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Quotes of the Day:
"Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets."
– Da Vinci
"real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know."
– Leo Tolstoy
"Gratitude is not only the greatest of all virtues, but the parent of all the others."
– Cicero
1. Assessing “Cognitive Warfare” by Frank Hoffman
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9. Department of War Name Set in Bronze at Pentagon Entrances
10. Russia claims to have thwarted Ukrainian assassination plot as deadly overnight strikes pound Kyiv
11. Memo Blessing Boat Strikes Is Said to Rely on Trump’s Claims About Cartels
12. SOCOM wants to train operators to build, wield FPV drones
1. Assessing “Cognitive Warfare” by Frank Hoffman
Summary:
“Cognitive warfare” is competition over human perception and decision-making enabled by emerging technologies. The term is poorly defined but captures a real battlespace increasingly emphasized by China and Russia, who see a distinct cognitive domain and integrate psychological, cyber, AI, and neuroscience tools to shape elites and societies. Western militaries, steeped in kinetic, Clausewitzian traditions, lag conceptually and institutionally. Hoffman proposes a broader definition and analytic framework that includes both degrading adversary cognition and enhancing friendly resilience and decision-making. He concludes the United States is underprepared and must develop holistic offensive and defensive responses.
Excerpts:
Information warfare has a long historical foundation in conflict. The concept is linked to our understanding of war’s fundamental nature and its essential element of human will. New technologies and methods have altered how information and beliefs can be manipulated to generate effects that impact will and its underlying beliefs, which are producing changes in war’s evolving character today. These technologies can also enhance or degrade critical decision-making processes and influence the key contributions that human expertise brings to bear.
Whatever we choose to call it, ignoring our adversaries in this field places the Nation in peril. The United States is presently underprepared to contest intrusions in its information space and will remain so until we recognize the problem and conceive of a more holistic counter approach. Mastering the opportunities and vulnerabilities within the cognitive domain will be increasingly relevant to strategic success in the 21st Century.
Comment: A long and important read. I think this makes a strong case for why we need an Information Warfare branch (IWar). We have to learn to lead with influence better than our adversaries. This is why we must be proficient in IWar, irregular warfare, and political warfare. Graphics at the link.
My assessment on the different views of warfare:
•What is the major difference in the views of conflict, strategy, and campaigning between China, Russia, Iran, nK, AQ, and ISIS and the US?
–The psychological takes precedence and may or may not be supported with the kinetic
–Politics is war by other means
–For the US kinetic is first and the psychological is second
–War is politics by other means
–Easier to get permission to put a hellfire on the forehead of terrorist than to get permission to put an idea between his ears
•Bonaparte: In war, the moral is to the physical as three is to one
•In the 21st Century the psychological is to the kinetic as ten is to one
•The US has to learn to put the psychological first
–Can a federal democratic republic “do strategy” this way
–Or is it only autocratic, totalitarian dictatorships that can “do strategy” this way?
•An American Way of Political Warfare: A Proposal https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE300/PE304/RAND_PE304.pdf
Assessing “Cognitive Warfare”
by Frank Hoffman
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11.14.2025 at 06:00am
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/11/14/assessing-cognitive-warfare/
Despite its introduction over a decade ago by the People’s Liberation Army, there is no common understanding of Cognitive Warfare. Nor is there an agreement on the existence of a human or cognitive domain. These concepts compete in a crowded and confusing field centered around information technology and the related information dimension of statecraft. While the US intelligence community notes the increasing prevalence of Chinese concepts and research for what they term Cognitive Domain Operations (as well as active Russian activities), there is little appreciation for the implications of Cognitive Warfare in the US military as described by the pacing threat.
Scholars have generated numerous labels to capture the ongoing evolution of information technologies as a vector to influence decision-makers and impact public opinion. See Figure 1 for a partial list. Recently, US government agencies have been using Foreign Malign Influence or just Influence Operations to address the threat.[1] RAND has published studies on cyber-enabled Influence Operations, Virtual Societal Warfare, and Next Generation Psychological Warfare to capture the contest in the information environment.[2] Related studies on Russian disinformation are also common, and with overlapping definitions.
War in the future will not be “wars of attrition but wars of cognition.”
Now the concept of Cognitive Warfare is competing in this crowded space, with no accepted definition or understanding of how it fits within the national security agenda. While information and narratives have shaped wars in the past, ongoing technological developments provide extremely efficient tools to expand this battlespace and substantially raise the potential and salience of Cognitive Warfare. New communication tools now offer infinite possibilities for digital distortion, opening the way to achieving desired objectives in opponents’ minds. Key competitors from autocratic states are not content to merely control their own population; instead, they have “weaponized” social media with “algorithmic amplification” against Western societies.[3] In the words of one expert, war in the future will not be “wars of attrition but wars of cognition.”[4] The joint warfighting community is aware of the challenge, but the national security community is reducing its ability to monitor and respond effectively.
Figure 1. Information Warfare Variants
To the historically oriented, the fight for the minds of decision-makers and noncombatants does not expand the battlespace, but it does expand or at least challenge long-held Western conceptions about war.[5] Those encultured with violent visions, per Clausewitz, will struggle with this concept. The acolytes of the Prussian sage think in terms of physical violence as the essence of war and overlook his description of war as a clash of wills, as well as his discussions about rational and irrational factors in human conflict.
Thus, Cognitive Warfare runs against the grain for the selective Clausewitzian reader, as it goes after a much softer target: the human mind. Because of this bias, Cognitive Warfare faces a steep uphill fight for acceptance within the US military establishment. The American predisposition to kinetic operations and attrition stems from the defense establishment’s strategic culture. This stress on hard power is part of the prevailing conventional US strategic and military culture, which privileges strike operations in the physical realm over more unconventional approaches and especially those involving the human domain.[6] As Colin Gray noted long ago, the US military culture is thoroughly conventional, firepower-centric, and technologically oriented.[7]
This assessment reviews the literature and ongoing dialogue on Cognitive Warfare within the research community. The reviewed scholarship details relevant material from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as well as from other international sources. The paper then moves to coverage on the subject in the United States. This analysis concludes with a brief assessment to further develop this framework.
Defining Cognitive Warfare
In Cognitive Warfare, the message is the munition, and the target is the mind of either specific individuals (e.g., elites, influencers, policymakers) or the collective population of a democratic state. Distorting what these individuals think is a precursor to how they think, and thus how they behave.
Early advocates such as the French officer, Francois du Cluzel, defined Cognitive Warfare as “the art of using technologies to alter the cognition of human targets, most often without their knowledge and consent.”[8] This early conception stressed Cognitive Warfare as an offensive form of cyber conflict; however, he recognized that countermeasures and preventive measures were required. Du Cluzel differentiated psychological operations from cognitive operations, but it is unclear whether the distinction is valid or of value. For du Cluzel, psychological warfare attempts to change what the target audience thinks, but Cognitive Warfare aims at shaping how they reason and their resultant behavior. This distinction lies at the heart of why human cognition is the central objective.
Cognitive War is the application of targeted and tailored messages and nonviolent methods used against civilian and military decision-makers or the general population of a target state to gain a positional advantage in the cognitive domain or gain desired political, military, and informational outcomes.
While Cognitive Warfare is not new, there are a number of novel technologies that significantly enhance the reach and efficacy of activities that target the way decision-makers and individuals think about a crisis situation. Some have seen this as social media-based influence operations.[9] These technologies can be combined to “assess, access, and affect the cognitive space.”[10] While our competitors think in terms of systems and confronting and deceiving us, Western militaries orient on hardware, maneuver platforms, and kinetic operations.
Cognitive Warfare but can be refined to capture a clear theory of victory focused on tailored actions in the information domain. My starting definition of Cognitive War is the application of targeted and tailored messages and nonviolent methods used against civilian and military decision-makers or the general population of a target state to gain a positional advantage in the cognitive domain or gain desired political, military, and informational outcomes. This definition aligns with most Western theorists, who focus on social media manipulation of civilian populations. There are limitations with this approach, which are addressed later.
State of the Security Literature
International Perspectives
There are numerous research articles throughout the international security community on this topic. NATO has continued to build upon Du Cluzel’s work.[11] Du Cluzel also recognized the array of new technologies that would increase the salience of Cognitive Warfare, including the weaponization of neuroscience and the potential convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, gene editing, computer science, information technologies, and cognitive sciences. His most recent work defined Cognitive Warfare as “an unconventional form of warfare that uses cyber tools to alter enemy cognitive processes, exploit mental biases or reflexive thinking, and provoke thought distortions, influence decision-making and hinder action, with negative effects, both at the individual and collective level.”[12]
In the last two years, there has been a surge in interest in this mode of conflict in Europe and Asia.[13] Japanese military officers have tracked PLA developments closely and analyzed Russian efforts in Ukraine to assess how effective the information activity has been.[14] They assess the PLA’s interest in what they call “Cognitive Domain Operations” (discussed in depth later) as strong and growing. Military analysts in India have also assessed PLA writings on the topic.[15]
Taiwan has studied and faced this threat. Their scholars erroneously think that cognitive warfare is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) strategy of “unrestricted warfare” (超限戰). However, Taiwanese strategists correctly recognize that Cognitive Warfare targets human perception, attitudes, and decision-making through information manipulation, propaganda, and psychological operations with the intent of gaining strategic objectives. The Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense (MND) describes it as an effort “to sway the subject’s will and change its mindset. Psychologically, the PRC is trying to cause mental disarray and confusion, in order to weaken fighting will and determination to defending ourselves.”[16] The MND also assesses that cognitive warfare “originated from the [disciplines] of intelligence warfare, psychological warfare, and public opinion warfare.” As a clear target in China’s crosshairs, the government in Taiwan has set up a research center tasked with deflecting the PRC’s narratives.[17] This research concluded that the PRC has not been very effective despite continued pressure campaigns against Taipei.[18]
China and Cognitive Domain Operations
In contrast with US strategic and military culture, China has embraced the existence of a cognitive domain and has expanded its thinking about contemporary warfare. It views the cognitive space as increasingly central to future conflict. “The cognitive domain will become another battle domain next to the land, sea, air, space, electromagnetic, and cyber domains of warfare.”[19] The PLA has been discussing the relevance of psychological conflict for several generations, but began writing about the cognitive domain as far back as 2002, with a steep increase in 2014. Some of these early Chinese writers stressed the novelty of the cognitive space as “a brand-new battlefield.”[20] [21]
Back in 2017, Major General He Fuchu forecasted, “The sphere of operations will be expanded from the physical domain and the information domain to the domain of consciousness (意识域); the human brain will become a new combat space.”[22] Consequently, success on the future battlefield will require achieving not only “biological dominance” (制生权) but also “mental/cognitive dominance” (制脑权) and “intelligence dominance” (制智权).
Chinese analysts employ a deep historical perspective about the impact of technology over time, and they note that each industrial revolution has extended the reach and impact of information. Our current era, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is said to extend the multimedia of the previous period with AI and image processing technologies to create deepfakes that can be used by the military to fool the enemy. “Throughout the continuous evolution of technology, more and more media can be used,” one Chinese author notes, “to influence the enemy’s thinking, judgment, and cognition, thus creating new modes of cognitive domain combat.”[23]
Chinese analysts have studied this aspect of modern conflict, and the government has supported research on how to translate the concept into an advantage for the PLA. This comports with the famous Sun Tzu maxim that equates winning without fighting as the highest form of the art of warfare.
Many scholars think this remains a key feature of Chinese strategic culture. Evidence for thinking that this is an operative concept can be seen in the activities of the Political Work department inside the PLA and the promulgation of its “Three Warfares” concept.[24] These include 1) public opinion warfare to influence domestic and international public opinion, 2) psychological warfare to demoralize enemy soldiers and civilians, and 3) legal warfare to gain international support through both international and domestic law. Only the latter element is outside what most people term influence operations or cognitive warfare.[25]
Chinese literature on cognitive warfare (認知作戰) is as diffuse as Western research is about influence operations. The volume of Chinese writings on the topic is significant, indicating the emphasis and interest within China’s leadership.[26] Recent articles address the value of confrontation via the social media battlefield.[27] Researchers from China’s psychological warfare unit call for the PLA to “speed up the research for online propaganda technology targeted toward the real-time release on social platforms, voice information synthesis technology using deep learning and other technology, as well as online netizen sentiment trend analysis using big data analytics.”[28]
One pair of Chinese researchers identified another aspect of intelligent operations in the form of “cognitive confrontation” (认知对抗), in which the key objective is to achieve decisive supremacy over enemies in terms of information and awareness. They forecast that future operations should attack enemy perceptions and understanding of the battlespace by “taking the cognitive initiative and damaging or interfering with the cognition of the enemy based on the speed and quality of the cognitive confrontation.”[29] Such a struggle will replace traditional warfare concepts that have emphasized control over physical domains such as land, air, and sea. This extends the concept from purely social media manipulation towards an operational application that US military planners may need to worry about.
China has read Clausewitz, and PLA analysts recognize that war “is ultimately a contest of human will. The key to victory is the ability to impose one’s will on the audience. Cognitive domain warfare takes people’s will, spirit, and psychology as the goal of confrontation, strengthens one’s own will and weakens the enemy’s will.”[30] They recognize that modern technology, including generative AI, has increased the ability to target the cognitive domain with “cognitive ammunition.” Yang Cunshe talks of increasing the fog of war for the opponent through cognitive interference, confusion, and blocking in order to increase the likelihood of the opponent making wrong decisions and actions.
The PLA has long extolled “disintegrating the enemy” via politico-psychological attacks and subversion as a means of undermining an opponent’s will to fight.[31] Chinese researchers appear to be interested in exploring methods of impacting key decision-makers, rather than just the general public. They are also interested in various physical means of targeting and affecting human targets beyond social media and other information systems.
Evidence of this is seen in Chinese military analysts writing about Cognitive Domain Operations, which is defined narrowly and focused on degrading both the military will to fight and generating friction and uncertainty. As one trio wrote:
Cognitive domain operations take the human brain as the main combat space and focus on striking, weakening, and dismantling the enemy’s will to fight, using human psychological weaknesses such as fear, anxiety and suspicion as a breakthrough point, focusing on soft-kill methods to create an atmosphere of insecurity, uncertainty and mistrust within the enemy, and increasing their internal friction and decision-making doubts.[32]
Some Chinese writers think in terms of multi-domain operations and creating dilemmas just as US joint doctrine authors do. In this regard, one author admits that physically destroying enemy decision-making centers, command hubs, and early warning systems is necessary. But he goes on to stress the greater need to work at “soft killing” through cognitive shaping, induction, intervention, and control, by embedding cognitive domain operations into “hard destruction” efforts to generate an asymmetric advantage.[33]
Some PRC researchers feel that the emerging metaverse will vastly expand the target set and success rate for CDO.[34] Some others write in terms of hearts and minds and impacting the emotions of target audiences.[35] Other scholars are more technologically oriented and see the potential for cognitive enhancement through Brain-Computer Interfaces.[36] As reported by Elsa Kania, the Chinese are interested in more than the employment of modern information technologies. Their research programs include work in brain sciences, human enhancement, biotech, as well as military applications of neuroscience.[37]
Chinese officials do not anticipate that the application of cognitive sciences and technologies will be used only against adversaries. They envision employing these technologies to enhance their own human performance as well. As noted in the CCP’s leading theoretical journal:
Brain Strengthening is to enhance human cognitive functions by means of neurofeedback technology, electromagnetic stimulation technology, etc., to improve the effectiveness of military training of personnel and enhance their combat capability. Real-time neurofeedback techniques can train and reshape the brain to improve its cognitive functions, thereby enhancing cognitive combat capabilities.[38]
Russia’s Version
There is little in the Russian literature that discusses Cognitive Warfare in those terms. However, indirect modes of warfare are a familiar strain in Russian scholarship and practice, including notable writings about ‘Subversion Wars’ (Myatezhevoyna) during the Cold War.[39] Moscow has employed so-called “active measures,” including cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, as well as limited coercive measures, to advance its interests for generations.[40] The Russian intelligence services are well-practiced in designing and conducting campaigns to utilize coercive actions and information tools.[41] Western analysts tend to divide Russian practice through various lenses, including propaganda, information operations, or disinformation.[42]
The latest wrinkle in Moscow’s longstanding practice is the exploitation of social media, which is seen as an extension of the battlespace.[43] Election interference in Europe and the United States is another aspect of this playbook, but a critically important one to deflect if we expect to preserve democratic freedom.[44]
While the term may not be common, the pursuit of cognitive effects is clear. President Putin’s advisors brag openly about the Kremlin’s influence campaigns. “Foreign politicians talk about Russia’s interference in elections and referendums around the world,” one such advisor stated, but “In fact, the matter is even more serious: Russia interferes in your brains, we change your conscience, and there is nothing you can do about it.”[45] Experts warn that a general understanding of Russia’s malign influence playbook is lacking.[46]
The closest concept to Cognitive Warfare is the Russian concept of Reflexive Control. This has been defined as consisting of “transmitting motives and grounds from the controlling entity to the controlled system that stimulate the desired decision. The goal of reflexive control is to prompt the enemy to make a decision unfavorable to him.”[47] This definition notes a key requirement: the need to tailor false information to the specific target, to impact the target’s responses and reactions. Reflexive control involves targeting decision-making through multiple vectors — adversary information processing, as well as emotional, psychological, and cultural frames within which decisions are made. Reflexive control appears to have evolved in Russian discussions and is now displaced by perception management.[48]
As early as 2010, influential Russian military authors noted the superiority of Western military power and began to stress the need for more asymmetric approaches.[49] This idea was expanded upon in subsequent articles, which saw a role for information confrontation to disorganize military command and control and state administration.[50] They further extended their thinking to stress the role of non-military attacks in what they labeled the Initial Period of War (IPW). They argued that this period can be decisive in future wars, and that it would include subversive acts, provocations, information operations, and psychological attacks in conjunction with military operations.[51] Their assessments also found that success could be accomplished by the employment of “military, economic, and IT measures in combination with efficient psychological information campaigns.”[52] These authors later argued for a concept called New Generation Warfare (NGW), a “new” form dominated by “information and psychological warfare seeking to achieve superiority.”[53] The Russian Chief of Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, expanded on this aspect in his noted talk on future warfare, going so far as stating that “The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.”[54]
There has been a recent link between Russia’s indirect methods and cognitive warfare produced by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). According to this research, “The primary objective of Russian cognitive warfare is to shape its adversaries’ decision-making and erode our will to act.” [55] Their study identifies the multi-modal character of Russia’s disinformation efforts. The Kremlin uses all platforms that transmit information, not just social media, but conferences, international frameworks, diplomatic channels, and influential individuals as means of employing Cognitive Warfare. According to the analysts at ISW, Russia’s version goes well beyond the dissemination of information and includes physical activities in peace, crisis, and war. These physical means include military exercises, sabotage, cyber-attacks, combat operations, and exaggerations of Russia’s military capabilities and battlefield progress.
This was not news to dedicated scholars of the Russian way of war.[56] In both theory and practice, the Russians employ a broader conception of war than most Western states.[57] This includes forms of subversion against political leaders and the general population, as well as other hostile measures that combine physical and cognitive means and effects.[58] Like the Chinese, Russian writers are becoming less concerned with attrition of the opponent’s order of battle and increasingly interested in targeting the adversary’s perception and will. To be sure, traditional military means are not overlooked either, as they too can impact perception and will. More recent scholarship highlights the potential impact of Artificial Intelligence on Russian disinformation efforts.[59]
United States
The earliest US author on this topic is James Lewis from CSIS. His in-depth 2018 study of cyber conflict highlighted the generation of what he termed “cognitive effects.” The goal in future conflict, Lewis concluded, “is not a kinetic effect (achieved with shells and bombs), but a cognitive effect, in other words, manipulating information to change thoughts and behavior. The strategic goal is to influence morale, cohesion, political stability, and, ultimately, to reduce the opponent’s will to counteract.” [60] His view aligns well with Russian thinking and the PLA.
The US intelligence community has monitored this development as well. In its annual threat assessments, both in 2022 and 2024, the Director of National Intelligence devoted coverage to the evolution of Chinese writings from psychological warfare to CDO, which they describe as combining psychological warfare with cyber operations to shape adversary behavior and decision-making. The assessment also noted that the PLA is looking at generative AI to generate synthetic media, including deepfakes.[61]
Analysts at RAND have identified China’s growing interest in systems and information confrontation.[62] One RAND researcher, Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, has extensively studied the PLA’s development of Cognitive Domain Operations.[63]
While the Chinese military seems intensely interested in cognitive warfare, the American professional military journals are fairly quiet. Yet, there have been few articles in the professional journals. One pair of Marine officers wrote about how CDO is tied to Maneuver Warfare because of its emphasis on human will (and presumably psychological dislocation) and argued that “the United States must develop its approach to CW—defensively as well as offensively.”[64]
One relatively recent article tied Cognitive Warfare to actions below the threshold of warfare, the so-called ‘gray zone.’[65] This seems to be tied to a very limited reading of both Chinese and Russian publications. The article’s criticism of Joint doctrine was noteworthy, as were its series of recommendations to enhance the readiness of the Joint warfighting community. The subject is not entirely unknown to readers of this journal.[66]
Assessment
There are many and varied definitions of this topic, and its complexity is exacerbated by the nature of the technologies involved, including those in the cognitive and neurosciences. It is further complicated by vague connections to larger conceptions like gray zone tactics and influence operations. The literature is scattered and contains limited evidence on tactics and technologies being considered.
Cognitive warfare could be viewed as a concept that may help promote the cognitive domain and squeeze out “the ounces of cognitive effect” the JCS Chairman has called for.[67] While I have some reservations about introducing a new term into a crowded field, the term “cognitive” is superior to broad terms like information or influence. Psychology is a broad field, and cognition narrows the subject to key features. It directs attention to the target and desired effect. I am less enthralled with the “warfare” label and think the Chinese terminology is better.
Arguably, some of the effects expected by the conduct of Cognitive Warfare can be conceived as part of the under-appreciated concept of subversion.[68] Some scholars believe we have entered an age of algorithm-fueled propaganda and superpowered subversion.[69] This is a valid term, but it is not traditionally employed in the US military lexicon. A RAND study almost two decades ago found the term vague at best.[70] It has not become any clearer over the last two decades, given the proliferation of terms.
The term “cognitive” is superior to broad terms like information or influence.
Scholars in this field have addressed cognitive warfare as a form of subversion. This would be fine if we limited the concept to non-military targets by non-military forces. The writings and efforts by the PLA and Russian military would beg to differ here and suggest that more than informational subversion is involved.
Subversion is not traditionally seen as a complement or component directed at conventional forces in warfare as understood in the West. It is clear that China and Russia expect to exploit psychological and cognitive effects in wartime as well, and seek to target military decision-making and combat effectiveness. We should expect military formations and their leaders to be targets as well. In short, the employment of cognitive confrontation against national security leaders or military commanders and their staff in wartime does not square with subversion.
If US adversaries were solely oriented on manipulating domestic audiences, a strong argument could be made that labeling this as a form of “warfare” over-militarizes the problem and distorts the search for solutions that would best address the issue. But as China and Russia use both intelligence and military assets, and seek to target political and military command systems, Cognitive Warfare seems to warrant greater consideration over subversion.
Analytical Framework
To help promote the potential development of this concept, we will need an analytical framework that explains the scope of the cognitive domain and the potential for applications of maneuver/confrontation in that domain. To grasp the potential of cognitive warfare, including its offensive use and appropriate defensive countermeasures, a broader analytical framework was conceived that captures a range of perspectives and authors. This framework helps define the potential scale and scope of the concept and its applications. Figure 2 offers an initial depiction to stimulate discussion and debate.
This framework depicts a larger or more comprehensive conception of cognitive warfare that captures both offensive and defensive contributions. The matrix reflects a continuum of targets—from individuals to collective populations—along the horizontal axis. The vertical axis separates actions and technologies that degrade human cognition (entire lower half of the matrix) from those that enhance individual decision-making (upper left) and those that counter cognitive warfare by improving social cohesions and resilience (upper right quadrant). Along the vertical continuum, political decision-making processes and military commands are in the middle of the matrix.
Figure 2. Analytic Framework for Cognitive Warfare/Domain Operations
As seen in the literature review, most of the research focuses on cognitive degradation, especially through the manipulation of social media against target societies (lower right quadrant). The majority of PLA authors fall in the lower half of the matrix, emphasizing the projected need to successfully apply information confrontation against a sophisticated, large-scale competitor. But they also include discourse on enhancing human performance and strengthening civil society. Overall, Chinese military authors touch upon every quadrant as opposed to Western analysts, who look at social media manipulation.
The most interesting quadrant is the individual block, which would address how we prepare future leaders to be able to design and conduct campaigns, as well as detect and deflect adversary Cognitive Domain campaigns. In this quadrant, we can conceive of applications of neurosciences and AI-enabled agents to enhance the cognitive function of military commanders and staffs through machine learning and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) of various types.[71] There are advances in BCI technologies that may extend the ability of decision-makers and warfighting operators to make sense of their situational context and make timely decisions.[72] DARPA is funding projects that examine how to augment human cognition via its SCEPTER study.[73] Investments targeting enhanced decision augmentation are represented in this portion of the matrix, as well as defensive measures to thwart neurological weapons and technologies. The legal, moral, and ethical framework for this work should be established first.
The converging role of AI and the neurosciences is going to impact command and control, and should include an ability to detect and deflect adversary CDO.[74]
Revised Definition
Accepting this framework would require some modifications to how we define Cognitive Warfare. Rather than just manipulating or degrading target audiences, the scope of Cognitive Warfare would have to incorporate efforts to develop and attain cognitive advantage at both the individual and collective level, as well as detecting and defending against cognitive domain operations.
This leads to a revision of my original definition: “The application of information and cognitive sciences to enhance or degrade the decision-making process and resulting behavior of political and military leaders, and civilian society, in order to obtain a positional advantage in the information environment and designated political objectives.” This is a concise initial stab that can be refined. It is not the final answer, but it does capture the offense/defense or enhancement/ degradation continuum to a greater degree than others.
Revision of Information Operation
Advancing the concept will face an uphill battle with the existing crowded terminological minefield in information warfare. A conceptual schema for placing Cognitive Domain Operations (CDO) that builds upon the existing joint information operations taxonomy is presented in Figure 3. A few adaptations are embedded in this proposed schema. This deliberately excludes operational security and deception as inherent to sound operational planning. Consideration could be given to including public media engagement for both domestic and foreign audiences. The interface between CDO and MISO needs further study regarding a division of labor. The inclusion of CDO within the joint doctrine pertains solely to the military’s use of or defense against CDO, and is not intended to suggest applications to domestic contexts.
Figure 3. Relationship of Information Operations and Cognitive Domain Operations
Tomorrow’s Cognitive Confrontation
The convergence of physical and moral forces during conflict will continue in this century. The advances in neuroscience, brain sciences, computational technologies, and AI-enabled models have altered the strategic environment and should change how we conceive of and prepare for conflict. These advances have enhanced the ability of competitors to “expanding the attack surface that foreign adversaries can exploit using cognitive manipulation.”[75] As the technological advances in artificial general intelligence (AGI) and machine learning become more operational, they can create mass disruption using low-cost but possibly impactful forms of influence. In the near term, distinguishing between real and manufactured products will become more difficult, if not impossible. The orchestration of physical and cognitive means to generate changes in human behavior and decision-making will thus accelerate with the advances in cognitive and neurosciences. The eventual development of AGI offers the potential for the perfect storm in Cognitive Warfare. A pro-Chinese influence operation in 2022 involved video content with AI-generated fictitious ‘people’ acting as newscasters, created using artificial intelligence techniques. In the future, competitors will continue to experiment with AI technologies, producing increasingly convincing media that are harder to detect and verify.[76]
Some states will find these technologies uniquely suited to sow divisions and undermine public support in free and open Western societies. Ongoing advances in generative AI will undoubtedly promote the proliferation of deepfakes.[77]
As authoritarian states such as Russia and China exploit these technologies, the global competition in influence or cognitive operations is going to intensify. Studies have identified variation in methods but convergence in narratives between Russian and Chinese foreign information manipulation and interference operations.[78] Veteran intelligence experts believe the United States is losing the battle for cognitive superiority.[79] However, the US government has shuttered intelligence and law enforcement cells and agencies designed to thwart foreign malign information efforts.[80] An objective assessment of this challenge suggests it is misguided and should be reconsidered. Strategies to address authoritarian influence campaigns, including Cognitive Warfare, need to be developed.[81] Our special operations personnel bring a lot to this arena, coupled with the cyber and information professionals.[82] Embracing the conceptual challenge and addressing capabilities is the first step toward reversing this widening gap.
Conclusion
Information warfare has a long historical foundation in conflict. The concept is linked to our understanding of war’s fundamental nature and its essential element of human will. New technologies and methods have altered how information and beliefs can be manipulated to generate effects that impact will and its underlying beliefs, which are producing changes in war’s evolving character today. These technologies can also enhance or degrade critical decision-making processes and influence the key contributions that human expertise brings to bear.
Whatever we choose to call it, ignoring our adversaries in this field places the Nation in peril. The United States is presently underprepared to contest intrusions in its information space and will remain so until we recognize the problem and conceive of a more holistic counter approach. Mastering the opportunities and vulnerabilities within the cognitive domain will be increasingly relevant to strategic success in the 21st Century.
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End Notes
[1] For example, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence once housed the Foreign Malign Influence Center which is focused on mitigating threats to democracy and US national interests from external sources.
[2] Michael J. Mazarr, Ryan Bauer, Abigail Casey, Sarah Heintz, and Luke J. Matthews, The Emerging Risk of Virtual Societal Warfare: Social Manipulation in a Changing Information Environment, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2019); Elina Treyger, Joe Cheravitch, and Raphael Cohen, Russian Disinformation Efforts on Social Media (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2022); Nathan Beuachamp Mustafaga, Chinese Next Generation Psychological Warfare: The Military Applications of Emerging Technologies and Implications for the United States (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, June 2023).
[3] Matthew Ingram, “What should we do about the algorithmic amplification of disinformation? “ Columbia Journalism Review, March 11, 2021, https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/what-should-we-do-about-the-algorithmic-amplification-of-disinformation.php
[4] As noted by James Giordano, “Is Neuroscience the Future of Warfare?,” Defence IQ, April 17, 2019, https://www.defenceiq.com/defence-technology/articles/neuroscience-and-future-warfare-1;
[5] The weaponization of social media for conflict is best captured in Peter Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018); David Patrikarakos, War in 140 Characters, How Social Media is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Basic Books, 2017).
[6] For a distinctive exception, see Todd Schmidt, “The Missing Domain of War: Achieving Cognitive Overmatch on Tomorrow’s Battlefield,” Modern War Institute, April 7, 2020, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/missing-domain-war-achieving-cognitive-overmatch-tomorrows-battlefield/
[7] Colin Gray, “Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy: Can the American Way of War Adapt?” Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle Barracks, PA, 2014.
[8] François du Cluzel, “Cognitive Warfare, A Battle for the Brain,” NATO, Allied Command Transformation, Norfolk, VA, 2018.
[9] Andrew Radin, Cyber-enabled, Social Media-based Influence Operations (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2024), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2679-1.html).
[10] Robert “Jake” Bebber, “Cognitive Competition, Conflict, and War: An Ontological Approach,” Hudson Institute, 2024, 12.
[11] Bernard Claverie1 and François du Cluzel, “The Cognitive Warfare Concept,” NATO Innovation Hub (2020), https://www.innovationhub-act.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/CW article Claverie du Cluzel final_0.pdf.
[12] Bernard Claverie and François Du Cluzel. “Cognitive Warfare”: The Advent of the Concept of “Cognitics” in the Field of Warfare,” in Bernard Claverie, Baptiste Prébot, Norbou Buchler and François du Cluzel, eds., Cognitive Warfare: The Future of Cognitive Dominance, NATO Collaboration Support Office, 2022, 2–1.
[13] To capture the growing breadth of research, see Olga Chiriac, “Military applications of cognitive sciences: cognitive warfare, matter of perception and misperception,” International Scientific Conference, Strategies XXI Bucharest (2022), 474-484; Jean-Marc Rickli, Federico Mantellassi and Gwyn Glasser, “Peace of Mind: Cognitive Warfare and the Governance of Subversion in the 21st Century,” Geneva Centre for Security Policy, Policy Brief No. 9, August 2023; Jean Lauglois-Berthelot and Didier Bazalgette, “Chinese Army Cognitive Warfare: Challenges for the Next Direction of Operations,” 2023, https://hal.science/hal-04253095v1; Irene Pujol Chica and Quynh Dinh Da Xuan, “The Battle for the Mind: Understanding and Addressing Cognitive Warfare and its Enabling Technologies,” IE Center for the Governance of Change, April 2024, https://static.ie.edu/CGC/CGC_TheBattleofTheMind_2024.pdf.
[14] Koichiro Takagi, “New Tech, New Concepts: China’s Plans for AI and Cognitive Warfare,” War on the Rocks, April 13, 2022; Koichiro Takagi, “The Future of China’s Cognitive Warfare: Lessons from the War in Ukraine,” War on the Rocks, July 22, 2022; Taro Nishikawa, “The Mind Is a Battlefield: Lessons from Japan’s Security Policy on Cognitive Warfare,” 49Security, February 22, 2023, https://fourninesecurity.de/en/authors/taro-nishikawa.
[15] Prasun K. Sengupta, “All in the Mind: China has developed blueprint to dominate perceptions, narratives without need for actual conflict,” Force India, online, April 25, 2025, https://forceindia.net/feature-report/all-in-the-mind/.
[16] Commander Jeremy (Yen-ming) Chen, ROC Navy, “The Challenges Taiwan Faces in Cognitive Warfare and Its Impact on US–Taiwan Relations,” Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs (Spring, 2025): 89–102.
[17] Chien Li-chung and Jason Pan “Research center set up to combat cognitive warfare,” Taipei Times, January 19, 2024, https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2024/01/19/2003812310.
[18] Tzu-Chieh Hung and Tzu-Wei Hung, “How China’s Cognitive Warfare Works: A Frontline Perspective of Taiwan’s Anti-Disinformation Wars,” Journal of Global Security Studies 7, no. 4 (December 2022): 1–18.
[19] Yang Wenzhe, “How to Win Intelligentized Warfare by Analyzing what are Changed and What are Unchanged,” (在变与不变中探寻智能 化战争制胜之道 ) Jiefangjun Bao, 22 October 2019.
[20] A detailed analysis of PLA writings can be found at Josh Baughman, “The People’s Liberation Army at the Nexus of Mind and Technology to Shape the Cognitive Battlefield,” in Nicholas Wright, Michael Mikalaucic and Todd Veazie, eds., Human, Machine, War How the Mind-Tech Nexus Will Win Future Wars (Maxwell, AL: Air University Press, March 2025).
[21] Wang Hongyou [汪洪友], “Fight Cross-Domain Asymmetric Warfare,” [打好跨域非对称作战], PLA Daily, August 29, 2019, http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/2019-08/29/content_242008.htm
[22] He Fuchu, “The Future Direction of the New Global Revolution in Military Affairs” [世界新军事革命未来走向], Reference News, August 24, 2017, available at https://web.archive.org/web/20190823210313/ http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2017-08/24/c_129687890.htm. Thanks to Elsa Kania for identifying this source.
[23] Guo Yunfei, “Cognitive Warfare Has Entered the Era of Combat for Brain Control,” Qiushi Magazine, June 2, 2020. http://www.qstheory.cn/llwx/2020-06/02/c_1126063647.htm.
[24] Sangkuk Lee, “China’s ‘Three Warfare’s: Origins, Applications, and Organizations,” Journal of Strategic Studies 37, no. 2 (2014): 198–221; Stefan Halper, China: The Three Warfare’s, Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2013.
[25] Peter Mattis, “China’s Three Warfare’s in Perspective,” War on the Rocks, January 30, 2018.
[26] For a sample of Chinese commentary on cognitive warfare or CDO see Li Minghai, “The cognitive domain is becoming the main battlefield,” (认知域正成为未来智能化混合战争主战场)
Global Times, March 16, 2022, https://opinion.huanqiu.com/article/47DoZ45dMzV; Sun Zhiyou and Sun Haitao, “Exploring the Way to Win in Cognitive Domain Operations,” [探寻 认知域作战制胜之道] PLA Daily, September 1, 2022, http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/2022- 09/01/content_323230.htm; Zhang Guangsheng, Li Yongli and Wang Haoxian, “A Brief Analysis of the Basics of Cognitive Domain Operations,” [浅析认知域作战的基本要义] PLA Daily, September 8, 2022, http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/ content/2022-09/08/content_ 323692.htm; Liu Haijiang, “The Key to Accurately Deepening the Study of Cognitive Domain Operations,” [把准深化认知域作战研 究的关键], PLA Daily, April 25, 2023; Li Xiaoyang, “Intelligent Communication: An Important Field for Cognitive Domain Operations” [智能传播:认知域作 战的重要场域], PLA Daily, April 18, 2023; Huang Yanlong, Wu Qiong, and Jiang Rile, “Intelligent Algorithms: A Decisive Weapon in Cognitive Domain Operations,” ([智 能算法:认知域作战的制胜利器), PLA Daily, March 21, 2023. http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/2023-03/21/ content_ 335982.htm.
[27] Duan Wenling and Liu Jiali, “Cognitive confrontation on the social media battlefield,” [社交媒体战场上的认知对抗PLA Daily, February 2, 2023, http://www.mod.gov.cn/gfbw/jmsd/4931739.html.
[28] Liu Huiyan, Xiong Wu, Wu Xianliang, and Mei Shunliang, “Several Thoughts on Promoting the Construction of Cognitive Domain Operations Equipment for the Omni-Media Environment,” [“全媒体环境下推进认知域作战装备发展的几点思考”], National Defense Technology [国防科技] 39, no. 5 (October, 2018). Quoted in William Marcellino, Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, Amanda Kerrigan, Lev Navarre Chao, and Jackson Smith, “The Rise of Generative AI and the Coming Era of Social Media Manipulation 3.0,” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, September 2023), 16.
[29] Brent Eastwood, “A Smarter Battlefield?: PLA Concepts for ‘Intelligent Operations’ Begin to Take Shape,” Jamestown Foundation, February 15, 2019.
[30] Yang Cunshe, “Quasi-Cognitive Domain Combat, Exploring the characteristic and development trends of cognitive domain operations,” Military Forum, August 16, 2022; http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/ 2022-08/16/content_322064.htm. On how PLA analysts see the impact of Generative AI, see Chen Dongheng and Xu Yan, “Generative AI: A New Weapon for Cognitive Confrontation” [生成式 AI: 认知对抗的新武 器], PLA Daily, April 4, 2023; Zhang Guangsheng and Tian Ling, “How Generative AI Will Affect Future Warfare,” [生成式AI如何影响未来战争], PLA Daily, April 18, 2023.
[31] Jacqueline N. Deal, “Disintegrating the Enemy: The PLA’s Info-Messaging,” Parameters 50, no.3 (Autumn 2020): 5–16; Evan Montgomery and Toshi Yoshihara, “Conquering Taiwan by Other Means: China’s Expanding Coercive Options,” Washington Quarterly 48, no. 1 (2025): 143–163.
[32] Zhang Guangsheng, Li Yongli, and Wang Haoxian, “A Brief Analysis of the Basics of Cognitive Domain Operations,” [浅析认知域作战的基本要义], PLA Daily, September 8, 2022, http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/2022-09/08/content_ 323692.htm.
[33] Yang Longxi, “Aiming at the Future War and Fighting the Cognitive ‘Five Battles,” (“瞄准未来战争打好认知 ‘五仗’”) PLA Daily, August 23, 2022. http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/2022-08/23/content_322554.htm.
[34] Chen Dongheng, Zhai Chan, and Feng Yaru, “Metaverse: A new highland for cognitive warfare in the future,” PLA Daily, March 3, 2022, http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/2022-03/03/content_310602.htm
[35] Zhang Zhiwei, “Cognitive Domain Operations from the Perspective of Intelligence: Emotional Conflict Becomes a Prominent Attribute of Cognitive Domain Operations,” [智能化视阈下的认知域作战:情感冲突成为认知域作战突 出属性] PLA Daily, December 8, 2022.
[36] Li Yue and Liu Gang, “Brain-Computer Interface Technology Has Made New Progress,” [脑机接口技术又有新进展], Ministry of National Defense Network, August 8, 2023, http://www.81.cn/szb_223187/ szbxq/index.html?paperName=jfjb&paperDate=2023-08-18&paperNumber=11&articleid=912797, cited by Josh Baugham, 252; Staff, “Brain-computer interface technology rapidly evolves in China, expected to form a new quality productive force,” Global Times, March 14, 2024, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202403/1308834.shtml.
[37] Elsa B. Kania, “Minds at War: China’s Pursuit of Military Advantage through Cognitive Science and Biotechnology,” 8, no. 3 PRISM (2018): 83–101.
[38] “Cognitive Domain Warfare Has Entered the Era of Struggle for Brain Control,” Qiushi Magazine, June 2, 2020, https://chinascope.org/archives/32555
[39] On Messner’s concept of Subversion War, see Ofer Fridman, Russian ‘Hybrid Warfare:’ Resurgence and Politicisation (London: Hurst, 2018), 57–73.
[40] For evidence of Russian activity inside the United States see Clint Watts. “Disinformation: A Primer in Russian Active Measures and Influence Campaigns,” Statement prepared for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, March 30, 2017; https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-cwatts-033017.pdf; Thomas Rid, “Disinformation: A Primer in Russian Active Measures and Influence Campaigns,” Hearings before the Select Committee on Intelligence, U. S. Senate, March 30, 2017. See also US Department of State, Kremlin-Funded Media: RT and Sputnik’s Role in Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem, Special Report (Washington, DC: Global Engagement Center, January 2022), https://www.state.gov/report-rt-and-sputniks-role-in-russias-disinformation-and-propaganda-ecosystem.
[41] The literature on Russian disinformation efforts is deep. See Timothy Thomas, “Russia’s Information Warfare Strategy: Can the Nation Cope in Future Conflicts?” 27, no. 1 Journal of Slavic Military Studies (2014): 101–30; Kier Giles, et al, The Russian Challenge, (London: Chatham House Report, June 2015); Martin Kragh and Sebastian Asberg, “Russia’s Strategy for Influence through Public Diplomacy and Active Measures: The Swedish Case,” Journal of Strategic Studies 40, no. 6 (2017): 773–816. For a comprehensive study of Russian methods, see Thomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2020).
[42] Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews, The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 2016), https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.htm; Keir Giles, “Russian Cyber and Information Warfare in Practice,” Chatham House, December 14, 2023, https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/12/ russian-cyber-and-information-warfare-practice.
[43] For useful insights from the US military see T. S. Allen and A. J. Moore, “Victory without Casualties: Russia’s Information Operations,” Parameters 48, no. 1 (Spring, 2018): 59–71; Buddhika B. Jayamahaa and Jahara Matisek, “Social Media Warriors: Leveraging a New Battlespace,” Parameters 48, no. 4 (Winter, 2018–2019): 11–23.
[44] Oliver Backes and Andrew Swab, “Cognitive Warfare: The Russian Threat to Election Integrity in the Baltic States,” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, November 2019; Report of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, On Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 US Election, Washington, DC (2020), www.intelligence. senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ report_volume5.pdf.
[45] Vladislav Surkov quoted in Heather Conley, et al, Playbook 2: The Enablers, Center for Strategic and International Studies (2019), v.
[46] Heather Conley, James Minz, Ruslan Stefanov and Martim Vladimirov, The Kremlin Playbook Understanding Russian Influence in Central and Eastern Europe, Center for Strategic and International Studies (October 13, 2016).
[47] For an assessment of reflexive control see Timothy L. Thomas, “Russia’s Reflexive Control Theory and the Military,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 17 (2004): 237–256; updated at Timothy L. Thomas, “Russian Military Thought: Concepts and Elements” McLean, VA: MITRE, August 2019, https://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/prs-19-1004-russian-military -thought-concepts-elements.pdf.
[48] For insights on the evolution of reflexive control, see Keir Giles, James Sherr and Anthony Seaboyer, “Russian Reflexive Control,” Royal Military College of Canada, October 2018, 5.
[49] This section relies heavily on the work of Tim Thomas for the following section, see Timothy Thomas, The Chekinov-Bogdanov Commentaries of 2010-2017: What Did They Teach Us About Russia’s New Way of War?, McLean, VA, Mitre Corporation, November 2020.
[50] S. G. Chekinov and S. A. Bogdanov, “Asymmetrical Actions to Maintain Russia’s Military Security,” Voyennaya Mysl’ (Military Thought) no. 3 (2010): 6; S. G. Chekinov and S. A. Bogdanov, “The Influence of the Indirect Approach on the Nature of Modern Warfare,” Voennaya Mysl’ (Military Thought) no. 6 (2011): 6.
[51] S. G. Chekinov and S. A. Bogdanov, “Initial Periods of War and their Influence on a Country’s Preparations for Future War,” Voennaya Mysl’ (Military Thought) no. 11 (2012): 24-25.
[52] Quoted by Thomas, “The Chekinov-Bogdanov Commentaries,” 27.
[53] S. G. Chekinov and S. A. Bogdanov, “On the Nature and Content of Wars of a New Generation,” Voennaya Mysl’ (Military Thought) no. 10 (2013): 22.
[54] Valery Gerasimov, “The Value of Science Is in the Foresight: New Challenges Demand Rethinking the Forms and Methods of Carrying out Combat Operations,” Military Review (January/February, 2016): 23-29. In the translation by Charles Bartels, Gerasimov forecasts a “new type war” with greater reliance on non-military means.
[55] Nataliya Bugayova and Kateryna Stepanenko, “A Primer on Russia’s Cognitive Warfare,” Institute for the Study of War, June 30, 2025.
[56] On Russia’s use of various forms of subversion see Andreas Krieg, Subversion: The Strategic Weaponization of Narratives (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2023), 119–145.
[57] For a comprehensive assessment of enduring elements of Russian military thinking and strategic precepts, see Michael Kofman, et al, Russian Military Strategy Core Tenets and Operational Concepts, CNA, August 2021.
[58] Ben Connable, Stephanie Young, Stephanie Pezard, Andrew Radin, Raphael S. Cohen, Katya Migacheva, and James Sladden, Russia’s Hostile Measures (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2020).
[59] Claudia Wallner with Simon Copeland and Antonio Giustozzi, “Russia, AI and the Future of Disinformation Warfare,” Royal United Services Institute, June, 2025.
[60] James Lewis, Cognitive Effect and State Conflict in Cyberspace. Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2018, 20, at https://www.csis.org/analysis/cognitive-effect-and-state-conflict-cyberspace
[61] Office of the Director of National Intelligence, The US Intelligence Community Threat Assessment, 2024, 37–38.
[62] See Edmund Burke, Kristen Gunness, Cortez Cooper and Mark Cozad, “People’s Liberation Army Operational Concepts,” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2020); Mark Cozad, et al., Gaining Victory in Systems Warfare: China’s Perspective on the US– China Military Balance (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023).
[63] For an early and exceptional analysis see Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, “Cognitive Domain Operations: The PLA’s New Holistic Concept for Influence Operations,” Jamestown Foundation, China Brief 19, no. 16 (2019); Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, “Chinese Next-Generation Psychological Warfare: The Military Applications of Emerging Technologies and Implications for the United States,” (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA853-1.html.
[64] Majors Andrew MacDonald and Ryan Ratcliffe, USMC, “Cognitive Warfare: Maneuvering in the Human Dimension,” Naval Institute Proceedings (April, 2023).
[65] Michael J. Cheatham, Angelique M. Geyer, Priscella A. Nohle, and Jonathan E. Vazquez, “Cognitive Warfare: The Fight for Gray Matter in the Digital Gray Zone,” Joint Force Quarterly 114 (3rd Quarter, 2024), 83-91.
[66] See R. McCreight, “Neuro-Cognitive Warfare: Inflicting Strategic Impact via Non-Kinetic Threat,” Small Wars Journal, September 16, 2022; Douglas Wilbur, “The Challenge of AI-Enhanced Cognitive Warfare: A Call to Arms for a Cognitive Defense,” Small Wars Journal, January 22, 2025.
[67] Andrew White, “Chairman Caine Has an Algorithm for US Winning,” Breaking Defense, May 8, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/05/joint-chiefs-chairman-caine-has-an-algorithm-for-us-winning/
[68] Professor Hew Strachan of St. Andrews and Dr. Lukas Milevski from Leiden University make this point.
[69] Jill Kastner and William C. Wohlforth, “A Measure Short of War: The Return of Great-Power Subversion,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2021); Josh A. Goldstein and Girish Sastry, “The Coming Age of AI-Powered Propaganda,” Foreign Affairs, April 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/coming-age-ai-powered-propaganda; Lennart Maschmeyer, “A new and better quiet option? Strategies of subversion and cyber conflict,” Journal of Strategic Studies 46, no. 3 (2023): 570–594.
[70] Willian Rosenau, Subversion and Insurgency (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2007).
[71] Anika Binnendijk, Timothy Marler, and Elizabeth M Bartels, Brain Computer Interfaces, US Military Applications and Implications. Santa Monica, CA: RAND 2020; Peter Bovet Emanuel, “Making Chameleons: Techno-shaped, Software-defined Special Operations Assemblages,” in James D. Kiras and Martijn Kitzen, eds., Into the Void: Special Operations After the War on Terror (London: Hurst, 2024); Anna Gielas, “Tip of the Spear, Edge of the Mind: Neurotechnology’s Roles in the Future of Special Operations,” SOF Support Foundation, May 2025, https://sofsupport.org/tip-of-the-spear-edge-of-the-mind-neurotechnologys-roles-in-the-future-of-special-operations/.
[72] For ideas see Nicholas Wright, “Enhancing the Humans in the Mind-Tech Nexus” and Timothy Grayson, “Breaking the OODA Loop: Human Machine Symbiosis to Manage Complexity and Accelerate Decision-Making as a Decisive Warfighting Advantage,” in Nicholas Wright, Michael Miklaucic, and Todd Veazie, eds., Human, Machine, War: How the Mind-Tech Nexus Will Win Future Wars (Maxwell, AL: Air University Press, 2025).
[73] SCEPTER stands for Strategic Chaos Engine for Planning, Tactics, Experimentation and Resiliency. Joe Phelan, “DARPA is funding AI to help make battlefield decisions,” Live Science, September 19, 2023, at https://www.livescience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/darpa-is-funding-ai-to-help-make-battlefield-decisions.
[74] Lieutenant General Clint Hinote, US Air Force, (ret.) “Reimagining Command and Control with Human-Machine Teaming,” Special Capabilities Study Project, Defense Policy Paper, 2024.
[75] Bebber, 9.
[76] For insights on Chinese development of Deep Fakes see Graphika, “Deep Fake It Till You Make It: Pro-Chinese Actors Promote AI-Generated Video Footage of Fictitious People in Online Influence Operation,” February, 2023, https://www.graphika.com/reports/deepfake-it-till-you-make-it.
[77] Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur, “How Deepfake Videos are Used to Spread Disinformation,” New York Times (February 7, 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/07/technology/artificial-intelligence-training-deepfake.html; Tiffany Hsu and Stuart A. Thompson, “A.I.’s Ease at Spinning Deception Raises Alarm,” New York Times, February 9, 2023, A1, A22.
[78] Tamás Matura, “Sino-Russian Convergence in Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference: A Global Threat to the US and Its Allies,” Center for European Policy Analysis, June 30, 2025.
[79] Renee Pruneau Novakoff, “Why the US Is Losing the Cognitive Competition,” Cipher Brief, October 16, 2025.
[80] The US government has curtailed centers at the FBI and State Department in order to reduce domestic censorship. David Siman-Tov, “The Trump Administration’s Withdrawal from the Fight Against Foreign Interference—Strategic Implications,” INSS Insight No. 2006, Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv University, July 7, 2025, https://www.inss.org.il/publication/trump-influence/.
[81] For substantial insights into China’s approaches and ideas to combat them, see Thomas G. Mahnken, Ross Babbage and Toshi Yoshihara, Countering Comprehensive Coercion: Competitive Strategies against Authoritarian Political Warfare (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2018).
[82] Jeremiah “Lumpy” Lumbaco, Cognitive Warfare to Dominate and Redefine Adversary Realities, Joint Special Operations University Press, Special Report 25-23, September 30, 2025.
Tags: Artificial Intelligence (AI), China military strategy, Cognitive Domain, Cognitive Warfare, Cyber warfare, Hybrid Warfare, influence operations, information operations, Russian military strategy
About The Author
- Frank Hoffman
- Dr. Hoffman retired from the National Defense University in 2024 after 46 years of service in the Department of Defense. He has served in senior executive positions at OSD and the Department of the Navy. He received his Ph.D. from King’s College, London.
2. Exclusive | Chinese Hackers Used Anthropic’s AI to Automate Cyberattacks
Summary:
China-linked hackers used Anthropic’s Claude AI to automate most of a September cyber campaign against roughly 30 corporate and government targets, achieving four breaches before detection. By jailbreaking safeguards and modularizing tasks, they scaled phishing and intrusion efforts. Anthropic blocked accounts, updated defenses, and warned AI also accelerates attackers globally.
Comment: Support for cognitive warfare.
Exclusive | Chinese Hackers Used Anthropic’s AI to Automate Cyberattacks
WSJ · DELOITTE
The use of AI automation in hacks is a growing trend that gives hackers additional scale and speed
By Sam Schechner and Robert McMillan
Updated Nov. 13, 2025 11:42 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-hackers-ai-cyberattacks-anthropic-41d7ce76
The hackers sidestepped Anthropic’s safeguards by telling the model they were conducting security audits on behalf of the targets. Gabby Jones/Bloomberg News
- China-backed hackers used Anthropic’s AI to automate 80% to 90% of a September hacking campaign targeting corporations and governments.
- Anthropic disrupted the campaigns, blocking accounts after four successful intrusions, including one where AI extracted data independently.
- The attacks, attributed to Chinese state-backed hackers, involved using AI to bypass safeguards by pretending to conduct security audits.
An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.
- China-backed hackers used Anthropic’s AI to automate 80% to 90% of a September hacking campaign targeting corporations and governments.
China’s state-sponsored hackers used artificial-intelligence technology from Anthropic to automate break-ins of major corporations and foreign governments during a September hacking campaign, the company said Thursday.
The effort focused on dozens of targets and involved a level of automation that Anthropic’s cybersecurity investigators had not previously seen, according to Jacob Klein, the company’s head of threat intelligence.
Hackers have been using AI for years now to conduct individual tasks such as crafting phishing emails or scanning the internet for vulnerable systems, but in this instance 80% to 90% of the attack was automated, with humans only intervening in a handful of decision points, Klein said.
The hackers conducted their attacks “literally with the click of a button, and then with minimal human interaction,” Klein said. Anthropic disrupted the campaigns and blocked the hackers’ accounts, but not before as many as four intrusions were successful. In one case, the hackers directed Anthropic’s Claude AI tools to query internal databases and extract data independently.
“The human was only involved in a few critical chokepoints, saying, ‘Yes, continue,’ ‘Don’t continue,’ ‘Thank you for this information,’ ‘Oh, that doesn’t look right, Claude, are you sure?’ ”
Stitching together hacking tasks into nearly autonomous attacks is a new step in a growing trend of automation that is giving hackers additional scale and speed.
This summer, the cybersecurity firm Volexity spotted China-backed hackers using AI tools to automate parts of a hacking campaign against corporations, research institutions and nongovernmental agencies. The hackers were using large language models to determine who they should target, how to craft their phishing emails and how to write the malicious software they used to infect their victims, said Steven Adair, Volexity’s president. “AI is empowering the threat actor to do more, quicker,” he said.
Last week, Google reported that hackers linked to the Russian government attacked Ukraine using an AI model to generate customized malware instructions in real time.
U.S. government officials have been warning for years that China is targeting U.S. AI-technology in an attempt to hack into U.S. companies and government agencies and steal data.
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said that tracing cyberattacks is complex and accused the U.S. of using cybersecurity to “smear and slander” China. “China firmly opposes and cracks down on all forms of cyberattacks,” he said.
Anthropic didn’t disclose which corporations and governments the hackers tried to compromise, but said it had detected roughly 30 targets. The handful of successful hacks managed in some cases to steal sensitive information. The company said the U.S. government wasn’t among the victims of a successful intrusion, but wouldn’t comment on whether any part of the U.S. government was one of the targets.
Anthropic said it was confident, based on the digital infrastructure the hackers used as well as other clues, that the attacks were run by Chinese state-backed hackers.
Hackers often use open-source AI tools to conduct their hacking because open-source code is available free of charge and can be modified to remove restrictions against malicious activity. But to use Claude to conduct the attacks, the China-linked hackers had to sidestep Anthropic’s safeguards using what’s called jailbreaking—in this case, telling Claude that they were conducting security audits on behalf of the targets.
Logan Graham, second from right, who runs the Anthropic team that tests for catastrophic risks, at Anthropic offices in San Francisco. Helynn Ospina for WSJ
“In this case, what they were doing was pretending to work for legitimate security-testing organizations,” Klein said.
The hackers also built a system to break down each portion of the campaigns, from scanning for vulnerabilities to exfiltrating data, into discrete tasks that didn’t raise alarms, the company said.
Anthropic says that after the attacks, it updated the methods it uses to detect misuse, making it harder for attackers to use Claude to do something similar in the future.
The automated hacks weren’t capable of being fully autonomous, with so-called AI hallucinations leading to mistakes. “It might say, ‘I was able to gain access to this internal system,’ ” when it wasn’t, Klein said of some of the hacking attempts. “It would exaggerate its access and capabilities, and that’s what required the human review.”
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What steps should AI companies take to prevent their models from being used to carry out cyberattacks? Join the conversation below.
The use of AI agents to conduct attacks puts a spotlight on the dual-use dangers of AI tools. Anthropic has said it hopes to use AI to supercharge cybersecurity defenses. But stronger AI systems also make for stronger attackers.
Anthropic says its strategy is to focus on building skills for its AI that benefit defenders more than attackers, such as known vulnerability discovery.
“These kinds of tools will just speed up things,” said Logan Graham, who runs the Anthropic team that tests for catastrophic risks. “If we don’t enable defenders to have a very substantial permanent advantage, I’m concerned that we maybe lose this race.”
Write to Sam Schechner at Sam.Schechner@wsj.com and Robert McMillan at robert.mcmillan@wsj.com
Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the November 14, 2025, print edition as 'Chinese Hackers Automated Attacks Using Anthropic’s AI'.
WSJ · DELOITTE
3. Putin Is Turning Eighth-Grade Classrooms Into Army Training Grounds
Summary:
Putin is militarizing Russian education, embedding patriotic indoctrination, weapons training and pro-war history from early grades through high school, including mandatory eighth-grade arms instruction and Youth Army programs. Massive funding equips schools with rifles and drones, shaping children into loyal future soldiers while marginalizing dissenting teachers and erasing Ukrainian narratives.
Comment: Indoctrination begins early (but not as early as in north Korea).
Putin Is Turning Eighth-Grade Classrooms Into Army Training Grounds
WSJ
By Matthew Luxmoore
Follow
Nov. 13, 2025 11:00 pm ET
- Russia’s education system is undergoing a significant transformation, integrating military-style training and war topics into the curriculum from the youngest grades.
- Funding for “patriotic education” has increased from 3.5 billion rubles (about $42 million) in 2021 to over 50 billion rubles in 2024, with additional funds for military equipment in schools.
- The curriculum includes mandatory weapons training, history textbooks portraying the West as an enemy, and classes on military hardware, aiming to prepare children for future conflicts.
An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.
- Russia’s education system is undergoing a significant transformation, integrating military-style training and war topics into the curriculum from the youngest grades.
A class of Russian first-graders stood to attention this fall as a soldier who had served on the front line in Ukraine inspected their military uniforms.
“Check your dress!” ordered the serviceman. “Your buckles should face not left, not right, but straight ahead.”
The pupils, age 6 to 8, adjusted collars, swiveled belts and repositioned the name badges on their chests. Then, they settled behind their desks for an hour of Russian language study.
Drills of this kind, which took place in the Kursk region bordering Ukraine and were broadcast on Russian state television, are happening across Russia as the Kremlin reaches into the country’s schools to prepare potential combatants for future wars.
It is part of a dramatic transformation of Russia’s education system that gained pace after the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 but was supercharged by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As the conflict approaches the four-year mark, military-style training and war topics are embedded in Russia’s school curriculum, while the budget for such programs has ballooned as the focus has turned to the youngest grades.
By eighth grade, weapons training—once extracurricular—is now mandatory. Teens are taught army discipline, military history and how to assemble Kalashnikovs and fly drones.
History textbooks portraying the West as Russia’s enemy and Ukraine as its stooge will soon be rolled out for the youngest grades, the government says. Outside of the classroom, the Defense Ministry has its own Youth Army, with a claimed 1.85 million members age 8 to 18 integrated into the school system.
The cover of a Russian history textbook for 11th grade, which portrays the West as an enemy of Russia and Ukraine as its lackey.
The Kremlin has signaled the war in Ukraine could last years, and analysts say the military indoctrination push is aimed in part at rearing a generation of militarized patriots who recognize the Russian state as the ultimate authority and will unquestioningly answer a future call to fight.
“If you take school-age children and indoctrinate them properly, then they will become cheaper and more efficient soldiers for any kind of war you may plan in the future,” said political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann, describing the Kremlin’s logic.
Key to the campaign is the involvement of active-duty soldiers, who now teach schoolchildren how to handle guns and fight in self-defense. Soldiers walked hand-in-hand at the start of term with pupils whose fathers had fallen in battle.
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“Wars are won not by generals, but by schoolteachers,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in December 2023, calling on soldiers to enter Russia’s classrooms. A state program now fast tracks their teaching applications.
For Putin, remastering Russia’s curriculum to promote patriotism and army service has been a long-held ambition. After he came to power in 2000, the Russian leader lamented a loss of unity in the wake of the Soviet collapse and said a lax youth policy was leading to the corruption of young minds.
Putin was one of millions of Soviet schoolchildren who joined the Pioneer and Komsomol youth movements, which taught devotion to communist ideals. As president, he revived and revitalized a network of youth clubs to train a new generation of militarized patriots.
His government also increased funding for so-called patriotic education, focused on teaching basic military skills and a historical narrative that whitewashes Russia’s past.
In 2015, many of the youth clubs merged into the Defense Ministry’s Youth Army with military-style uniforms and red berets. Its members stand guard at historical ceremonies and attend regular army training sessions.
A schoolroom in Kharkiv, Ukraine, that was damaged in the war. Emanuele Satolli for WSJ
Putin also moved to bring the education system under government control, targeting schools that taught different interpretations of Russia’s past. He argued that a tug of war with the West over Russia’s soul was just as fierce as the fight for natural resources.
“The intention has been to use all the tools the government can think of to prepare children ideologically, psychologically and, at least on some level in terms of basic military skills, for war,” said Ian Garner, a lecturer and author of a book on Russia’s youth.
Russian schools now start the week with an hourlong class titled “Conversations about Important Things,” aimed at spreading conservative Russian values among children, according to government documents. The teaching material for preschoolers, according to a copy published in Russian independent media, declares, “To live means to serve your Motherland.”
Since 2024, a new class called “Foundations of Security and Defense of the Motherland” includes instruction on the Kalashnikov rifle, the RPK machine gun, the RPG antitank grenade launcher and the Dragunov sniper rifle, as well as lectures on psychological operations and “unity of command,” according to documents published online as a resource for teachers.
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What does the vast militarization of Russia’s education system mean for the future of the war in Ukraine? Join the conversation below.
History classes are based on textbooks co-written by Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s chief negotiator on Ukraine. The 11th-grade version describes Ukraine as an ultranationalist state and claims, without evidence, that the U.S. opened secret biolaboratories on Ukrainian territory in the buildup to the war. It says Kyiv was working to develop nuclear weapons ahead of an attack on Russia with the full backing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“This would possibly have spelled the end of civilization,” the textbook reads, according to copies of it posted on Russian state-linked websites. “We couldn’t let this happen.”
Funding for “patriotic education” increased from 3.5 billion rubles, equivalent to $42 million, in 2021 to more than 50 billion rubles, almost $600 million, in 2024, according to government statistics. This year, another four billion rubles was earmarked to equip 23,000 schools with model Kalashnikovs, grenades and drone kits.
The new curriculum is also taught in occupied parts of Ukraine, where authorities have seized and destroyed Ukrainian-language books, and residents say Ukraine’s national history is scrubbed from the timetable. Parents who dial their children into online classes taught in other Ukrainian cities risk arrest for doing so.
Beyond the classroom, public figures disseminate a message of sacrifice and commitment to the defense of Russia. “A man is created not for peace, but for war, and Russians—for victory,” Vladimir Solovyov, a TV anchor close to Putin, told a gathering of young adults in Moscow last fall.
That is resonating with thousands of Russian children who have lost relatives in Ukraine. Authorities have renamed schools in honor of men killed there. Classrooms often contain “hero desks” decorated with portraits of graduates who have died in the war.
A ceremony to unveil a so-called hero desk at a school in the Russia-controlled city of Melitopol. Alexander Polegenko/Zuma Press
But the most controversial change has been the introduction of a military ethos at the heart of the civilian classroom.
For some, intensive preparation for military service begins in preschool, where cadet classes include physical drills carried out in army-style uniforms. Parents of some first-graders who don camouflage at school have already identified which military university they want their children to attend, and have an expectation for where they will ultimately serve, according to Russian state media.
In the television report about military drills at the school in Kursk this fall, serviceman-turned-teacher Andrey Apurin said he had his work cut out to bring the pupils up to scratch. “We have a long way to go before we establish full discipline,” the 22-year-old said.
Many parents support the change. But others, as well as teachers and education experts, warn that the indoctrination risks spawning a jingoistic, unquestioning generation that will perpetuate Russian warmongering.
“When a child is handed a rifle and told ‘Putin is our pride,’ and that Ukraine is where enemies who want to destroy us are living, they don’t have the critical thinking to say: ‘No, wait, it’s not that way,’ ” said Dima Zicer, a Russian education expert living abroad.
Some teachers who have refused to deliver the militarized curriculum have faced criminal charges.
In June, a Moscow court sentenced teacher Natalia Taranushenko to seven years in jail for telling pupils about atrocities committed by Russian troops. By the time of her sentencing, Taranushenko had fled the country.
Write to Matthew Luxmoore at matthew.luxmoore@wsj.com
WSJ
4. China Registers Worst Investment Decline in Years as Slowdown Continues
Summary:
China’s October data show a broad slowdown: retail sales and industrial output decelerated, fixed-asset and property investment fell further, and home prices stayed negative. The rare January–October investment decline is the worst in decades. Growth still tracks Beijing’s 5% target, but continuing weakness could force stronger stimulus from Beijing soon.
China Registers Worst Investment Decline in Years as Slowdown Continues
WSJ
Consumption also slowed, with retail sales on their longest run of decelerating growth since 2021
By Hannah Miao
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Updated Nov. 14, 2025 12:37 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-economic-growth-momentum-slowed-in-october-b6d2786b
China’s GDP expanded 5.2% over the first nine months of the year. Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/Zuma Press
- China’s retail sales increased by 2.9% in October year-over-year, a decrease from 3.0% in September, marking the fifth consecutive month of deceleration.
- Fixed-asset investment in China declined by 1.7% from January to October compared to the same period in 2024, widening from a 0.5% decrease in the first three quarters.
- Property investment in China decreased by 14.7% from January to October year-over-year, a further decline from the 13.9% decrease observed in the first three quarters.
An artificial-intelligence tool created this summary, which was based on the text of the article and checked by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.
- China’s retail sales increased by 2.9% in October year-over-year, a decrease from 3.0% in September, marking the fifth consecutive month of deceleration.
SHANGHAI—Signs of weakness in China’s economy stretched into October, with one measure of investment notching the sharpest slowdown in years.
The numbers
Momentum in retail sales and industrial production slowed, while investment and the property market continued to struggle, according to data released Friday by China’s National Bureau of Statistics.
- Retail sales: +2.9% in October from the prior year, down from +3.0% in September
- Industrial production: +4.9% in October from a year prior, down from +6.5% in September
- Fixed-asset investment: -1.7% in the January-to-October period compared with the same period in 2024, widening from -0.5% in the first three quarters of the year
- Property investment: -14.7% in the January-to-October period from the same period in 2024, widening from -13.9% in the first three quarters
- Average home prices in 70 cities: -2.6% in October from a year prior, compared with -2.7% in September
- Urban unemployment rate: 5.1% in October, down from 5.2% in September
Earlier this month, China reported an unexpected contraction in exports in October. Producer prices also remained in negative territory for more than three years.
The context
The January-to-October drop in fixed-asset investment marks the first time the country has seen a decline over the first 10 months of the year, stretching back to at least 1992.
While drawing historical comparisons is made difficult by methodological changes over the years, the only time fixed-asset investment declined on a year-to-date basis—aside from the past two months—was during the Covid pandemic in 2020.
Retail momentum in China has slowed. Tingshu Wang/Reuters
The drop in investment might reflect ongoing efforts to combat “involution,” a phenomenon of excessive competition and price wars. China has been discouraging new investment in oversaturated sectors, such as steel and electric vehicles.
Retail sales, a key gauge of consumer spending, have slowed for five consecutive months as of October, the longest streak of deceleration since 2021.
Elevated sales a year ago help explain the slowdown. China rolled out a consumer-goods subsidy program last year, which pulled forward purchases of items such as household appliances, creating a higher base of comparison now.
China’s economy is still largely on track to meet Beijing’s targets; gross domestic product expanded 5.2% over the first nine months of the year, and Beijing is aiming for growth of “around 5%” for 2025. But policymakers could step up support if the economy were to further weaken.
The outlook
A trade detente between Beijing and Washington reached last month could offer some relief to China’s export sector. The U.S. agreed to reduce fentanyl-related tariffs from 20% to 10% in return for China’s assurances that it would reduce shipments of fentanyl precursors.
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What is your main takeaway from China’s economic report? Join the conversation below.
China’s top policymakers recently made recommendations for the country’s next five-year plan, which will guide the world’s second-largest economy through the rest of the decade. High-end technology, advanced manufacturing and increased consumption are among the priorities outlined.
An official Chinese guidebook published recently said that real GDP growth will need to average 4.17% or more over the next 10 years to reach the per capita GDP of a midlevel developed country by 2035.
Grace Zhu and Xiao Xiao contributed to this article.
Write to Hannah Miao at hannah.miao@wsj.com
Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
WSJ
5. ‘Not enthusiastic’: why China finds Trump’s ‘G2’ talk too costly in geopolitics
Summary:
China quietly appreciates Trump’s “G2” remark as recognition of parity but publicly rejects it due to its hegemonic undertones, fear of appearing in a U.S.–China duopoly, and concern about alienating the Global South. Beijing prefers multipolar rhetoric and sees Trump’s framing as flattery, not a real proposal or desired role.
Comment: "Hegemonic undertones ?" My assessment remains that China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions through subversion. It takes a long term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives, with the main objective being the unification of China (i.e., the recovery of Taiwan).
But does Xi get what he wants: Recognition of parity while deflecting the hegemony moniker to POTUS?
‘Not enthusiastic’: why China finds Trump’s ‘G2’ talk too costly in geopolitics
South China Morning Post
While the term treats China and the US as equals, Beijing is probably ‘not enthusiastic’ about its ‘hegemonic’ undertones, analysts say
Dewey Simin Beijing
Published: 6:00am, 13 Nov 2025Updated: 7:41am, 13 Nov 2025
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3332527/why-donald-trumps-g2-label-prompts-tepid-response-china?tpcc=GME-O-enlz-uv&utm
Dewey Simin Beijing
Published: 6:00am, 13 Nov 2025Updated: 7:41am, 13 Nov 2025
When US President Donald Trump was about to begin his closely watched summit with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping last month, he wrote a social media post that revived a decades-old concept about the dynamics between the two countries and their role in global affairs.
“The G2 will be convening shortly,” he wrote – in all caps – ahead of the talks.
The term “G2”, or Group of Two, emerged in the 2000s as a proposal for Washington and Beijing to work together to address global challenges. Over time, it has evolved to broadly refer to the US and China as leading powers sharing the world stage.
Trump’s remarks, which hinted at a global duopoly between the US and China, have worried some US allies. But how does it sit with the Chinese leadership?
Beijing is likely to have taken some pride in being treated by Washington as an equal, but its leaders would not be particularly pleased about being referred to as the G2, according to observers.
They said this categorisation would not be ideal for Beijing as the term had a “hegemonic” undertone that could harm China’s efforts with the developing world and bring it added responsibilities it might not be too eager to shoulder. Trump’s words, they suggested, should be treated as no more than political rhetoric or flattery ahead of trade talks.
As Da Wei, director of Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, put it: “China is not enthusiastic about the ‘G2’ concept and term.”
“In the past, China wasn’t keen on it … I think this attitude has not changed,” he said.
First floated by American economist C. Fred Bergsten in 2005, the G2 concept envisioned the US and China jointly tackling global issues ranging from economic stability to climate change.
It gained some momentum in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, when China – the fastest-growing developing economy – emerged as a key player in supporting the global economic recovery.
While the concept was discussed during Barack Obama’s first term as US president as a framework for the US and China to come together to shape a new global order, it was never adopted as official policy.
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It was never embraced by Beijing either. Former premier Wen Jiabao rejected the concept in 2009, making clear to Obama that while Beijing and Washington could play a role in setting up a new global order and promote world peace and stability, “global issues should be decided by all nations in the world rather than one or two countries”.
In another occasion that year, Wen said: “Some say that world affairs will be managed solely by China and the US. I think that view is baseless and wrong.”
“Multipolarisation and multilateralism represent the larger trend and the will of the people,” he said, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua. “China stands ready to develop friendly relations and cooperation with all countries and it will never seek hegemony.”
About 16 years later, Beijing’s position has not changed. Asked about Trump’s G2 comment, China’s foreign ministry last month said China and the US could shoulder their responsibilities as major powers while stressing that Beijing would “forever stand together with fellow developing countries”.
Dominic Chiu, senior analyst at Eurasia Group, said the Chinese leadership certainly wanted to be treated by the US as an equal power. Privately, this meant that Chinese leaders probably welcomed Trump’s G2 remark as a tacit acknowledgement of equal status, even if it was for the purposes of the trade negotiations.
Xi and Trump met last month on the sidelines of a multilateral forum in South Korea – the first in-person summit since Trump’s return to power – resulting in the two sides agreeing to dial down tensions and yielding breakthroughs in areas including soybean purchases and fentanyl-related tariffs.
But Chiu suggested Beijing’s reaction to the G2 comments might appear “lukewarm” because of its “public disavowal of international hegemony”.
“The phrasing could be interpreted by some third countries as a global duopoly, which Beijing is eager to avoid for diplomatic reasons,” he said.
“Trump’s use of ‘G2’ signals the priority he places on managing US-China relations and may also serve as flattery ahead of talks, much like his many references to a personal friendship with Xi. Beijing likely does not interpret this as a call for a true G2 framework.”
Da said China had not been keen on the G2 concept when it gained popularity during the first Obama administration – and that position remained.
“G2 suggests that China and the US, as two major powers, are playing a decisive role in international affairs. This doesn’t align with China’s long-term diplomatic philosophy and tradition,” he said.
“It has a strong hegemonic undertone, a sense that major powers are determining global affairs, so China is unwilling to accept such a term.”
While China would agree to play a significant role in global affairs with the US as a leading power, Beijing did not necessarily prefer to use the G2 term, as it had a connotation of the two countries “dominating” the global order, Da said.
He added that China wanted to become a major power and had been shouldering greater responsibility, including its contributions to the United Nations and global peacekeeping operations, but “if being a global leader means taking on a role like the one US had in the past, China probably has no appetite for that”.
“China’s diplomatic goal has never been to become a country like the US, a leader or a hegemon, however you want to call it,” Da said.
Joining a G2 grouping with the US could also hurt China’s interests when it comes to building deeper ties with the developing world. China has in recent years sought to frame itself as a champion and leader of the Global South, advocating a greater voice for developing economies.
Da said major developing countries such as India and Brazil would be unwilling to accept the G2 concept as the grouping tacitly suggested the US and China dominate global affairs. And that could sour Beijing’s ties with developing economies.
“I think there’s no need to take Trump’s statement too seriously,” he said. “I think his core meaning is that China and the United States should play leadership roles in global affairs.”
US President Donald Trump (left) and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea on October 30. Photo: Reuters
Yu Jie, senior research fellow on China at British think tank Chatham House, said Trump’s G2 remark should be treated “as a matter of rhetoric rather than a substantive policy pushed by the Trump administration and by Beijing”.
The cautious Chinese response indicated that Beijing did not want to become a world leader in the way the US had conducted its diplomacy, she said.
“It will only bring additional responsibilities and inevitably draw China into conflicts which it does not want to get involved in,” she said.
“We are not exactly moving towards a duopoly; instead, we are moving into a low-intensity competition temporarily between the world’s two largest economies.”
“The first time I heard about ‘G2’ being used as an analogy for describing the current state of affairs between Washington and Beijing, I was, like many, surprised,” said Zha Daojiong, professor at Peking University’s school of international studies.
But he noted that Trump had not offered a definition of the term, suggesting that Trump “might as well be saying something aspirational” about the future state of affairs between the US and China.
“It might as well have resulted from just an impromptu choice ... by its sender to express his sentiments at that moment,” Zha said.
Dewey Sim
Dewey Sim is a reporter for the China desk covering Beijing's foreign policy. He was previously writing about Singapore and Southeast Asia for the Post's Asia desk. A Singapore native, Dewey joined the Post in 2019 and is a graduate of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.
6. The Partner’s Partner: Exploring Proxy Security Cooperation Efforts
Summary:
The U.S. should adopt an offshore-balancing approach to security cooperation by building regional proxy partners that can train and equip neighboring militaries. This would reduce U.S. costs, mitigate force reductions, leverage allied networks, standardize training, expand interoperability, and preserve strategic influence amid rising Chinese and Russian competition.
Excerpts:
Facing challenges from an increasingly coordinated group of great powers, regional powers, and rogue states is inherently dangerous — but attempting to do so amid personnel and materiel shortfalls is especially perilous. Offshoring portions of the United States’ large security cooperation enterprise conserves the critical manpower and readiness required to deter and compel great powers in competition, and if required, address the threat of large-scale conflict. Furthermore, adopting an offshore strategy increases the return on investment of security cooperation efforts in an increasingly competitive market while concurrently strengthening and leveraging bilateral relations with key nations.
While not a perfect solution, offshoring security cooperation is one worth further examination from both policymakers and national security practitioners alike. The model offers a middle ground option that still operationalizes America’s allies and partners while meeting the transactional and cost-saving objectives of the Trump administration’s approach to foreign policy.
The Partner’s Partner: Exploring Proxy Security Cooperation Efforts
by James Micciche
|
11.14.2025 at 06:00am
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/11/14/the-partners-partner-exploring-proxy-security-cooperation-efforts/
Group photo during Justified Accord 24, an AFRICOM-led counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and stability operations exercise alongside African and European partners. Photo courtesy Rwanda Defense Force.
The ongoing transformation of the United States’ foreign policy has led to many of its supporting apparatuses to adapt, reorganize, evolve, or even cease operations. Security cooperation, which has been an institutionalized instrument of the United States’ foreign policy since the end of World War II, is one such capability that requires the adoption of new strategic concepts to better align with current executive direction and guidance. Specifically, the Department of Defense should integrate the core concepts of offshore balancing into the planning and execution of US security cooperation efforts by selecting and sponsoring key regional bilateral partnerships. Such a strategy overcomes ongoing service reorganizations, strengthens bilateral ties between the United States and key regional powers, advances US security interests at reduced costs, and improves the effectiveness of security cooperation efforts.
A Changing Environment
The United States’ foreign policy and its supporting apparatuses are undergoing a fundamental shift away from the multilateral foreign policy that guided America since the early 1940s. The Trump administration’s focus on homeland and hemispheric defense, bilateral engagement, and increased demands for burden sharing is a far departure from the liberal internationalist policy that guided America for the last seventy-five years. Under the current realist approach to foreign policy, the executive branch has instituted sweeping changes ranging from closing the country’s primary instrument of non-defense foreign assistance (USAID) to renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War. Concurrent to reimagining foreign policy, the administration is emphasizing increased government efficiency and is actively promoting cost-saving and dismantling of bureaucratic structures.
Internationally, the United States faces a complex series of challenges to the global order that underpins its hegemonic status. Both great powers and regional actors aggressively test the American power that serves as a guarantor of the order’s rules. Additionally, as the world shifts to multipolarity, interstate conflict is on a marked increase, destabilizing entire regions and the world’s economy. Within this hyper-competitive and volatile paradigm, intensifying Chinese and Russian security cooperation efforts increase those nations’ share of an increasingly competitive market in South America, Africa, the Indo-Pacific, and the Middle East, and all but eliminate the monopoly on security cooperation the United States and its allies once enjoyed.
Offshoring Security Cooperation—An Overview
Security cooperation is a hundreds-of-billion-dollar enterprise consisting of all Department of Defense interactions with foreign defense and security establishments to build defense relationships, promote US security interests, develop partner nations’ capabilities, and secure access for US forces. Security cooperation includes a wide range of operations, activities, and investments, including training, exchanges, capacity building, exercises, and foreign military sales. While security cooperation is a versatile tool at its base, it seeks one of two outcomes; the first is improving interoperability with higher-end foreign armed forces to conduct combined operations. The second, the primary focal point of this article, is building the capacity and capability of militaries in nations where the United States lacks the political will to deploy troops to deter external aggression or suppress internal threats from non-state actors. This article proposes that defense officials consider integrating the concept of offshore balancing to adapt security cooperation to current geopolitical and domestic conditions.
The United States should not perceive European training efforts as a challenge but rather a unique opportunity to leverage America’s asymmetric advantage—its network of allies and partners.
A theory occasionally attributed to US foreign policy is some variation of offshore balancing. While nuances of the theory vary, its goal remains avoiding mass military interventions and deployments through the operationalization and sponsorship of select regional powers. While there are excellent and well-articulated arguments for and against offshore balancing as a foundation of grand strategy, applying the theory to security cooperation efforts could benefit the United States. Specifically, creating regional proxies capable of exporting US training programs, doctrine, values, and even equipment to their neighbors. The United States would apply the principles of mass and economy of force by focusing security cooperation Operations, Activities, and Investments (OAIs) on a small number of partner nations within a geographic region. The objective would be to develop a partner military capable of training its neighbors in comparable programs that have the aim of creating regional security forces following similar standards, improving regional procedural and human interoperability, in a strategic version of a “train the trainer program.” The long-term goal of this program is to build states capable of deterring aggression from nefarious state actors and improving the ability of combined operations if deterrence fails and a military crisis occurs.
This approach would allow the United States to reduce its overall security cooperation efforts and commitments by hyper-focusing on a series of bilateral relationships and then enabling those nations to train regional militaries using programs that promote US interests, interoperability, and materiel. Integrating aspects of offshore balancing into the planning and execution of security cooperation efforts allows the Department of Defense to help achieve the administration’s objective of realigned foreign assistance and increased government efficiency.
Doing More with Less
While the current administration has not yet produced a publicly available national security or defense strategy, the 2022 National Defense Strategy demanded “ruthlessly prioritizing” of where, when, and how the United States competes, invests, and mitigates risk. This concept is concurrent with the current administration’s emphasis on finding efficiencies across government, holding allies accountable, and prioritizing a military designed and ready for conflict against the PLA above all other efforts. To support the administration’s policy, the Department of Defense has begun many joint and service reorganization efforts that reduce the means available to conduct global security cooperation. The efforts include deactivating multiple Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs), the Army’s dedicated conventional advising units, as well as removing nearly 3000 billets from United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), a primary security cooperation implementer across the globe.
By supporting and funding bilateral relationships to export training, capacity building, and operational support to neighboring countries, the Department of Defense can economize security cooperation efforts on a smaller set of partners for greater effects while avoiding overextension of limited personnel and resources. Furthermore, working through partners who have deep cultural and linguistic ties to their neighbors allows security cooperation programs to overcome some of the language and cultural challenges of training militaries outside the developed world. Offshoring security cooperation not only mitigates institutional reorganization but also improves the United States’ ability to compete in an increasingly crowded marketplace by forming proxies that reduce overall US commitments while concurrently enhancing regional stability.
An Increasingly Competitive Marketplace
The expanding scope of Russia and China’s global military aid programs is not the sole cause of an increasingly competitive security cooperation marketplace, as many US Allies conduct various training and support missions across the globe. The French, Germans, Italians, and British all have well-established training programs in Africa and the Middle East, and in 2018, NATO accredited a Security Force Assistance Center of Excellence. In addition, the European Union (EU) has also been increasingly practicing strategic autonomy, conducting 37 different advising, training, and equipping missions to Africa since 2003. The United States should not perceive European training efforts as a challenge but rather a unique opportunity to leverage America’s asymmetric advantage—its network of allies and partners. To realize this opportunity, the United States would need to advocate for its NATO allies to adopt two major changes.
Alliance-Wide Security Cooperation Standards
First, the alliance-wide adoption of NATO standards, such as AJP-3.16 (Security Force Assistance) or similar US joint doctrine, as the foundation for security cooperation programs improves interoperability and reduces contradicting efforts. Alliance-wide training standards improve US interoperability with potential partner forces regardless of the training overseen by American, French, German, or Spanish advisors. Standardized security cooperation also improves outcomes for recipient nations’ security forces. Training through common doctrine, tactics, and operating concepts enables a military to conduct joint and combined arms maneuver at various echelons. While partially driven by complex geopolitical factors, US, Turkey, and EU training programs in Somalia highlight how alliance partners using different standards can create company and battalion-sized formations that not only lack interoperability among one another but also have a wide divergence of operational capabilities.
Intra-Alliance Economy of Effort
Second, and even more important, is adopting an intra-alliance command economy to limit competition and redundant training efforts by members. This approach would assign lead geographic and functional responsibilities, preventing alliance partners from providing the same nation with concurrent and potentially unsynchronized training and development programs. Through unity of effort, alliance members would assign security cooperation responsibility to specific nations based on diplomatic relations, cultural ties, military capabilities, and national interest to build recipient nations into potential exporters. In addition to the bilateral partnership, regionally aligned alliance members will have functional oversight based on their aptitude in specific technical skills such as Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), airborne operations, or logistics.
US Army EOD specialist gears up a solider with the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces in an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) 9 Bomb Suit during African Lion 2025. Photo courtesy US Army.
For example, based on Senegal’s high military capability and historical association with France, the French armed forces would serve as the lead alliance member charged with planning and executing efforts to develop the Senegalese Armed Forces into a regional security cooperation exporter. Germany, well-regarded as a leading EOD trainer, could assume regional functional area responsibility to include support for French efforts in Senegal. Nevertheless, a flaw exists if any alliance member feels it is in their national interest to develop their own OAIs in Senegal, as there is little others can do to stop them. Despite this flaw, the current administration seems far more capable of handling this flaw as they have regularly pressured allies to act in US interests on a range of topics from energy imports to overall defense spending.
In addition to exporting and improving procedural and human interoperability, an offshore balancing model can improve technical interoperability, extend the reach of American-centric supply chains, and improve the US defense industry’s access to foreign markets. Through Foreign Military Sales and Financing (FMS / FMF), as well as §333 (Authority to Build Capacity), fully operationalized security cooperation proxies can train on and demonstrate US equipment throughout a region. Providing foreign security cooperation proxies a percentage of future FMS cases they facilitate not only incentivizes the overall process but builds enduring bilateral relationships and is easily integrated into existing administrative surcharge schedules that fund service training activities.
Managing Risk: Partner Selection and Principal-Agent Challenges
The focused investment inherent to Security Cooperation offshoring serves to significantly develop, strengthen, and leverage bilateral relations with key partners. An approach that the current administration has regularly championed over historic multilateral agreements. However, this focused approach is far from a “one size fits all” solution, largely due to regional rivalries between nations. Even after decades of US encouragement and the shared threat of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Japan and the Republic of Korea remain reluctant partners at best. Developing two or more proxies per geographic region partially overcomes this obstacle, as where one partner might be unwelcome, potentially the other is. An offshore approach also requires diplomatic and senior military engagement, as some countries might not want the perception of being subordinate or inferior to regional US proxies.
Offshoring portions of the United States’ large security cooperation enterprise conserves the critical manpower and readiness required to deter and compel great powers in competition…
Another challenge is first finding nations willing to enter a bilateral proxy relationship with the United States and then mitigating the myriad challenges associated with principal-agent associations. While there are risks inherent to any proxy relationship, the argument can be made that the Trump administration’s overall foreign policy approach appears better prepared to handle them than others. First, its emphasis on transactional and bilateral relationships places it in a far better position to overcome drift and exploit dependencies, as partnerships are viewed, made, or even abandoned with a strict zero-sum game perspective. Furthermore, while Leahy vetting remains in place to prevent the damage of association with human rights violators, the administration’s shift away from democracy promotion toward realism increases the potential pool of candidates to work with and through.
Additionally, many of our treaty allies have complex relationships with their former colonial holdings, as was recently on display with the French in Niger. A critical choice in adopting this concept is whether the United States wants to compete directly or indirectly with great powers. For example, China would be far more threatened by US attempts to foster South Africa as a regional proxy than Liberia due to the former’s co-membership in BRICS and the latter’s long-standing partnership with the United States. There are risks and opportunities with either approach. Thus, policymakers must be deliberate in deciding where and with whom to offshore security cooperation.
The Way Ahead—Expanding Existing Models
The United States has a long history of regional offshoring: some cases, successful like Japan, and others, like Iran, proving the limits of American power. Even today, the United States is funding NATO allies and European partners to train the Ukrainian Armed Forces on donated US equipment in an intra-alliance example of the concept. The Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI) authorizes the United States to strengthen the capacity of partner militaries to “prepare, deploy, and sustain peacekeepers” to United Nations and African Union missions that the United States normally does not have the political will or desire to deploy combat forces to. Additionally, since 2017, US special operations forces have extensive experience building counterterrorism proxies in dozens of countries through the use of 127e programs authorized by Congress.
Finally, the 2023 NDAA provided a framework to expand this concept to South America using Title 10, Chapter 16, §335 of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. For instance, the provision allows the Department of Defense to fund friendly foreign forces to take part in training programs conducted by the armed forces of Colombia.
This new authority is particularly significant given the United States’ long-standing regional engagement with Colombia. Since the 1990s, US efforts under Plan Colombia have prioritized counter-narcotics and security cooperation. Emphasis on this initiative was reinforced by the Trump administration’s reassertion of hemispheric defense. The US also maintains longstanding relationships with Colombian special operations forces, and the nation was the first persistent post-GWOT training program by SFABs.
Conclusion
Facing challenges from an increasingly coordinated group of great powers, regional powers, and rogue states is inherently dangerous — but attempting to do so amid personnel and materiel shortfalls is especially perilous. Offshoring portions of the United States’ large security cooperation enterprise conserves the critical manpower and readiness required to deter and compel great powers in competition, and if required, address the threat of large-scale conflict. Furthermore, adopting an offshore strategy increases the return on investment of security cooperation efforts in an increasingly competitive market while concurrently strengthening and leveraging bilateral relations with key nations.
While not a perfect solution, offshoring security cooperation is one worth further examination from both policymakers and national security practitioners alike. The model offers a middle ground option that still operationalizes America’s allies and partners while meeting the transactional and cost-saving objectives of the Trump administration’s approach to foreign policy.
Tags: foreign military sales, interoperability, offshore balancing, regional proxies, Security Cooperation, US Foreign Policy
About The Author
- James Micciche
- James P. Micciche is a retired US Army Strategist (FA59) and Civil Affairs Officer with deployment and service experience in the Middle East, Africa, Afghanistan, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific. He holds degrees from The Fletcher School at Tufts University and Troy University.
7. Control the Hemisphere, Contain China: Inside America’s Two-Front Strategy
Summary:
Trump’s emerging “hemispheric-first” strategy links Caribbean naval power, tougher policies toward Canada and Mexico, and scrutiny of Chinese influence into a unified deterrence system. By fortifying the Americas as a “continental fortress,” Washington seeks to secure its core, prevent Chinese encroachment, and project power into the Indo-Pacific while accepting risks of regional friction.
Control the Hemisphere, Contain China: Inside America’s Two-Front Strategy
nationalsecurityjournal.org · Andrew Latham · November 13, 2025
https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/control-the-hemisphere-contain-china-inside-americas-two-front-strategy/
Key Points and Summary – USS Gerald R. Ford’s Caribbean patrol is more than counternarcotics theater; it signals a hemispheric-first grand strategy.
-Trump’s team is refortifying the Americas—using carrier presence, tariffs on Canada, and tougher rules for Mexico—to build a “continental fortress” that underwrites Indo-Pacific competition with China.
The U.S. Navy Gerald R. Ford–class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) and the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) underway in the Atlantic Ocean on 4 June 2020, marking the first time a Gerald R. Ford–class and a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier operated together underway.
-Maritime denial in the Caribbean, scrutiny of Chinese port deals, and tighter border and supply-chain controls fuse into one deterrence system.
-The bet: consolidate power close to home, then project outward.
-Risks include miscalculation with Venezuela, trade blowback, and friction with allies, but advocates call the shift disciplined rather than isolationist.
The “Continental Fortress”: Why the U.S. Is Re-arming the Americas Now
The USS Gerald R. Ford’s gray silhouette cutting across the Caribbean horizon marks a decisive shift in American statecraft: U.S. foreign policy, long focused on policing the planet-wide Rules-Based International Order, is narrowing to a more restrained focus on the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific.
From the Ford’s slow approach to Venezuelan waters to escalating trade tensions with Canada and early signs of a harder U.S. line toward Mexico and migration, Washington’s attention is once again concentrated on the regions most vital to its security and power.
This is no tactical coincidence. It reflects a deliberate recalibration under President Trump—one that binds hemispheric defense to the broader logic of great-power competition. The United States is refortifying its neighborhood not as a retreat from global leadership, but as the bedrock from which it intends to sustain it.
Hemispheric Militarization: Power Projection in the Caribbean
The official story, of course, is that the Ford’s presence off Venezuela is part of an anti-drug, anti-cartel mission. The larger calculus, however, is clear enough: it is about demonstrating and regaining U.S. maritime and aerial supremacy in its southern approaches, and about showing that no outside power—China, Russia or Iran—will be allowed to establish a permanent presence in the Americas. For decades, the Caribbean had been considered a quiet backwater.
Now it is a proving ground for the reinvigorated use of sea power in the defense of the hemisphere. By deploying a supercarrier, Washington has shown that the Caribbean is once more a forward battleground in the projection of American deterrence.
Nimitz-class carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) transits the Atlantic Ocean while offloading munitions via helicopter to the world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), June 27, 2025. Gerald R. Ford, a first-in- class nuclear aircraft carrier and deployed flagship of Carrier Strike Group Twelve, incorporates modern technology, innovative shipbuilding designs, and best practices from legacy aircraft carriers to increase the U.S. Navy’s capacity to underpin American security and economic prosperity, deter adversaries, and project power on a global scale through sustained operations at sea. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Jarrod Bury)
It is not a return to gunboat diplomacy. It is an acknowledgment that great-power competition now extends to every maritime approach in which the adversary might test for advantage. The strategic renaissance of the Caribbean is thus an updated Monroe Doctrine, stripped of its 19th-century paternalism. It is based on the belief that the defense of the American homeland starts well beyond the shoreline.
Economic Fronts: Canada and Mexico in the Crosshairs
While the Navy reasserts control of the southern seas, the continental dimensions of hemispheric power are being defined through trade and migration policy. The new tariff standoff with Canada, long America’s most dependable ally, shows that even the friendliest partners are being effected by Washington’s strategic nationalism.
Trump’s message is simple: economic sovereignty and defense are paramount, and no ally should expect preferential treatment if its industries undermine American competitiveness or security.
At the same time, there are strong indications of a tougher U.S. stance toward Mexico. Proposed enforcement mechanisms at the border, the tightening of supply-chain rules, and a likely review of migration protocols suggest that economic integration will increasingly serve strategic ends. Washington appears to see Mexico not as a buffer but as a pressure point—an area where trade, labor, and security converge into one system of control. Together, these moves reveal the architecture of what might be called the “continental fortress”: a North America more economically integrated under U.S. dominance, but also more tightly managed in the name of security and competition.
Trump’s Grand Strategic Vision: Securing the Hemisphere, Blunting China
Trump’s grand strategic vision is not isolationist, nor is it the liberal internationalism of his predecessors. It is hemispheric and selective—focused on securing the Western Hemisphere while simultaneously blunting China’s expanding bid for power and influence across the Indo-Pacific. The logic is almost classical: before projecting power outward, consolidate strength within one’s sphere of influence.
In this conception, the Western Hemisphere is the indispensable core from which the United States can compete effectively with China abroad. This explains the parallel emphasis on hemispheric defense and Indo-Pacific containment.
The administration’s new naval posture in the Caribbean, its scrutiny of Chinese port investments in Panama and the Caribbean, and its quiet support for Latin American governments seeking to push back against Beijing’s influence all serve the same purpose—to deny China strategic depth in America’s neighborhood while reinforcing U.S. freedom of action across the Pacific. What emerges is a two-front strategy defined not by expansionism but by disciplined geography: control the hemisphere, deny the adversary’s periphery, and maintain maritime advantage in both oceans.
This also helps explain the reorientation of American diplomacy toward transactional realism. Trump has little interest in multilateral moralizing or global crusades. He views power through the lens of geography and leverage. By focusing on the hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific, he is redefining what it means for America to be a global power in the 21st century: not omnipresent, but unassailable in its core regions and unyielding where vital interests are at stake.
Redefining Hemispheric Defense
The emerging doctrine of hemispheric defense fuses military presence, economic leverage, and border control into a single system of deterrence. Migration flows, energy corridors, data networks, and supply chains are no longer treated as separate policy arenas—they are integrated components of national defense.
This is the new realism of power in a multipolar world: defending the homeland now means managing the arteries through which people, goods, and influence flow. The Western Hemisphere is being recast as a platform for global competition, a staging ground for future economic and technological contests as much as for military ones.
This grand strategy is a return to very deep-rooted traditions in American statecraft, updated to suit the current era. Just as the architects of containment during the Cold War saw Europe, the Middle East, and Asia as the epicenters of the struggle, Trump’s strategists see the hemisphere as the indispensable homeland of American power in an era of global contest.
The same instincts that once drove continental expansion now drive the consolidation of continental defense. The United States is again acting like a great power that understands its geography: surrounded by oceans, connected to allies by trade and migration, and vulnerable where those flows are uncontrolled.
Risks and Repercussions
Yet there are obvious dangers in this revival of hemispheric strategy. The militarization of the Caribbean risks confrontation with Venezuela or its backers. Tariff escalation with Canada could strain the very defense-industrial integration on which North American security depends.
Heavy-handed migration enforcement risks alienating Mexico’s government and destabilizing the borderlands. But these risks, in Trump’s calculus, are manageable compared to the alternative—ceding strategic ground in the Americas while overextending elsewhere. His administration sees the hemisphere as the one theater where America can still dictate terms. Everything beyond it, from the South China Sea to Eastern Europe, must be approached from that foundation.
When the World Comes Home
The Ford’s steady advance toward Venezuelan waters captures the essence of America’s new grand strategy: to defend the hemisphere, contain China, and root great-power competition in geographic reality. The long-standing American habit of trying to shape events on every continent has been checked and redirected—not as a retreat, but as a consolidation of power.
The Western Hemisphere is no longer a neglected periphery; it has become the front yard of great-power politics.
Whether this rebalancing endures will depend on Washington’s ability to wield power with restraint, transforming proximity into stability rather than crisis.
One thing, however, is clear: the era of the open-ended liberal empire has ended. A new age of hemispheric power has begun, and the world will now have to reckon with an America determined to defend its dominance from within its own neighborhood.
About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham
Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham. He writes a daily column for the National Security Journal.
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8. The Army's New M1E3 Abrams Tank Has a Message for Every Military on Earth
Summary:
America’s new M1E3 Abrams is engineered for the drone battlefield, adding an active protection system, lighter modular design, hybrid engine, autoloader, unmanned turret, and drone connectivity. A major leap beyond SEPv3, it aims for better survivability and fuel efficiency. Four prototypes will enter Army units in 2026 for real-world validation.
The Army's New M1E3 Abrams Tank Has a Message for Every Military on Earth
nationalsecurityjournal.org · Christian Orr · November 13, 2025
https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/the-armys-new-m1e3-abrams-tank-has-a-message-for-every-military-on-earth/
Key Points and Summary – America’s next Abrams, the M1E3, is designed for the drone era with an active protection system to defeat ATGMs, RPGs, loitering munitions and armed UAVs.
-Planned changes include an autoloader enabling an unmanned turret, secure links to friendly drones, a lighter hull (about 10 tons less), and a hybrid-diesel powertrain targeting 50% better fuel efficiency.
Soldiers from Echo Company, 1st Battalion, 81st Armor Regiment, 194th Armored Brigade, conduct gunnery training with the M1 Abrams tank, Jan. 14, 2025, at Brooks Range, on Fort Benning, Georgia. (U.S. Army photo by Joey Rhodes II)
CINCU, Romania – U.S. Army Soldiers of 1st Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, setup their M1 Abram Tanks during Getica Saber 17, July 10, 2017. Getica Saber 17 is a U.S.-led fire support coordination exercise and combined arms live fire exercise that incorporates six allied and partner nations with more than 4,000 Soldiers. Getica Saber 17 runs concurrent with Saber Guardian 17, a U.S. Army Europe-led, multinational exercise that spans across Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania with more than 25,000 service members from 22 allied and partner nations. Image Credit: US Military.
-Unlike Ukraine’s older M1A1 SAs, the M1E3 aims to leap beyond SEPv3’s armor and radios with a software-driven, modular architecture and smaller crew.
-The Army has accelerated timelines: four prototypes are slated to enter formations in 2026, validating survivability, sustainment and networking under combat-realistic conditions.
The M1E3 Abrams Tank Is Coming
It has been said countless times and bears repeating yet again: The American-made M1 Abrams is the most successful main battle tank (MBT) of all time.
Its unmatched prowess was proved during smashing performances in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and 2003 Iraq War.
The Abrams has enjoyed continual improvements throughout its 46-year history: from the M1A1, which upgraded the primary armament from a 105-mm to a 120-mm main gun, to the current M1A2 SEPv3.
The latest upcoming improvement is the M1E3.
However, given the battering tanks have endured on both sides of the Russo-Ukrainian War, one cannot help but ask: Will the M1E3 be able to survive and contribute during the drone era?
Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF)
The tentative answer appears to be a cautiously optimistic “yes,” at least on paper.
As Andrew Feickert notes in a September report for the Congressional Research Service about the U.S. Army’s M1E3 Abrams tank modernization program, “among the chief features of this modernization program will be “an active protection system (APS) designed to protect the M1E3 from anti-tank guided missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, and threats from a variety of armed aerial drones and loitering munitions.”
The 1st Battalion, 194th Armor Regiment,1st Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, test fire their M1 Abrams Tank at Udairi Range, Kuwait, May 3, 2021. The main cannon of the M1 Abrams Tank shoots a 105mm round. (U.S. Army Photo by Spc. Juan Carlos Izquierdo, U.S. Army Central Public Affairs)
An M1 Abrams main battle tank provides security during the Combined Arms Company field exercise at Novo Selo Training Area, Bulgaria, Sept. 16, 2015. The CAC is a newly formed armor element supporting the Black Sea Rotational Force, which reassures our NATO allies and partners of our commitments and will enhance training exercises and operations with partners in the region. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Justin T. Updegraff/Released)
Among the major selling points for earlier versions of the Abrams was its first-of-its-kind Chobham armor (an arrangement of metal and ceramic plates), which gave it incredible survivability, including practical invulnerability against the main guns of adversary tanks such as the Soviet-designed T-72.
It will be interesting to see if the M1E3 keeps the Chobham armor in conjunction with the anti-drone APS or employs a new type of armor.
Additional Features for the M1E3
-Autoloader capabilities for the main gun to facilitate an unmanned turret. (This further boosts the crew’s prospects for survival against drones and other systems.)
-Ability to communicate with friendly forces’ drones.
-Alternate power trains.
-10-ton weight reduction.
-A more “green-friendly” hybrid electric diesel engine that will be 50 percent more fuel-efficient than the current Abrams.
Comparison with the M1A2 SEPv3
Ukraine’s M1s experienced disappointing survival rates, but it should be remembered that the Ukrainians were not supplied with the newest versions of the MBT. Rather, they’re using the M1A1 SA (Situational Awareness) model provided by the United States, as well as additional M1A1s recently sold by the Australian government.
It just so happens that the Australian Army is already integrating the M1A2 SEPv3 into its arsenal and is accordingly retiring its M1A1 stocks; Canberra’s sale of the latter to Kyiv was a convenient offramp for these retired war machines.
A U.S. M1A1 Abrams tank needed for training the Armed Forces of Ukraine awaits offloading at Grafenwoehr, Germany, May 14, 2023. The M1A1 training is expected to last several weeks and will include live fire, crew qualification, maneuver, and maintainer training. Armed Forces of Ukraine training is conducted by 7th Army Training Command at Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels training areas in Germany on behalf of U.S. Army Europe and Africa. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Christian Carrillo)
Key features of the SEPv3 include boron carbide ceramics and a titanium support framework; the latter attribute promotes structural integrity and weight reduction, enhancing protective capabilities while managing overall weight. (Titanium is lighter than steel.)
It also integrates a joint tactical radio system to ensure network readiness and interoperability with future brigade combat teams.
The Way Forward for the M1E3
In May 2024, the U.S. Army awarded a contract to General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) to shape requirements for the M1E3. The Army planned to bring the upgraded tank into service along a similar timeline as the XM-30 Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle.
However, the lessons learned from the Ukraine War have sparked an urgency to dramatically accelerate the Abrams’ modernization timeframe. Originally projected for 2030, the M1E3 is now wanted within 24 to 30 months.
Along those lines, in September 2025, the Chief of Staff of the Army, Gen. Randy A. George, stated that four M1E3 prototypes would be operational within Army formations at some point in 2026, further noting that “the new tanks will be completely software-driven, require a smaller crew, be modular, and will be equipped with an active protection system. Once the Army receives them, crews will try the tanks out and then decide what they need.”
It has yet to be determined which specific Army units will field those four prototypes next year.
About the Author: Christian D. Orr, Defense Expert
Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor. He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He is also the author of the newly published book “Five Decades of a Fabulous Firearm: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Beretta 92 Pistol Series.”
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nationalsecurityjournal.org · Christian Orr · November 13, 2025
9. Department of War Name Set in Bronze at Pentagon Entrances
Department of War Name Set in Bronze at Pentagon Entrances
Nov. 13, 2025 | By C. Todd Lopez, Pentagon News |
https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4331116/department-of-war-name-set-in-bronze-at-pentagon-entrances/
At the Pentagon today, facilities personnel took down outdated bronze plaques at two of the building's entrances and replaced them with recently minted plaques bearing the new name of the federal agency that leads America's fighting force: "Department of War."
One of those new plaques was put up at the River Entrance, which faces the Potomac River and serves as the Pentagon's grand entrance. It's where Secretary of War Pete Hegseth greets counterparts from partner and allied nations, as well as other dignitaries and distinguished visitors.
The Mall Entrance, which faces north toward the National Mall in Washington, also got a new sign. Outside that entrance are the Pentagon's helicopter landing pads.
"We wanted to replace [the old signs] because we want everybody who comes through this door to know that we are deadly serious about the name change of this organization," Hegseth said.
In early September, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order changing the name of the Defense Department back to the War Department — a name the department held for more than 150 years, from 1789 to 1947.
Construction on the Pentagon began in 1941 and was completed in 1943. When the building opened that year, it housed the Department of War. In fact, the dedication stone on the Pentagon — located outside the Mall Entrance — has "War Department" engraved at the top, along with the names of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was president at the time, and Henry L. Stimson, who served as Secretary of War from 1940 to 1945.
Now, the Pentagon again houses the War Department.
"We love everything that the Department of Defense represented," Hegseth said. "But this is a new era of the Department of War that is focused on winning wars ... and making sure that we know exactly what the mission is and that the troops are sent there to succeed and win."
The name "Department of War," Hegseth said, harkens back to America's founding.
"[We are] reestablishing [the department] back to Henry Knox and George Washington and the founding of our nation — to fight and win our nation's wars if called upon," he said. "And of course, the whole goal is to deter wars in the first place ... to establish peace."
The new name also reflects a new ethos for the department, Hegseth said, after he personally fastened the last screw on the new River Entrance plaque.
"We are rebuilding it; we are reestablishing deterrence — it's based on America first, peace through strength and common sense," he said. "And now everybody that enters this building, whether it's generals or civilians or foreign leaders, is going to see: this is not just on paper. This is not just a title. This is exactly who we are."
The new bronze plaques are each roughly 30 by 20 inches and weigh about 60 pounds.
The old plaques, which say "Department of Defense," had been on the building for more than 70 years, Hegseth said.
10. Russia claims to have thwarted Ukrainian assassination plot as deadly overnight strikes pound Kyiv
Summary:
Russia claims it foiled a Ukrainian plot to assassinate a top Kremlin official, as heavy Russian strikes killed five in Kyiv. Ukraine denied the allegation. Both sides launched overnight drone and missile attacks, hitting Kyiv, Novorossiysk, and targets deep inside Russia amid a surge in wartime assassinations.
Russia claims to have thwarted Ukrainian assassination plot as deadly overnight strikes pound Kyiv | CNN
CNN · Lex Harvey, Svitlana Vlasova · November 14, 2025
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/14/europe/ukraine-russia-assassination-attempt-intl-hnk?utm
This photograph taken on February 13, 2025 shows the Kremlin's towers with Moscow's International Business Centre (Moskva City) in the background in Moscow.
Tatyana Makeyeva/AFP/Getty Images
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Russia’s security service has claimed it foiled a plot by Ukraine to assassinate a high-ranking Kremlin official inside Russia as the alleged target visited a graveyard.
The claim by Russia’s Federal Security Service – the FSB – came as residents of Kyiv experienced another heavy night of deadly Russian aerial attacks that killed at least five people, according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukrainian special services were planning to target the unnamed official, described as “one of the highest-ranking officials of the Russian state,” while he was visiting the graves of his relatives at a cemetery outside Moscow, according to a Friday statement by Russia’s FSB.
The FSB also claimed in its statement that Ukraine is planning similar attacks inside Russia.
CNN could not independently verify Russia’s claims. The Security Service of Ukraine denied the report, telling CNN, “They are churning out fake news and statements non-stop. Our position is not to comment on their nonsense.”
Ukraine has claimed responsibility for assassinating Russian officials in the past, including a commander killed last month in Siberia.
Both Ukraine and Russia launched aerial attacks into each other’s territory overnight into Friday, according to authorities in the respective countries.
In Kyiv, local authorities said at least five people were killed and dozens injured in the latest attacks. Among the wounded were two children and a pregnant woman, according to the city’s military administration.
More than 15 buildings were damaged in the capital, including residences and a medical facility, it added.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone attack targeted the Russian port city of Novorossiysk, wounding at least four people and damaging an oil depot, according to the governor of Krasnodar Krai. A state of emergency has been declared there, officials said.
One man was hospitalized due to debris from downed Ukrainian UAVs, according to the governor, adding that at least four apartment buildings and two private homes were damaged.
Overall, Russia’s defense ministry said it intercepted a total of 216 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Ukraine also launched long-range Neptune cruise missiles at Russian targets on Thursday night, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Neptunes are domestically-produced Ukrainian weapons.
“Last night, our soldiers successfully used ‘long Neptunes’ against specific targets on Russian territory, and this is our entirely justified response to the ongoing Russian terror,” Zelensky said in a social media post.
Assassinations have become a hallmark of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Targeted killings inside Russia and Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine have surged since 2022, according to monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED).
There were more assassination attempts inside Russia in the first three quarters of 2025 than the annual totals of the previous three years, ACLED reported.
Last month, Ukraine said it assassinated a Russian officer, Veniamin Mazzherin, using a car bomb. Mazzherin, deputy commander of a Russian military police unit in Kemerovo, southwest Siberia, allegedly helped lead a special unit involved in “war crimes and genocide against the Ukrainian people,” according to Ukrainian Defense Intelligence.
In April, Russian General Yaroslav Moskalik was killed in a car explosion outside Moscow. Russian authorities said they charged a “Ukrainian special services agent” with terrorism, though Ukraine did not claim any responsibility for the incident.
A few months before that, a top Russian general accused of using chemical weapons in Ukraine was killed by a remotely detonated bomb planted in an electric scooter outside an apartment building in Moscow. A source with knowledge of the operation told CNN at the time that Ukraine’s security services were behind the assassination.
In November 2023, Ukraine said it was responsible for the assassination of Mikhail Filiponenko, a lawmaker in a Kremlin-installed assembly in the occupied eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk. Filiponenko was also killed with a car bomb.
Ukraine has also seen assassinations. In July, a Ukrainian security services officer was gunned down in broad daylight in Kyiv, with authorities blaming Russia’s security services for the killing.
CNN’s Kosta Gak, Catherine Nicholls, Daria Tarasova-Markina and Anna Chernova contributed reporting.
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CNN · Lex Harvey, Svitlana Vlasova · November 14, 2025
11. Memo Blessing Boat Strikes Is Said to Rely on Trump’s Claims About Cartels
Summary:
A secret DOJ memo justifying Trump’s lethal boat strikes hinges on his claim that the U.S. is in an armed conflict with “narco-terrorist” cartels. Accepting White House assertions uncritically, it deems drug-smuggling vessels lawful targets and offers legal defenses for killings, despite widespread criticism that no armed conflict exists.
Comment: Not so secret anymore.
Memo Blessing Boat Strikes Is Said to Rely on Trump’s Claims About Cartels
NY Times · Julian E. Barnes · November 13, 2025
Accounts of a secret Justice Department memo offer a window into how administration lawyers approved the president’s desired course of action.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/us/politics/boat-strikes-doj-memo-trump.html
The Trump administration has insisted that its boat strikes are lawful, telling Congress in September that Mr. Trump had “determined” that the United States was in a noninternational armed conflict.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
By Charlie Savage and
Reporting from Washington
Nov. 13, 2025Updated 9:11 p.m. ET
A secret Justice Department memo blessing President Trump’s boat strikes as lawful hangs on the idea that the United States and its allies are legally in a state of armed conflict with drug cartels, a premise that derives heavily from assertions that the White House itself has put forward, according to people who have read it.
The memo from the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which is said to be more than 40 pages long, signed off on a military campaign that has now killed 80 people in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. It said such extrajudicial killings of people suspected of running drugs were lawful as a matter of Mr. Trump’s wartime powers.
In reaching that conclusion, the memo contradicts a broad range of critics, who have rejected the idea that there is any armed conflict and have accused Mr. Trump of illegally ordering the military to commit murders.
The administration has insisted that Mr. Trump has the authority to lawfully order the strikes under the laws of war, but it has provided scant public details about its legal analysis to buttress that conclusion. The accounts of the memo offer a window into how executive branch lawyers signed off on Mr. Trump’s desired course of action, including appearing to have accepted at face value the White House’s version of reality.
The memo, which was completed in late summer, is said to open with a lengthy recitation of claims submitted by the White House, including that drug cartels are intentionally trying to kill Americans and destabilize the Western Hemisphere. The groups are presented not as unscrupulous businesses trying to profit from drug trafficking, but as terrorists who sell narcotics as a means of financing violence.
Based on such claims, the memo states that Mr. Trump has legitimate authority to determine that the United States and its allies are legally in a formal state of armed conflict with “narco-terrorist” drug cartels, according to the people who have read the document. The rest of the memo’s reasoning is based on that premise.
For example, the people said, the memo asserts that boats believed to be carrying narcotics are lawful military targets because their cargo would otherwise generate revenue that cartels could use to buy military equipment to wage the purported armed conflict.
And a lengthy section at the end of the memo, they said, offers potential legal defenses if a prosecutor were to charge administration officials or troops for involvement in the killings. Everyone in the chain of command who follows orders that comply with the laws of war has battlefield immunity, the memo says, because it is an armed conflict.
The people who described the memo did so on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive document. Asked for comment, the White House said in a statement that Mr. Trump directed the strikes under his constitutional powers and that they complied with the law of armed conflict.
The U.S. Navy guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg docked at the port of Ponce, Puerto Rico, earlier this month.Credit...Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters
Since Sept. 2, the U.S. military has attacked 20 boats, either in the Caribbean Sea or the eastern Pacific Ocean, that the administration has said were smuggling narcotics. In announcing the strikes, the administration has cited intelligence but has not put forward specific evidence.
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The Trump administration has insisted that its boat strikes are lawful. In September, it told Congress that Mr. Trump had “determined” that the United States was in a noninternational armed conflict, meaning in a war against a nonstate actor, like drug cartels, and that the people it was killing aboard the boats were “combatants.”
Outside specialists in laws governing lethal force have widely criticized that argument, and the administration has not offered a detailed public explanation of the legal analysis supporting its assertion. The omissions have included how it bridged the conceptual gap between drug trafficking and associated crimes, as serious as they are, and the kind of armed attacks that is necessary to create a state of war.
The administration has, however, disclosed that an Office of Legal Counsel memorandum signed off on the operation. And while it has not made the memo public, it has started to let members of Congress and their staff read copies, while providing T. Elliot Gaiser, who leads the office, to answer questions at some briefings.
The memo is said to be framed around a question posed by the White House: whether limited lethal force could be used to stop vessels in international waters that are not registered to any country, in order to curb the flow of narcotics from drug cartels designated as terrorist groups.
In endorsing Mr. Trump’s determination that there is an armed conflict, the memo accepted the White House’s assertions uncritically, according to the people who have read it.
For example, they said, the memo cites the White House’s claim that cartels are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans a year. But it does not address the fact that a surge in overdoses over the past decade was caused by fentanyl, which comes from labs in Mexico controlled by Mexican cartels, not by South American cocaine.
The memo also cites violence by drug cartels against the security forces of other governments in the region, like Colombia’s and Mexico’s, and asserts that the United States can attack the cartels as a matter of collective self-defense, the people who have seen the memo said. But it does not address whether any foreign government has requested the United States to defend it by carrying out military strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea or eastern Pacific Ocean.
Colombia is fighting a Marxist rebel group known as the National Liberation Army, or E.L.N., which traffics in drugs to finance its purchases of weapons but is not traditionally considered a drug cartel. One of the 20 strikes to date, announced on Oct. 19, targeted a boat that the Trump administration said was carrying a shipment linked to E.L.N. But Colombia’s president has demanded that the United States stop striking boats, calling them murders.
The memo is said to treat as significant the fact that the U.S. government has designated a range of Latin American drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. The Trump administration itself did that a few months ago at Mr. Trump’s direction.
Applying that label to ordinary drug cartels and criminal gangs was unprecedented and contested, since terrorists are ideologically or religiously motivated violent groups like Al Qaeda. By that standard, the E.L.N., which was designated a terrorist group in 1997, qualifies, but groups that are traditionally understood as drug cartels do not.
The memo’s framing of the boat strikes as a specific effort to destroy the cargos has a different emphasis from the messaging the administration has used to justify the attacks.
The strikes have been widely condemned as murders or a war crime, because even criminal suspects are considered to be civilians, and a military may not deliberately target them if they pose no immediate threat. The United States has traditionally dealt with maritime drug smuggling by intercepting boats and arresting the people on board if a search reveals illicit cargo.
Responding to such criticism, Mr. Trump and members of his administration, like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have declared that the people crewing the boats are “narco-terrorists” and the Trump administration has called them “combatants.”
The memo, however, is said to focus instead on the purported shipments of narcotics aboard, portraying those as the specific targets of the strikes based on the theory that their sale would generate revenue that cartels would use to finance their alleged war efforts.
Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer and specialist in the laws of war who has been critical of the Trump administration’s operation, said there was some historical practice for citing international law to justify attacks on things that an enemy uses to fund its wartime combat activities. He pointed to strikes on oil facilities run by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and on Taliban-linked drug operations in Afghanistan.
But he criticized the proposition that there was an actual armed conflict with the cartels to start. Regardless, he added, he was skeptical that the specific loads of drugs being hit could meet international law standards for being legitimate military targets, arguing that their connection to any specific military activity seemed attenuated.
“It would be difficult to establish that the cargo on these vessels was a military objective under the law of war because there is no obvious connection between a shipment of drugs and military action by these supposed groups,” he said. “By contrast, ISIS was paying actual fighters in a real armed conflict with the proceeds of its oil sales.”
Another part of the memo, the people said, addresses the lack of congressional authorization for the operation.
While it has not made the memo public, the administration has started to let members of Congress and their staff read copies.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
The memo, they said, asserts that Mr. Trump has constitutional authority, as commander in chief, to order strikes on his own because he has determined they would be in the national interest and because their anticipated nature, scope and duration would fall short of a “war” in the constitutional sense.
Despite concluding that an armed conflict is underway, the memo also says the operation is not covered by the War Powers Resolution, a 1973 law that requires presidents to terminate deployments of troops into “hostilities” after 60 days if Congress has not authorized them. This part of its reasoning, which has been previously reported, turns on the idea that airstrikes that do not put U.S. personnel in danger should not be interpreted as “hostilities.”
The final section, discussing arguments that could be raised in case of any future prosecutions, is said to be lengthy, broaching, among others, the idea that U.S. personnel have immunity for killing enemy fighters in an armed conflict.
Citing a need to protect society from dangerous narco-terrorist cartels, the memo compares military personnel participating in the strikes to the police who break the speed limits when pursuing a suspect who poses a threat to public safety. Those officers are not considered to have committed a crime.
There have been growing signs that the campaign may escalate to land strikes. Some members of Mr. Trump’s administration have pushed to remove from power Venezuela’s President, Nicolás Maduro, whom they have called the leader of a narco-terrorist cartel.
The Pentagon has moved large amounts of naval-based firepower more appropriate for major land attacks than for striking small boats into the region, and Mr. Trump in public has mused about expanding to land strikes.
If he does, though, the Office of Legal Counsel may need to produce another memo. The existing one does not mention Venezuela or strikes anywhere on land, the people said.
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
See more on: U.S. Politics, Donald Trump
NY Times · Julian E. Barnes · November 13, 2025
12. SOCOM wants to train operators to build, wield FPV drones
Summary:
SOCOM plans a new 10-day course teaching operators to build, repair, and fly FPV drones, including soldering, circuitry, software setup, and 40 hours of live flight training starting January 2026.
Comment: I bet there are many team guys and support guys already doing this on their own time.
SOCOM wants to train operators to build, wield FPV drones
militarytimes.com · Zita Fletcher · November 13, 2025
https://www.militarytimes.com/unmanned/2025/11/13/socom-wants-to-train-operators-to-build-wield-fpv-drones/?utm
Wielding drones in combat missions and being able to repair them on the spot could soon become a new standard among the skills fielded by the operators of U.S. Special Operations Command, per a solicitation released Wednesday.
SOCOM wants a contractor to develop a 10-day course for six operators twice a year to train them in all aspects of building and flying first-person view drones, according to the performance work statement from Naval Special Warfare Command, which oversees the training and formation of Navy SEALs.
Special warfare operators would be trained to not only fly small drones but also develop expertise in their assembly, including soldering, wiring, circuitry and software configuration.
They will undergo 40 hours of flight instruction in indoor and outdoor environments, with pressure to master the drones quickly in the field. No more than four hours of simulations will be allowed for practice, according to the performance work statement.
As small drones continue to present new threats with incursions into NATO airspace and pose challenges to the defense of U.S. military bases, SOCOM is evidently wasting no time in getting operators up to speed. The documents show that SOCOM expects the contractor selected to present a course schedule and training plan within three days after the contract award, and aims for the course to begin Jan. 15, 2026.
About Zita Ballinger Fletcher
Zita Ballinger Fletcher previously served as editor of Military History Quarterly and Vietnam magazines and as the historian of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. She holds an M.A. with distinction in military history.
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
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