At division fires, a beta Artillery Execution Suite (AXS) node ran beside AFATDS. AXS built targets fast and clean and pushed them across ASCA, while AFATDS remained the certified channel to the launchers. If AXS hiccuped, the team fell back to AFATDS; if AFATDS lagged, AXS prepared the thread and passed the data in one cut.

The plan assumed a shared NATO logistics map, a single picture fed by the alliance’s Mission Partner Environment and its logistics tool, LOGFAS. The ground said otherwise. Estonia did not feed a live system; a staff officer emailed a daily spreadsheet that served as the logistics report. Germany tracked trucks and pallets inside its national system, and its data would not line up with the US Army’s own tracker. Movement control posted the same convoy in two different deployment databases and the entries rarely landed in the same hour.

The systems were named differently in every headquarters, but the effect was the same: Clocks drifted, fields did not match, and no one source could be trusted on its own. Fuel and ammunition moved while the picture lagged by hours. Escorts waited for convoys that existed twice on a screen and once on a road. Medical resupply missed a window because one feed showed the route green and another showed it blocked. Planners added buffers and reconciled by hand before a truck rolled.

USAREUR-AF asked for forecasts with decimals; Keller’s support brigade sent fuel by jerry can, rounds by crate, and casualties by blood bag. When a depot near Druskininkai was burned by a Russian reconnaissance quadcopter, they ghosted it, spun a heat-signature decoy with diesel drums and dead servers, and rerouted on paper because, as a Lithuanian captain said while tucking Keller’s handwritten intent under his plate, “When the network falters, paper travels farther than packets.”

Airspace for evacuation stayed simple: The medical lane was published every hour; if radios died, flares opened the sky and gunners held fire on a single code word.

That one rule kept a Role 2 medical facility alive. A blood resupply convoy slid through the hour and a surgeon who had been awake for twenty-three hours kept a Lithuanian crew chief on the table long enough for the bird to lift. Nobody wrote that into the plan. They kept the lane amber and it mattered.

A midnight ambush cut a UK–Lithuanian convoy and drew a hive of first‑person‑view (FPV) drones. The joint fires net blinked and then went dark. Keller woke fires, signals, and the land component. “Synchronize under doubt,” he wrote. “It’s safer than waiting for perfect.” He pushed intent on paper: Keep moving; act on commander’s intent; if cut off, defer to the adjacent unit; execute sector tasks through the next twelve hours of darkness. He penciled air rules in the margin: Big drones stay on the corridors even if the common picture dies; small drones at company and battalion levels roam under local control to blunt the assault; the evacuation lane is amber; ground‑based air defense fights with optics unless the air picture is clean. The runner grinned without humor. The sky already sounded wrong.

Chapter 2: Deployment and Contact

Suwałki Corridor, Central Sector

Day 3

0312L

“Friction has a pulse. And it speaks Russian.”

West of Hill 47, the day opened over a torn tree line. Russia’s 20th Combined Arms Army drove with drone-directed artillery, armor under canopy, and layered swarms. Poland’s 18th Mechanized Division and UK 3 Div held the flanks; Keller’s center took the weight. The division pushed deep effects: counterbattery against rocket footprints; interdiction at bridgeheads; deception heat blooms over empty lots; corridors for larger drones tightened to keep flight paths predictable for air defense and fires; small drones kept free inside local altitude slices where companies could steer them without a master map. For twelve hours, higher saw blur. On the ground, tasks stayed small and exact.

At 0312, the network blinked and lied. A forged login whispered reset to friendly radios, screens went blank, ASCA queues stalled, enemy armor appeared where they were not, and blue icons vanished where people bled. Martin told her team the spectrum is ground and said they would fight for it like a bridge.

Fallbacks took over. The plan was simple to remember under stress. First, the handheld mesh that let squads talk. If that died, short satellite bursts that could sneak through the noise. If that failed, old voice nets that hopped across frequencies. If even that failed, long-range HF and runners with folded cards. Everyone knew the sequence and nobody waited for perfection.

At division, the big machines still mattered. The common operational picture that higher headquarters used to synchronize fires and airspace limped along in guarded rooms that passed only what was essential. At the edge, brigades and companies did what worked without a clean map. An air sentry, a cheap quadcopter hovering at treetop over the point man, watched for the shimmer that gives FPV teams away when hot exhaust and moving glass disturb the foreground. Mobile counterdrone crews circled casualty sites and gun lines with a rhythm they could keep in their heads—jam, pause, kill.

Air rules went to paper. Close air support slid west behind an emergency box. The two named corridors for the larger drones, Fox Line and North Ladder, were kept alive with printed bird tables, simple altitude and time gates pinned to maps so units could fly without a digital plot. Ground air defense switched to optics unless the picture was clean by voice. A short fragment went out on the net so nobody guessed. No drones over food and water convoys. No close air support in sector. The medical lane is amber.

At company level, the drone fight stayed plain. FPV teams launched from culverts and hedges. Some carried formed charges for engine decks. Some flew empty to burn down enemy jammers. Pocket repeaters the size of a palm lifted the swarm over dead ground. When the interference dipped, small fixed-wing drones ferried printed cards that told who was where and what needed to be hit. It was not pretty, and it was not silent, yet it kept the line from coming apart.

Keller displaced the command post three times in six hours. A loitering munition took out the deputy operations officer; the fires planner lost a leg; and the signals intelligence chief arrived bandaged. With four of ten senior staff down and a third of battalion commanders off net, Keller’s FRAGO (fragmentary order) went paper and voice: decentralized execution; fires on positive identification; protect the line and civilians; kill what you can see. A one-line report rode any live path to Wiesbaden: sector under full assault; signal denied; decentralized fires; buying time, not terrain.

Airspace fell to simple rules: five‑minute clear‑sky windows for evacuation; then altitude slices; larger drones on corridors for sensing and strike, small drones free under company bands with local checks to prevent friendly fire. It was risky but better than grounded assets. Casualties spiked; the medical facility overflowed; the evacuation box stayed open on flares and code words.

UK 3 Div tried to pass a strike through the common-launcher pilot. The message died on a grid mismatch between British and American fire control systems. A Polish fire support officer, flank compressing, fired locally; the round fell short into a US cavalry screen. Keller cut off blame: Fix doctrine later, figure out how to survive now.

Under the canopy east of Hill 47, the fires cell ran the AXS and AFATDS side by side. AXS threaded the mission fast, cleaned the metadata, and passed it over ASCA; AFATDS verified, certified, and sent the launch message. When the net lied again, AFATDS held the floor while AXS cached targets and routes for the next window.

Martin pushed Márquez forward with a rugged tablet, two radios, three batteries, and laminated fire cards. Márquez forced grid normalization, translated Polish TOPAZ to AFATDS over ASCA, and used a Norwegian Teledyne FLIR Black Hornet nano-UAS checksum with one blink meaning good. The chain shrank to three humans and a drone, and rounds started hitting their targets.

Air control stayed procedural: A single named box reopened for timed stacks; drones flowed one‑way on Fox Line; air defenses got printed bird tables. If it wasn’t on the card, you didn’t fly or fire.

Martin collapsed remaining satellite traffic to one masked node in a farm tower near Alytus dressed like a civilian cell phone tower. Fires moved as short, staggered bursts. Every byte a bullet; every burst bought relative advantage. A Polish HIMARS (high-mobility artillery rocket system) volley launched off a US tablet with a Polish overlay and a Norwegian confirm; an enemy column folded on the approach. A guided bomb killed the tower the next day. It had purchased sixteen hours. Sixteen hours changed the battlefield geometry.

With the common operational picture gone, Keller pinned a paper map to a folding table and wrote eight‑digit grids in pencil, question marks on assumptions, and Xs on targets. “This is a thinking fight,” he said. “We’ll think faster.” He pushed 2‑66 Armor to retake Hill 47 overlooking the approach and delegated fire approval to platoon leaders with one guardrail: positive identification. Deconfliction became time slices and altitude gates. UAS relayed and struck—larger ones stayed on the corridors, smaller ones served as local couriers and knives when the target was clean. Close air support came when weather or windows allowed, not on demand.

A MEDEVAC (medical evacuation) bird lost a rotor to fragmentation and taxied across stubble while FPVs hunted heat. A British section hauled a Lithuanian crew from a burning track into a Polish ambulance without a shared word. A US mortar line pushed illumination into a low ceiling that returned light like a rebuke. The Role 2 medical facility shifted triage twice in an hour; urgent surgical bled into priority and back. Keller slid a creased intent to a lieutenant whose hands shook. Paper steadied them both.

Keller read every name on the casualty list. Names are not numbers. Every name is a decision he still owed them.

By evening on day 4, the enemy salient was deep but thin. Martin pointed to a gap in the jamming. There it is—a window. Lithuanian decoys lit the west to pull enemy eyes; British guns stacked time‑on‑target on Polish grids Márquez had validated; a French recon troop pushed a live correction through a coalition suite into the mission‑partner feed; U.S. FPV strike cells flew engine deck to engine deck while sacrificial drones climbed to soak jammer cycles. In that shaped ten‑minute quiet, 2‑66 Armor took Hill 47 and registered the road beneath it. A three‑dimensional fires box snapped on for ten minutes; aircraft slid in dry while artillery owned the stack; the corridor narrowed to two‑ship chains; one in, one out.

The counterattack formed as parts that found one another. Polish tanks from the south; British artillery stacked time on target across the center; a French quick reaction force cut the seam; Lithuanian scouts marked egress; US cavalry screened the far slope and killed the first three counterpushes. The common launcher behaved after the ASCA fix and CDS patch; it didn’t look like the PowerPoint slide he saw at the Polish MoD, just professionals solving the same problem with different approaches. The sky’s noise thinned. A lane opened. Martin shoved a fires burst through it. For the first time in forty-eight hours, more blue call signs checked in than MEDEVAC nine-lines.

Day 5 began in hard rain; enemy swarms flew lower to keep link. The division used the weather to its advantage. FPV strike cells hunted under cloud; counterswarm teams used directional emitters and shotguns to quiet city blocks of air; the mesh ladder climbed tree lines one hop at a time. Keller sent a quadcopter with a printed SITREP (situation report) to 1st German-Netherlands Corps headquarters: still fighting; southern ridge held; immediate reinforcement required. Eleven hours later, French and Polish quick reactions surged the seam. The salient kinked, then broke. Armor tried to exfil on roads British guns had preregistered; a Norwegian drone walked the last adjustments. Trucks moved; field hospitals breathed; the sky sounded like wind again. Air control shifted back to positive steps; evacuation widened; and managed corridors reopened for larger drones while small ones stayed under local bands to keep air defenses safe.

In a barn missing a wall, Keller wrote that what remained of the division was decisions, not systems. The division had kept the fight when it tried to slide away; it was enough. He unfolded the first scrap that said “make it real” and added transitions on a new card: defense → counterattack without pause; digital → paper without losing the ground picture; dispersed → massed effects → dispersed again before retaliation. He folded both under his watchband.

Review teams found not a flawless overlay but adaptation. Fires coordinated by intent. Sustainment moved by runners and memory when the Mission Partner Environment wasn’t accessible. Decentralized decisions at platoon and company levels matched the commander’s intent. Drones served as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, relays, decoys, and strikes. Counterspoofing restored trust to the air picture. Adjustments captured three truths: command through collapse; signal is terrain; trust over network traffic.

Next-generation command and control was refit to fail gracefully: radios autoshifted based on enemy activity in the electromagnetic spectrum; coalition CDS policies were written for operators under fire; a common data model was enforced at the edge to kill grid errors. Martin’s notes became habits: Build for fragility; fight for spectrum; teach redundancy as muscle memory; make intent the currency; and remember that when the network fails, paper goes where packets cannot.

Chapter 3: Adaptation and Lessons

Kaunas Rail Yard

Day 6

1100L

“We didn’t win with better tools. We won with better decisions.”

Units reassembled in pieces. The sustainment brigade returned as trucks, fragments, and operators who could identify jammer types by ear. In Kaunas, Keller told the staff the war gave no time to be right, only time to act. A Lithuanian runner held up the creased intent page that had crossed three pockets and a boot.

In Wiesbaden, asked whether he had authorized a French drone team to mark targets without the joint fires net, Keller said the net was gone, a Polish battalion was about to be flanked, and the only eyes he trusted in that minute were over the field. He would do it again if winning remained the task. People who had been in mud and noise let out a breath that meant recognition more than agreement.

Windows appeared when routines were stressed: A nine-minute jamming lull became a four-minute mesh build; a twenty-minute deception heat bloom created a twelve-minute fires window; a drying road gave sustainment an hour on paper while feeds caught up. Radios shifted modes without heroics; a common data model let a British grid ride a Polish tablet into a US mission; an attritable fixed-wing courier carried a printed card because nobody trusted a single perfect picture.

The runner had not learned English beyond maps and numbers. He did not need more. He felt the paper warm in his fist as he ran the ditch west of the rail yard and thought that paper communicates when radios cannot.

Interoperability had been the rehearsal word; interdependence described contact. British guns adjusted to Polish targets on US eyes. A Norwegian drone dropped a packet on a Lithuanian hood. French and Polish quick reactions moved on a US division’s paper SITREP because when the network ends, intent doesn’t. Regional plans absorbed phrases that sound like lived experience: intent-defined synchronization, trust-based delegation, counterreconnaissance by swarm, deception by heat, communications by air sentry.

Martin wrote out five lessons learned to command and control on the modern battlefield. Connectivity is battlespace and must be fought like ground. Mission command is the default, not the exception. Redundancy is survival—two paths make one; one path makes none. Bandwidth is not assurance—shared intent is. Build systems that function when broken and train people who function alone. Two implementation notes stuck: Publish coalition CDS policies operators can use under fire and enforce a common standard sector-wide to kill silent grid errors.

The formal end state read clean: The 20th Combined Arms Army broke contact west of the ridge; the corridor reopened; Lithuanian units rejoined; French and Polish quick reactions consolidated gains; British guns raked exits. On the ground it looked like unescorted trucks, quieter triage tents, and a morning when the sky’s sound finally thinned. The line held. The corridor stayed open. The allies won. Keller set the first folded scrap beside the last, smoothed both with his palm, and slid them under his watchband.

Author’s note: Sample products from the story can be found by clicking on the following links.

Fragmentary Order (FRAGO) 02 to Operations Order (OPORD) 25-06 (Multinational Deterrent Sector 2)

PACE Communications Card (MDS2)

Coalition Fires Quick-Reference (AXS/ASCA/CDS)

Lieutenant Colonel James J. Torrence, US Army, is the commander of the 39th Strategic Signal Battalion in Chièvres, Belgium. He holds an MS in strategic design and management, an MS in cybersecurity, a master of military art and science, and a doctorate in strategic security. Torrence is a LTG (Ret) James M. Dubik Writing Fellow. He has deployed twice to Afghanistan as a battalion communications officer and has served in various military leadership positions in the United States, Germany, Belgium, Korea, and Israel.

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

Image credit: Sgt. Collin Mackall, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · James J. Torrence · October 22, 2025

15. What the Military Does

A human story.

What the Military Does

Evan Slusser

October 22, 2025

warontherocks.com · October 22, 2025

What struck me most was the pain in his eyes. Not the kind of pain that announces itself with dramatics, but the slower variety that settles into the contours of a face and refuses to leave. A countenance of struggle, though that makes it sound more noble than I remember it. This was the look of someone who’d told this story before, probably many times, each telling an attempt to persuade someone who refused to believe.

Whether those rehearsals had been to other pilots over beers, or in his head during the long stretches between missions, or in front of a bathroom mirror in the morning trying to convince himself of a version of events he could live with, I couldn’t say. But the performance had been refined to the point where you could see the boundaries, could tell where the authentic memory ended and the protective narrative began.

It hurt him to tell it. More specifically, it hurt him to admit he hadn’t killed anyone.

He described how the bomb had hit the sloped sides of a wadi, a makeshift irrigation ditch, in most cases, one of thousands that scar the landscape like abandoned projects. He used the term with the casualness of someone who’d spent enough time in Afghanistan that the vocabulary had become natural. His story unfolded in the ungodly hours of the morning, which is military speak for a time when nothing good happens, everyone’s decision-making is compromised by exhaustion, and an easy moral flexibility creeps in.

“The guy was digging a hole,” he told me. “What good can anyone be up to at three in the morning?”

I thought about the condemnation silently. Maybe he was planting some improvised explosive. Maybe he was doing something else nefarious. Maybe he was depressed like the rest of us and couldn’t sleep, or maybe, like my own father had done, he was burying the dog in the middle of the night so his children didn’t have to see.

Regardless, he was to die.

The point isn’t whether the call was right or wrong. I wasn’t there, I don’t know what intelligence they had, and I’m not going to pretend from the comfort of hindsight that I could have made a better decision. War is full of impossible choices made with incomplete information, and sometimes killing someone is the least bad option available. Sometimes, the people who have to make those calls carry the weight of them for the rest of their lives, regardless of whether they were justified.

But that’s not this story.

This is the story of a bomb that landed on the side of the ditch and buried itself in the ground without detonating. A dud. The thing that was supposed to end a life just sat there, inert. It’s probably still sitting there now for all he knows.

“It was the angle it impacted, I think,” he said, which struck me as the kind of technical explanation you offer when you’re looking for exoneration. He was probably right about the angle, in a purely physical sense. But we weren’t really talking about physics.

“That sucks,” I said, attempting consolation. But he wasn’t having it. I doubt I was even a part of the conversation anymore. His mind was clearly back in Afghanistan, likely flipping all the switches in his cockpit and double-checking the release parameters from memory.

“I mean, I’m sure the concussion of it fucked him up, right?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably.”

Sadly, though that’s a regrettable use of the word, he’d reached minimum fuel levels shortly after and was forced to head back to the airbase before he could assess the damage. In the following days, he was unable to gather any news of the strike. He would never get his closure.

He sat down, finding the nearest chair in the ready room, and sipped his coffee. He was an admirable man. I say that wholeheartedly. I routinely looked up to him not only as a pilot, but for his dedication as a friend to me and many others, and as a father to his children. But it was sad to see him so broken by what many people would probably fail to understand. I often think about how much damage one unexploded bomb can do to two people. On the one hand, a man dropped a bomb trying to kill someone and didn’t. On the other hand, a man who someone tried to drop a bomb on but survived. It feels strange. The shape of both their lives would never be the same, forever tied to that moment, and to one another.

When I joined the military, one of my father’s final pieces of advice was, “When you’re in the military, you want to do what the military does.” I didn’t know what he meant by that. I was 21 and dead set on being in Top Gun.

What does the military do, after all? Missions range from war to humanitarian aid. I chalked it off as another one of my dad’s quotes he just liked and said whenever he thought it’d apply. But that night, a decade later, in that ready room, talking to that pilot, I started to understand it. When you’re in the military, you want to kill.

At least, that’s the easiest way to contextualize it, but it’s not the whole picture.

It’s not just killing. That’s too simple for the nuance, too clean for the reality. More accurate is seeking validation, which sounds less honorable but cuts closer to the truth. The exact internal mechanism that drives civilians to chase likes on social media or seek corner office promotions is the same hunger for external confirmation that you matter, that you’ve done something worth recognizing. Wanting those specific medals and ribbons on your chest that say: “I’ve been there, I’ve done that.” Those credentials that give you room to speak in a culture that is quick to silence those who haven’t crossed certain lines. It’s insidious precisely because it’s so ordinary, so human. Looking back, the evidence of conditioning was everywhere.

One evening, in late 2019, as the other pilots and I in the squadron posed for a harmless photo with wives, husbands, and other partners before celebrating the Marine Corps’ birthday, our commanding officer at the time stared us down. A cohort of mostly junior captains, his only comment to us as he stared at our medal-less dress blues was, “We need to get you guys to war!”

Met with applause, laughter, and other sneers from senior ranking officers, we agreed, toasted, and celebrated without thinking twice. The comment landed as a joke, as motivation, as aspiration, all at once. Nobody questioned it. Because that would mark you as soft, as someone who didn’t understand what we were here for. The culture of such an organization doesn’t announce itself with policy memos. It seeps in through moments like these, small enough to seem innocent, frequent enough to rewire how you think. I felt nothing as I watched the wives laugh along. As if sending their husbands off to war was the obvious next step. Such ideas didn’t get in the way of our photos.

There’s a clear line between those who have and those who haven’t that deliberately ignores the idea of anything else. Not those who served with honor versus those who didn’t. Not those who were ready versus those who weren’t. It was either you deployed to combat or not. Killed or didn’t. So unashamed of its bias, there’s no need to hide it. It bothers me that I was more hesitant toward the idea of landing on an aircraft carrier at night than I was to the idea of taking a life.

Some prominent essays from earlier in my career, written mostly by Marine infantry officers, circulated among us in various units and squadrons, detailing their struggles to come to terms with never having seen combat while serving. Shame, embarrassment, and guilt consumed their testimonies. To say I didn’t relate or understand would be a lie. People in those situations are treated as lesser or unequal. And after enough time marinating in that judgment, you start to internalize it; to start to believe that maybe they’re right and maybe you are somehow incomplete.

When I read those articles, the words felt hesitant. Restrained, but on the verge of finally saying what needed to be said: It wasn’t about combat, it was about killing. Even in combat, there’s a hierarchy. This pilot had deployed before, met all the other metrics you could ask for in a career, but he’d never taken a life. I watched him, sitting there, despondent over a missed opportunity to check off that necessary item. That night was supposed to be his first. The kill that would prove he belonged among those who had. Instead, the moment passed without ceremony, and he carried it like something broken.

The idea consumed me as well. Staring at people’s uniforms became a habit, judging them instantly based on what was displayed. I locked myself in the backrooms of our intelligence sections, watching recordings of other pilots dropping bombs on people overseas, wondering what it felt like. Could I do it? Would people treat me better? Would I finally feel proud of my service?

The ease with which these other pilots discussed killing inspired envy, but the bottom line was evident: Pilots who had been in combat were better than those who hadn’t. Pilots who have killed other people in combat are better than those who haven’t.

The story he was telling didn’t bother me. It was understanding his pain so completely that did. Sitting across from him that evening, watching him relive the moment his bomb failed to detonate, all I thought about was how much sense he made, how his regret was perfectly logical within our world. The same feelings would overwhelm me if our positions were reversed. I saw my own future staring back at me.

Staying in long enough, getting more deployments, finally getting the chance to prove our worthiness, it was obvious that all roads led here. Either killing someone and spending the rest of life carrying that weight, or not killing and spending the rest of life feeling like a failure. Either way, losing something that couldn’t be recovered. The culture didn’t offer a third option. Only validation or shame.

My own service ended not many years after that conversation, but not because I saw the danger in what he displayed. I left for different reasons entirely. At the time, I understood his pain not as a warning but as an aspiration. Of course, he felt that way. Of course, I would feel that way too. The thought of ending up in that ready room 20 years later, carrying regret over a bomb that didn’t explode, that seemed acceptable, even noble, because at least I would have tried. At least I would have been there. The culture had worked on me.

It’s only now, years removed, that I can see how perverted that was. How I’d internalized a value system that made me view another man’s anguish over not killing someone as perfectly reasonable. How I wore my deployments with frustration, not because of what I’d done, but because of what I hadn’t.

That pilot found another war, of course. There’s always another one if you wait long enough. This time, it’s cartels instead of insurgents, boats instead of wadis. The mission changes, but the goal remains the same. And I hope he gets the chance.

I know how that sounds. I know what you think I mean. That I hope he finally gets to complete his mission. That I hope the bomb works this time. That I hope he gets the feeling he’s been chasing since that night in Afghanistan when a bomb buried itself in the earth and spared a man digging a hole.

But that’s not what I mean.

I hope he gets the chance to realize how lucky he was. To recognize that the dud wasn’t a failure, it was a gift. Being spared from taking a life isn’t something to regret. I hope he gets the chance to see that the burden he’s been carrying isn’t the weight of what he didn’t do, but the weight of a culture that made him think not killing someone was something to be ashamed of.

Mostly, I hope he gets the chance to know relief instead of regret. That we all do.

But he won’t. That’s not allowed. If he gets his chance this time, if the bomb works, he’ll finally feel whole. He’ll finally have his validation.

Evan Slusser is a former Marine Corps pilot and current doctoral student in political geography. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Virginia Tech and the University of Arizona and has also attended the Marine Corps University. After a decade of service, he now resides in North Carolina and spends his free time gardening and birdwatching.

warontherocks.com · October 22, 2025

16. Small Drones, Big Limits: A Smarter Drone Strategy

If it is good to read once it is better to read it twice. This is the value of the IWI-SWJ partnership/exchange.

Small Drones, Big Limits: A Smarter Drone Strategy

https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/us-army-drone-strategy-future-warfare/

irregularwarfare.org · Crispin Burke

Editor’s Note: this article is being republished with the permission of Small Wars Journal as part of a republishing arrangement between IWI and SWJ. The original article was published on 09.22.2025 and is available here.

Introduction

Recently, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum, delivered via quadcopter drone, designed “to put legions of small, inexpensive drones into the hands of warfighters who need them.” The decision came weeks after both Ukrainian and Israeli forces launched covert quadcopter attacks against key targets deep within Russia and Iran, respectively. The Pentagon, and the U.S. Army in particular, has doubled down on drones and other robotics in recent months, even placing quadcopter drones and robot dogs front and center during the Army’s 250th birthday parade in Washington, D.C.

Although the United States has long been the world leader in producing high-end drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper, RQ-4 Global Hawk, and MQ-25 Stingray, a recent U.S. Army exercise in Alaska highlights persistent shortcomings in how the Army employs and defends against small quadcopter drones. American-made drones largely failed to perform in Ukraine, with Silicon Valley executives admitting their products were “fragile” and unable to overcome Russian jamming. Worse yet, many doubt American manufacturers can produce enough drones, especially considering China’s dominance of the quadcopter market.

The U.S. Army will likely spend millions, if not billions of dollars, on drones and drone defenses as it aims to achieve domain dominance by 2027. As one analyst put it, “Everyone wants to win the Army’s big drone contract, get their billion-dollar check and go retire on an island somewhere.“

Yet while quadcopter and One-Way Attack drones might dominate headlines in Ukraine, their success rests on a unique set of battlefield conditions that may not apply to a future war involving U.S. troops. Although small drones have a place within the U.S. Army’s arsenal, larger conventional weapons systems will likely form the center of ground combat for the foreseeable future. Instead of focusing on offense, the Army should prioritize defense, both in combat zones and on U.S. bases. Officials should also be wary that with dozens of firms seeking access to defense dollars, the absence of a clear procurement vision risks inviting fraud, waste, and abuse.

The Emerging Drone Battlefield

Experts have long warned that the reduced costs and proliferation of drones might allow smaller nations and non-state actors to tilt the playing field against American air power. The past decade has seen no shortage of examples. Islamic State militants used explosive quadcopter drones in Iraq as early as 2016. Less than two years later, assassins used similar devices in a failed attempt on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s life. More recently, Iranian-backed militant groups, including Yemen’s Houthis and Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah, have repeatedly attacked U.S. forces in the Middle East with One-Way Attack (OWA) drones, including a recent incident that killed three U.S. service members in Jordan.

However, it was the 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh that served as a true wake-up call for observers. Azerbaijani forces, equipped with Turkish-made Bayraktar drones and Israeli HAROP loitering munitions, routed Armenia’s military in just six weeks. Less than two years later, Ukrainians deployed a slew of drones, including Bayraktars, Switchblades, and quadcopters against the Russian army during the initial campaign against Kyiv. As the war has evolved, experts estimate that drones now account for up to 70% of casualties in Ukraine. As one battlefield commander put it, “You can hide from artillery, [but drones] are a different kind of nightmare.”

Context Matters

Context is critical in understanding the role of drones on these modern battlefields. Although one expert from the Center for Strategic and International Studies acknowledged the role of One-Way Attack drones and loitering munitions in destroying significant amounts of Armenian military equipment during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, he also stipulated that Armenian air defenses were obsolete, and even then, still managed to down several Azerbaijani drones. The same report also credits a military-wide modernization system for Azerbaijan’s victory. Additionally, although Azerbaijan initially used drones during the beginning of the conflict, many of these were used to destroy air defense systems, allowing manned aircraft to operate with impunity. Finally, the report also notes that Armenia contributed to its own defeat through its lackluster performance and obsolete equipment. Although the importance of OWA drones is certainly evident, conventional manned systems still played a decisive role.

Extensive drone use during the Russia-Ukraine War also stems from several unique circumstances. First, despite over three years of fighting, neither side has achieved air superiority. Manned fighter aircraft play a relatively minor role in the conflict compared to U.S. operations, so drones assume a role usually reserved for larger, manned aircraft equipped with more powerful munitions. Second, although many commentators are quick to note that drones cause approximately 70% battlefield casualties today, some experts attribute this less to a revolution in warfare and more to the shortages of artillery ammunition and attrition of howitzers within the Ukrainian forces. Finally, Russia’s use of larger OWA drones, such as the Iranian-made Shahed-136, likely emerged due to Ukrainian attacks on the Black Sea Fleet, hampering Russia’s ability to launch more sophisticated Kalibr cruise missiles. Even then, Ukrainian air defenses have still managed to destroy the majority of Russia’s Shaheds, which travel at one-third the speed and have less than one-tenth the payload of a World War II-era German “Buzz Bomb”. Indeed, for many smaller countries and non-state actors, drones are a stopgap solution, compensating for financial constraints, personnel shortages, or the attrition of more capable platforms.

Small Drones, Big Limitations

Jakub Jajcay, a former Slovak Army officer who recently spent six months volunteering as a drone operator with the Ukrainian military in Donbass, wrote about his experience using First-Person View (FPV) drones in an article titled, “I Fought in Ukraine and Here’s Why FPV Drones Kind of Suck” The author laid out serious limitations inherent to the current generation of FPV drones. These devices are usually quadcopters, often armed with explosive devices. A camera transmits first-person aerial video back to its controller, who either drops a munition or flies the drone into the target kamikaze-style. Ukrainian officials believe these drones are responsible for the majority of casualties on the battlefield.

For context, although American-made drones can be highly capable, often with night vision cameras and global positioning systems (GPS) receivers, they can be very expensive. A complete system for the handheld sailplane Raven drone, consisting of three air vehicles, two ground control stations, and other accessories, costs the U.S. government nearly a quarter of a million dollars. The Black Hornet, a ten-inch-long helicopter equipped with infrared cameras and GPS guidance, sells for almost $200,000 per system, according to publicly available sources (the company would not return a request for pricing information). This cost could not only discourage wide-scale procurement, but also make commanders reluctant to train with expensive systems that could be lost or result in an extensive investigation.

The recent Pentagon memorandum urges the services to procure large numbers of cheap drones. Unfortunately, cheap drones are, by nature, cheap. Jajcay estimates in his article that nearly 20% of Ukraine’s FPV drones failed to take off due to technical or mechanical problems, while others failed in flight or upon detonation. Ukraine’s inexpensive FPV drones generally lack the features of higher-end American drones. For instance, most do not come equipped with night vision cameras, rendering them ineffective for 8 to 12 hours each day. Many also lack GPS receivers for moving-map displays, forcing operators to navigate either by memory or with paper maps. This approach might work well for an army fighting on its soil and in static front lines, but it’s less of a viable solution for an army advancing into enemy territory.

Jamming from both sides further limits FPV drone employment. Jajcay estimates that FPV drones could only fly during a few short windows per day. With a limited number of radio frequencies available, commanders often compete to launch and control their own drones. Jajcay estimated nearly 30% of Ukrainian drone sorties failed due to Russian jamming, while Ukrainian jammers precluded their own drone operations for significant portions of the day. Terrain, weather, and obstacles often interfere with a drone’s radio signal, making them challenging to operate, especially in hilly terrain or at very low altitudes, such as when they are close to their target. Ukraine’s well-publicized FPV drone attack on Russian bomber bases succeeded partly because Russia did not have jammers emplaced.

Recently, both sides have begun equipping FPV drones with fiber-optic cables to circumvent jamming. This improves control, video quality, and range (reportedly up to 40 kilometers). However, the cable limits a drone’s maneuverability and makes drones susceptible to, of all things, having their cable cut by a pair of scissors. Some Ukrainian commanders report a two-month waiting list for fiber optic cable, while Russia likely procures its cable from Chinese companies.

FPVs still require trained human operators. Jajcay noted it takes about five weeks to train a drone operator, and current technology allows them to control only one aerial vehicle at a time. Both Russia and Ukraine have experimented with using machine learning and artificial intelligence to help drones navigate, designate, and attack targets. However, fully autonomous systems are likely years away, according to an analysis from the Institute for the Study of War. Indeed, machine learning and AI-programmed drones will likely struggle to tell friend from foe in a variety of situations. For instance, armies may use similar equipment, as Russia and Ukraine do. Combatants may also install unusual modifications such as anti-drone canopies or construct unconventional vehicles, making it difficult for AI and Machine Learning technology to properly identify targets. Finally, many non-state actors use commercial pickup trucks, most famously the Toyota Hilux, as armed “technicals,” further blurring the distinction between combatants and non-combatants.

Finally, FPV drones are relatively slow and carry smaller payloads than manned aircraft and artillery. Conventional weapons, including mortars and artillery, also conduct strikes faster than quadcopters and can do so unconstrained by jamming, poor weather, or nighttime conditions. These constraints suggest that the prevalence of drones in the Russia-Ukraine War is the product of specific conditions.

U.S. Army Drone Challenges

The U.S. Army will face its own challenges in implementing drones. With so much money at stake, and with promises to achieve “domain dominance” in the next two years, the potential for fraud, waste, and abuse is real. In the rush to buy drones, the Army must fight the temptation to purchase everything and anything it can get its hands on, especially considering that few, if any, American manufacturers can keep up with demand. A piecemeal approach to procurement could lead to dozens of drone models, each with differing parts and control mechanisms, especially if the Pentagon goes forward with its plan to allow local commanders to either procure them off the commercial market or 3D print them. Manufacturers have little incentive to standardize controls and interfaces, which could mean an operator trained on one model might be unable to fly another. Additionally, it could compound efforts to repair or procure spare parts for a large, diverse fleet of small systems.

Of course, there is no one-size-fits-all requirement for battlefield drones. Some drones may be used for long-term surveillance, others for strike roles. Nevertheless, each acquisition will force the Army to choose between costs and capability. The recent M-10 Booker light tank program is a cautionary tale. Initially envisioned as a light, air-droppable tank to support troops, the Booker gained weight through “requirements creep” until it hit 38 tons – too heavy to drop from the air or cross bridges, but too thinly-armored to go toe-to-toe with main battle tanks.

FPV drones face a similar dilemma. Too cheap, and they might be prone to failure or be ineffective on the battlefield. Too expensive, and the Army may hesitate to buy them in quantity, let alone treat them as disposable. Commanders may also avoid training with costly systems for fear of losing them, triggering investigations, or even forcing soldiers to reimburse the loss.

Another challenge is preventing swarms of small quadcopters from colliding with manned aircraft. Proponents might envision each squad leader launching a drone on demand to peek over a hill or to attack a tank. This runs counter to the careful coordination needed to prevent fatal conflicts between fighter jets, helicopters, artillery, missiles, paratroopers, bombs, and drones. Cheap drones without critical safety features, especially explosive ones, could be just as hazardous to friendly forces as they are to the enemy. Jamming could disrupt not only drone controls but also radio communications with manned aircraft, a hazard difficult to replicate during stateside training. One collision could force the Army to rethink mass drone integration dramatically.

Finally, the Army must avoid prematurely cutting existing programs and force structure on the assumption that drones will fully replace legacy systems. While drones may eventually perform reconnaissance, strike, transport, and even medical evacuation, removing current capabilities without tested replacements is risky.

Some analysts have compared the rise of drones with that of the aircraft carrier during Pearl Harbor, which eventually made the battleship obsolete. But perhaps a more relevant analogy comes from a Washington Post article (some language slightly edited):

“Tanks charged dug-in infantrymen on a far-flung battlefield. Forty of the 50 tanks were knocked out, thanks to a cheap, inexpensive weapons system. That engagement, and others like it, inspired many military commentators around the world to declare the tank as dead as the cavalry horse. These cheap new weapons, they said, have returned the military advantage to the defense. But U.S. Army leaders are now making a life and death bet that these commentators are wrong. They are spending more money than ever before on a new tank; experimenting with a new type of armored division built around it, making the tank the deadliest weapon on the battlefield. Army leaders conceded in a series of interviews that the war demonstrated that an infantry armed with a smart weapon could knock out a tank almost as easily as a rifleman could shoot the horse out from under the cavalryman.”

The article was written in 1977, and the new weapon was the AT-3 Sagger anti-tank missile, which destroyed dozens of Israeli tanks during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. But while these weapons certainly posed a threat to armored vehicles, the Commander of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, Gen. Donn A. Starry, made a comment which may very well echo the emergence of drones in the 21st Century:

“One of the great lessons of that war is that there is no single system that’s going to dominate the modern battlefield. Winning requires a combination of well-trained armor, infantry, artillery, and aircraft. If you get away from the concept of a combined arms team, you’re liable to get yourself in trouble.”

Drone Defense

Although the Army is right to focus on drone offense, it must focus more attention on drone defense. To use an analogy, FPV drones are to warfare what ChatGPT is to education. Large Language Models can turn a 95% paper into a 100% paper – but only with significant input, and even then, you’ll need a 95% paper to begin with. Where ChatGPT excels, however, is by allowing a mediocre student to turn a 0% paper into a 70% paper within seconds. Leaving aside the obvious ethical issues, the latter approach provides the best product given a student’s skill level and time investment.

Similarly, while quadcopter drones might provide the Army with an advantage, they give mid-tier powers and non-state actors a much more significant boost. Quadcopter attacks in Russia and Iran have alarmed Defense officials, as have mysterious sightings near U.S. military bases. The military has struggled to defend against small drones both in combat and over domestic installations.

The recent Alaska exercise shows that even after nearly a decade of facing adversary FPV drones, U.S. troops still face challenges in jamming and shooting them down. One drone operator reportedly hovered ten feet overhead, carrying a jar of strawberry jam to mock defenders. More recently, the military news site Task and Purpose called a recent field manual’s recommendation for tank crews to shoot down drones with specialized buckshot-style rounds from their main cannons “a bit optimistic.”

The fight against quadcopters mirrors the fight against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq. There was no single solution. The U.S. combined proactive measures, like jammers and aerial reconnaissance, with reactive ones, like heavily armored vehicles. Insurgents adapted, using “pressure plate” IEDs immune to jammers, much as both Russia and Ukraine use fiber-optic drones today to avoid radio interference.

Jammers will be part of the answer, but they must be light and portable enough for infantry to carry on long missions. A soldier’s average combat load has skyrocketed since the early 2000s. Every pound dedicated to jamming devices must come at the expense of some other piece of equipment. Additionally, the Army must recognize that jammers, while effective at combating enemy quadcopter drones, may also interfere with the use of friendly drones and radio communications. Additional proactive solutions might also include the anti-drone canopies currently seen on vehicles from both sides of the Russia-Ukraine War, or even simple fishing nets, as Ukraine employs.

Similarly, reactive solutions should not only be light and portable enough for the average soldier, but they should also be unobtrusive enough not to take away from an infantry soldier’s standard fighting power. Specialized anti-drone weapons might be effective against drones, but they are a single-use device. A recently designed smart scope intended to help Marines shoot moving targets might be an ideal solution, as it is light enough to attach to a rifle and does not interfere with the weapon’s primary use.

Larger one-way attack (OWA) drones, such as the Shahed 136, have become a mainstay for Russian and Iranian forces. These weapons are undoubtedly responsible for hundreds of deaths; however, they are by no means unstoppable. Although Russia launched record numbers of Shahed drones in July 2025, Ukraine still managed an interception rate of approximately 89%. Similarly, fighter jets and air defense systems from the U.S., Israel, and other nations shot down all 170 Shahed drones launched by Iran against Israel in April 2024. Current OWA drones are slow, unmaneuverable, and non-stealthy, roughly equivalent in size and speed to a World War II-era target drone. Although many are rightly concerned about the use of expensive interceptor missiles against $50,000 OWA drones, Ukraine has had success countering Shaheds with weapons ranging from the 1970s-era German Gepard flak gun system to its home-grown interceptor drones.

Stateside base defense, however, presents a different challenge. Many U.S. military bases are the size of large cities, making them difficult to defend for an extended period. The Pentagon also has little legal authority to disable or shoot down drones that overfly U.S. bases. Recently introduced legislation could allow private citizens to bring down drones with legally purchased shotguns; however, this bill has remained stalled in a subcommittee for at least five months. Jammers, while effective, might prove politically unpopular should they interfere with civilian radio or other telecommunications traffic. A recent RAND Corporation exercise suggests that defeating drones domestically requires treating this new threat like any other form of terrorism – as a law enforcement problem. Even then, the exercise found several gaps among U.S. government agencies as they tried to detect and disrupt any hostile drone activity before it started.

Conclusion

Army leaders face a daunting task in predicting the future of war. As former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates fondly noted about the military’s ability to identify its next major engagement, “Our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right.”

The Army faced a similar challenge in the 1950s. The Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear weapon in 1949. Five years later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “New Look” defense program envisioned considerable cuts to the Army’s role, instead relying on air and sea power – and especially the atomic bomb – to deter any attack on U.S. interests. Eisenhower’s new policy sought to cut nearly 200,000 soldiers within a year. The Army responded by creating “Pentomic” divisions designed to survive on the new nuclear battlefield, only to scrap the concept just a few years later. Documents from the time show an Army grasping at new technologies. While some, such as night vision goggles, would come to fruition, others, including jet packs and jeeps armed with tactical nuclear weapons, would remain a technological curiosity. But instead of fighting against Soviet tanks in a nuclear wasteland, the Army’s next war took place in a country few had ever thought of – Vietnam.

Today, the Army is at another generational crossroads. Coming out of the War on Terror, the Army is struggling to justify its role in a future conflict. A drone-heavy force, similar to what we see today in Ukraine, is a tempting way for the Army to reinvent itself for the 21st Century. However, without a disciplined approach, an overemphasis on drones could become the new Pentomic division.

The Army must do three things. First, determine how it will incorporate these devices and what types of drones it intends to field. Although any successful experiment will undoubtedly result in some waste, poor fielding planning risks wasting significant amounts of taxpayer money, both in unmanned systems and from the manned systems that the Army may prematurely cut. Second, despite current cries for “lethal” drones, the Army must focus more attention on drone defense than on offense. Finally, keep combined arms principles front and center. Drones might not replace human beings, but they certainly will help them succeed.

This article was originally published by Small Wars Journal

Crispin Burke is a retired Black Hawk helicopter pilot who served in Iraq from 2008-2009. He served as an Unmanned Aerial Systems Observer-Controller/Trainer at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, from 2010-2012. Following his retirement, he earned a Master of Arts in Strategy, Cybersecurity, and Intelligence from Johns Hopkins University. He is a volunteer docent at the International Spy Museum, a hobby drone pilot, and a longtime contributor to Small Wars Journal.

Main Image: U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Brian Vile, an intelligence specialist with Marine Rotational Force – Darwin 24.3, operates a Skydio drone as part of a counter-unmanned aircraft systems field test at Mount Bundey Training Area, NT, Australia, July 11, 2024. The Marines and Australian Soldiers with the Robotics and Autonomous Implementation and Coordination Office, Australian Army Headquarters, used C-UAS to enhance MRF-D 24.3 Marine Air-Ground Task Force capabilities to defend against aerial attacks. Vile is a native of Pennsylvania. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Migel A. Reynosa)

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.

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17. The China Model’s Fatal Flaw – Why Beijing Can’t Overcome Overcapacity

Excertps:

The Chinese system has produced some extraordinary innovation. But breakthroughs in China often come from sheer technical ingenuity and determination. DeepSeek, for instance, the AI firm that stunned global observers with its advances in large language models, built much of its momentum because of internal resourcefulness and a highly disciplined engineering culture. The fact that it didn’t rely on mainstream financing channels underscores the weaknesses of the system rather than its strengths.

The same pattern is visible in other sectors. China’s new semiconductor challengers, for instance, are pushing against the dominance of the U.S. tech company Nvidia by exploiting narrow technical edges, tapping the country’s deep engineering ecosystem, and reacting to urgent market demand for domestic alternatives. Robotics startups, likewise, are advancing through lean operations, rapid prototyping, and close integration with local supply chains. Some observers see these developments through a positive lens and have concluded that China’s tech ecosystem is efficient and competitive. But the Chinese firms that are succeeding are the ones that can persevere in an environment that is rigged against them. In the industrial robot sector, for instance, there are already signs that overcapacity will undermine progress: some sales prices are reported to be even lower than the cost of materials, eroding margins before firms have even turned a profit.

To create a more sustainable model—one that encourages innovation but doesn’t spiral into overcapacity—China will have to undergo an institutional reckoning. The logic of speed over quality, of scale over innovation, and of investment volume over returns is deeply embedded in the system. Reversing that logic means making long-deferred tradeoffs and moving past the structures that once powered China’s incredible rise.

In this sense, unwinding overcapacity is not just an economic adjustment. It is the ultimate test of Beijing’s ability to self-correct—and of whether the Chinese model has reached a plateau or can once again soar to new heights.

The China Model’s Fatal Flaw

Foreign Affairs · More by Lizzi C. Lee · October 21, 2025

Why Beijing Can’t Overcome Overcapacity

Lizzi C. Lee

November/December 2025 Published on October 21, 2025

Simon Bailly

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China’s role as the world’s factory—producing and exporting goods across the globe—has entered a new phase. In the past decade, China has made a concerted effort to move its manufacturing sector up the value chain, producing a deluge of cheap, green technology in the process, including electric vehicles, batteries, and solar panels. It now makes EV models that sell for under $10,000—most of the low-cost models in the United States start at around $30,000—and it dominates roughly 80 percent of the global solar supply chain.

But rather than welcome the influx of renewable energy products, the world’s two largest consumer markets have lambasted these Chinese imports as a structural threat to fair competition. In May 2024, the Biden administration imposed tariff hikes of up to 100 percent on a variety of Chinese goods, which were justified as a defensive response to Beijing “flooding global markets with artificially low-priced exports.” The European Commission followed suit, imposing duties on Chinese electric vehicles in October 2024 and complaining that China’s “unfair government subsidies” were causing “a threat of economic injury” to EU producers. Regardless of the efficacy of such trade remedies, the message is unambiguous: China makes more than the world can take.

This tension, of course, is not new. China’s “overcapacity”—the shorthand term for producing more than demand calls for—has long led other governments to complain. In the past, China produced too much steel, coal, cement, and other goods, which crowded out competitors elsewhere and drove global prices to unprofitable lows. China’s tendency toward overcapacity has traditionally been blamed on a fundamental mismatch in its economy; government subsidies and investment in manufacturing and infrastructure are unusually high compared with those in other advanced economies, and the country’s household consumption as a share of GDP is unusually low. Simply put, China lacks enough domestic demand to soak up what the country’s factories produce, which then causes a glut of exports.

But China’s green tech boom is exposing a more sinister and systemic aspect of the country’s political economy. In reality, today’s Chinese overcapacity does not result from domestic demand that has peaked or excessive subsidies. Consider the solar power industry. China is still seeing significant demand for solar installations. In 2024 alone, China installed 277 gigawatts of new solar capacity—more than twice the total cumulative capacity ever installed in the United States—and 2025 is on track to match or surpass that record. At the same time, the notion that subsidies are propping up China’s solar growth is outdated; China ended central government subsidies for solar in 2021. Meanwhile, in the EV and battery sectors, demand among Chinese consumers is still booming, and direct purchase subsidies have been phased out.

The real challenge, then, lies not in weak domestic demand or excessive state handouts but in an extraordinary and seemingly uncontrollable surge in supply—one that Beijing is struggling to get its arms around. Since mid‑2024, central government authorities have warned repeatedly about “blind expansion” in solar power, batteries, and EVs. This summer, after a brutal price war in the solar industry saw prices fall around 40 percent year-over-year, Chinese leaders directed officials to tackle overcapacity and “irrational” pricing in key industries, including solar. Shortly thereafter, high-level officials met with industry leaders to collectively urge companies to curb price wars and strengthen industry regulations.

But Beijing’s efforts won’t make much of a dent in the problem. Unlike earlier bouts of overcapacity, today’s top offenders are private companies, not state-owned enterprises. If Beijing were to step in and force consolidations or shutter factories, it would risk sparking unemployment and potentially stall local growth engines that depend on these industries. Moreover, exports have become one of the few remaining bright spots in otherwise slowing GDP performance. If Beijing were to meaningfully curb production and exports, it could cause significant damage to China’s overall economy.

The fundamental problem is that by rewarding speed and scale over productivity and differentiation, the internal plumbing of China’s political economy incentivizes businesses to produce too much stuff. Although that has always been the predictable outcome of China’s political and financial system, the dysfunction was kept in check during much of China’s spectacular rise. Changes in the Chinese economy since 2020, however, including the cratering real estate market and a crackdown on private businesses and investments, have compounded the structural incentives that lead to overcapacity.

The result is not only damage to China’s trade relationships but also plummeting company profits, significant deflationary pressure, and constraints on innovation. Over time, cutthroat price wars also spill into the labor market, with firms freezing wages or cutting jobs, which weakens household spending, deepens China’s structural slowdown, and makes growth even harder to sustain. Without significant reforms, China risks repeating earlier missteps as it tries to move further up the value chain and into advanced fields such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology—potentially with even greater consequences for its economy.

THE TAX MAN

China’s tendency to overproduce starts in an unlikely place: the Chinese Communist Party’s performance and promotion system. In the CCP bureaucracy, local officials are evaluated primarily on their ability to deliver growth, employment, and tax revenues. But China’s largest single tax, the value-added tax (VAT), is split evenly between the central government and the local government of the place where a good or service is produced, not the place where it is consumed. Since the system allocates tax revenue to regions based on production, it rewards the decision to build larger industrial bases. Local Chinese officials try to retain as much upstream and downstream activity as they can to expand their tax base. (The U.S. tax code, by contrast, apportions much of the corporate tax base to where companies’ customers are, rather than where firms produce goods, so the tax base is more evenly spread across jurisdictions.) This feature of the Chinese tax system explains the proliferation in China of “full stack” industrial clusters: EV assembly lines are located near battery production facilities, and solar panel factories are integrated with raw material and component suppliers.

This system effectively encourages provincial and municipal leaders to act like industrial investors or venture capitalists. And in many cases, it has produced profound efficiencies. Over the past decade, for instance, Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, has poured about $25 billion of state capital into various struggling companies, including the EV maker Nio and the flat-panel display manufacturer BOE, to great effect. By acting as an early investor and bearing the initial risk, Hefei stimulated about $96 billion in follow-on investment and generated around $9 billion in tax revenues. The Hefei model has since been widely imitated, with other provinces racing to assemble their own industrial clusters.

But Hefei’s success rested on unique conditions—namely, that the city invested in companies that were relatively mature already. When other provinces have tried to replicate the model, especially in high-tech sectors that Beijing has signaled support for, they have often lacked the same foundation; as a result, many of the projects have underperformed, creating fiscal stress for local governments. But provincial officials have continued to rush into these industries because earmarked subsidies from the central government effectively make Beijing a co-financier. Provinces pour in matching funds, offer discounted land and utilities, and guarantee quick regulatory approvals to secure money from Beijing and eligibility for central government support. After Beijing released its 14th Five-Year Plan, in 2011, which designated EVs, solar panels, and batteries as “strategic emerging industries,” provincial five-year plans started to read like carbon copies of one another, each promising the same clusters in the same industries. This is the logical outcome of a tax and subsidy system that rewards scale over selectivity.

For much of the past three decades, however, the bureaucratic incentives feeding this copy-and-paste system were mitigated by the role of real estate in China’s political economy. Because the state owns all urban land in China and leases it to developers, local officials relied on land sales to provide a third or more of their budgets—meaning they did not have to be singularly focused on attracting industrial investment. Land development was the primary engine of local revenue and growth. In 2021–22, however, China’s real estate bubble popped; Evergrande, one of the country’s largest developers, defaulted on more than $300 billion in liabilities and entered liquidation proceedings. Local governments saw revenues from land sales plunge from $1.3 trillion in 2021 to $670 billion in 2024.

At the same time, as Beijing tightened oversight of the financing tools that led to the bubble in the first place—such as special-purpose bonds and short-term rollovers—local governments found themselves without any way to fill their revenue gaps. With fiscal space highly constrained, expanding industrial capacity became the last reliable lever local officials could pull to secure growth, generate new jobs, and expand their tax bases. For risk-averse bureaucrats staring at a looming fiscal crisis, the safest bet was to hop on the bandwagon.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

Just as the structure of China’s tax code helps explain why capacity has expanded so quickly in China, the structure of the country’s financial system helps explain why that capacity is often duplicative and inefficient. Over and over, credit flows reinforce the same bias—build fast, build visibly, and build with state backing.

China’s state-dominated banking system has long favored tangible, government-endorsed projects over private ventures that pursue long-term or high-risk paybacks, such as drug development and other biotech pursuits. Chinese banks often face strict regulations on their lending and investments, so they prefer to make loans to lower-risk projects that have physical assets that can serve as collateral and that already have regulatory permits and government sponsorship. From a risk-management perspective, this preference is understandable. But the result is a system that diverts scarce capital into factories, production lines, and physical infrastructure, which tend to generate relatively low profits.

This is one reason why, in an earlier era, China came to dominate the global manufacturing of clothes, toys, and electronics—and why, today, it dominates in EVs, solar panels, and batteries. But the consequence is an economy with world-class build-out speed but chronically thin profitability. When demand softens or the market becomes crowded, firms slash prices and expand exports to keep production running, further eroding their margins. China’s automakers, for instance, saw average profit margins decline from 5.0 percent in 2023 to 4.4 percent in 2024, as they chased market share via heavy discounting.

China’s green tech boom is exposing a more sinister aspect of its economy.

Persistently low profit margins also mean companies have little cash to reinvest in product development and hiring; that in turn depresses household income growth and consumer demand. In this way, overcapacity becomes more than just a sectorial problem: it acts as a drag on China’s broader economy, locking it into a cycle of low profits, weak investment, sluggish job creation, and consistently weak demand.

Firms rarely close down operations altogether, however, because the state-backed banks prefer to roll over existing loans so that the firms appear solvent on paper. That way, even if those companies are only servicing their interest payments and not generating strong returns, the banks avoid having to book immediate losses—and avoid potentially contributing to the collapse of a large local employer. Credit keeps flowing into these “zombie” sectors and companies with declining productivity even as they are dragging down the broader economy in the long run.

Private firms not chasing government-backed industries, meanwhile, have long struggled to access affordable bank credit, which means they tend to seek capital from costly nonbank channels, such as venture capital, private equity, and initial public offerings. These channels helped fuel much of China’s record growth in the first two decades of the twenty-first century: by October 2020, 217 Chinese companies were listed on major U.S. exchanges with a combined $2.2 trillion market cap, illustrating how deeply private firms tapped global equity markets. Leading venture capital platforms scaled as well. Sequoia’s China arm (now HongShan), for instance, backed hundreds of private firms, including some of China’s most prominent success stories, such as the social media company ByteDance and the transportation platform Didi.

Electric cars at a factory in Ningbo, China, April 2025 Nick Carey / Reuters

But in the past five years, private firms have seen such options dry up. Starting in late 2020, Beijing launched a sweeping crackdown on tech platforms, private tutoring, and other high-growth sectors that had previously attracted huge amounts of venture capital. This had a chilling effect. Investors suddenly realized that entire industries could be upended overnight by regulatory fiat. That uncertainty made private investors more cautious, and many began pulling back capital. In the first quarter of 2024, private companies in so-called Greater China, which includes mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, raised just $12 billion, down 42 percent from the previous quarter. (The overall global decline during that period was just 12 percent.) Foreign venture capital firms have also pulled back, with cross-border investment into China collapsing from $67 billion in 2021 to just $19 billion in 2023. U.S. investors, in particular, have been absent from the largest deals.

The CCP has tried to fill the financing gap, but has yet to deliver. Official statistics, for instance, suggest that from 2023 to 2024 the average balance of inclusive loans to small and microbusinesses was about $67,000, which barely covers the working capital needs of most such borrowers, let alone multiyear innovation projects that are better positioned to deliver sustained, high-quality returns. (By comparison, in fiscal year 2024, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s flagship 7(a) loan program provided average financing of $448,400.) Private enterprises also still face significantly higher borrowing costs compared with their state-owned counterparts.

Beijing’s attempts to fill the venture capital and private equity gap with state-backed funds have been similarly ham-handed, since they rely on vehicles that demand guarantees, include onerous buy-back clauses, and concentrate capital in a handful of sectors. Officials managing these state-backed funds are also reluctant to make bold bets because any failure could be seen as misusing public money—or worse, corruption. Even in strategic sectors such as semiconductors and biotech, private Chinese companies looking to innovate face limited access to capital. Although Beijing’s recent push to promote “new quality productive forces”—industries that China sees as the next drivers of growth—has been genuine in political ambition, it has been underpowered in financing support for the private sector.

FAILING UP

The incentives that shape the behavior of local governments and financial institutions also filter down to firms. In China’s most contested sectors, entrepreneurs operate within a brutally rational framework: copy quickly, scale up even faster, and price aggressively.

Entrepreneurs tend to copy one another in large part because China’s incredibly high tax and contribution burden discourages risk-taking. Chinese companies not only have to pay high taxes but also face mandatory contributions to pensions, health insurance, unemployment insurance, and housing funds. According to data from the World Bank and PwC, China’s total tax and contribution rate for a typical midsize firm was 59.2 percent of profits in 2019. (In the United States, the rate was 36.6 percent of profit.)

Firms tend to expand rapidly, meanwhile, because doing so buys them leverage in price negotiations with upstream suppliers and grants them visibility with lenders, who tend to equate large scale with low risks. By expanding quickly, firms also hope to win preferential treatment from local officials eager to showcase large industrial champions.

Finally, many firms end up slashing prices because they become trapped in a death spiral: once one firm cuts prices, others must follow to defend their market share, even if it erodes everyone’s margins. Take the EV industry. In 2022, Chinese automakers cut prices on 95 passenger vehicle models. In 2023, that number rose to 148, and by the end of 2024, it was 227. Even as BYD’s overseas sales continue to grow, the company’s net profit in the second quarter of 2025 fell 29.9 percent year on year.

These firm-level calculations are reinforced by the same structural pressures that shape local officials’ thinking. Local governments are reluctant to let duplicative or unprofitable firms exit the market, especially as property revenues decline. Even unprofitable firms, after all, contribute to local coffers through the VAT, payroll taxes, and mandatory social security contributions. This helps explain why local governments prop up firms that lose money, at least on paper: a failing factory still employs workers, thus paying labor-related taxes and social contributions; it still buys inputs, which generate VAT; and it still adds to industrial output statistics that matter for cadre evaluation. In other words, unprofitable firms remain fiscally valuable not because they generate profits but because they generate taxes.

AT THE MARGINS

If companies, financiers, and local officials are all behaving rationally within the system and the result is overcapacity, then the only way to change course would be to change the system. So far, however, Beijing is merely making tweaks. Recently, for instance, officials introduced draft legislation that would ban companies from using algorithms to dynamically adjust prices based on demand, costs, or competitors. Beijing also introduced new regulations that require large firms to settle payments with small and medium-sized suppliers within 60 days—a response to the EV pricing war, which saw firms financing their discounts by stretching out payments to their suppliers. And in July, the CCP published a draft amendment to a 1998 pricing law—the first major revision to the law—which would, among other things, prohibit below-cost pricing that is intended to eliminate rivals, clarify penalties for unfair pricing, and ban forced bundling or data-driven discounting.

But the price wars are a mere symptom of the overcapacity problem. Beijing can’t hope to make meaningful progress without reengineering the underlying incentive structure that is causing overcapacity. Consider, for example, how the CCP evaluates local officials. At present, cadres are promoted largely based on how much growth they deliver; that means judging them based on how much new factory space they build and how many roads or industrial parks they pave. Such measures favor scale over quality. If China wanted to dismantle the barriers and redundancies that waste capital and sap productivity, it would instead use metrics that judge officials on concrete targets for new business formation as well as on survival; not only how many private firms are registered each year, for instance, but also how many remain operational over a longer time horizon.

But new metrics alone would not be enough. China’s taxation system would also need to be overhauled. Some reforms have been debated in Beijing, such as shifting more tax revenue from the central government to the provinces or restructuring local government debt, but so far, the CCP has not made any changes that have altered the behavior of local officials. As long as land and factories keep local governments solvent, overcapacity will remain an attractive fallback.

Producing copper wire in Ganzhou, China, August 2025 Florence Lo / Reuters

If the CCP wants to make good on its oft-repeated slogan “Invest early, invest small, invest long-term, and invest in hard tech,” then it will also need to significantly retool the financial system. Regulators would have to require, for instance, that big banks dedicate long-term lending portfolios to technology companies. China’s stock and bond markets, meanwhile, would need to mature quickly to become genuine alternatives to collateral-heavy bank loans. That means speeding up slow approval queues and strengthening accounting rules and investor protections so that entrepreneurs and investors alike see public markets as reliable. Currently, bonds and stocks account for just 31 percent of all the funds available from both bank and nonbank sources in China—less than half that available from equivalent sources in the United States.

To unlock more financing, China would have to develop financial tools for raising and recycling capital. Common tools in the United States—such as convertible bonds, loans that can turn into shares if a company succeeds, or venture debt (credit for startups without hard collateral)—are practically nonexistent in the world’s second-largest economy. And yet China is sitting on a vast pool of domestic savings; household deposits and gross savings rank among the highest in the world, amounting to a colossal 43 percent of GDP as of 2023. Building a more active secondary market for private equity stakes, encouraging corporate acquisitions of startups, and restoring confidence in public listings would ensure that capital keeps cycling back into the next wave of young firms.

Finally, if Beijing wants to see innovation as opposed to just imitation, it would have to design and enforce a competition policy that rewards originality. The draft reforms to China’s pricing law and new rules on algorithmic discounting are steps in the right direction, but without more robust enforcement of intellectual property rights and fair competition laws, copycats will continue to proliferate. China’s intellectual property enforcement is weak: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ranked China 24th out of 55 economies in its 2024 International IP Index. Curbing predatory pricing and coercive platform tactics will help firms with little capital, but protecting intellectual property raises the return on genuine innovation.

DEFYING THE ODDS

The Chinese system has produced some extraordinary innovation. But breakthroughs in China often come from sheer technical ingenuity and determination. DeepSeek, for instance, the AI firm that stunned global observers with its advances in large language models, built much of its momentum because of internal resourcefulness and a highly disciplined engineering culture. The fact that it didn’t rely on mainstream financing channels underscores the weaknesses of the system rather than its strengths.

The same pattern is visible in other sectors. China’s new semiconductor challengers, for instance, are pushing against the dominance of the U.S. tech company Nvidia by exploiting narrow technical edges, tapping the country’s deep engineering ecosystem, and reacting to urgent market demand for domestic alternatives. Robotics startups, likewise, are advancing through lean operations, rapid prototyping, and close integration with local supply chains. Some observers see these developments through a positive lens and have concluded that China’s tech ecosystem is efficient and competitive. But the Chinese firms that are succeeding are the ones that can persevere in an environment that is rigged against them. In the industrial robot sector, for instance, there are already signs that overcapacity will undermine progress: some sales prices are reported to be even lower than the cost of materials, eroding margins before firms have even turned a profit.

To create a more sustainable model—one that encourages innovation but doesn’t spiral into overcapacity—China will have to undergo an institutional reckoning. The logic of speed over quality, of scale over innovation, and of investment volume over returns is deeply embedded in the system. Reversing that logic means making long-deferred tradeoffs and moving past the structures that once powered China’s incredible rise.

In this sense, unwinding overcapacity is not just an economic adjustment. It is the ultimate test of Beijing’s ability to self-correct—and of whether the Chinese model has reached a plateau or can once again soar to new heights.

LIZZI C. LEE is Fellow on Chinese Economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

Foreign Affairs · More by Lizzi C. Lee · October 21, 2025

18. Putins All the Way Down – How Russia Was Remade (Review Essay)

Putins All the Way Down

Foreign Affairs · More by Joshua Yaffa · October 21, 2025

Review Essay

How Russia Was Remade

Joshua Yaffa

November/December 2025 Published on October 21, 2025

John Lee

JOSHUA YAFFA is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and the inaugural Writer in Residence at Bard College Berlin. He is the author of Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia.

In This Review

Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation
By Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov
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Ideology and Meaning-Making Under the Putin Regime
By Marlene Laruelle
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More than 25 years ago, at the outset of Vladimir Putin’s rule, Russia’s political future felt undetermined, or at least full of contradiction. The state nurtured some freedoms but repressed others; it made a nod toward democracy yet kept its politics carefully managed. It flung open the doors to free-market capitalism but allowed those same markets to be preyed upon by oligarchs, insiders, and corrupt officials. And it tolerated a degree of feisty, muckraking journalism, even if it subjected reporters engaged in that work to pressure and threats. Above all, with rising oil prices and living standards and growing ties to the West, Russia seemed to offer its citizens a decent, even promising existence—on the condition that they stay out of politics, a dominion ceded to the state.

What the state lacked, and not by accident, was any particular ideological orientation. In part, this was a reflection of political reality. In the years after 1991, Russians were trained cynics, having lived through Soviet decline and collapse; forcing belief would be a difficult endeavor, with an unclear upside. They then entered the twenty-first century with conflicting ideas and views—Was communism a virtuous system or an idiotic one? Was the Soviet collapse a moment of freedom and opportunity or a hardship? So it seemed better to keep the tent big, to borrow from the world of American party politics, than to force a reckoning on what people should or should not believe.

But it was also a matter of law. Article 13 of Russia’s post-Soviet constitution formally recognized the state’s ideological diversity and prohibited the establishment of any single state ideology. Even Putin paid lip service to this principle. As the Russian investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan observe in Our Dear Friends in Moscow, their colleagues interviewed Putin in 2000, in his first months in office, and asked him whether Russia needed a new ideology. He dismissed the idea out of hand. “It cannot be invented on purpose,” he said, adding that the country needed instead to “strengthen the state, the economy, and democratic institutions, including the free press.”

Today, that sounds like a long-forgotten fantasy. The Kremlin no longer holds to any democratic pretensions. Putin appears destined to rule indefinitely, and even far down the ballot, independent candidates are kept from running. The free press is gone, as are all manner of basic freedoms, however limited: a “like” on the wrong social media post or a donation to a foundation deemed illegal are enough to merit a lengthy prison sentence. The economy has been largely cut off from the West; travel to Europe is fraught, expensive, and complicated. Above all, the state has seized on ideology to justify itself to the public and provide an orienting narrative: imperialist and militaristic, conservative and anti-Western, undergirded with an atavistic sense of both grievance and righteousness.

Two new books trace the arc of this transformation, presenting the reemergence of ideology as a central question for both state and citizen in today’s Russia. In Our Dear Friends in Moscow, Soldatov and Borogan look to their own generation. They tell the story of a one-time group of friends and colleagues, young Russians who, over the course of the Putin years, steadily accommodate themselves to the ruling system, drift toward nationalist and illiberal ideas and justifications, and end up as supporters of Russia’s war in Ukraine. By centering their book on the shifting values of these friends, Soldatov and Borogan show how Putin’s deliberate strategy to “wall off Russia from the West,” as they put it, has been enabled and augmented by Russians themselves.

In Ideology and Meaning-Making Under the Putin Regime, the French historian and political scientist Marlene Laruelle demonstrates how the ever-shifting dynamic between state and society has been central to Putin’s power. Putin’s effort to construct a new national-imperial ideology, she suggests, relies not only on values imposed from above but also on exploiting ideas and strains of thought already circulating in society. Together, these books suggest that far from arbitrary or irrational, the ideas that have driven Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and broader conflict with the West have resulted from the long and evolving interplay between the Putin system and the people it rules.

TREASON OF THE INTELLECTUALS

In the opening scenes of Our Dear Friends in Moscow, Soldatov and Borogan have just been hired by the newspaper Izvestia, a former state mouthpiece that became an independent paper after the Soviet collapse. During the 1990s, Izvestia had gained a modicum of spunky, speak-truth-to-power freedom, and the authors quickly found themselves thrust into a spirited and ambitious circle of colleagues, friends, rivals, lovers, and intellectual sparring partners. At the center of this cohort was Petya Akopov, then a political correspondent for the paper, and Marina, his chain-smoking wife, who together hosted drinking bouts and philosophizing sessions in their handsome apartment overlooking Gogolevsky Boulevard, a stately, tree-lined thoroughfare in the center of the capital. As Soldatov and Borogan write, the Akopovs’ living room—“with its large sofa, a table with two chairs under a shiny chandelier dangling from the high ceiling, and a couch at the arched window”—was where notions of history, politics, and journalism were argued out, marking the beginning of a years-long conversation that evolved in rhythm with Russia’s transformation under Putin.

As early as Putin’s first years in office, allegiances among these Moscow friends began to shift. Soldatov and Borogan, reporters on Russia’s security services, were simultaneously traumatized and galvanized by the heavy-handed response of the FSB, Russia’s internal security service, to two horrific hostage crises—at the Nord-Ost theater in Moscow in 2002 and at a school in Beslan in 2004—both of which involved huge numbers of casualties and significant government cover-ups. They watched with confusion and dismay as a colleague at Izvestia started writing pieces fed to him by the FSB, and another friend took to making conspiracy-laden, anti-Western documentaries. All the while, Soldatov and Borogan took note, as if marking notches in the wall—“that year, two of our friends had moved to the other side.”

Before long, Izvestia’s short-lived period of relative independence came to a close, and Soldatov and Borogan’s path began to diverge from their more conformist colleagues. From the outside, resisting the emerging status quo looked pointless, or even foolish: there were careers to be made, not to mention money. One newspaper to which Soldatov and Borogan had contributed articles “mocked all forms of protest activity as a pastime for old losers who had failed to find a place in the new Russian reality.” As they bounced from one publication to the next, Soldatov and Borogan launched Agentura.ru, their own investigative website about Russia’s security services. “We were in our mid-thirties and felt out of step with our own generation,” they later reflected.

Still, for a while, it was unclear which way the country would go. In 2008, Putin declined to run again for president, as the constitution required, allowing a supposedly more liberal successor, Dmitry Medvedev, to be elected. But Putin did not step down so much as temporarily step aside into the role of prime minister; and when, in late 2011, he announced his plans to return to the presidency, and parliamentary elections were marred by widespread fraud, it sparked the largest protests in Russia’s post-Soviet history. Nonetheless, Putin returned to power amid new crackdowns, and most middle-class protesters retreated to their lives, careers, and families. Around this time, ideology began to raise its head from behind the parapets of the Kremlin’s walls: Putin was now the defender of an emerging set of, as he portrayed them, inherently “Russian” values, and those who opposed him were painted as degenerate, anti-Russian agents.

Putin speaking at a state rally in Moscow, March 2024 Reuters

As Russia’s politics curdled, so did the attitudes of Soldatov and Borogan’s friends. In the wake of the 2011 protests, Petya Akopov called for the assassination of Alexei Navalny, the protest movement’s most visible and charismatic leader (who was ultimately arrested and later died in a Russian prison in 2024). In a column praising Russia’s turn away from European civilization, Akopov also cheered the end of the country’s “liberal experiment.” In 2014, as Russia annexed Crimea and launched a proxy war in eastern Ukraine, Evgeny Krutikov, the political editor who had hired Soldatov and Borogan at Izvestia years earlier, went “full imperial,” as they put it, and began promoting “the return of state ideology to Russian foreign policy.”

By the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, Soldatov and Borogan had fled to London at the urging of security sources, who hinted they were in danger. But for many of their old friends, the war was an opportunity. Weeks after the invasion, Akopov wrote an ecstatic column for RIA, a Russian state news service, arguing that the “Ukraine question” had been solved. Another old journalist colleague and former liberal took his guitar and began entertaining Russian troops in occupied Ukraine. A doctor friend became an impassioned war supporter. Even more remarkable was the trajectory of Olga Lyubimova, the scion of a prominent Soviet theater and film family, whom Soldatov and Borogan had known in the early Putin years when she was a young TV host. By 2020, she had risen to become Putin’s minister of culture, and as the war unfolded, she wielded her vast propaganda apparatus in accordance with the needs of the state, censoring works deemed politically undesirable while lavishing state funding on patriotic narratives connected to the war effort.

As Soldatov and Borogan survey their former cohort, they realize how many of its “intelligent, well-informed, thoughtful” members have become instrumental to Russia’s war. Not only do many of them support the invasion; they also endorse the antiliberal and anti-Western ideology that has come with it. “They couldn’t feel deceived or misinformed by the Kremlin’s propaganda, because they were themselves a part—and a willing part—of the deception,” Soldatov and Borogan write.

At the end of Our Dear Friends in Moscow, the authors observe that their friends and the many millions of Russians like them seem to live as if they were passive observers of “storms and hurricanes one could only accept, but never challenge.” As with previous generations of Russians under autocratic rule, from tsarism to Soviet communism, there was no purpose in worrying about the causes of the storm. The only real choice was “whether to stay outside the regime—doomed to be a loser, a victim of inevitable repression” or to “stay inside and play a role.” As for their former circle, “all of them, ever ambitious, chose to stay in and play.”

FROM ABOVE AND BELOW

For Laruelle, the story of Soldatov and Borogan’s friends can be seen as an expression of the larger forces that have shaped the Putin era. “The regime’s relationship with Russian society is much more than simply authoritarian,” she writes. “It is cocreational, based on an implicit social contract” that must be “continuously renegotiated.” One thing, however, has remained constant: Putin’s belief in his mission to restore Russia’s status as a great power. Laruelle identifies this understanding as “a stable element of his geopolitical grammar.” What has changed are the means he has sought to achieve that project, namely the ideas that he and the state apparatus have propagated to justify and explain what the regime deems necessary or expedient.

Over time, the Putin state has borrowed from a number of doctrines that on the surface might seem contradictory: among others, Russian Orthodoxy, tsarism, the Soviet Union’s superpower legacy, populism, and Eurasianism—an early-twentieth-century dogma that sees Russia as neither European nor Asian but following a unique civilizational path. Since the 2022 invasion, these have been augmented by the militarism of the so-called Z bloggers and war correspondents. In drawing on these diverse strains of thought, Laruelle writes, the Putin system is driven by expediency and opportunism. Rather than basing its vision of Russia on a fixed set of political ideas, she writes, the regime has its own worldview and preferences and inclinations, and then seeks “intellectual soil and better articulated doctrine to justify and nurture itself.”

Within that overall dynamic, ideas can move from below as well as from above. Laruelle highlights the case of Ivan Ilyin, the early-twentieth-century reactionary philosopher who gave a moral, even metaphysical, veneer to autocracy and whom Putin took to quoting during his first decade in power. “The spreading of Ilyin’s works by his supporters is undoubtedly oriented ‘upward’ to the inner circle of elites around Putin, with very little time and energy spent trying to promote it ‘downward’ to a broader audience,” Laruelle writes. Although Putin is the ultimate arbiter and authority, he allows “entrepreneurs of influence,” as Laruelle calls them, to pitch their own ideas or pursue projects they think are in keeping with the Putin state. Take Konstantin Malofeev, known as the “Orthodox oligarch,” a self-proclaimed monarchist who has funded the creation of a conservative media empire, for example, or the far-right ideologue Alexander Dugin, who is less “Putin’s brain,” as he’s often mislabeled, than an opportunist whose ravings about Russia’s unique Eurasian historic mission are episodically useful to the Kremlin.

Laruelle describes how, following Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, the state’s ideological underpinnings became more formalized. Western-style modernization was pushed aside in favor of a revanchist doctrine that emphasized “Russia’s anti-Western and antiliberal stance, the country’s greatness, and the eternal infallibility of Russian/Soviet state leaders.” Laruelle masterfully explains how, over time, the geopolitical grievances of Putin and his security and military elite—whether over “color revolutions” in the former Soviet republics or the integration of eastern Europe into Western political and military structures—were sublimated into a new vision of the Russian state. As Laruelle writes, the Kremlin increasingly saw the Western-led liberal order as a “cover for U.S. imperialism and military hegemony” that sought to undermine Russia. These assumptions pushed Putin to become what Laruelle calls “an architect of destabilization and chaos.”

Putin watching a military parade in Moscow, May 2024 Dmitry Astakhov / Kremlin / Sputnik / Reuters

With time, as Putin and the political system he built aged, Russia’s outlook grew more rigid but also more prone to conspiracy and a sense of messianic fate. According to the Kremlin, it was the West that had betrayed its values, leaving Russia as the sole true, honest, and virtuous power left on the world stage. Laruelle calls this notion “Katechon” Russia—a concept drawn from Orthodox theology and repurposed by contemporary right-wing ideologues such as Dugin, according to which the country has a sacred purpose to project sovereign power and military force to serve as the “protector and restorer of order.” In such a worldview, military aggression may seem necessary or even virtuous, whether in Russia’s annexation of Crimea or its 2015 air war to prop up the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. As Laruelle notes, Russia began to combine “Orthodoxy as a spiritual shield and nuclear weapons as a material shield,” a combination that pushed Putin toward full-scale war in Ukraine and helped him build a powerful case for why it was necessary and legitimate.

The war in Ukraine, Laruelle writes, has consolidated the ideology of the Putin state. In addition to “reactivating” Russian imperialism, it has organized the disparate political ideas underpinning that state system into a struggle and a cause that are legible, even existential. Three motivations have seemingly become one, much to the Kremlin’s convenience: Russia’s success on the battlefield, or at least avoidance of outright defeat or humiliation; the safety and security of Russia’s citizens, who, regardless of their feelings on the conflict’s genesis, are fearful of losing the war; and the security of Putin’s power. Laruelle lays out the components of Russia’s new concept of empire: “state projection abroad, nation-building language, regime securitization, and Putin’s self-vision of a ruler whose historical role will not be questioned by the future leadership.”

Meanwhile, Russia has had some luck, both at home and in the global South, selling its war in Ukraine as precisely the opposite: a “liberation war” whose aim is actually decolonization. Countries such as Brazil, India, and South Africa can at once be repulsed by Russia’s actions, and as Laruelle notes, regard them as a “byproduct” of “Western domination.” The propagation of this framing by the Kremlin is certainly cynical and calculated, but it also expresses elements of a genuine worldview. “If Russia’s quest for status cannot be achieved through integration with the West on its own terms,” she writes, then “joining the non-Western world to transform the international order looks like the most promising strategy.”

Even as the war has led to a consolidated state with a clear ideological expression, that does not mean Putin or his ruling system is all powerful. Laruelle describes Putin’s rule as “consolidated personalistic authoritarianism”—a form of autocratic governance that is distinct from outright totalitarianism. On the whole, she writes, the Kremlin “does not believe that it can recalibrate the brains of its citizens.” Instead, it seeks simply to push aside “rival ideologies” and provide enormous loyalty incentives. Laruelle detects the beginnings of what she calls “fragmentary fascism”—the call among some Russians for total war and full militarization of the country. But even more Russians, she writes, do not want to be “dragged into the war” and want to keep the fighting separate from the civilian economy and the cultural sphere.

For now, that’s an advantage of the Putin system: it needs acquiescence, not ardor. As the war goes on, however, the Kremlin will need ever more people who are willing to fight—and even to sacrifice their bodies and lives—as is the case with the estimated 30,000 to 40,000 men who take huge signing bonuses to join the Russian army every month. So far, these people are mostly from poorer areas and the provinces who can be induced by material rewards. As Laruelle concludes, whether or not the authorities can continue “shielding the rest of society—especially the upper and middle classes from big cities—from the impact . . . will be critical to the long-term success or failure of state ideology.”

PRISONERS OF THEIR OWN DEVICE

Eventually, Russia’s war will end. But Laruelle is rightly pessimistic as to whether that could lead the country toward a second perestroika, a renewed flourishing of liberal thought. Across society, including among the elite, the romantic political ideal of the West as a model is gone and cannot be easily resurrected. War supporters clearly view the Western order—its military and geopolitical power and its embodiment of liberal values—with hostility; but even quiet war skeptics or outright opponents feel embittered and let down by the United States and its European allies, which look, from Russia’s vantage point, feckless and hypocritical. First, they failed to stop the war and its resulting suffering. Then they tried to punish and isolate the Russian government with sanctions and travel bans, leaving ordinary citizens, including those against the war, as collateral damage. Tellingly, in 2024, European countries spent more importing Russian energy than they provided in financial assistance to Ukraine. Russians may not like Putin or his war, but for many of them, his argument can feel convincing: the West is inherently anti-Russian and thus out to get you.

Soldatov and Borogan note the seeming paradox in their friends’ attitudes toward Europe and the United States. Despite their own affinities, these Russians now insist that they hate Western values. Soldatov and Borogan wonder if their friends’ closeness to the West, psychic if not temporal, was the very thing that made them “so emotional and angry” when they came to see that Russia had not been accepted into the liberal order on its own terms. Whatever the case, Soldatov and Borogan write, “they helped Putin isolate the country.” Ideology, after all, works both upward and downward.

Foreign Affairs · More by Joshua Yaffa · October 21, 2025

19. Taiwan Is Not for Sale – America Can Make a Good Deal With China Without Abandoning the Island

Hmmm... wishful thinking? A proposal that plays into PRC hands?

Excertps:

Negotiations could start by seeking to limit offensive military capabilities around Taiwan. The United States could ask China to withdraw long-range and mobile ballistic missile systems currently stationed opposite Taiwan, so that attack systems on the mainland are not positioned within range to strike the island. It could also request that China restrict how closely People’s Liberation Army ships and aircraft operate near Taiwan. In exchange, the United States could pull back its own long-range weaponry, such as the Typhon missile system that it recently deployed to the Philippines, from China’s immediate periphery, while maintaining the ability to redeploy those capabilities if necessary. The United States could also refocus its regional military exercises involving aircraft carriers and bombers on defensive objectives, such as protecting U.S. and allied territory, rather than offensive missions that appear to target China.

A good deal with China should seek to restore the norms that existed before 2022.

The United States could also propose establishing a de facto buffer zone around Taiwan. Such a buffer would reduce the risk of incidents that could escalate into a major conflict. It would also restore early warning indicators that would make it easier for both Beijing and Washington to send and read strategic signals, which would allow them to differentiate between routine exercises and military escalation. As long as the United States maintains enough forces in the region to communicate its willingness to enforce boundaries, such a buffer zone would not undermine the ability of the United States and Taiwan to collectively deter China. China may be amenable to this arrangement because Xi, who continues to purge high-level military officials, appears to not fully trust the People’s Liberation Army or its readiness to take Taiwan in the near term.

Leaders in the United States and China should also explore mutual restraint in how they talk about Taiwan’s legal status. In recent years, the Chinese government has intensified its campaign to push an alternate interpretation of UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, the 1971 measure that flipped the UN seat representing China from Taipei to Beijing. China claims that Resolution 2758 says that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China—a claim that Western legal scholars widely reject—raising concerns that Beijing is seeking to lay the legal foundation for attacking Taiwan. Meanwhile, the United States’ pushback against China’s position on Resolution 2758 is viewed in Beijing as an effort to promote Taiwan’s permanent separation from the mainland. The two sides should pursue a cease-fire in this war of words in which both sides refrain from discussing Taiwan’s legal status, a practice that had largely been followed for decades.

Although these are limited steps, any incremental progress in the Taiwan Strait would be a major achievement. Rather than merely reacting to Beijing’s proposals, Washington can set the agenda on Taiwan and stabilize the Taiwan Strait, which remains the likeliest venue of a war between the two nuclear-armed powers. If China balks at American suggestions, it would nonetheless clarify Beijing’s intentions and send an important signal to the region that the United States does not seek war in the Taiwan Strait—and is committed in both words and deeds to preventing one.

Taiwan Is Not for Sale

Foreign Affairs · More by Marvin Park · October 22, 2025

America Can Make a Good Deal With China Without Abandoning the Island

October 22, 2025

A flag flying in Taipei, Taiwan, October 2025 Ann Wang / Reuters

MARVIN PARK is Senior Vice President at American Global Strategies. He served as Director for Taiwan Affairs on the National Security Council from 2023 to 2024 and as U.S. Naval Attaché at the American Institute in Taiwan from 2016 to 2019.

DAVID SACKS is Fellow for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

More by David Sacks

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When U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the coming weeks and months—likely starting next week at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in South Korea—the immediate focus will be on how to de-escalate the latest round of export restrictions and tariff threats that the United States and China have wielded against each other. But Trump and Xi are also likely to consider a more ambitious deal to reset bilateral relations, which would seek not only to stabilize economic ties but also to reevaluate geopolitical flash points—above all, Taiwan. Indeed, this week Trump acknowledged to reporters that Taiwan is likely to come up in talks with Xi.

Chinese leaders have made no secret of their desire to assert control over Taiwan, by force if necessary, and they frequently remind their American interlocutors that the island remains the most sensitive and important aspect of U.S.-Chinese relations. Xi is likely to use negotiations to ask the United States to reduce its support for Taiwan, as Beijing believes that this would help China achieve its goal of bringing Taiwan more firmly under its control. Xi could even go so far as to see whether Trump would be willing to fundamentally alter U.S. policy toward Taiwan—by asking the United States to formally oppose Taiwan’s independence, for example—in exchange for lucrative Chinese trade and investment promises. China may be willing to offer more market access to U.S. firms and increased purchases of American goods if Trump is willing to agree to Beijing’s requests.

But accepting such a deal would be a grave mistake for the United States. Even subtle changes to U.S. policy that would shift it closer to Beijing’s position would destabilize the region. A strong Taiwan that is confident in American support is a critical factor in maintaining peace in the region. Trump should not shy away from bringing up Taiwan in his negotiations with Xi, but he should use his leverage to push back on China’s encroachment and reestablish norms in the Taiwan Strait that have proved successful in reducing the possibility of miscalculation. A good deal with Beijing would ensure Taiwan’s safety, not set the island adrift.

FALSE PROMISES

Beijing’s demands to the United States on Taiwan are rooted in the claim that it is Taiwan and the United States, not China, that are the principal drivers of regional instability. But in reality, it is China’s increasingly aggressive actions, both militarily and politically, that have inflamed tensions. China has engaged in an unprecedented peacetime military expansion aimed at developing the ability to take Taiwan by force. It has intensified the tempo and scale of military exercises and training in amphibious operations, and it has rapidly expanded its arsenal of nuclear weapons. And it has attempted to isolate Taiwan internationally and intervene in its domestic politics.

Beijing says that its actions were a response to Taiwan’s 2016 election that led to the presidency of Tsai Ing-wen, a member of the Democratic Progressive Party, which takes a firmer line toward Beijing. But China had been increasing its military posturing even before her election. Tsai’s predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, of the Kuomintang, encouraged closer cross-strait ties and signed two dozen agreements with China on issues such as trade and tourism. Ma even met with Xi in Singapore, which marked the first time that political leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait had engaged directly since the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. But despite Ma’s Beijing-friendly positions and this historic rapprochement, China significantly expanded its arsenal of ballistic missiles and its fleet of fighter jets stationed within range of Taiwan during his tenure. Taiwan’s defense spending, by contrast, stagnated and even declined for much of Ma’s presidency. Thus, by the time Tsai took office, China’s military spending outstripped Taiwan’s by a factor of 14.

Tsai originally sought to downplay tensions with China—but China rebuffed these overtures and instead increased pressure. Ma’s so-called 1992 Consensus, which set the basis for cross-strait relations by agreeing that there is only one China but offering room to interpret this in multiple ways, had grown hugely unpopular in Taiwan. Tsai nonetheless stated in her inaugural address that she respected the “historical fact” of the understandings reached in 1992 and offered a creative formula that embodied a “one China” framework that could, in theory, respect Beijing’s bottom line while satisfying the Taiwanese population. But Chinese leaders rejected that approach, passing up an opportunity to improve cross-strait relations and blaming Tsai for not going far enough.

Since 2022, when then U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi carried out a visit to Taiwan that Beijing saw as provocative, China has broken many long-standing norms of conduct in the Taiwan Strait. It has been routinely flying aircraft and sophisticated military drones across the centerline of the strait—a demarcation that both sides respected for decades—and stationed military and coast guard vessels around Taiwan. China has been challenging the boundaries of Taiwan’s contiguous zone—an area of 24 nautical miles around the island—and is threatening to violate its territorial waters, which stretch 12 nautical miles from its shores. China has also increasingly sought to coerce Taiwan through nonmilitary means. It has pressured the few remaining countries that maintain formal diplomatic ties with Taipei to instead recognize Beijing, imposed sanctions on Taiwanese products, and launched cyberattacks on Taiwanese infrastructure.

Meanwhile, amid this intensifying pressure campaign, Taiwan’s citizens have further soured on Beijing. When Taiwanese voters elected Lai Ching-te, Tsai’s former vice president, as president in January 2024, Beijing made clear that it would not work with him, labeling him a “dangerous separatist” intent on destroying cross-strait peace. China’s military called Lai a “parasite” and depicted him in a propaganda video as a bug hovering over a Taiwan engulfed in flames. Although Lai has adopted a more defiant stance on Taiwan’s relations with China than Tsai did, for instance by labeling China a “hostile foreign force,” Beijing’s preemptive rejection of Lai has removed any incentive for him to take a more accommodating approach. Beijing is not looking for a way to break this impasse; instead, it is seeking external validation for its efforts to undermine Taiwan’s leadership.

BAD DEAL RISING

In upcoming negotiations, Xi could make a range of requests that seek to shift U.S. policy on Taiwan. These could include asking Trump to publicly oppose Taiwan’s independence, to refrain from advocating for Taiwan’s participation in international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), or even to restrict arms sales to the island. But granting these requests would bolster Beijing’s position and harm U.S. interests.

Washington’s long-standing position on Taiwan—which is based on the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, three joint communiqués between the United States and China signed between 1972 and 1982, and the Six Assurances that U.S. President Ronald Reagan conveyed to Taiwanese leaders in 1982—is that the United States does not support Taiwan’s independence and does not take a position on its legal status. If Trump were to shift from this neutral stance to one that openly opposes Taiwanese independence, it would upend the carefully crafted neutrality that has helped maintain peace in the strait for decades. China would attempt to cast this move as a vote of no confidence in Lai and would use it to bolster a narrative that Taiwan cannot rely on the United States and should instead seek the best deal it can with Beijing. This would put pressure on Taipei, rather than Beijing, to reduce cross-strait tensions. But given that it is China that is primarily responsible for growing risks, this would back Taiwan’s leaders into a corner and embolden China’s aggressive behavior.

Any agreement that limited Taiwan’s participation in international forums would also reverse three decades of U.S. policy and further undercut Taiwan’s geopolitical space. Since U.S. President Bill Clinton completed a comprehensive review of American policy toward Taiwan in 1994, the United States has consistently called for Taiwan’s membership in international organizations that do not require statehood to join and for its meaningful participation in those that do. During Ma’s presidency, from 2008 to 2016, Beijing allowed Taipei to participate in meetings with UN specialized agencies such as the WHO and the International Civil Aviation Organization, which sets global standards for air navigation. China’s demand that the United States cease advocating on Taiwan’s behalf would thus merely be an attempt to selectively isolate and pressure Lai.

U.S. neutrality has helped maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait for decades.

A reduction in U.S. security cooperation with Taiwan would further erode the ability to deter a potential Chinese blockade or invasion of the island. The reality is that Taiwan does not have the capacity to meet its defense needs on its own, and the United States is the only country that is willing and able to provide the island with the defensive weapons it requires. Over the past three and a half decades, the United States has approved over $65 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, helped train Taiwan’s military, and assisted the island’s leaders in developing its defense strategy. To prevent China from attempting to take Taiwan by force, Washington must ensure that Beijing does not believe it can achieve its political aims at an acceptable military cost. Security cooperation between the United States and Taiwan sends a message to China’s leaders and gives Taipei confidence that it can withstand the threats emanating from Beijing.

Trump’s actions in the first year of his second term have already contributed to growing anxiety in Taipei about the durability of U.S. support. Concessions to Beijing would increase skepticism among the Taiwanese about the value of investing in deterrence and preparing for a potential crisis—what current leaders have called whole-of-society resilience. It would also further unsettle U.S. allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, prompting them to question the credibility of the United States. If U.S. support for Taiwan declines, other countries may feel that they have less room to pursue closer relations with Taipei, offering China another opportunity to try to push regional powers away from cooperating with Taiwan.

THE ART OF THE DEAL

American negotiators can make a good deal with China that reduces tensions in the Taiwan Strait without selling out Taiwan. The objective should be to take incremental steps to restore the status quo that existed before Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022. Washington should press Beijing to pull its military, coast guard, and surveillance ships from Taiwan’s contiguous zone, reduce the frequency and scale of major military exercises around Taiwan, refrain from crossing the centerline in the Taiwan Strait, and decrease its military buildup in areas within range of Taiwan. In exchange, the United States could offer to make reciprocal changes to reduce its overall military buildup in the region. Such steps would reduce the chance of escalation and add much-needed stability to the Taiwan Strait.

Negotiations could start by seeking to limit offensive military capabilities around Taiwan. The United States could ask China to withdraw long-range and mobile ballistic missile systems currently stationed opposite Taiwan, so that attack systems on the mainland are not positioned within range to strike the island. It could also request that China restrict how closely People’s Liberation Army ships and aircraft operate near Taiwan. In exchange, the United States could pull back its own long-range weaponry, such as the Typhon missile system that it recently deployed to the Philippines, from China’s immediate periphery, while maintaining the ability to redeploy those capabilities if necessary. The United States could also refocus its regional military exercises involving aircraft carriers and bombers on defensive objectives, such as protecting U.S. and allied territory, rather than offensive missions that appear to target China.

A good deal with China should seek to restore the norms that existed before 2022.

The United States could also propose establishing a de facto buffer zone around Taiwan. Such a buffer would reduce the risk of incidents that could escalate into a major conflict. It would also restore early warning indicators that would make it easier for both Beijing and Washington to send and read strategic signals, which would allow them to differentiate between routine exercises and military escalation. As long as the United States maintains enough forces in the region to communicate its willingness to enforce boundaries, such a buffer zone would not undermine the ability of the United States and Taiwan to collectively deter China. China may be amenable to this arrangement because Xi, who continues to purge high-level military officials, appears to not fully trust the People’s Liberation Army or its readiness to take Taiwan in the near term.

Leaders in the United States and China should also explore mutual restraint in how they talk about Taiwan’s legal status. In recent years, the Chinese government has intensified its campaign to push an alternate interpretation of UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, the 1971 measure that flipped the UN seat representing China from Taipei to Beijing. China claims that Resolution 2758 says that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China—a claim that Western legal scholars widely reject—raising concerns that Beijing is seeking to lay the legal foundation for attacking Taiwan. Meanwhile, the United States’ pushback against China’s position on Resolution 2758 is viewed in Beijing as an effort to promote Taiwan’s permanent separation from the mainland. The two sides should pursue a cease-fire in this war of words in which both sides refrain from discussing Taiwan’s legal status, a practice that had largely been followed for decades.

Although these are limited steps, any incremental progress in the Taiwan Strait would be a major achievement. Rather than merely reacting to Beijing’s proposals, Washington can set the agenda on Taiwan and stabilize the Taiwan Strait, which remains the likeliest venue of a war between the two nuclear-armed powers. If China balks at American suggestions, it would nonetheless clarify Beijing’s intentions and send an important signal to the region that the United States does not seek war in the Taiwan Strait—and is committed in both words and deeds to preventing one.

Foreign Affairs · More by Marvin Park · October 22, 2025

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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