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Quotes of the Day:
"The United States of America, when compared to these dictatorships, comes across as lacking in national unity and slow in executing state affairs. But, in the final analysis, the United States exercises the greatest power in the world. And the source of this great power lies in its democratic political system. In the American political system, when an issue comes under deliberation, at first people from all walks of life express their views in an unrestrained manner and a national consensus may appear out of reach. But as the people continue to debate the pros and cons of the various arguments related to the issue at hand, those numerous contrasting points of view gradually coalses into two opposing views, which are respectively subsumed by the two main political camps. By the principle of majority rule one of these two viewpoints is adopted as a resolution of the national legislature. Once the president signs the resolution into law the will of the people is made official and immutable. In effect, democracy is a procedure or method for ascertaining and giving voice to the will of the people rather than the substance of such popular will. Hence, democracy may be defined as the guarantee of free speech, free elections, and majority rule."
– Kim Koo, My Wish, (for Korea), 1876-1949
“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”
– Dalai Lama
"The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether or not it is the same problem you had last year."
– John Foster Dulles
Uncertain Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PRQSSAHm8k
1. Trump likely to face long military commitment and chaos if he ousts Maduro in Venezuela, experts say
2. U.S. Boat Strikes Are Straining the Counterdrug Alliance
3. Trump recasts foreign terror list to focus on ‘antifa,’ cartels
4. The US Army says it's getting soldiers next-day fixes on new tech rather than making them wait 6 months
5. Army scraps PEOs in bid to streamline procurement, requirements processes
6. How the Rest of the World Is Moving on From Trump’s ‘America First’
7. Pentagon Acquires Combat Proven ‘Multi-Dimensional Drone Swarm’
8. Putin's adviser warns Russia risks new civil war and internal collapse of the nation
9. Intelligence Community, Department of War Welcome LTG Michele Bredenkamp as Director of NGA
10. China's people are on a treadmill
11. He’s Been Right About AI for 40 Years. Now He Thinks Everyone Is Wrong.
12. Preservationists sue Trump over plans to paint Eisenhower building
13. U.S. and Japanese Ground Forces Reforge Their Alliance for the Counter Drone Fight
14. U.S. Marines Deploy Drone Unit to Philippines to Patrol Over South China Sea
15. New Rare-Earths Plant in Europe Shows How Tough Breaking China’s Grip Will Be
16. Now Tech Moguls Want to Build Data Centers in Outer Space
17. What’s in a Name? DoD vs. DoW — And Why It Matters More Than You Think
18. What Ken Burns learned by making ‘The American Revolution’
19. PacNet #95 – New reforms reforge the Arsenal of Freedom for the Indo-Pacific
20. Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America by Gordon Chang Reviewed by: Kevin Johnston
21. Securitizing Kinmen: China’s Gray Zone Strategy and the Evolution of the Kinmen Model
22. Pentagon: Change Radically or Lose
1. Trump likely to face long military commitment and chaos if he ousts Maduro in Venezuela, experts say
Summary:
Experts warn that ousting Maduro could trap Trump in a long, costly commitment. The U.S. lacks assets for a large-scale operation, and Maduro’s removal could trigger military rule, civil conflict, or harsher Chavista successors. Opposition leaders cannot govern without sustained U.S. security support, risking prolonged involvement and domestic political backlash.
Excerpts:
The Maduro regime is propped up in different ways by Russia, China and Cuba. Experts worry that if US strikes hit assets of those nations the conflict could quickly escalate. While it is unlikely that any of those nations would send their troops to the region to defend against US strikes, it is possible that the effect of US strikes inside Venezuela could be blunted by the support those countries provide to the regime.
All three nations have invested in the Venezuelan regime and have instruments that they could bring to bear to prevent Maduro’s ouster, experts said.
This is something that has happened in the past.
“In 2019, the opposition thought that the Cubans had uncovered what they were trying to do with their coup attempt and believe that they made moves to undermine their efforts,” Bolton said.
Further expanding the problem could be a move by Maduro to hit US assets in the region – before the US makes any move to directly oust him.
Comment: Does anyone think that a conflict that puts US boots on the ground in Venezuela will be short and decisive?
“There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.”
— Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter 2: “Waging War”
Trump likely to face long military commitment and chaos if he ousts Maduro in Venezuela, experts say | CNN Politics
CNN · Kylie Atwood · November 15, 2025
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro greets his supporters during a meeting of jurists in defense of international law in Caracas on November 14, 2025.
Pedro Mattey/Anadolu/Getty Images
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President Donald Trump has said he believes Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s days are numbered, and that land strikes inside Venezuela are possible.
Experts say that the US doesn’t currently have the military assets in place to launch a largescale operation to remove Maduro from power, though Trump has approved covert action within Venezuela, CNN has reported.
But if Trump did order strikes inside Venezuela aimed at ousting Maduro, he could face serious challenges with fractured opposition elements and a military poised for insurgency, according to experts, as well as political backlash at home for a president who promised to avoid costly entanglements overseas.
CNN reported that Trump received a briefing earlier this week to review updated options for military action inside Venezuela, a concept the White House has been weighing. The administration had not made a decision on whether to launch strikes, CNN reported, though the US military has moved more than a dozen warships and 15,000 troops into the region as part of what the Pentagon branded Operation Southern Spear in an announcement Thursday.
The concentration of military assets and threats of further attacks beyond the ongoing drug boat campaign have served to increase pressure on Maduro, with administration officials saying he needs to leave office while arguing that he’s closely tied to the Tren de Aragua gang and leading drug trafficking efforts.
But if Maduro does flee Venezuela or is killed out in a targeted strike, experts worry about a military takeover of the country or the boosting of another dictator similar to Maduro.
There are other members of the Venezuelan Chavismo, the leftist political ideology of former Cuban leader Hugo Chavez that Maduro has championed, who could take the reins and subject the country to even harsher rule, experts and former officials said.
“Maduro has said something to the effect of, ‘You want to get rid of me? You think things will get better?’ It is something to consider because Maduro is a moderate inside the Chavismo, and someone else could usurp power instead of the opposition with the backing of the military,” said Juan Gonzalez, a resident fellow at the Georgetown Americas Institute who was a former Biden administration official focused on the region.
Another possibility would be a military takeover.
“If the military is still cohesive, and I don’t think we see any evidence it is not, they will not collapse because there is a challenge to or an ouster of Maduro,” said John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser in his first term. “They will follow their discipline, assert military control, and suppress anyone who goes into the streets.”
Members of the Armed Forces participate in the "Plan Independencia 200" defense deployment ordered by Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, amid rising tensions with the United States, in Merida, Venezuela, in this Handout picture made available on November 11, 2025.
Merida Governorate/Handout/Reuters
Maduro, whose inner circle is made up of both civilians and military officers who are often in competition with each other, is known to have tight control over his administration and has helped stabilize competing factions. External forces, like Colombian insurgent groups who regularly operate from Venezuela or criminal syndicates linked to cocaine, gold and mineral trafficking further complicate the picture.
Were Maduro to disappear, these pulls could tear the nation apart – descending into a potential civil war, experts said.
“Whether you like it or not, Maduro is the guarantor of the equilibrium,” said a Western diplomat who has spent years in Venezuela, asking to speak anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss with the press. “Everyone knows he’s been politically dead since last year’s election, but if he leaves there’s nobody who can maintain the status quo … so they all close ranks around him.”
Opposition Figures
The Trump administration may hope that Venezuelan opposition figures would be able to step into a power vacuum created by the removal of Maduro, something that the first Trump administration considered as it propped up Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido after a 2018 election victory for Maduro that was decried internationally as rigged. That first Trump administration officially recognized Guaido as the legitimate leader of Venezuela in 2019, but a failed coup attempt that year meant he never managed to take power.
One current Venezuelan opposition group led by Edmundo Gonzalez, who ran for president last year in an election that the US said Maduro lost, says it has a 100-hour plan to transition the power of Venezuela’s government from Maduro to Gonzalez. But experts say that they would be unable to succeed in the short-term or in the long-term without sustained US support – and potentially US boots on the ground.
“The idea that a member of the opposition would be able to rule almost immediately is impossible. There is no way to guarantee their safety or ability to govern without the US providing security,” Juan Gonzalez said. “Everyone is viewing removing Maduro as the end but it’s really just the beginning of what would be a long, drawn-out process.”
US officials have also said that Edmuondo Gonzalez, who is currently residing in Spain, is the rightful leader of Venezuela, based on the results of last year’s election. The US has provided limited support to another Venezuelan opposition leader, María Corina Machado, who went into hiding in the country after the election. The assistance includes support, like gaining access to secure communication capabilities, former US officials said.
Venezuelan President-elect Edmundo Gonzalez during the Grupo Libertad y Democracia Forum at the Ateneo de Madrid, May 21, in Madrid, Spain.
Mateo Lanzuela/Europa Press/Getty Images/File
But in order to keep any of the potential opposition leaders in power the type of support needed from the US would go beyond providing a secure device – there would need to be assistance in reconstructing the army, unfreezing Venezuelan government funds and training their police force, experts said.
The opposition’s enemies inside Venezuela are not limited to Maduro himself, which is why such sustained outside support is seen as a necessity, experts said. The opposition would face hostilities from the Venezuelan military; pro-government paramilitary groups known as colectivos; the National Liberation Army (known as the ELN), which is a Colombian guerilla group that currently has safe haven in the country; and other active criminal groups.
It is unclear how much support Trump would be willing to give any opposition leader who seeks to take the presidency from Maduro. But that support would need to be sustained, officials said, to fend off a failed state.
Such an extended US military involvement runs the risk of upsetting the political coalition that propelled Trump into office on promises of keeping America out of overseas wars.
“The American people did not vote for Trump to draw the US into a sustained conflict in Latin America. On that basis securing Trump’s commitment to long-lasting support for the opposition is likely to be a challenge,” said a GOP congressional staffer. “And without that support, this won’t work.”
Still, if Trump backs away from a potential opportunity to oust Maduro now, some believe it could be viewed as a lost opportunity.
“Trump is calling Maduro a narcoterrorist and a drug trafficker, and has assembled a huge armada. If he backs down now and Maduro survives, there goes all the ‘new Monroe Doctrine’ talk and the idea of being supreme in our own hemisphere.” said Elliott Abrams, a former senior State Department official in Trump’s first term.
Entanglements
Even while some say that displacing Maduro could be done without US troops on the ground for an extended period, they say that the US commitment following any kinetic strikes needs to be long-lasting or else the effort could easily fall apart.
“If the force is decisive it can disband a full army. But whatever is done cannot be done with a short-term perspective. The use of force needs to create a result and be connected to a political solution with US support, and planning for that support for 5-10 years,” said a regional diplomat.
The Maduro regime is propped up in different ways by Russia, China and Cuba. Experts worry that if US strikes hit assets of those nations the conflict could quickly escalate. While it is unlikely that any of those nations would send their troops to the region to defend against US strikes, it is possible that the effect of US strikes inside Venezuela could be blunted by the support those countries provide to the regime.
All three nations have invested in the Venezuelan regime and have instruments that they could bring to bear to prevent Maduro’s ouster, experts said.
This is something that has happened in the past.
“In 2019, the opposition thought that the Cubans had uncovered what they were trying to do with their coup attempt and believe that they made moves to undermine their efforts,” Bolton said.
Further expanding the problem could be a move by Maduro to hit US assets in the region – before the US makes any move to directly oust him.
“There is a chance that if Maduro thinks he is going down he might make a move to hit something the US cares about, such as oil platforms in the Caribbean Sea. It could be a gamble he may be willing to take that would harm US interests in the region,” said Henry Ziemer, a regional expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Publicly the Trump administration continues to point to its buildup of military assets in Latin America as supremely focused on counter-drug operations – not an ouster of Maduro. Experts have also previously told CNN that the assembled hardware and troops aren’t enough for a full-scale invasion.
Still, when asked earlier this month if the US might get into a war with Venezuela, Trump gave an ambiguous answer, saying: “I doubt it. I don’t think so.”
CNN · Kylie Atwood · November 15, 2025
2. U.S. Boat Strikes Are Straining the Counterdrug Alliance
Summary:
U.S. unilateral missile strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific are alienating key counterdrug partners. France and EU leaders call them illegal; Canada, the Netherlands and others distance themselves. Colombia suspends intelligence sharing, threatening decades-old cooperative interdiction efforts and risking gains against cocaine and fentanyl trafficking.
Comment: Effective US national security activities depend on allies, especially for sustained efforts. What is the tradeoff here?
U.S. Boat Strikes Are Straining the Counterdrug Alliance
WSJ
The U.S. military relies on international partners to counter the narcotics trade, but allies won’t back lethal attacks
By Vera Bergengruen
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, Kejal Vyas
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and Shelby Holliday
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Nov. 15, 2025 12:00 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/trump-boat-strikes-drug-9bbbeb90
Drugs interdicted in the Caribbean Sea being unloaded in Florida in March. marco bello/Reuters
- The U.S. military’s unilateral strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have strained relations with international partners.
- Allies like France, Canada and the Netherlands have publicly distanced themselves from the U.S. operations, with some calling them violations of international law.
- Colombia has vowed to cut off intelligence cooperation with Washington.
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.
- The U.S. military’s unilateral strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have strained relations with international partners.
France denounced the U.S. military strikes on alleged drug boats as a violation of international law. Canada and the Netherlands have stressed they aren’t involved. Colombia has vowed to cut off intelligence cooperation with Washington. Mexico summoned the U.S. ambassador to complain.
Two months into the Trump administration’s military campaign against low-level smugglers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, the coalition of partners that has long underpinned U.S. antidrug operations in the region is fraying.
Instead of significantly reducing the flow of drugs to the U.S. and other countries, the shift to unilateral military operations that have killed at least 79 suspected smugglers could in the long run undercut the decades-old fight to keep cocaine, fentanyl and other substances out of North America, Europe and Asia, foreign and former officials say.
“It could potentially really hurt us in the end, because we need their help,” said Todd Robinson, who until January ran the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. “The fact that these countries are going public is a clear indication of their wariness for the tactics the United States is using. ”
As of last year, 80% of cocaine disruptions relied on international partners, according to U.S. defense officials. But since the U.S. boat strikes began in September, several key allies have emphasized that their own intelligence isn’t being used to strike the vessels, and publicly distanced themselves from the U.S. military operation that some of them call a violation of international law.
Mark Esper weighs in on the Trump administration’s continued military strikes against alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers. Photo: Ivan Apfel for WSJ
And those concerns come as the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and its escort ships enter the region, bringing the largest influx of personnel, jet fighters and missiles it has seen in decades. This has prompted unusual public pushback from countries that have long been strong U.S. partners in counterdrug operations.
“We will not allow Panamanian territory to be used for actions against Venezuela or any other country,” President José Raúl Mulino said on Thursday.
President Trump, however, has hailed the operations as a success, saying that “boat traffic is substantially down” since the strikes started. “Interdiction doesn’t work,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in September, defending the unprecedented lethal strikes. “What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them.”
On Wednesday, he shrugged off the concerns of allies. “I don’t think that the European Union gets to determine what international law is, and what they certainly don’t get to determine is how the United States defends its national security,” he said after meeting with leaders of the Group of Seven industrial nations in Canada.
For decades, U.S. antidrug operations have relied on over 20 allies for everything from detection to interdiction to cover a vast area of the Western Hemisphere used by traffickers and cartels to distribute illegal drugs. Most allies maintain liaison officers at U.S. Southern Command’s headquarters near Miami to coordinate interdiction operations in the region.
At least 14 countries have participated in Operation Martillo, a U.S.-led campaign launched in 2012 to disrupt maritime trafficking routes off Central America, including Canada, Colombia, France, the Netherlands, Panama, Spain, the U.K. and Chile.
These joint operations have seized hundreds of tons of cocaine and detained thousands of suspects in recent years, according to U.S. Southern Command officials. Five days before the first boat strike, U.S. officials touted that their coalition had disrupted a record amount of cocaine and “prevented approximately 334 billion lethal doses from reaching American communities.”
Nearly four out of five counterdrug missions intercepting cocaine bound for the U.S. involved foreign navies or coast guards, according to Southcom.
A seized submarine was towed by a Colombian Navy ship in 2021. luis robayo/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
At the same time, the Trump administration has slashed or frozen counternarcotics aid across Latin America. This includes a foreign-aid freeze that grounded U.S.-funded Black Hawk helicopters in Colombia, temporarily halted U.S.-backed antifentanyl programs in Mexico, and a budget proposal to cut the State Department’s main counternarcotics account by more than 90%.
“There’s no Western nation in the world that is engaging in this sort of endgame against narcotics trafficking vessels,” said William Brownfield, who led the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and served as U.S. ambassador to Colombia. “And that is going to have an impact on things such as intelligence sharing.”
The boat strikes “violate international law,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on Tuesday on the sidelines of the G-7 foreign ministers’ summit in Canada, noting that more than a million French citizens are living in its overseas territories in the region. “They could therefore be affected by the instability caused by any escalation.”
Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said international law was clear on the matter. “You can use force for two reasons: One is self-defense, the other one is the U.N. Security Council resolution,” she said this week.
Canada has also distanced itself from the strikes. While still running antidrug operations in the Caribbean, Canada’s defense ministry stressed that those are “separate and distinct” from the U.S. military operation against drug boats.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof had a similar message after visiting the country’s Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curaçao this week. “It’s important that we can say that we are in no way involved in the activities that America is currently conducting,” he said, adding that Dutch officials are “trying to determine the Americans’ actual intentions.”
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Some leaders are now in a bind as they try to maintain cooperation with Washington while dealing with domestic outrage over America’s moves. Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell has dragged his feet on approving a U.S. request to temporarily install a radar at the country’s main airport, irking some Trump officials, according to people familiar with the matter. The request for Grenada to host a U.S. military asset amid the buildup has faced strong pushback on the island, where the memory of the 1983 U.S. invasion still looms large.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, whose country until recently had been the closest U.S. antidrug partner in the region, said on Tuesday that he was ordering his nation’s security forces to stop sharing intelligence with the U.S. until the Trump administration stops its strikes. He has previously denounced the strikes as “extrajudicial executions.”
“If intelligence communication is only used for killing boatmen with missiles, not only is it irrational, but it’s also a crime against humanity,” Petro said, adding that information would only be shared with guarantees that it would be used to capture suspects instead of killing them.
The break could be significant. Between January 2024 and June 2025, 85% of all actionable intelligence used by the U.S.-led task force originated in Colombia, according to a letter from the House Foreign Affairs Committee to Trump in September.
Interior Minister Armando Benedetti said Colombia would continue its longstanding collaboration with U.S. law-enforcement agencies. But Antonio Martinez, a retired Colombian admiral who led antinarcotics efforts in the Caribbean and Pacific, said he feared the feud between the presidents could damage decades of trust building for counterdrug operations.
“It’s a major step backwards,” he said. “The only ones who win here are the criminal groups.”
Write to Vera Bergengruen at vera.bergengruen@wsj.com, Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com and Shelby Holliday at shelby.holliday@wsj.com
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WSJ
3. Trump recasts foreign terror list to focus on ‘antifa,’ cartels
Summary:
The Trump administration is rapidly expanding the foreign terrorist list to include European antifa-linked groups and Latin American cartels, a major shift from traditional counterterrorism criteria. Experts warn these groups pose little direct threat to the U.S., raising concerns the designations could enable investigations of Americans and politicize terrorism authorities.
Comment: Expediency? Overreach? Escalation? Will we begin domestic counterterrorism operations with military CT forces?
Trump recasts foreign terror list to focus on ‘antifa,’ cartels
The administration is making an unprecedented expansion, designating entities in Europe and Latin America not typically a focus of U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
Updated
November 15, 2025 at 1:17 p.m. ESTyesterday at 1:17 p.m. EST
Washington Post · Adam Taylor
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/15/trump-antifa-terrorist-list/
The Trump administration is pursuing an unprecedented expansion of the U.S. government’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, adding left-wing groups in Europe along with Latin American drug-trafficking organizations — entities not associated with the ideological violence central to Washington’s counterterrorism stance dating back decades.
Officials said this week that in coming days the administration will add four “violent Antifa groups” based in Germany, Italy and Greece to the list. The Trump administration this year designated 19 entities as foreign terrorist organizations, including Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua.
Since 2001, Islamist extremist networks have accounted for the vast majority of groups put on the list, typically those with active links to transnational actors that threatened the United States, such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. The 23 entities that the Trump administration has added or plans to add is the most in a single year since the foreign terrorist list was established in 1997, when 28 organizations were designated.
Though far-left groups have appeared on the list before, experts said the targeting of groups linked to antifa — a broad left-wing anti-fascist and anti-racist ideology that has a long history in Europe — was a highly unusual move, particularly as those targeted this week do not directly threaten the United States or have a record of committing deadly attacks. Some counterterrorism experts said that the move could open U.S. citizens perceived as having links to antifa to criminal investigation.
“These are four organizations that have been around for varying periods of time, but they don’t have one fatality associated with their activity,” said Jason Blazakis, who led the State Department’s Counterterrorism Finance and Designations Office from 2008 to 2018.
The State Department declined to answer further questions about why it was expanding the foreign terrorist list so rapidly, pointing to public statements on the matter.
The State Department is “committed to identifying and dismantling these terror networks that conspire to ruthlessly suppress the will of the people and violently topple the very foundations of the United States and Western Civilization,” said spokesperson Tommy Pigott in a statement.
Terrorist designations are a powerful tool, effectively blocking access to the U.S. financial system and prohibiting U.S. citizens from conducting business with those on the list.
To be designated as a foreign terrorist organization, a group must not only commit acts of terrorism — defined in U.S. law as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets” — but also be a threat to the security of United States nationals or the national security of the United States, according to the law that established the system.
That group was led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Now Syria’s president, he met with President Donald Trump at the White House this week and has pledged to rebuild the country’s relationship with the United States.
The administration’s targeting of left-wing European groups follows Trump’s declaration of “antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization. He did so in September, after the shooting death of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, who was close with the president. There is no public evidence that Kirk’s alleged shooter was a member of a specific antifa-aligned group.
The president routinely asserts that “radicals on the left” are to blame for the preponderance of political violence in the United States, though members of both political parties have been victims of such crimes.
Daniel Byman, an expert on terrorism with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the president’s declaration that antifa is a domestic terrorist organization was “meaningless legally,” but that the law clearly states Americans could be prosecuted for supporting a foreign terrorist organization.
“The law is very powerful if there is a connection to a designated foreign group even if the group itself is not a big deal … or the support seems minor,” Byman wrote in an email.
Blazakis, the former State Department official, noted that, in the past, federal investigators have used such designations to target U.S. citizens suspected of links to groups such as al-Qaeda, adding that the FBI could use designations of antifa-related groups in Europe “as a cover to try to infiltrate perceived antifa cells in the United States.”
Trump administration officials have compared drug cartels and antifa to such international terrorist organizations as al-Qaeda. “They’re essentially trying to make the argument that from an organizational perspective, [antifa is] no different than ISIS, with regional branches or affiliates,” said Colin Clarke, executive director of the security-focused think tank the Soufan Center.
The administration has sought to justify it actions, which have killed at least 80 people, by arguing that the president had “determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations” in Latin America.
Law of war experts contend that the Trump administration’s activities are illegal because the small vessels being targeted are carrying civilians allegedly involved in the commercial sale of drugs, not armed hostilities against the U.S. or its citizens.
The four European groups due to be added to the foreign terrorist list on Thursday — Antifa Ost from Germany; Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front in Italy; and Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense from Greece — have been involved in violent attacks, according to the State Department. Antifa Ost is accused of targeting right-wing individuals in Germany and Hungary, and the three other groups each have been linked to explosive attacks, among other crimes.
In a statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that these groups used “revolutionary anarchist or Marxist ideologies, including anti-Americanism … to incite and justify violent assaults domestically and overseas.”
The embassies of Germany, Italy and Greece did not respond to requests for comments.
In July, German federal prosecutors charged six people thought to be close to Antifa Ost with attempted murder, aggravated assault and membership in a criminal organization for their role in attacks targeting right-wing extremists in Budapest in 2023. An additional seven people suspected of participation in the network are on trial in Dresden in connection with an attack on an alleged neo-Nazi there, among other suspected acts.
Another possible member of the network is being prosecuted in Hungary for suspected involvement in the attacks there and faces up to 24 years in prison. The State Department noted that on Sept. 26, Hungary designated Antifa Ost a terrorist organization. Trump enjoys a close relationship to Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, Viktor Orban, and last week granted Hungary a special exemption from sanctions for importing Russian oil and gas.
Germany’s domestic intelligence characterizes Antifa Ost as belonging to the left-wing extremist spectrum, which it describes as those who “want to abolish the existing state and social order, and thus the free and democratic order,” but German officials have downplayed the group’s significance. A spokeswoman for the country’s Interior Ministry told reporters Friday that the group was already under investigation and security services had assessed that the threat it posed had “recently decreased significantly.”
“It’s certainly a violent network, though it’s not being talked about as [a terrorist organization] in Germany by most mainstream politicians,” said Peter Neumann, an expert in violent extremism at King’s College London.
A prominent German far-right activist is seeking asylum in the United States, alleging persecution by “antifa,” as well as surveillance by the German state.
The woman, Naomi Seibt, met recently with a Republican member of Congress and has been in regular touch on social media with former top Trump adviser Elon Musk, both of whom support her asylum case, she told The Washington Post. Trump administration proposals would grant priority refugee status for Europeans targeted for populist views, among others.
Some experts expressed confusion about how and why these groups were chosen for the terrorist designation, given that some did not appear to subscribe to the antifa ideology.
Mark Bray, a Rutgers University history professor who studies antifascism, said that the Trump administration appeared to be conflating anti-fascist groups with other groups of different left-wing ideologies.
“Obviously Antifa Ost is an antifa group,” Bray said. “The other three are not. They’re anarchist groups or networks of groups that are, yes, revolutionary and yes, they attacked the state and they attacked the police. But they are not antifa groups.”
“To me this is clearly an effort to create a stepping stone towards using a foreign terrorist designation to attack groups or individuals in the U.S.,” Bray added.
The State Department said that the Italian group FAI/FRI had claimed responsibility for threats of violence, bombs and letter bombs against political and economic institutions, including a courthouse, since 2003.
Both Greek organizations to be listed as foreign terrorist organizations — Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense — have been linked to bombing attacks against government offices, with the latter linked to an April bombing at the Hellenic Train offices in central Athens. The explosion caused no injuries.
Aaron Weiner and Kate Brady contributed to this report.
Washington Post · Adam Taylor
4. The US Army says it's getting soldiers next-day fixes on new tech rather than making them wait 6 months
Summary:
The Army is developing its Next Generation Command and Control system through rapid, soldier-driven iteration. Troops work directly with developers, receiving overnight software fixes instead of months-long updates. Through exercises like Ivy Sting, NGC2 is evolving quickly, reflecting a new, agile acquisition model focused on real-time feedback and flexible, modernized capabilities.
The US Army says it's getting soldiers next-day fixes on new tech rather than making them wait 6 months
Business Insider · Chris Panella
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-army-making-next-day-fixes-on-new-warfighting-software-2025-11
NGC2, or Next Generation Command and Control, is a cornerstone of the Army's transformation initiative. Army Maj. Joel Anderson
2025-11-15T12:27:01.227Z
- US Army soldiers are working with developers to refine the service's new command and control system in real time.
- NGC2 is a software-driven command-and-control system now being tested through a series of Army exercises.
- Soldiers are getting fixes overnight rather than in six months, officials said.
The US Army is rushing to close the dangerous gap between how fast technology evolves and how slowly the military usually moves.
The service's Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) system is being developed with soldiers and developers fixing problems in real time instead of waiting months for upgrades, Army officials said.
It's a different, faster approach to developing weapons than the service is used to; it's a process officials said is essential for preparing the Army for a potential high-intensity future conflict.
NGC2, has been a leading new development in the Army's broader transformation initiative that's focused on new weapons and technologies like uncrewed capabilities and artificial intelligence, and the service is leaning hard on soldier feedback for faster development.
"What soldiers are really enjoying is having the ability to talk to the developers," Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, commanding general of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, told reporters at a recent media roundtable.
Ellis said that while industry likes this setup, the soldiers really like it because it's not the usual "I've offered my opinion, and six months later another engineering release comes out."
"It's much more a case of, 'I've offered my opinion, and tomorrow, what I asked you to fix has now been fixed,'" he said.
US Army photo by Pvt. Jacob Cruz
Ellis said soldiers and developers have been in constant conversation about how to use this new technology during the Army's Ivy Sting exercises at Fort Carson, Colorado. The Army has completed two rounds of testing so far, with a third set for next month and a larger event next year that will pit NGC2 against simulated cyber and electronic warfare threats.
Each Ivy Sting has seen incremental upgrades to NGC2, including the number of Howitzers connected, the use of drones to provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance feeds, AI models for identifying targets, and more diversified systems for commanders to make decisions.
NGC2 marks a major shift from the command and control technologies the Army has long relied on. It's a more centralized system relying on open architecture, data, and software. The development team behind it, including Anduril, Palantir, and other companies, has been working with the Army on its specific capabilities.
Ellis said that the Army is staying deeply involved in the project from start to finish, rather than serving as a temporary stop for contractors who build something and move on.
Army leadership has been emphasizing the need for a new approach to buying, developing, and fielding weapons, as well as more collaborative relationships with industry partners. They're prioritizing agile and adaptive development of new systems, a more Silicon Valley approach.
US Army photo by Pvt. Jacob Cruz
Joe Welch, the Army executive overseeing the NGC2 program, said the system is one example of a "totally different relationship with industry than what we have previously been doing within our historic acquisitions," noting the service's goal to avoid past pitfalls and build technology that can be updated and improved quickly.
Getting input from soldiers into the development of new technologies isn't new, but there's an effort to move faster as warfare evolves. For instance, that feedback has been useful in the swift development of the Army's Mid-Range Capability, or Typhon, missile system.
During an exercise in the Philippines earlier last year, soldiers tweaked Typhon in the field, reducing reload time and stress on its components. User input was collected during and after the deployment in the region.
In a report earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog agency, said the Army's MRC program reflected "an iterative product development approach" with flexible requirements and regular user feedback. The focus was getting a "minimum viable product" into the hands of soldiers and letting that drive iterative development.
The iterative design approach has been a growing interest for the Army and is present in work on NGC2 as well. What the Army's doing with NGC2, Welch said, "is really changing how the institutional Army behaves."
"It's showing we can move not just in acquisition more quickly, but in all the aspects of what we do," he said.
Business Insider · Chris Panella
5. Army scraps PEOs in bid to streamline procurement, requirements processes
Summary:
The Army is consolidating 12 PEOs into six Portfolio Acquisition Executives to streamline requirements, cut decades-long procurement cycles, and accelerate fielding. Centralized decision-making, commercial off-the-shelf solutions, and agile requirements aim to reduce cost, speed delivery, and break dependence on bespoke systems that leaders say have slowed modernization and undermined scalability.
Comment: The SECARMY is quite outspoken about the "primes."
Army scraps PEOs in bid to streamline procurement, requirements processes
Big defense contractors have “conned” services into believing they need bespoke systems, the Army secretary said.
defenseone.com · Meghann Myers
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/11/army-scraps-peos-bid-streamline-procurement-requirements-processes/409540/
The Army is taking another swing at slashing its sometimes decades-long procurement cycle by gathering up the many offices that weigh in on requirements and stacking them under a new program office structure.
The six Portfolio Acquisition Executives will compress the previous 12 Program Executive Offices, with the new Transformation and Training Command in the overseeing uniformed position, and the assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology as the civilian boss.
“So we had, arguably, an alphabet soup of requirements folks across both [Army Futures Command] and [Training and Doctrine Command],” Gen. David Hodne, who leads the newly merged Transformation and Training Command, told reporters Wednesday. “So generally, you had…I'll just say over 40 agencies that could either vote on or veto requirements.”
Now, they’ll all report to the PAE, which will make one determination that goes up to the four-star level. The Army unveiled the move Wednesday to Breaking Defense, just a few days after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued orders to revamp the PEO system amid a larger reform of the defense acquisition process.
Each PAE will own one of the six “capability areas”: Fires; Maneuver Ground; Maneuver Air; Command and Control and Counter Command and Control; Agile Sustainment and Ammo; and Layered Protection and Chemical, Biology, Radiological and Nuclear Defense.
“Under the current fragmented process, accountability is distributed across multiple organizations and functions, creating misalignment between critical stakeholders,” Brent Ingraham, the civilian oversight official for the PAEs, said in a release. “Aligning this reform with operational concepts better postures the Army to deliver capabilities our [soldiers need] without delay.”
Now the old PEO structures and Centers of Excellence will be nested under the PAE, rather than being their own co-equal organizations. On the Maneuver Ground team, Hodne said, you’ll have the Maneuver CoE commander as the director, with the former PEO Soldier director as his deputy, as an example.
‘Conned the American people’
The PEO revamp is a concrete change, but the service is hoping it’s part of a bigger overall shift. Hegseth’s acquisitions changes do away with a requirements process notorious for taking so long and being so rigid in its output that by the time a program was ready to be fielded, it was a mere irrelevant shell of its initial concept.
The Army is also hoping that a new approach to requirements will allow acquisitions teams to go with the best commercially available options for some systems in the short term, while continuously looking for better solutions. That philosophy is in stark contrast to the way the Army has done business for the last half-century or so, working with one or two vendors to compete to build a new, customized system from the ground up.
“It used to be 90 percent of things we bought were purpose-built for the military or the Army, and 10 percent were off the shelf,” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said Wednesday. “This is what I would say is, that the defense industrial base broadly, and the primes in particular, conned the American people in the Pentagon and the Army into thinking that it needed military-specific solutions, when in reality, a lot of these commercial solutions are equal to or better. And we've actually harmed ourselves with that mentality.”
Driscoll said he would like to see those ratios flip.
“Because when you actually start to think about what large-scale conflict looks like, you cannot scale one-off solutions as quickly and easily as you can scale commercially available things,” he said. “And we are, in every decision, thinking when we buy this thing, we go to conflict, how many of them can we get, and how long will it take to hit peak scale?”
Pressed on his characterization of prime contractors as con artists, Driscoll conceded that the Army has often been the one driving the requirement for bespoke equipment.
“I think their incentive structure has been to make things seem harder, to build more exquisite and more expensive,” he said. “I regularly, when I meet with them, highlight how bad of a customer we have been and the characteristics that they have today, we created and incentivized over a long period of time, and I appreciate that it's so difficult to build against our demand signal, and it requires such balance sheet to outlast all of our insane processes, that I can appreciate that from their perspective, by the time we actually start to buy a thing, they have to lock in some number of those to make back their expenses that we laid onto them.”
Now, the Army will be doing more dynamic decision-making about how much a system fulfills a requirement, how quickly they can field it and how much it will cost, the Army chief of staff said Wednesday.
“So if you have a requirement, and somebody says it needs to weigh a certain amount, and it has to go 100 miles an hour, and then somebody comes back to you and says, ‘Hey, it can go 90 miles an hour and weigh just a little bit differently, but you can get it for half the cost in half the amount of time — I mean, that's what we're after,” Gen. Randy George said.
defenseone.com · Meghann Myers
6. How the Rest of the World Is Moving on From Trump’s ‘America First’
Summary:
Countries are adapting to Trump’s renewed “America First” agenda by diversifying trade and forging new partnerships beyond the U.S. Singapore, Europe, India, and others are pursuing alternative agreements, while China positions itself as a multilateral champion. As protectionism rises, global leaders quietly prepare for a post-American economic order.
Excerpts:
Pursuing trade and security diversification away from the US won’t necessarily drive governments into Xi’s embrace, but it may have other consequences that frustrate Trump’s agenda. One panel discussion at the Forum — part of its focus on Financial Innovation — looks at the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
Scott Bessent has said one of his principal goals as Trump’s Treasury secretary is “locking in dollar supremacy.” Part of that is about ensuring the US retains its power to punish enemies by imposing crippling financial sanctions. But success is far from guaranteed.
Xi, together with his fellow BRICS leaders, wants more of the world’s trade denominated in rival currencies such as the yuan. At the same time, investors have begun questioning the dollar’s viability as a store of value while US federal debt keeps rising toward unprecedented levels.
Comment: Will the post-US economic order include the loss of the dollar as the reserve currency? Loss of the dollar as the reserve currency could be the most catastrophic national security disaster for the US in the 21st Century.
How the Rest of the World Is Moving on From Trump’s ‘America First’
While nations make deals with Trump in the short term, they’re preparing to move on for the long term.
China President Xi Jinping and South Korea President Lee Jae Myung at the APEC Gala Dinner on Oct. 31.Source: APEC 2025 Korea & Yonhap News
By Erik Schatzker
November 15, 2025 at 6:45 AM EST
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-11-15/the-world-starts-moving-on-from-america-first-new-economy?utm
Hello from Singapore. I’m Erik Schatzker, editorial director of Bloomberg New Economy, bringing you a special edition of the Saturday newsletter. The Bloomberg New Economy Forum gets underway on Nov. 19 with a stellar lineup of newsmaking speakers. Find the full program here and be sure to check out BloombergNewEconomy.com for more. Send us feedback and tips here or get in touch with us online. And if you aren’t yet signed up to receive New Economy Saturday, our weekly exploration of the biggest issues facing governments and economies and what’s coming next, do so here.
Ten months into Donald Trump’s second term as president, “America First” remains as unpopular as ever outside the US. Yet no one’s waiting for a U-turn. The world has little choice but to adapt to the Republican’s program of strategic autonomy, economic coercion and transactional diplomacy.
Take Singapore. Back in April, in the wake of Trump’s “liberation day” tariff unveiling, the country was openly critical of the US pivot to protectionism and pullback from multilateral leadership.
Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, channeling the thoughts and feelings of leaders around the globe, said he was “disappointed by the US move,” invoked a sense of betrayal and warned of a new chapter in global affairs — “one that is more arbitrary, protectionist and dangerous.” Vivian Balakrishnan, his foreign minister, spoke of a “shadow forming across the world.”
That did nothing to dissuade Trump from imposing a 10% levy on Singaporean imports. But the tone is different now: rather than continue grumbling, Singapore appears to have accepted, if reluctantly, the new status quo. The city-state’s new game-plan is emblematic of what’s become a broader pattern evident across the globe.
In September, Singapore’s government announced a new trade and investment partnership with 13 mid-sized economies, among them New Zealand, Morocco and Norway, vowing to “strengthen the rules-based trading system.” Last month, Wong emphasized the need to forge ahead with efforts to create a post-American order and floated the possibility of bringing Europe and Southeast Asia together in a free-trade agreement.
It’s a practical and pragmatic response, one very characteristic of Singapore and fitting context for Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum, a global-affairs conference that explores solutions to problems such as hostile trade policies.
Lawrence WongPhotographer: Prakash Singh/Bloomberg
The Forum, Bloomberg’s flagship event, returns to Singapore Nov. 19–21, bringing together some 500 leaders from across the globe – multinational CEOs, major investors and senior government officials. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will, for example, discuss the twin European challenges of security and economic competitiveness as the continent’s relationship with the US frays. Apollo Global Management Chief Executive Officer Marc Rowan will question whether financial markets are striking the right balance between risk and resilience.
Trade looms large on the agenda, since the sudden US pivot from liberalization to protectionism has destabilized the world economy and created uncertainty for many countries.
As Trump appears to see it, tariffs serve multiple objectives: They’ll reinvigorate US industry by forcing companies to relocate manufacturing; they’ll raise revenue to pay down the debt; and they’ll reset the terms of trade in America’s favor.
Economists question all of those, highlighting that the federal budget is roughly $2 trillion away from reducing debt even with record customs revenue, and that the supply and cost of US labor pose challenges to any industrial revival. Nevertheless, protectionism ultimately may yet move the needle to varying degrees — resting on the assumption that companies and countries will continue to crave access to the US market.
As viewed from Trump’s redoubt in Mar-a-Lago, the countries that have reached something approaching full trade deals with the US since April – about a dozen at latest count, with Canada and India among those still trying – are bending to Trump’s overpowering will.
The reality, as Singapore’s efforts show, is that America’s trading partners are actively searching for non-US alternatives. The European Union is finalizing a free-trade agreement with South America’s Mercosur bloc, pursuing bilateral deals with India, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia, and has agreed to initiate discussions with the United Arab Emirates.
India signed a trade deal with the UK in July and is working on others with Australia, New Zealand and Peru. Britain has talks underway with the Gulf Cooperation Council, Turkey and Switzerland. Canada is negotiating with Mercosur and ASEAN. And so forth.
Here in Singapore, I spoke with Chong Meng Tan about this diversification. The former CEO of PSA International, a giant Singapore-based port operator, he’s now deputy chairman at Temasek, one of the country’s main sovereign-wealth funds.
Chong Meng TanPhotographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
“With the right mindset, there is a win-win outcome possibility for people who are looking to increase their options and prosper in different ways,” Tan said. “But if you come at it with win-lose, whether it’s diversification or outright bullying, then I think it would not be productive.”
If Trump’s pullback is indeed creating a global vacuum, China will be delighted to fill it. Last month, at the APEC CEO Summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, President Xi Jinping cast himself yet again as a champion of the “rules-based multilateral trading system” and called on leaders to “strengthen solidarity and collaboration, oppose protectionism, reject unilateralism and bullying and prevent the world from reverting to the law of the jungle.”
Pursuing trade and security diversification away from the US won’t necessarily drive governments into Xi’s embrace, but it may have other consequences that frustrate Trump’s agenda. One panel discussion at the Forum — part of its focus on Financial Innovation — looks at the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
Scott Bessent has said one of his principal goals as Trump’s Treasury secretary is “locking in dollar supremacy.” Part of that is about ensuring the US retains its power to punish enemies by imposing crippling financial sanctions. But success is far from guaranteed.
Xi, together with his fellow BRICS leaders, wants more of the world’s trade denominated in rival currencies such as the yuan. At the same time, investors have begun questioning the dollar’s viability as a store of value while US federal debt keeps rising toward unprecedented levels.
It’s both tempting and appropriate to see a price-discovery mechanism in every venue for differing views on the Trump presidency. So far in 2025, the dollar is down more than 7% and gold has surged over 55%. That says something.
In the off-year US elections on Nov. 4, Democrats overwhelmingly outperformed Republicans. That says something, too.
And here in Singapore, the public and private conversations at the New Economy Forum will serve as a different kind of referendum, telling us whether “America First” more precisely means America alone.
Follow all new stories by Erik Schatzker
7. Pentagon Acquires Combat Proven ‘Multi-Dimensional Drone Swarm’
Summary:
The Pentagon awarded XTEND a contract for AI-driven “multi-dimensional” drone swarms based on Israeli combat experience. Autonomous AI pilots, remote launch Nests, mixed-mission drone teams, fiber-optic unjammable links, and certified safe-arm munitions enable rapid indoor and complex operations. Swarms reach Level-4 autonomy, but humans retain mission control.
Pentagon Acquires Combat Proven ‘Multi-Dimensional Drone Swarm’
Forbes · David Hambling · November 13, 2025
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2025/11/13/pentagon-acquires-combat-proven-multi-dimensional-drone-swarm/
A contract has been awarded for the supply of 'combat proven' swarming drone capability
XTEND
The Pentagon has just awarded a contract for ‘multi-dimensional drone swarm’ from XTEND Reality Inc which includes multiple types of drone flown by AI pilots working together under the control of a single human operator.
XTEND have supplied equipment to U.S. forces before, with hardware now produced in their new Florida facility, but the contract for ‘Affordable Close Quarter Modular Effects FPV Drone Kits’ adds a new level of sophistication.
In particular, the technology incorporates the experience of drone warfare in Gaza where the IDF has made wide use of XTEND drones in combat operations, and hard lessons have been assimilated rapidly.
“We learned more in the first week following October 7th than we had in the previous four years,” Aviv Shapira, CEO and Co-Founder of Xtend, told me.
Combat Experience Drove AI Pilots And Drone Nests
Aviv Shapira, co-founder and CEO of XTEND
XTEND
MORE FOR YOU
Shapira says they quickly discovered that there was little opportunity to train soldiers on the use of new drones, especially in a force composed largely of reservists. This was solved with drones which essentially fly themselves, with what Shapira calls an AI pilot. This flies the drone autonomously, planning the flight path and avoiding obstacles. The operator does not require piloting skills. Anyone can use the system out of the box in fifteen minutes and hit targets, without the weeks-long training processes normally required. The idea is that this turns every operator into an FPV ace.
The AI pilot also solves the problem of latency, the communications lag between drone and operator, so drones can be flow via satellite and other long-distance communication. The drones also have a number of AI-enabled smart behaviors for tasks like searching, providing what is described as “battle-proven performance.”
“Drones are just the physical tools,” says Shapira. “The software XOS [XTEND’s drone operating system], the AI pilots, the applications – these are the future.”
The developers also discovered early on that soldiers were overloaded with gear and could not easily carry all the drones, batteries, drone munitions and other equipment they wanted as well as well.
The solution to this is remote operation. Instead of troops carrying and launching the drones from forward positions as we see in Ukraine, the drones operate remotely from Nests. A Nest may be a mobile unit carried by a personnel carrier or uncrewed ground vehicle, a robot boat or a helicopter or other aircraft including drones. Nests may also be static, pre-positioned units with automated systems to change batteries and attach munitions to drones. There are many other such concepts, but XTEND have extensive real-world experience of using Nests.
“We put the emphasis on remote applications,” says Shapira. “We have the biggest advantage where the drones are operated far from people.”
With this setup, Shapira says, “distance is not an issue,” a great benefit to the Special Forces teams who will operate the new drones.
Mission Control
XTEND drones are designed to be deployed in mixed teams with several specialist types
XTEND
The drones are being supplied to the Special Operations / Low-Intensity Conflict Capability Development & Innovation Directorate.
In a typical mission the operator would use a team of drones to investigate a building occupied by terrorists. The operator views the building from a distance with the camera on a Honey Badger drone, a large multipurpose type which can also act as a carrier, while other drones remain in holding patterns or wait for the order to launch.
The software automatically identifies items of interest including vehicles, people and doors and windows in buildings. The operator identifies a suitable entry point such as a window in an upper floor and clicks on it. A Scorpio strike drone with a breaching charge automatically homes in on the window and creates an entry.
A small Xtender drone, optimized for flying indoors, then enters via the breach, and the operator switches to the Xtenders viewpoint, directing it as it goes through the building looking for terrorists. This sort of flying is challenging for a human pilot, but the AI pilot flying the drone can easily negotiate indoor spaces without crashing. Other drones watching the exits will alert the operator to any activity, allowing them to focus on the main task.
Xtender is a specialist quadcopter for exploring interior spaces via small entry holes
XTEND
If the Xtender makes contact, the operator can call on more drones to investigate or strike as appropriate.
The use of multiple different types of drones able to carry out a range of different tasks is what makes the group ‘multi-dimensional’. The mission may also include ground robots and other types of flying drone. Shapira says that while term swarm has somewhat negative connotations, ‘drone swarm’ may be more descriptive than the bland ‘drone team.’
Unjammable Drones
While the software is central to XTENDs work, the new contract also includers some significant hardware not found on other drones.
One is dual connectivity and can be operated either by radio or via a fiber optic cable. Fiber drones, now so heavily used in Ukraine that in places the landscape is strewn with fiber optic cables , cannot be jammed and so are immune to electronic warfare. They can also operate underground and in tunnels where radio waves cannot reach.
The downside is that the fiber reel adds weight, and the fiber link imposes some restrictions on maneuverability, so XTENDs system makes it optional.
“At launch the operator can decide whether to connect with fiber or not,” says Shapira.
The other piece of hardware is an Electronic Safe and Arm Device (ESAD) which gives a high level of safety on the munitions carried. In Ukraine, many operators are killed in accidents with improvised munitions. Aviva says the high-voltage ESAD certification, which took two years in the U.S., makes their system unique.
The drones can carry a variety of swappable munitions, including anti-personnel, anti-vehicle, breaching charges, flash-bang ‘distraction devices,’ non-lethal rounds and inert training warheads.
Autonomous Drones, But Humans In Control
The new system is well ahead of earlier drones thanks to advances in AI.
“Smaller processors have helped us make a huge leap in autonomy. Now we can tell a swarm to go to these co-ordinates, find a target that looks like a rocket launcher, for example, and report back. That was not possible two years ago,” says Shapira.
Autonomous drones work together in a swarm — but a human controls the swarm
XTEND
XTENDs drones have now moved from Level 2 autonomy, where the drone has a limited autopilot, to Level 4 where the swarm can carry out entire missions on its own. Further advances in processors by suppliers like NVIDIA will bring increasing capability to smaller drones at lower cost. On the software development side, XTEND works with ten supplier companies producing advanced AI software for their systems. These are adding new and more sophisticated behaviors for combat missions in response to user demands.
But this is all in the service of the operator controlling the swarm. While the operator may not be piloting individual drones, they are still very much in control of the mission.
“A human is always in the loop in order to supervise the system,” says Shapira.
Forbes · David Hambling · November 13, 2025
8. Putin's adviser warns Russia risks new civil war and internal collapse of the nation
Summary:
A senior Kremlin adviser warns Russia faces rising risks of civil war as inflation, war fatigue, and social fragmentation deepen. With soaring prices, shrinking social programs, massive wartime casualties, and eroding public trust, he cautions that a divided Russia could face internal collapse or foreign exploitation unless unity is restored.
Comment: If an accurate assessment, what comes next? Are we prepared for what comes next? WHat kind of planning are we doing for what comes next?
Putin's adviser warns Russia risks new civil war and internal collapse of the nation
dagens.com · November 11, 2025
Jens Asbjørn Bøgen•November 11, 2025
https://www.dagens.com/news/putins-adviser-warns-russia-risks-new-civil-war-and-overall-collapse-of-the-nation
“A divided country becomes easy prey for external forces.”
Others are reading now
Mounting economic hardship and growing public discontent could push Russia toward internal conflict, a senior Kremlin official has warned.
The stark message comes as inflation, war fatigue, and social divisions deepen across the country.
Alexander Kharichev, head of the Presidential Directorate for Monitoring and Analysing Social Processes, issued the warning in a state-run journal.
He said that civil war is one of five critical dangers facing Russia as the country grapples with the toll of nearly four years of war and a weakening economy.
Military over social spending
Rising prices have hit ordinary Russians hard, with food costs climbing well above the national inflation rate. Businesses are struggling to stay afloat, and layoffs and bankruptcies loom large.
Also read
Despite the pressure, the Kremlin continues to prioritize military spending over social welfare.
At the same time, Russia’s workforce has been decimated by more than a million war casualties, mostly men of working age, worsening the long-term demographic decline and ageing population.
Divisions within society
Kharichev warned of “fragmentation of society” and the “loss of Russia’s ability to fight for its survival.”
His analysis cited the growing erosion of public trust in government and widening rifts within Russian society.
“We’ve gone through this at least twice in our history — in the 17th and 20th centuries,” he wrote according to Express.
Also read
He added: “And who’s to say it can’t happen again? The causes can be anything, from ethnic or religious tensions to generational or property conflicts.”
He added that deepening divides could make Russia vulnerable to internal collapse or foreign interference if not addressed.
Echoes of past warnings
This is not the first time Kharichev has sounded the alarm. In an April essay titled Civilisation Russia, he cautioned about “the loss of internal unity” and the “splitting of society.”
“Historical examples — from the Time of Troubles to the revolutions of the 20th century — clearly show that when society becomes divided, statehood comes under threat,” he wrote.
“The contradictions may vary — social, political, moral, or spiritual — but the result is always the same: a divided country becomes easy prey for external forces.”
Growing war fatigue
Also read
His warning coincides with a reported shift in public mood.
ccording to an internal Kremlin survey cited by Russian media, a majority of citizens now say they are tired of the war in Ukraine and want it to end as soon as possible.
With inflation high, social programs shrinking, and the population declining, analysts suggest the Kremlin faces one of its toughest domestic challenges in decades.
Sources: Reuters, BBC, AP, Express
This article is made and published by Jens Asbjørn Bogen, who may have used AI in the preparation
dagens.com · November 11, 2025
9. Intelligence Community, Department of War Welcome LTG Michele Bredenkamp as Director of NGA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ODNI News Release No. 40-25
November 10, 2025
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-2025/4124-pr-40-25
SPRINGFIELD, VIRGINIA – Recently, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (PDDNI) Aaron Lukas and Under Secretary of War for Intelligence and Security Bradley Hansell welcomed Lieutenant General Michele Bredenkamp as the Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in a Change of Directorship ceremony at NGA headquarters.
LTG Bredenkamp brings more than 30 years of military experience to her new role, where she will lead U.S. geospatial intelligence collection, analysis, and distribution in support of national security. In her most recent role as DNI Gabbard's Advisor for Military Affairs (DAMA) at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Bredenkamp oversaw the seamless and timely integration of intelligence between the Intelligence Community and the Department of War.
The Intelligence Community also recognized outgoing Director Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth with the George Washington Spymaster Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Director of National Intelligence, for exemplary leadership across thirty years of public service.
Excerpts from remarks by PDDNI Lukas and NGA Leadership are below:
PDDNI Lukas: "As Director of NGA, I know LTG Bredenkamp will tirelessly build on the agency's enduring legacy of delivering timely, accurate geospatial intelligence to warfighters, policymakers, and partners worldwide. Her proven track record of intelligence integration, across the Department of War and the IC, positions her to advance NGA's mission in an era of evolving threats, leveraging emerging technologies like AI, data analytics, and multi-domain operations."
VADM Whitworth: "LTG Bredenkamp, you are inheriting an agency at the height of its capabilities, but there is so much more to do. I could not be more confident in NGA's future. Thank you for stepping up to the plate, and thank you for your friendship."
Under Secretary Hansell: "LTG Bredenkamp is a battle-tested leader with extended deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and South Korea. Her experience also includes leading the Army's sprawling signals and intelligence enterprise, most recently serving as Director Gabbard's senior military advisor. I have no doubt that she is up to the task. The President, the Secretary of War, and myself have full confidence in LTG Bredenkamp's ability to lead the GEOINT enterprise during this crucial period."
LTG Bredenkamp: "I have personally observed how GEOINT, delivered by NGA professionals, provided clarity, understanding, and increased decision advantage for commanders and policy makers. As we gather here today, NGA experts are enabling key and critical operations around the globe by protecting our sources, safeguarding our homeland, and preserving our American interests. I look forward to building on our GEOINT foundation and rapidly advancing our role as the world-class leader in producing decisive and actionable geospatial intelligence to decisionmakers and warfighters at every level."
###
10. China's people are on a treadmill
Summary:
China’s glossy global image masks deep domestic malaise. Youth face bleak job prospects, falling wages, collapsing property wealth, and intense “involution” from subsidized overcompetition. Mental-health stress is soaring. As investment slows and pessimism rises, many feel trapped on a treadmill, working harder only to fall behind, fueling anger that China now serves national grandeur over its own people.
Comment: Are we paying sufficient attention to domestic stability in China? Do we know what is happening inside China the effects conditions have on decisions by the CCP?
China's people are on a treadmill
They're working hard for someone else's benefit.
Noah Smith
Nov 15, 2025
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/chinas-people-are-on-a-treadmill?utm
Photo by LYCS Architecture on Unsplash
“And the man in the suit has just bought a new car/ From the profit he’s made on your dreams” — Traffic
Leftist online personality Hasan Piker recently took a trip to China, and — like many other influencers who have been there — declared it to be a paradise, praising “abundance style consumption paired up with a centrally controlled economy” and “1950s Soviet era building blocks next to the Gucci store”.1 Meanwhile, pro-China pundits continue to crow about the country’s technological achievements and export performance.
But when you talk to ordinary Chinese people about what their lives or their families’ lives are like these days, a less rosy picture emerges. Helen Gao writes:
Behind the orderliness of everyday life, a quiet desperation simmers. On social media and in private conversations, there is a common refrain: worry over joblessness, wage cuts and making ends meet…
Internationally, China looks strong…That muscular facade is punctured here in China, where despair about dimming economic and personal prospects is pervasive. This contrast between a confident state and its weary population is captured in a phrase Chinese people are using to describe their country: “wai qiang, zhong gan,” roughly translated as “outwardly strong, inwardly brittle.”…
Many now feel the very state policies that have made China appear strong overseas are hurting them. They see a government more concerned with building global influence and dominating export markets than in addressing the challenges of their households…These days, there is a sense of bitter anger among the people at being the voiceless victims of the state’s obsession with world power and beating the United States…The government recently began cracking down on social media content it considered “excessively pessimistic” — a clear sign it is concerned about this public unease undercutting its agenda.
For even more direct insight, I recommend the blog Reading the China Dream, which translates Chinese writing and online commentary. The blog has a good translation of a recent report from a Chinese marketing company on morale among the youth. Here are some excerpts from the bloggers’ summary:
The text translated here is [the] last of a series meant to sum up 2024 and preview 2025…[T]he tone of the text is unsparingly bleak: the China Dream has stalled and no one knows what to do about it…Chinese young people inherited great expectations from China’s phenomenal economic rise, which began to slow in the 2010s, and from the democratization of China’s higher educational system…This ringing success has fallen flat because the job market has not kept up with university expansion. Consequently, China’s vulnerable generation…find themselves in a limbo defined by a flat job market, stagnant salaries, and high prices, especially for real estate…This appears to be where China is now: school is a marathon, but nobody wins.
And this is from the translated report itself:
The number of young people who are depressed or anxious continues to rise, and young people have the worst emotional state of all age groups. The China National Mental Health Report (2019-2020) shows that young people aged 18-34 have the highest anxiety level; at the same time, people’s mental health level has dropped significantly compared with ten years ago.
Young people’s emotional problems are becoming more and more serious, especially in the context of fierce competition in education…As a result, emotional problems tend to emerge at a younger age. Through longitudinal comparison, the China Youth Research Center found that between 2015 and 2020, the sense of hope of primary and secondary school students decreased by 11.8 percentage points.
This all fits with everything my Chinese expat friends tell me about how their relatives are faring back home. It also fits with the descriptions of young Chinese people’s disillusionment in Dan Wang’s recent book Breakneck.
Essentially, it seems as if Chinese people — especially young people — are stuck on a treadmill. China’s young people are studying hard, getting a college education, and putting in grueling long work hours. And yet youth unemployment rates are rising relentlessly, many college graduates can’t find the kind of white-collar work they trained for, and wage growth is sluggish. To a huge number of Chinese people, the modern Chinese economy is less of a “Chinese Dream” than a Sisyphean nightmare.
In fact, the word “treadmill” also hearkens back to where China’s problems began. Way back in 2010, hedge fund manager Jim Chanos declared that China’s real estate market was on a “treadmill to hell”. That prediction was way too early — the real estate market probably didn’t become a bubble until the late 2010s, and didn’t begin to crash until near the end of 2021.
But crash it eventually did, and four years later it’s still in a protracted state of collapse. Despite government support, Chinese property prices are still falling:
China’s home-price slump worsened in October, ending a traditionally peak sales season with a weak reading as recent loosening measures failed to revive the moribund market…New-home prices in 70 cities, excluding state-subsidized housing, dropped 0.45% from September, the steepest decline in a year, National Bureau of Statistics figures showed Friday. Resale home values fell 0.66%, the fastest slide in 13 months.
This price decline is a catastrophe for regular Chinese households. Even more than in most countries, Chinese households have their wealth concentrated in real estate. The stock market is underdeveloped, and bonds have crappy interest rates,2 so people save money by buying houses or housing-linked bonds. When real estate prices go down, it means Chinese people are getting poorer and poorer, despite working hard and living frugal lives.
The property bust is also weighing on the macroeconomy. Property investment is down almost 15% since a year ago. This is a big reason why unemployment is rising, wages are stagnant, and lots of college grads can’t find jobs commensurate with their skills.
For a while, China used manufacturing investment to fill the economic hole left by real estate. The country embarked on the greatest industrial policy push in human history, spending an estimated 4.4% of GDP on manufacturing subsidies of various kinds. Industrial lending and output surged, keeping GDP growth from collapsing even as the real estate sector floundered.
But this strategy also hit its limits. It turns out that if you pay a whole bunch of companies to make the same products, they end up competing viciously with each other, and their profits evaporate. Here are some excerpts from a recent story in the Atlantic about China’s EV industry, which is both beating the world and floundering financially at the same time:
The Chinese electric car has become a symbol of the country’s seemingly unstoppable rise on the world stage…[But] bloated by excessive investment, distorted by government intervention, and plagued by heavy losses, China’s EV industry appears destined for a crash. EV companies are locked in a cutthroat struggle for survival. Wei Jianjun, the chairman of the Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor, warned in May that China’s car industry could tumble into a financial crisis; it “just hasn’t erupted yet.”…
Dunne Insights, a California-based consulting firm focused on the EV industry, counts 46 domestic and international automakers producing EVs in China, far too many for even the world’s second-largest economy to sustain…In most economies, the market would sort out this mess by culling the weakest players…In China, state support or ownership of automakers extends the life of struggling businesses. Local governments are also reluctant to lose the jobs they bring, so officials prop up unprofitable companies. The city of Wenzhou recently helped arrange financing for an EV maker called WM Motor, to get the company’s local factory humming again. The city of Hefei rescued the EV start-up Nio in 2020, but the publicly listed company continues to lose money—$1.6 billion in the first half of this year.
This so-called “involution” results in misallocation of capital, reducing productivity growth and ultimately slowing GDP growth. By destroying profit margins for even the best-run Chinese companies, involution damages their ability to invest for the future. The excessive corporate competition from involution contributes to China’s overwork problem, because it gives companies an incentive to work their employees to the bone in order to get a competitive edge. And worst of all, involution drives down prices, causing deflation that exacerbates the value of the debt left over from the property bubble.
So China’s leaders are going on an “anti-involution” campaign. It’s not clear what this means — the details of the policy are mostly out of the public eye — but if it’s anything like what Japan’s industrial policy bureaucrats did to stop “excessive competition” in the 1970s, it will probably involve telling Chinese companies to get together and all raise their prices at the same time.
That’s going to mean slower growth. Why? Because demand curves slope down. If Chinese car companies all raise their prices, fewer cars will be sold. Another way of saying the same thing is that the easiest way to raise prices is to curb production. Either way, this means less investment, because Chinese companies won’t need to build as many factories. And less investment means slower GDP growth in the short run.
In fact, this might already be happening. China’s fixed-asset investment has begun to fall in the last few months, right around the time the anti-involution campaign began. Bloomberg reports:
China’s economic activity cooled more than expected at the start of the fourth quarter…Fixed-asset investment shrank 1.7% in the first 10 months of the year…according to data released by [China’s] National Bureau of Statistics…Bloomberg Economics estimates investment dropped as much as 12% in October, extending its streak of declines into a fifth straight month.
And here’s a chart:
Source: Brad Setser
This investment drop is a bit statistically weird, since it contradicts some other data sources. Data quality in this area is notoriously bad. But it seems to fit with some other pieces of data, such as slowing loan growth — especially industrial loans — and rising unemployment.
It also fits with the generally pessimistic mood that Chinese people express about their economy:
Chinese households became more pessimistic last quarter and their view of the jobs market fell to the worst ever, according to a survey by the central bank…Consumers turned increasingly negative about income, employment, and prices in April-June, the poll showed…
The data also revealed that people’s willingness to consume dropped to the weakest since the outbreak of the pandemic, with almost two-thirds of respondents saying they want to save more, while an employment index fell to a record low…The data also showed a shrinking percentage of respondents expecting consumer and housing prices to rise.
Put this all together, and it makes perfect sense that Chinese people — especially young people — would be feeling futile and pessimistic. They’ve been hit with a bunch of huge negative shocks, all within a short space of time:
- A real estate bust that destroyed a significant portion of their wealth, as well as their hopes of asset appreciation in the near future
- An economic slowdown that destroyed expectations of constantly rising living standards, made it hard for people to find jobs, and meant that lots of college degrees are going to waste
- A government industrial policy that encouraged “involution”, made a lot of people work hard for little gain, and exacerbated the hangover from the property crash
These negative shocks would be brutal for any country. But for China, which has known nothing but skyrocketing living standards for over three decades, it’s especially galling to be suddenly thrust into a world where you have to run flat-out just to stay in place.
Ten years ago, Chinese people worked hard because they knew that tomorrow would be much better than today; now, they work hard because they know that if they don’t, tomorrow will be much worse than today. Their dream has suddenly flipped from aspiration to survival.
All of this raises the question of who, exactly, the modern Chinese nation-state is built for. In many ways, China is the greatest nation on Earth — it has endless miles of high-speed rail, futuristic technological marvels, vast productive power, sprawling malls and highways and forests of towering apartment blocks. Its cities sparkle with light, drones zip through its skies, and robots crawl along its streets. And yet many of its people now toil in quiet desperation. It feels like a nation built for the glory and greatness of its leaders and owners, rather than for the happiness of its regular people.
This was not always true, of course. Under Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao, China vanquished poverty, created a vast middle class, and made a concerted effort to spread its new prosperity all across the nation. That was always the deal — prosperity for political quiescence. Now, under Xi Jinping, the deal has been altered. China’s people are basically being told “Let them eat national greatness.”
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1
Interestingly, this is very similar to my own description of Chinese urban life: “at the end of the day you live in an isolated tower block and you drive to the mall.”
2
This is partly due to China’s strategy of “financial repression” — a policy of keeping interest rates low in order to make it cheap for businesses to borrow.
11. He’s Been Right About AI for 40 Years. Now He Thinks Everyone Is Wrong.
Summary:
Yann LeCun, a pioneer of neural networks and Meta’s chief AI scientist, is breaking with Big Tech’s focus on large language models. Long sidelined inside Meta, he argues LLMs are a dead end and is exploring a startup to pursue “world models” that learn from perception, like children. LeCun built his career at Bell Labs, NYU, and Facebook’s FAIR, winning the 2018 Turing Award. As Meta doubles down on Llama under new AI leaders, his blue-sky research group has lost clout and funding. Touring conferences, he urges young researchers to avoid LLMs and chase new architectures for real intelligence.
Comment: Where do we go from here? If he is right, would this crash the AI tech world and all those who have invested in LLMs' suffer a dot.com like bubble burst?
He’s Been Right About AI for 40 Years. Now He Thinks Everyone Is Wrong.
Yann LeCun invented many fundamental components of modern AI. Now he’s convinced most in his field have been led astray by the siren song of large language models.
WSJ
By Meghan Bobrowsky
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Nov. 14, 2025 9:00 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/yann-lecun-ai-meta-0058b13c
As a graduate student in the 1980s, Yann LeCun had trouble finding an adviser for his Ph.D. thesis on machine learning—because no one else was studying the topic, he recalled later.
More recently, he’s become the odd man out at Meta META -0.07%decrease; red down pointing triangle. Despite worldwide renown as one of the godfathers of artificial intelligence, he has been increasingly sidelined as the company’s approach diverged from his views on the technology’s future. On Tuesday, news broke that he may soon be leaving Meta to pursue a startup focused on so-called world models, technology that LeCun thinks is more likely to advance the state of AI than Meta’s current language models.
Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has been pouring countless billions into the pursuit of what he calls “superintelligence,” hiring an army of top researchers tasked with developing its large language model, Llama, into something that can outperform ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
LeCun, by his choice, has taken a different direction. He has been telling anyone who asks that he thinks large language models, or LLMs, are a dead end in the pursuit of computers that can truly outthink humans. He’s fond of comparing the current state-of-the-art models to the mind of a cat—and he believes the cat to be smarter. Several years ago, he stepped back from managing his AI division at Meta, called FAIR, in favor of a role as an individual contributor doing long-term research.
“I’ve been not making friends in various corners of Silicon Valley, including at Meta, saying that within three to five years, this [world models, not LLMs] will be the dominant model for AI architectures, and nobody in their right mind would use LLMs of the type that we have today,” the 65-year-old said last month at a symposium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
LeCun has been talking to associates about creating a startup focused on world models, recruiting colleagues and speaking to investors, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. A world model learns about the world around it by taking in visual information, much like a baby animal or young child does, versus LLMs, which are predictive models based on vast databases of text.
LeCun didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Meta declined to comment.
Early innovations
LeCun was born in Paris, raised in the city’s suburbs and attended what’s now known as the Sorbonne University in France in the 1980s. While getting his Ph.D., he married his wife, Isabelle, and they had the first of their three sons. A woodwind musician, he played traditional Breton music for a Renaissance dance troupe.
Always ahead of the curve, LeCun studied machine learning before it was en vogue. He worked in Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton’s AI lab in Toronto before Hinton became an AI legend, and spent much of his early professional career in New Jersey at Bell Labs, the institute famous for the sheer number of inventions that came out of it.
“The thing that excites me the most is working with people who are smarter than me, because it amplifies your own abilities,” LeCun told Wired magazine in 2023.
LeCun has described himself as ‘a scientist, an atheist, a leftist (by American standards at least), a university professor, and a Frenchman.’ Nathan Laine/Bloomberg News
At Bell, LeCun helped develop handwriting-recognition technology that became widely used by banks to read checks automatically. He also worked on a project to digitize and distribute paper documents over the internet.
LeCun, who’s said he’s always been interested in physics, mostly worked with physicists at Bell and read a number of physics textbooks.
“I learned a lot by reading things that are not apparently connected with AI or computer science (my undergraduate degree is in electrical engineering, and my formal CS training is pretty small),” he said during a Reddit ask-me-anything session 12 years ago.
In 2003, LeCun started teaching computer science at New York University, and later he became the founding director of NYU’s Center for Data Science. When he’s in New York, he has been known to frequent the city’s jazz clubs.
In 2013, Zuckerberg personally recruited him to head up a new AI division at what was then called Facebook. LeCun oversaw the lab for four years, stepping down in 2018 to become an individual contributor and Facebook’s chief AI scientist.
He won the 2018 A.M. Turing Award, the highest prize in computer science, along with Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. The award honored their foundational work on neural networks, multilayered systems that underlie many powerful AI systems, from OpenAI’s chatbots to self-driving cars.
Since then, LeCun, who speaks with a light French accent and is known for wearing black Ray-Ban glasses and collared shirts, has largely become a figurehead for the company. He wasn’t part of the team that helped create Meta’s first open-source large language model, called Llama, and he hasn’t been involved in the day-to-day operations of their development since.
LeCun works on his own projects and travels to conferences, talking about Meta’s AI glasses and his own views on the path to AI advancement, among other things, people who have worked with him said.
Léon Bottou, a longtime friend of LeCun’s, previously told The Wall Street Journal that he’s “stubborn in a good way,” meaning he is willing to listen to others’ views, but has strong convictions of his own.
He also holds strong opinions on a variety of other topics. “I am everything the religious right despises,” he wrote on his website: “a scientist, an atheist, a leftist (by American standards at least), a university professor, and a Frenchman.”
Breaking away
Most of his recent takes have been knocks on the LLMs at the center of Zuckerberg’s ambitions–and also of nearly every other major tech company’s.
“We are not going to get to human-level AI just by scaling LLMs,” he said on Alex Kantrowitz’s Big Technology podcast this spring. “There’s no way, absolutely no way, and whatever you can hear from some of my more adventurous colleagues, it’s not going to happen within the next two years. There’s absolutely no way in hell to–pardon my French.”
This summer, as part of a major restructuring, Zuckerberg named 28-year-old Alexandr Wang as Meta’s new chief AI officer–LeCun’s new boss–and ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao as Meta’s new chief scientist.
Alexandr Wang is now Meta’s chief AI officer—and LeCun’s new boss. brian snyder/Reuters
Employees inside Meta’s thousand-person-plus AI division started asking each other: What’s going to happen to Yann LeCun?
Some viewed the announcements as LeCun being cast aside after not getting onboard with Zuckerberg’s AI vision.
“There is no change in Yann’s role. He will continue to be Chief Scientist for FAIR!” the CEO posted on his social media app, Threads, in July, referring to the AI division that he hired LeCun to lead over a decade ago. FAIR is shorthand for the Fundamental AI Research group.
“I’m looking forward to working with Shengjia,” LeCun replied in a comment.
In recent months though, LeCun’s once burgeoning AI division has faced job cuts and fewer resources, and has become less prestigious internally, according to current and former employees.
For a long time, the division, helmed by LeCun, was seen as a place to discuss lofty ideas about the future of artificial intelligence, conduct experiments that may or may not pan out, and not give too much thought to how their research breakthroughs might be turned into actual products someday.
Now, Meta’s new AI research organization, full of fresh hires making millions of dollars, is being led by Wang, who is pushing the teams to make rapid breakthroughs and quickly turn those advancements into products.
LeCun, meanwhile, has been tromping through Asia and Europe and speaking at conferences. In one such talk earlier this year, he doled out advice to aspiring researchers: “If you are a Ph.D. student in AI, you should absolutely not work on LLMs.”
Write to Meghan Bobrowsky at meghan.bobrowsky@wsj.com
WSJ
12. Preservationists sue Trump over plans to paint Eisenhower building
Summary:
Preservationists sued Trump to block painting the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building white, arguing he must follow preservation and environmental laws before altering the landmark.
Comment: I recall visiting the late Len Hawley in the NSC (of PDD 56 fame) in the 1990s and him describing why his office had a"loft" with an upstairs office and conference room and a special space for a paper shredder. It had been Oliver North's office in the 1980s and he needed more space to conduct his operations. So he called a contractor who came in and modified his office for him. As others noticed how great his office space was they requested from the White House Architect to do the same in their high ceiling offices. The White House Architect denied permission saying that they could not modify the EEOB because it was a national historic landmark. But he did not require Oliver North to reset his office to the original condition so it became prime office real estate.
Preservationists sue Trump over plans to paint Eisenhower building
The complaint alleges Trump’s plan would ‘permanently alter one of the most architecturally significant and historic structures in the Nation’s Capital'
November 14, 2025 at 9:44 p.m. ESTNovember 14, 2025
Washington Post · Jonathan Edwards
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/11/14/preservationists-sue-trump-eisenhower-building/
Preservationists concerned by President Donald Trump’s public musings this week about painting a 137-year-old building next to the White House completely white sued him Friday to halt the work, arguing that he could not unilaterally alter “one of the most architecturally significant and historic structures in the Nation’s Capital.”
Trump had taken aim at the stately Eisenhower Executive Office Building in a television interview that aired Wednesday on FOX, saying “it was always considered an ugly building.” He was particularly irked by its color, which he said was too dour for the White House’s next-door neighbor.
“Gray is for funerals,” he told his interviewer, Laura Ingraham.
Trump vowed to make it “beautiful,” showing Ingraham a mock-up that turned the normally slate gray exterior into a palatial white.
“Look at it, how beautiful that is with a coat of paint,” he said.
The DC Preservation League and Cultural Heritage Partners, a law firm focused on historic preservation, took Trump seriously and scrambled to slow down any plans, given his recent demolition of the East Wing of the White House. On Friday, the groups asked a federal court to issue an emergency injunction prohibiting Trump and other federal officials from altering the building unless they complete legally required reviews. In a 35-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the plaintiffs accused Trump of trying to end-run legally-mandated public input into changes to historic buildings — echoing a complaint lodged by critics of his East Wing teardown.
“The Eisenhower Executive Office Building is one of our nation’s most significant architectural landmarks,” Greg Werkheiser, founding partner of the Cultural Heritage Partners law firm, said in a statement. “Any plan to alter that … like the President revealed this week, especially an irreversible action like painting it all white, must be preceded by a transparent public process that includes expert consultation and a full hard look at potential harms.”
The White House did not respond Friday to requests for comment.
The EEOB, as it is commonly known, is a preeminent example of French Second Empire architecture and a National Historic Landmark with a facade of polished granite, slate, and ornate cast-iron trim, according to the General Services Administration. Built between 1871 and 1888 as the home of the State, War and Navy departments, the building now serves as office space for more than 1,500 employees working for the president, vice president, the Treasury Department and Defense Department.
When Ingraham asked Trump whether he was worried his plan would turn the building into “a big white blob,” he was undeterred, saying the all-white approach would bring out the building’s details.
In their suit, the historic preservation advocates said Trump and other federal officials must comply with the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, laws requiring they consult experts and allow public input about possible impacts of proposed renovations.
“Regardless of who occupies the White House, our nation’s historic landmarks belong to the American people,” Werkheiser said. “Federal law requires a careful, public, and expert review before irreversible changes are made to a National Historic Landmark.”
Rebecca Miller, executive director of the DC Preservation League, said her nonprofit has worked with local and federal officials as well as past administrations on proposed changes to federal buildings in D.C. Those efforts followed the law and underwent reviews designed to guarantee public input, she said.
“They create the character we have in the nation’s capital,” Miller said.
Painting a historic building’s uncoated masonry can trap moisture, accelerate deterioration and cause it to crack or crumble, the suit states. That risk of permanent damage has led to preservation standards, including the Interior Department’s, to advise keeping a property’s historic appearance as unchanged as possible and caution against new paint schemes on historic masonry unless they replicate or closely match documented historic finishes, the complaint alleges.
Paint could not be removed from the EEOB’s stone facade without risking its destruction, according to the suit.
“This landmark has survived 137 years without being covered in white paint,” Werkheiser said in a statement. “It won’t hurt the President to take a minute to follow the law.”
Painting the EEOB would be the latest effort by Trump to transform the White House complex. Since taking office, he has paved the Rose Garden, erected a pair of 88-foot-tall flag poles on the North and South lawns, covered the Lincoln Bathroom in marble, and torn down the East Wing of the White House to make room for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom building he estimates will cost $300 million.
To cover that, Trump solicited private money, and last month, the White House released a partial list of about three dozen individual and corporate donors, including Amazon, Comcast, Lockheed Martin and other heavy hitters in the technology, financial and defense sectors. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) A watchdog group found that the donors had received $279 billion in government contracts in the past five years and had sprawling interests that touch almost every aspect of American life.
Washington Post · Jonathan Edwards
13. U.S. and Japanese Ground Forces Reforge Their Alliance for the Counter Drone Fight
Summary:
Exercise Rising Thunder 25 at Yakima trains 500 U.S. soldiers and 440 JGSDF troops to fight drones as a core mission, integrating jammers, lasers, microwaves and fires. The allies practice full counter-UAS kill chains and COP building, signaling unmanned threats now dominate ground-force planning in the Asia-Indo-Pacific region..
Comment: There should be no doubt how serious our Army is about operating in the Asia-Indo-Pacific and facing modern, advanced threats with our allies..
U.S. and Japanese Ground Forces Reforge Their Alliance for the Counter Drone Fight
armyrecognition.com · Halna du Fretay
https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/u-s-and-japanese-ground-forces-reforge-their-alliance-for-the-counter-drone-fight
Japan Ground Self Defense Force units and roughly a battalion-sized U.S. Army contingent wrapped up Exercise Rising Thunder 25 at Yakima Training Center after two weeks of live fire and counter-drone training built around small UAS threats. The rotation signals that the Japan-US alliance now treats unmanned systems as a central problem for ground forces, blending jamming, directed energy, and conventional fires into a layered air defense approach relevant to the Indo-Pacific.
In a statement released on 12 November, the Japan Ground Self Defense Force framed this year’s Rising Thunder exercise at Yakima Training Center as a test bed for “various threats such as UAS,” a notable shift from earlier rotations that focused more narrowly on combined arms gunnery. About 500 U.S. soldiers and some 440 JGSDF personnel trained together in central Washington from 27 October to 12 November 2025, using Yakima’s deep maneuver corridors and unrestricted airspace to practice full counter-drone kill chains: detection, warning, tracking, and live engagements against drones in flight, something that is difficult to reproduce over Japan’s densely populated archipelago.
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On the ground, Japanese infantry and ground based air defence specialists train in the combined use of sensors, conventional weapons, and man-portable electronic warfare equipment (Picture source: Japan MoD)
During Rising Thunder 25, the units involved operate in a high intensity scenario that combines conventional live firing with sequences dedicated to unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Around 500 U.S. soldiers and 440 Japanese personnel share the firing ranges and training areas at Yakima, whose depth and airspace volumes make it possible to conduct engagements against drones in flight that the constraints of the Japanese archipelago make difficult to reproduce. For General Arai Masayoshi, Chief of Staff of the JGSDF, this ability to run a complete series of detection, alert, tracking and live engagements against unmanned platforms is, in itself, sufficient to justify the regular presence of his troops on U.S. soil.
On the ground, Japanese infantry and ground based air defence specialists train in the combined use of sensors, conventional weapons and man portable electronic warfare equipment. U.S. Army Stryker units employ jammers from the Dronebuster family, man portable electronic attack systems capable of disrupting a drone’s radio control link and its GNSS signals over several hundred metres. When the data link is saturated, the aircraft is forced into a safety mode, to hover or to return to its point of origin, which opens a window to destroy it with small arms or cannon fire. The portability of these jammers makes it possible to integrate them at platoon or company level, whereas Japanese ground based air defence still relies largely on higher echelon, longer range batteries.
Japanese authorities also refer to the use of electromagnetic wave devices intended to damage the internal circuits of drones. These systems, which form part of the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency’s work on high power microwave solutions, project an energy volume over a given sector and can neutralise several light platforms at the same time, which directly reflects swarm scenarios. In parallel, Japan continues to test a laser based ground based air defence system mounted on an 8x8 vehicle, delivering a beam of around 10 kW provided by a Denyo DCA 125LSIE generator set. Combined with a surveillance radar, this system can engage small drones at short range, with a reported reach slightly above one kilometre, by concentrating enough energy to degrade sensors or the airframe within a few seconds. The interaction between these directed energy layers and conventional weapons is a central focus of the lessons sought at Yakima.
At tactical level, Rising Thunder 25 prompts headquarters staffs to reconsider how they build a common operational picture (COP). Small fixed wing reconnaissance drones and quadcopters act as opposing forces, seeking to detect and target Stryker columns and Japanese mechanised elements. Counter drone action becomes a guiding thread of the manoeuvre, with alert procedures, radio emission windows adjusted to emission control (EMission CONtrol, EMCON) constraints and the gradual integration of friendly mini drones into the fire support network. The data provided by these platforms, combined with ground based sensors, also feeds into the recognised maritime picture (Recognised Maritime Picture, RMP) in scenarios involving the protection of forward operating sites and the escort of medium altitude long endurance (Medium Altitude Long Endurance, MALE) drones in support of ground forces.
The dynamic set in motion by Rising Thunder 25 fits into the evolution of Japan’s defence industrial base and into the offset posture sought by the alliance in the Indo Pacific. Man portable jammers, ground based lasers and microwave systems still account for only a limited segment of Japan’s inventory, but they reflect Tokyo’s aim of acquiring air defence layers with controlled costs in the face of rapidly expanding adversary drone stockpiles. For Washington, the issue is to disseminate technological building blocks and shared procedures that enable allied forces to protect forward bases, ports of debarkation and logistical hubs, while maintaining interoperability with U.S. command architectures. From the perspective of Beijing, Pyongyang or Moscow, the message is that ground forces no longer focus solely on conventional manoeuvre and now treat counter drone operations as a key component of deterrence and of the allied posture in the Indo Pacific.
armyrecognition.com · Halna du Fretay
14. U.S. Marines Deploy Drone Unit to Philippines to Patrol Over South China Sea
Summary:
The U.S. Marine Corps deployed unarmed MQ-9A Reaper drones to the Philippines, strengthening surveillance and U.S.-Philippine coordination amid Chinese coercion in the South China Sea.
Excerpt:
“The temporary stationing of unarmed MQ-9As to the Philippines demonstrates mutual commitment to improving the collective maritime security and supports our common goal for a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the spokesperson said.
Comment: The West Philippine Sea.
U.S. Marines Deploy Drone Unit to Philippines to Patrol Over South China Sea - USNI News
share.google · Aaron-Matthew Lariosa · November 13, 2025
https://news.usni.org/2025/11/13/u-s-marines-deploy-drone-unit-to-philippines-to-patrol-over-south-china-sea
Marine Corps MQ-9A MUX/MALE is formally unveiled during a ceremony for Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron 3 (VMU-3), Marine Aircraft Group 24, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay, Aug 2, 2023. US Marine Corps Photo
The U.S. Marine Corps temporarily deployed a unit of drones to support Philippine maritime security efforts in the South China Sea where tensions are high between Manila and Beijing, USNI News has learned.
Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron (VMU) 1, an Arizona-based unit formation equipped with MQ-9A Reapers, was sent to the Southeast Asian nation to support “Philippine regional maritime security,” a Marine Corps Forces Pacific spokesperson confirmed to USNI News. The deployment also enhances the U.S.-Philippine alliance’s maritime domain awareness capabilities.
“The temporary stationing of unarmed MQ-9As to the Philippines demonstrates mutual commitment to improving the collective maritime security and supports our common goal for a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the spokesperson said.
The I Marine Expeditionary Force previously confirmed the presence of Reaper drones at Basa Air Base in June 2024, citing similar intelligence support efforts at the request of the Philippine government.
Basa Air Base is one of nine sites where American forces can rotationally deploy forces and construct facilities across the Southeast Asian archipelago under the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. In recent years, the air base has received several U.S.-funded projects to improve its runway and aircraft facilities.
U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael S. Cederholm, a native of Connecticut and commanding general of I Marine Expeditionary Force, poses for a group photo with Marines assigned 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at Basa Air Base, Pampanga, Philippines, April 18, 2025. US Marine Corps photo
Marine Corps Forces Pacific did not specify how many drones were deployed in the Philippines.
The demands for increased surveillance assistance follow a string of increasingly escalatory incidents between Philippine and Chinese forces in the South China Sea in 2023 and 2024. Tensions peaked in 2024 with the June 17 incident at Second Thomas Shoal, which saw a Philippine Navy SEAL lose his thumb during a China Coast Guard ramming.
According to the Philippine Coast Guard, dozens of Chinese cutters, warships and maritime militia vessels frequently operate in the western Philippine exclusive economic zone.
Manned and unmanned aircraft have proven to be crucial in monitoring disputed maritime features, providing live feeds during incidents between Philippine and Chinese forces across the South China Sea. Aerial platforms captured numerous Chinese water cannon attacks and ramming attacks against Philippine vessels, which have been highlighted by Manila in its bid to expose Beijing’s actions.
The Philippines previously received several U.S.-donated Boeing ScanEagle drones to bolster its maritime domain awareness capabilities. Philippine forces also deployed Israeli-made Hermes 900 and 450 drones to the country’s westernmost province of Palawan.
The General Atomics MQ-9B Reaper Unmanned Aerial Vehicle taxis down the runway at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Grounds, U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command, Yuma, Ariz., Nov. 7, 2019. US Marine Corps photo
U.S. Marine Reaper drones achieved initial operating capability in 2023 via the Hawaii-based VMU-3. Described by the service as a “game-changing capability,” these General Atomics drones have been identified as a key procurement under Force Design, a strategic overhaul that aims to prepare the Marine Corps for a fight in the Indo-Pacific. The service has also deployed six VMU-3 Reapers to Japan in support of Tokyo’s intelligence monitoring efforts around the Ryukyu Islands.
An unreleased exercise, dubbed PRISM RAVEN, appears to have occurred between the temporarily deployed American drones and their local counterparts. An image circulating online shows a patch from the exercise that details a Reaper alongside a Hermes 900 flying over the Philippine archipelago in a combined patrol. Marine Corps Forces Pacific did not address a request for more information about the exercise.
The unmanned support and cooperation between Washington and Manila demonstrates that defense cooperation between the two countries is “on track,” Georgi Engelbrecht, a Manila-based Senior Analyst with International Crisis Group, told USNI News.
“It tackles an operational domain — drone technology — that is increasingly important in the Indo-Pacific theatre,” Engelbrecht said. “I also think that reconnaissance, defense operations and integration of UAV systems with other assets could be key areas for this type of capacity building.”
Drone surveillance is among the many initiatives that Washington is pursuing to back Philippine forces facing Chinese threats amid Beijing’s efforts to claim the South China Sea under its territorial claims.
Last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilbert Teodoro announced Task Force Philippines. According to Hegseth, the 60-person coordination unit headed by a one-star officer was designed to enhance bilateral defense cooperation and deter Chinese coercion.
Washington has also pledged half a billion dollars in defense assistance to help modernize Philippine forces. American funding has been allocated to a Philippine Navy base facing the South China Sea set to host unmanned surface vessels.
share.google · Aaron-Matthew Lariosa · November 13, 2025
15. New Rare-Earths Plant in Europe Shows How Tough Breaking China’s Grip Will Be
Summary:
Europe’s first big rare-earth magnet plant in Narva, Estonia, marks a step to cut dependence on China but will meet only a small share of projected demand. Neo’s EU-backed factory lags U.S. subsidized build-out, highlighting Europe’s slower support, vulnerability to Chinese export curbs, and reliance on premium-paying customers for now.
Comment: From what I have learned is that it is "all about the processing, stupid" to borrow from President Clinton's former strategist, James Carville. It is not the deposits or the mining but the processing.
New Rare-Earths Plant in Europe Shows How Tough Breaking China’s Grip Will Be
Estonian factory built in 500 days marks big boost to continent’s production but is only a start to satisfying soaring demand
WSJ
By Kim Mackrael
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Updated Nov. 16, 2025 8:28 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/a-new-rare-earths-plant-in-europe-shows-how-tough-breaking-chinas-grip-will-be-1c19f747
- A rare-earth magnet production plant built by Neo Performance Materials in Narva, Estonia, aims to reduce reliance on China.
- Even at the new factory’s initial planned capacity of 2,000 metric tons of permanent magnet material, the plant will produce a fraction of what analysts estimate European manufacturers need.
- Companies are currently planning to build more than 40,000 metric tons of capacity in the U.S. by 2030, according to Adamas Intelligence.
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.
- A rare-earth magnet production plant built by Neo Performance Materials in Narva, Estonia, aims to reduce reliance on China.
Europe is trying to get itself on the global rare-earths map, and a new facility on Russia’s border is its opening bid.
The city of Narva in Estonia, once a textiles hub for the Russian Empire, is now host to Europe’s biggest production plant for the kinds of rare-earth magnets needed in electric cars and wind turbines. It is part of Europe’s push to secure a foothold in a global supply chain dominated at every step by China. Built by Canada’s Neo Performance Materials and financed in part by the European Union, the factory is expected to begin commercial deliveries to companies including the German car-parts supplier Robert Bosch next year.
The problem: Even at the new factory’s initial planned capacity of 2,000 metric tons of permanent magnet material, the plant will produce a fraction of what analysts estimate European manufacturers need.
Neo plans eventually to scale up production to 5,000 metric tons, but that is still a long way from being enough to break Europe’s dependence on China. Total European demand is forecast to reach about 45,000 metric tons by 2030, according to data from Adamas Intelligence, which tracks the industry.
The U.S. has much more in the pipeline. Companies are currently planning to build more than 40,000 metric tons of capacity in the U.S. by 2030, according to Adamas.
After China imposed new export restrictions for rare earths in April, the Trump administration stepped up subsidies and other measures to support the industry, spurring a race to build out American mining, processing and manufacturing capacity. Rare earths are also essential to manufacturing many defense systems.
“The U.S. has come out with a very big wallet, a very aggressive plan and a very supportive plan to build capacity,” Neo Chief Executive Rahim Suleman said.
Neo’s factory was built in 500 days, a pace analysts consider fast for a new rare-earth magnet facility in the West. Plans to significantly boost capacity in the U.S. are expected to take several years, and there is no guarantee that all of those projects will be successful or that they will reach the capacities they anticipate, analysts said.
European auto suppliers were already eager to diversify their permanent magnet sources before China’s move, Suleman said, and the April restrictions prompted more interest from customers in other industries.
Suleman said he doesn’t think Europe needs to source all of its rare-earth magnets domestically. But in Europe, “We have a long way to go just to meet a portion of the existing demand,” he said.
Europe prospered over recent decades in a global trading system that allowed it to import cheap gas from Russia and rare earths from China, powering its industrial base. But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and China’s move this year to restrict rare-earth exports showed how dependent the continent had become on those countries.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said last month that the EU is working on a critical-materials plan that will take lessons from the bloc’s previous effort to cut its reliance on Russian gas. The plan, due to be announced this year, could include joint purchasing, stockpiling and more money for European projects, she said.
The EU already established targets for reducing its dependence on imports and is determined to act faster and more strategically, a commission spokesperson said.
Production of rare-earth magnets is expected to increase at the factory in Estonia, but it still isn't expected to meet Europe's projected demand. Sergei Nehhozin/Neo Performance Materials/Reuters
The rapid growth of the U.S.’s rare-earth industry could help fill a gap, said Ryan Castilloux, managing director of Adamas Intelligence, which is based in Toronto. But Europe might be hesitant to rely too heavily on the U.S., he said.
“I think Europe also recognizes that the U.S. is not afraid to be adversarial in its policies at the moment,” Castilloux said.
Higher American subsidies could lure some European companies to set up on the other side of the Atlantic.
The U.K.-based rare-earth company Pensana, which is developing a mine in Angola, said recently that it was scrapping plans to build a British processing facility and turning its focus to America. The Export-Import Bank of the United States offered $160 million in debt financing for the mine, Pensana Chairman Paul Atherley said, compared with a U.K. grant for the processing facility that would have been worth about $6.6 million.
“The level of support from the U.K. government fell well short of what is required,” Atherley said. “The U.S. government asked us how much we needed.”
Neo secured about $16.9 million in funding from the EU. Recent government support in the U.S. far exceeds that level. In July, the U.S. government said it would take a 15% stake in the rare-earth company MP Materials and establish a price floor for its products.
Suleman said he thinks Neo would choose Europe again if it was making a decision about its Narva factory today because customer demand is much higher in Europe than it is in the U.S. and because Neo already had a rare-earth separation facility near Narva. After rare earths are mined, they must be separated and refined before they can be used to manufacture magnets.
Europe has some rare-earth processing and recycling facilities but no active rare-earth mining.
Birgit Püve for WSJ
The city of Narva is on Estonia’s border with Russia. Birgit Püve for WSJ
Estonia embraced Neo’s plans. The city of Narva granted a building permit for the facility in 4½ months, a speed that Mayor Katri Raik said was the fastest possible under the country’s laws. She said she worked the phones to make sure the municipality kept up with the tight timeline, pressing her colleagues to have documents ready as soon as they could.
“We supported their idea, their plan, as intensively as we could,” Raik said.
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Is Europe doing enough to reduce its reliance on China for rare-earth minerals? Join the conversation below.
In a sign of the symbolic importance of the Narva factory for European officials, the European Commission’s von der Leyen brought a permanent magnet from the factory to the Group of Seven industrialized countries’ gathering in Canada earlier this year to show to her fellow leaders.
For now, EU producers are relying on customers being willing to pay a premium to avoid dealing with China’s restrictions, said Ben Davies, chief executive at the Global Rare Earth Industry Association, which counts Neo among its members.
He added that the association’s members would be glad to see the EU increase its support, as the U.S. has, to help close the price gap between Chinese and Western products.
Write to Kim Mackrael at kim.mackrael@wsj.com
WSJ
16. Now Tech Moguls Want to Build Data Centers in Outer Space
Summary:
Soaring AI power demand has tech moguls eyeing space-based data centers, arguing lunar and orbital solar could outcompete Earth’s grid. Bezos, Musk and Google tout projects to harvest constant sunlight and bypass regulations, though current economics are dubious. Critics see bubble risk as futuristic energy schemes chase AI growth relentlessly.
Comment: Making space war even more dangerous and perhaps likely. He who controls the data....
Now Tech Moguls Want to Build Data Centers in Outer Space
WSJ
By Tim Higgins
Follow
Nov. 16, 2025 5:30 am ET
Energy constraints in the artificial-intelligence race are causing tech companies to think out of this world
Nov. 16, 2025 5:30 am ET
ELENA SCOTTI/WSJ; GETTY IMAGES
If things weren’t already frothy enough around AI, now the excitement is headed toward the Moon—literally.
The world’s richest men are earnestly talking about traveling to outer space to build gigantic data centers to run artificial-intelligence models among the stars. They argue such missions make the most sense for powering energy-hungry operations.
“The moon is a gift from the universe,” Jeff Bezos recently said when talking about the benefits of lunar development and using it as a base for launching projects in space.
Such talk comes as his Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket companies are working to make space travel cheaper and routine.
It isn’t clear what’s closer to being real: Moon bases or superintelligent AI? But the two seem to be converging in an era of investor enthusiasm that has some worried we are in an AI bubble.
To be clear, the current economics of space-based data centers don’t make sense. But they could in the future, perhaps as soon as a decade or so from now, according to an analysis by Phil Metzger, a research professor at the University of Central Florida and formerly of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Electricity demand is surging, driven by artificial intelligence and a boom in data center construction. Some warn the U.S. grid can’t keep up. But Scott Strazik, CEO of GE Vernova, says his company can deliver. Strazik joins Bold Names to talk about gas turbines, nuclear power, and the future of electrification. Photo: Annie Zhao
“Space enthusiasts (comme moi) have long sought a business case to enable human migration beyond our home world,” he posted on X amid the new hype. “I think AI servers in space is the first real business case that will lead to many more.”
Back on Earth, President Trump has already declared an energy emergency and the U.S. government says we need to add massive amounts of capacity to handle the expected power demands coming in the next few years.
Meanwhile, AI companies are building out their own energy-generating capabilities as they wait for the power grid to catch up. Musk’s xAI, for example, has been using gas turbines as temporary power sources. And OpenAI is pushing for the government to partner with companies to add 100 gigawatts a year.
Let’s put 100 gigawatts into perspective. Forty years ago, when “Back to the Future” came out, a key plot point in the movie was the need to generate such an incredible amount of energy that time travel seemed plausible to an audience.
The story revolved around needing to find 1.21 gigawatts of power, or the equivalent of a lighting strike, to send Doc Brown’s famed DeLorean time machine back home.
Now, 1 gigawatt, which the Energy Department once noted was roughly half the power generated by the Hoover Dam, seems paltry. And Musk, Bezos and even Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai are saying stuff that sounds like pure science fiction for a new generation.
The argument essentially boils down to the belief that AI’s needs are eventually going to grow so great that we need to move to outer space. There the sun’s power can be more efficiently harvested.
In space, the sun’s rays can be direct and constant for solar panels to collect—no clouds, no rainstorms, no nighttime. Demands for cooling could also be cut because of the vacuum of space.
An Amazon data center in Ashburn, Va. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Plus, there aren’t those pesky regulations that executives like to complain about, slowing construction of new power plants to meet the data-center needs. In space, no one can hear the Nimbys scream.
“We will be able to beat the cost of terrestrial data centers in space in the next couple of decades,” Bezos said at a tech conference last month. “Space will end up being one of the places that keeps making Earth better.”
It’s still early days. At Alphabet, Google’s plans sound almost conservative. The search-engine company in recent days announced Project Suncatcher, which it describes as a moonshot project to scale machine learning in space. It plans to launch two prototype satellites by early 2027 to test its hardware in orbit.
“Like any moonshot, it’s going to require us to solve a lot of complex engineering challenges,” Pichai posted on social media. Nvidia, too, has announced a partnership with startup Starcloud to work on space-based data centers.
Not to be outdone, Musk has been painting his own updated vision for the heavens.
He has long reached for Mars—a main driver of SpaceX. But in recent weeks he has been talking more about how he can use his spaceships to deploy new versions of his solar-powered Starlink satellites equipped with high-speed lasers to build out in-space data centers.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Do data centers belong in outer space? Join the conversation below.
On Friday, Musk further reiterated how those AI satellites would be able to generate 100 gigawatts of annual solar power—or, what he said, would be roughly a quarter of what the U.S. consumes on average in a year. “We have a plan mapped out to do it,” he told investor Ron Baron during an event. “It gets crazy.”
Previously, he has suggested he was four to five years away from that ability. He’s also touted even wilder ideas, saying on X that 100 terawatts a year “is possible from a lunar base producing solar-powered AI satellites locally and accelerating them to escape velocity with a mass driver.”
Simply put, he’s suggesting a moon base will crank out satellites and throw them into orbit with a catapult. And those satellites’ solar panels would generate 100,000 gigawatts a year.
“I think we’ll see intelligence continue to scale all the way up to where…most of the power of the sun is harnessed for compute,” Musk told a tech conference in September.
Yes, it all sounds hard to believe. Yet, a few years ago, Musk was drawing eye rolls as he jawboned energy industry officials to boost their capabilities, warning we were headed to shortages with the rise of demand for AI, electric cars and other tech. Now we’re looking for solutions in outer space.
As they say in “Back to the Future”: If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything. Maybe.
Write to Tim Higgins at tim.higgins@wsj.com
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WSJ
17. What’s in a Name? DoD vs. DoW — And Why It Matters More Than You Think
Summary:
Renaming the Pentagon from Department of Defense to Department of War is more than symbolism. It may cost billions, alter legal documents worldwide, and shift strategic framing from deterrence to confrontation, influencing culture, public perception, alliances, and how U.S. leaders, troops, and adversaries think about the nation’s use of force.
Comment. Of course words matter. It is not cliche. I just wish we were putting this much effort and priority into information warfare (IWar) though I suppose one purpose of the name change here is to send a message to our adversaries.
What’s in a Name? DoD vs. DoW — And Why It Matters More Than You Think
military.com · Douglas Lindsay · November 14, 2025
When workers at the Pentagon quietly removed “Department of Defense” plaques and replaced them with new bronze signs reading “Department of War,” the reaction was immediate. Photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth installing a 60-pound “Department of War” plaque spread across social media within hours. Supporters praised the symbolism. Critics argued it sent the wrong signal to allies and adversaries.
But behind the headlines, the change raises a deeper question—how much power does a name really have? And when it comes to America’s most important military institution, does renaming the Department of Defense actually matter?
This story is about psychology, strategy, culture, and cost, all wrapped in a single word.
Why the Pentagon’s Name Change Is Back in the Spotlight
President Trump’s September executive order directed the Pentagon to “revert to its historic name,” though Congress would still need to update the title in federal law. Soon after, Pentagon workers took down the old DoD signs and installed “Department of War” plaques at two major entrances. Hegseth said the rebrand restores a clarity of purpose tied to winning wars.
But the change isn’t just semantic. According to congressional staff and independent analysts, a full rebrand, from IT systems to global basing signage, could cost up to $2 billion. For comparison, renaming Army and Air Force bases that previously honored Confederate officers cost $62 million across nine installations (Naming Commission final report).
If renaming nine bases costs $62 million, imagine renaming an entire global defense enterprise. The Pentagon hasn’t released its own cost figure yet. But experts agree the price tag will not be small.
New signage on the Pentagon reflecting the name change (DoW photo).
The Psychology Behind a Name Change
If this debate sounds symbolic, it is. But symbols can shape how institutions think and act.
Psychologists call this priming—the idea that language triggers mental models long before people make decisions. A name is a frame. It signals who you are and what you do.
- “Defense” suggests protection, stability, deterrence, and partnership.
- “War” suggests offense, aggression, kinetic force, confrontation.
This is what linguist George Lakoff calls linguistic framing: words activate metaphors, metaphors activate emotions, and emotions influence behavior. For an organization as large as the Pentagon, a name shapes strategic identity.
The War Department’s name changed to the Department of Defense in 1949 because the U.S. was entering a world defined by alliances, nuclear deterrence, and global stability—not constant open conflict. That shift was strategic.
Reverting to “War” sends a different message about America’s role today.
Could the Name Change Influence U.S. Military Behavior?
Names don’t issue orders. They don’t mobilize troops or authorize funding. But names can influence how leaders interpret threats and justify actions. They shape public opinion, political rhetoric, and internal culture.
A “Department of War” could subtly frame global competition in more confrontational terms. Studies in cognitive psychology and strategic communication show that lexical choices influence risk perception. Words like “war,” “fight,” and “enemy” create sharper mental boundaries than words like “defense,” “security,” or “stability.”
It doesn’t mean the U.S. becomes more aggressive just because of a sign change, but it does shift the psychological baseline. And in Washington, baselines matter.
A flag hanging on the Pentagon (Alexander Kubitza / Wikimedia Commons).
What It Could Cost to Rename the Department
Renaming the Pentagon is not like swapping out a building placard.
The department’s name is embedded in thousands of systems and agreements, including:
- IT networks and cybersecurity certificates
- Digital forms, procurement language, and acquisition regulations
- Diplomatic agreements and NATO standardization documents
- Global basing signage at 4,800 facilities
- Military education materials and doctrine
- Public-facing websites, recruitment platforms, and branding
Congressional aides estimate the global rebrand could approach $2 billion when all indirect changes are included. And it won’t happen overnight.
Every partner nation with a U.S. defense agreement, from Japan to Poland to the Philippines, would have to update documentation referring to “the Department of Defense.” That’s decades of treaties, MOUs, and operational frameworks.
The 2021–2023 base renamings provide a clear example of scope: nine bases, $62 million, and months of planning. The Pentagon is exponentially larger.
Military Culture: Why Language Is Never Just Language
The U.S. military is built on symbols—patches, mottos, call signs, unit heritage. Language reinforces identity. A title like “commander” versus “manager” carries weight. Marines aren’t “employees”; they are “Marines.”
The Pentagon’s name is part of that cultural story.
Changing it reshapes not just outward messaging but internal mindset:
- How leaders talk about missions
- How troops imagine the purpose of service
- How policymakers explain national security
- How the public interprets America’s posture in the world
A name becomes part of the cultural narrative. And culture—more than any budget—drives how institutions think.
The New Department of War logo is seen after US President Donald Trump signed an order to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War in the Pentagon, Washington D.C. (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images).
Supporters say it restores ‘clarity.’ Critics say it signals aggression.
Supporters of “Department of War” argue:
- It is more honest about the military’s purpose.
- It reinforces a mindset focused on winning, not managing.
- Rivals like China, Russia, and Iran will better understand U.S. resolve.
Critics counter:
- It may signal unnecessary aggression to allies.
- It oversimplifies the military’s modern mission set (cyber defense, space operations, humanitarian relief).
- It risks escalating tensions by emphasizing conflict over deterrence.
Inside the Pentagon, some leaders have raised concerns that the new name could complicate basing rights and diplomatic agreements, where “defense” carries a softer connotation than “war.”
The debate is not just semantic—it’s strategic.
The Public’s Reaction Reveals a Generational Divide
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll tracking public attitudes toward recent national security shifts found broad disagreement over the administration’s more aggressive security posture (Reuters polling). While the poll did not directly ask about the name change, the results show Americans are sharply split on how forcefully the military should act.
Among service members and veterans, reactions are mixed as well:
- Some welcome the return to a “fighting spirit.”
- Others say the change does not reflect the realities of modern operations.
The split mirrors a broader generational divide in how Americans define military power: through overwhelming force, or through alliance management and deterrence.
A Look Back: The Last Time America Changed the Name
The U.S. created the Department of War in 1789 to oversee the Army. After World War II, the Truman administration reorganized the national security apparatus into the National Military Establishment, and in 1949 renamed it the Department of Defense.
That 1949 change was intentional: it symbolized a shift from winning wars to preventing them. The current push to restore “War” may symbolize the reverse.
U.S. President Donald Trump displays a signed executive order on the Defense Department (Photographer: Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images).
So…Does It Matter?
This is where the debate becomes bigger than politics. Names matter because they tell a story.
They signal how a nation sees itself.
They influence how institutions behave.
They shape how allies interpret American actions.
They affect how adversaries calculate risk.
A “Department of Defense” suggests a commitment to stability. A “Department of War” suggests readiness for direct confrontation.
Neither is inherently good nor bad. Both reflect strategic worldviews. But the difference is not small. Not at this moment in history. The renaming debate forces the country to ask:
What story should America tell about its military today?
Is it the story of a nation defending the system it built? Or the story of a nation preparing for the conflicts it expects?
At a time of global volatility—from the Western Pacific to the Middle East to cyberspace—names shape perceptions long before strategy does. In national security, perception is power.
And sometimes, a name is not just a name, it’s a declaration.
military.com · Douglas Lindsay · November 14, 2025
18. What Ken Burns learned by making ‘The American Revolution’
Summary:
Ken Burns’ new six-part series “The American Revolution,” a decade in the making, aims to strip away nostalgia and show the war’s bloody, divided reality as America’s origin story. Timed with the 250th, it uses maps and restrained reenactments to evoke place and danger, not romance. Burns praises Hamilton’s impact but insists documentary filmmakers owe strict factual accuracy, even at art’s expense, in an age of “post-truth.” He highlights Washington as a flawed but indispensable leader whose courage and political judgment held the revolution together, arguing that real heroism and responsible leadership require wrestling honestly with both strengths and failures.
Comment: It goes without saying that I will be watching this starting tonight. (and recording it for future posterity).
What Ken Burns learned by making ‘The American Revolution’
As he prepares to release his latest series on the Revolutionary War, the filmmaker reflects on the history of the U.S. and his quest for truth.
Fast Company · Robert Safian · November 15, 2025
https://www.fastcompany.com/91441305/what-ken-burns-learned-by-making-the-american-revolution
Legendary documentarian Ken Burns is set to release his long-awaited series after a decade in development. In the lead-up to the premiere of The American Revolution, Burns shares key lessons he gleaned from the founding of the United States—and the parallels between the revolutionary era and today. He also reflects on his admiration for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, and the obstacles he himself faces in his ongoing quest for truth.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
You have a new, six-part series about the American Revolution premiering on November 16. Why were you drawn to this? And why now?
I’ve been working on this for almost 10 years. . . . I said yes to this project in December of 2015. Barack Obama still had 13 months to go in his presidency. What drew me to the Civil War was organic and interior to my choices. I was looking at a map, a kind of 3D map, where I suddenly saw an arrow of British moving west through Long Island towards Brooklyn. This little, tiny town of Brooklyn, which is the largest battle in the entire revolution.
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While there are no photographs and newsreels, I felt being a lover of maps and a willingness, I think, to reexamine my usual disdain for reenactments—they’re [the actors] aren’t going to reenact that battle. They’re just being there to make you feel the weather, make you feel the heat, make you feel the cold, make you feel the location, the interiors of all of these actions, and at that point, I realized maybe we can do this. Of course, I went about three years into the project and said, “Wow. If we hit our marks, we’ll be in 2025, which is the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord.” Then, all of a sudden people would arrive and say, “Oh, you planned this so well.”
Yes, yes.
We didn’t. I’m glad that a very deep dive into the revolution is going to happen way in advance of the Fourth of July of next year, which is, for many people, the 250th. Of course, it’s been going on for some time, and will go on if you want to follow it through to the end, until 2039, which is 250 years after our government officially got started and George Washington became the first president of the United States of America. There’s lots of things going on. But a lot of it will be focused next July, and there is that risk that it could become superficialized. The war itself is already encrusted with the barnacles of sentimentality and nostalgia. It is not bloodless or gallant. You do not want to die when a cannon takes off your head, or a bayonet guts you, or a musket ball rips through you.
There’s just a remarkable set of characters and remarkable interiors to the war, the details of the battles—a really long, six-and-a-half-year war from Lexington to Yorktown. We need to know about our origin story, particularly in a time when people are sort of ringing their hands. We’re so divided. Well, you just look back there, and we were really divided back then. And that maybe reinvesting with our origin story helps us find out what’s real and what’s artificial in all of the stuff that’s going on right now.
The current cultural story about the American Revolution that maybe is most prominent or most well-known is Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s retelling in that. Did that impact the way you told the story at all?
Look, let me give my props to Lin-Manuel. Hamilton is the greatest cultural event of this new millennium, this new century. It is a phenomenal thing. I mean, I’ve got a teenage daughter who’s 15, a 20-year-old daughter, and an almost-15-year-old granddaughter, and they can . . . sing the whole thing, two and a half hours. And so, they know tensions between big and small states. They understand between a strong federal Hamiltonian system and a state’s rights Jefferson model. They know who Hercules Mulligan is. They know all this sort of stuff about the revolution, and they have a kind of great glee about it that must mean that history teachers of this period are just lying down and thanking God for Lin-Manuel Miranda.
I mean, truth and fact are increasingly contested today, and we mentioned Hamilton. I mean, Lin-Manuel, the big picture is certainly there, but there’s a lot of artistic license in what he pulled together. When you look at this as a storyteller—and for our listeners who are business leaders and other leaders—is the responsibility to promote strict accuracy? Or, like, as long as we get the big picture right, it’s okay, the details don’t matter as much?
The people that are listening to this have to do the former, right? Strict accuracy, and so do I. . . . But we’re always finding new and destabilizing information [that’s] true and you need to incorporate [it]. Lin-Manuel can actually take the poetic license necessary to do a big, Broadway musical, and God bless him.
I mean, there’s a guy that we know in our past who would take the histories and conflate characters, change countries, move these characters around: His name is William Shakespeare. And we don’t believe that there are any truths higher in fiction, which are sometimes more true than what’s real. But I can’t do that. I will sacrifice the art for the correct story. That makes it super complicated. But what’s interesting is when you do that, when you try to fit the round peg of the truth into the square hole of art, if you will, and you successfully negotiate it, it’s as good as anything. You’re right, we’re in an age where we’re supposed to be post-truth. No, we’re not. Are you post-truth? I’m not.
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Right.
Nor are the business leaders of the country. You’re going to fudge your figures? I don’t think so. We do know that large sections of where we supposedly get information are, themselves, unaccountable. They do not care, one way or the other. Whatever political persuasion, whatever it is, people are manipulating the truth all the time. Always have been.
The problem is just the sheer size of the internet and its ability for a lie to get started before the truth can come back. But one and one is always going to be two. You can’t build an airplane, you can’t run a business, you can’t work the budget of a documentary film without one and one equaling two. You can’t just make it up, right? You cannot make it up.
George Washington rides out on the battlefield at least three times, that I know of, risking his life—at Kips Bay in Manhattan, at Princeton, and at the Battle of Monmouth. And these are significant things. If he’s killed, it’s all over, because he is the only person that held us together, as historian Annette Gordon-Reed says. . . . And I’m interested in him. He’s deeply flawed. He’s rash . . . and he makes terrible battlefield mistakes. He leaves his left flank exposed in the Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolution, and loses it and New York for seven years. It’s the British headquarters and the loyalist stronghold for the rest of the war.
He does the same mistake at Brandywine in Pennsylvania, another huge, huge battle, where this time he leaves his right flank. But there’s nobody who knew how to inspire men in the dark of night, in the dead of cold, who could pick subordinate talent that he wasn’t afraid of their skills or talent. Who could defer to Congress and understand how they work. Who could speak to a Georgian and a New Hampshirite and say, “You’re not that. You’re an American, this new thing.” Nobody. Nobody could do that. Does he have undertow? Yes. Does that make him any less heroic? No. Heroism is not perfection. Heroism is a negotiation within yourself between your strengths and your weaknesses.
Has truth always been sort of fungible and selective in U.S. history, kind of a matter of debate and perspective, or is this time we’re in now different?
Human beings have always lied. People have been lying as long as there have been human beings.
The early-rate deadline for Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
Fast Company · Robert Safian · November 15, 2025
19. PacNet #95 – New reforms reforge the Arsenal of Freedom for the Indo-Pacific
Summary:
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s acquisition reforms aim to replace stove-piped PEOs with portfolio acquisition executives, embrace an “85% solution,” and use a Wartime Production Unit and long-term contracts to buy proven, largely commercial systems at speed. Success hinges on empowering leaders to shift money, accept calculated acquisition risk, and deliver integrated, distributed capabilities for contested Indo-Pacific operations. Moving DSCA under acquisition and accelerating foreign military sales are meant to build a joint, networked “Arsenal of Freedom” with allies such as Japan, Australia, South Korea, and the Philippines, turning industrial agility into credible, theater-wide deterrence, sustainment and munitions stockpiles.
Excerpts:
This is especially vital in the Indo-Pacific, where deterrence depends on a multidomain response and an integrated allied front. The decision to shift the Defense Security Cooperation Agency—which manages foreign military sales and trains allies on US equipment—from the Pentagon’s policy shop to its acquisition office promises to accelerate weapons sales to partners, addressing long timelines from ordering systems to delivery. Faster delivery means the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and Australia can field compatible systems that operate as part of defensive web. Building this networked production base is as essential to deterrence as any new platform.
When combined with the emphasis on secure architectures and common standards, faster foreign military sales can enable truly integrated operations where allied systems work seamlessly together from day one.
Hegseth’s reforms evoke memories of an earlier transformation—when American industry forged the “Arsenal of Democracy” that won World War II. The Arsenal of Democracy succeeded not just because of individual factories or weapons systems, but because they formed an integrated whole—Liberty ships carrying tanks and aircraft that worked together in combined arms operations.
Comment: The innovations in logistics, acquisition, the defense industrial base, the arsenal of democracy/freedom and the changes being made in the Army and all the services and with allies are arguably the most important strategic developments in the 21st century. This is what will allow us to fight and win wars, and thus be able to deter them.
PacNet #95 – New reforms reforge the Arsenal of Freedom for the Indo-Pacific
pacforum.org · November 14, 2025
Kimberly Lehn Senior Director of the Honolulu Defense Forum at Pacific Forum
https://pacforum.org/publications/pacnet-95-new-reforms-reforge-the-arsenal-of-freedom-for-the-indo-pacific/
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth last week unveiled acquisition reforms representing an ambitious overhaul of Pentagon procurement. The reforms aim to fundamentally reshape how the military buys weapons by prioritizing speed over perfection, while also empowering acquisition leaders with greater flexibility and embracing commercial technology as the default option. These changes point in the right direction. Their ultimate impact will depend on implementation and speed—and on whether we can build the integrated, networked capabilities our warfighters need.
Nowhere is this transformation more urgent than to deter a fight in the Indo-Pacific. Beijing is racing to outproduce and outfield advanced systems across the region, leveraging a domestic defense industrial base that can surge at scale. The tyranny of distance, combined with China’s rapid buildup and stockpiling of munitions, means deterrence will hinge on how fast the United States and its allies can innovate, produce, and sustain operations across thousands of miles of contested ocean.
The proposed reforms Secretary Hegseth laid out are wide-ranging. Portfolio acquisition executives will replace traditional program executive offices, giving single officials accountability for interrelated programs with authority to shift resources based on performance. The Pentagon will embrace the “85% solution” and iterate toward perfection rather than waiting for the perfect system. A new Wartime Production Unit will negotiate deals with vendors across their entire Pentagon portfolio, creating new leverage and commercial contracting incentives.
These reforms overall will emphasize stabilizing demand signals and awarding companies “bigger, longer contracts for proven systems” and prioritizing “commercial solutions first.” They will also empower program leaders with the “control, expertise, and authority” to direct program outcomes and move money “to deliver on-time and under budget.” Regulatory reform was another facet, including removing “excessive testing oversight” and “regulations” that unnecessarily slow down government contracts.
The emphasis on speed was pronounced, noting that the new model will built on “speed, alignment, and action” with “problems driving the priorities of the department.” This includes the Pentagon’s highest priorities—from critical munitions to the Golden Dome missile defense initiative. These reforms aim to make the exception the rule and ensure that the top warfighting priorities are funded.
The true test will be execution. The shift to portfolio acquisition executives must be accompanied by genuine authority and protection from bureaucratic second-guessing. The reforms call for compensation tied to capability delivery time, competition, and mission outcomes, with acquisition officials held accountable for results. This accountability must cut both ways—protecting those who take smart risks and deliver results, while removing those who cling to process over progress.
How quickly can we materialize new weapon capabilities under this system? The answer depends on whether we truly embrace commercial timelines and technologies. The Pentagon will prioritize commercial solutions that can be purchased more quickly, accepting increased acquisition risk to decrease operational risk. Silicon Valley and the broader technology sector operate on innovation cycles measured in months, not decades, and in business commitments measured by real budgets. If these reforms genuinely enable the Pentagon to tap that velocity, we could see transformational capabilities fielded in months and years, rather than the current decades-long timelines.
That speed translates directly into deterrence, particularly with the need for distributed operations across vast distances. Hegseth’s speech rightly notes that “contested logistics is a key prioritized operational problem.” To ensure that this is properly funded, we must focus on acquisition and deployment of systems that are mobile, modular, and easily replenished, such as unmanned surface vessels, long-range munitions, adaptive basing kits, and resilient communications networks that can survive in a contested environment. Acquisition reform must deliver capabilities suited for that fight.
Perhaps most crucially, we need capabilities that can easily integrate across the joint force and with key allies and partners. The future battlefield demands a meshed network of sensors, shooters, and decision systems that work seamlessly across services, with allied forces, and between different contractors’ products. Building faster isn’t enough if the products of that effort can’t operate together. The next generation of strike, sensing, and command systems must be fielded as part of a joint, networked force—not as bespoke capabilities isolated by service or nation.
This is especially vital in the Indo-Pacific, where deterrence depends on a multidomain response and an integrated allied front. The decision to shift the Defense Security Cooperation Agency—which manages foreign military sales and trains allies on US equipment—from the Pentagon’s policy shop to its acquisition office promises to accelerate weapons sales to partners, addressing long timelines from ordering systems to delivery. Faster delivery means the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and Australia can field compatible systems that operate as part of defensive web. Building this networked production base is as essential to deterrence as any new platform.
When combined with the emphasis on secure architectures and common standards, faster foreign military sales can enable truly integrated operations where allied systems work seamlessly together from day one.
Hegseth’s reforms evoke memories of an earlier transformation—when American industry forged the “Arsenal of Democracy” that won World War II. The Arsenal of Democracy succeeded not just because of individual factories or weapons systems, but because they formed an integrated whole—Liberty ships carrying tanks and aircraft that worked together in combined arms operations.
Today’s challenge is even more complex: we must forge an Arsenal of Freedom that spans oceans and nations, linking US industry and weapons producers with the factories and innovators of our Indo-Pacific allies. By uniting speed, jointness, and alliance integration, we can build that arsenal—and the deterrence—needed to keep the peace at home and in the Pacific.
PacNet commentaries and responses represent the views of the respective authors. Alternative viewpoints are always welcomed and encouraged.
Kimberly Lehn is Senior Director of the Honolulu Defense Forum at Pacific Forum, and a national security professional with 20 years of experience in the US federal government and private sector focused on the Indo-Pacific region prior to joining the Forum.
Photo Credit via War on the Rocks
pacforum.org · November 14, 2025
20. Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America by Gordon Chang Reviewed by: Kevin Johnston
Summary:
Gordon Chang’s Plan Red warns that China is waging covert war and urges the U.S. to sever ties and prepare for decisive conflict. Reviewer Kevin Johnston agrees China is dangerous but faults Chang for overlooking vulnerabilities in energy, alliances, and naval power, arguing the threat, though still serious, is constrained.
Comment: Certainly a provocative book from Gordon Chang. It does appear to help to justify Congress' proposed legislation of the DISRUPT Act. The Act would certainly target the vulnerabilities that Kevin Johnston recognizes. DISRUPT Act: https://defensescoop.com/2025/11/07/congress-disrupt-act-china-russia-iran-north-kore
Book Review
Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America by Gordon Chang Reviewed by: Kevin Johnston
By
Kevin Johnston
Published
2 days ago
https://interpopulum.org/plan-red-chinas-project-to-destroy-america-by-gordon-chang-reviewed-by-kevin-johnston/
ISBN: 978 1630062804, Humanix Books, October 2024, 160 pages, $22.13 (Hardcover)
Reviewed by: Kevin Johnston, Old Dominion University, Arlington, Virginia, United States
Gordon Chang’s recent book Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America is a call to action for American policymakers to strike the People’s Republic of China (PRC) before it can defeat the United States in a military conflict. Chang is a noted scholar of the PRC, with several books and numerous academic articles on the threats China poses to the United States. His writing draws on two decades spent living in mainland China and Hong Kong, where he worked as a lawyer for Baker & McKenzie.
Throughout this short book, Chang outlines the dangers posed by the PRC, how it is already working to undermine American sovereignty and infrastructure, and how these activities could escalate into full-scale war. He concludes with a call for the current administration “to sever virtually all points of contact to the regime” and advocates a strategy of aggressive diplomatic and economic measures to deter PRC aggression.
The book begins by surveying the current threat environment under Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. Chang highlights how the PRC quietly influences world events—such as the war in Ukraine and Iran’s destabilizing actions in the Middle East—and argues that these are not isolated episodes but intersecting operations coordinated by Beijing. China, he claims, acts as “first among equals” within an emerging anti-American bloc. As the foreword states: “There is no such thing as a ‘regional’ conflict. Because superpower China is fighting either directly or indirectly around the world, every conflict has global implications.”
In later chapters, Chang argues that the PRC is eroding American democratic norms by fomenting social-media discord and harming civilians through disease and drugs. By allowing COVID-19 to spread and facilitating the sale of fentanyl in the United States, the PRC is attacking without declaring war or risking its personnel. These actions, he contends, are essential preludes to China’s final objective: total war.
The keystone of Plan Red is the PRC’s alleged desire to launch a war against the United States. Once America is weakened—overextended abroad, destabilized by social-media operations, and harmed through indirect attacks on civilians—the PRC will initiate a full-scale conflict designed to reorder global power. If these steps unfold as Chang envisions, Chinese victory is all but assured.
Chang’s proposed solution is for the United States to recognize the PRC as an immediate threat and pivot its foreign policy accordingly. He advocates a whole-of-nation response that includes expelling Chinese nationals, rejecting Chinese refugees, and severing trade ties with the PRC to undermine its economy. It is an extreme prescription for an extreme problem, but one Chang argues could succeed. Drawing inspiration from the Reagan administration’s approach toward the Soviet Union, he claims these policies—combined with the PRC’s internal weaknesses—would cause China to collapse from within.
Despite its strong warnings, Plan Red overlooks several key PRC vulnerabilities that the United States could exploit in a future conflict. Wide disparities in energy security, alliance structures, and naval power illustrate how uneven the competition between the two countries remains. The PRC imports most of its energy, including large quantities of Australian coal and Middle Eastern petroleum, the latter of which must transit the vulnerable Strait of Hormuz. In wartime, the United States could blockade key chokepoints—such as the Strait of Malacca—cutting China off from critical supplies. By contrast, the United States is a fuel exporter capable of sustaining itself without contested imports.
Chang also neglects the imbalance in alliances. Any future conflict would almost certainly involve partners on both sides. The United States benefits from longstanding alliances through NATO, AUKUS, and its partnerships with Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. It is also plausible that unaligned states, including India, would support the United States against an aggressive PRC. By contrast, China’s core partners—Russia, North Korea, and Iran—are considerably weaker. Russia is mired in a multi-year war, North Korea’s military relies on outdated equipment, and Iran’s proxy networks have suffered significant setbacks. While China participates in BRICS, it is a commercial grouping, not a defense alliance.
Chang further overlooks the decisive gap in naval capabilities. The U.S. Navy is a global (blue-water) force capable of projecting power worldwide; its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and long-range capabilities would give it a substantial edge in open-ocean conflict. China’s navy, despite rapid growth, remains largely a coastal (green-water) force with limited ability to threaten the continental United States. If U.S. and allied navies blockaded China’s energy lifelines, the PRC would struggle to break the blockade, especially with minimal support from its partners.
Gordon Chang has written a forceful book highlighting the threats the PRC poses to the United States. Readers seeking to understand the stakes in the Sino-American relationship may find his warnings instructive. He rightly emphasizes China’s ambitions and its desire to reshape the global order. But by omitting key Chinese vulnerabilities, Plan Red offers an incomplete assessment. A realistic appraisal of the PRC’s ability to threaten the United States must consider energy security, alliances, and naval strength. When these factors are weighed, the Chinese threat appears more constrained than Chang suggests. While vigilance toward the PRC is essential, accurate assessments must incorporate these strategic asymmetries.
21. Securitizing Kinmen: China’s Gray Zone Strategy and the Evolution of the Kinmen Model
Summary:
Ian Murphy argues that Chinese discourse on the “Kinmen Model” marks a fifth phase in Kinmen’s modern history, shifting from economic integration to coercive gray-zone securitization. Using Vuori’s framework for securitization in non-democracies, Murphy analyzes nineteen PRC and Hong Kong media pieces to trace five strands of securitizing speech: raising issues, legitimizing future actions, deterrence, justifying past acts, and control. Beijing portrays patrols and law-enforcement operations near Kinmen as lawful protection of “Chinese” fishermen while normalizing expanded jurisdiction and Coast Guard-military presence. The study shows how media narratives prepare audiences and justify incremental encroachment on Taiwan’s de facto authority.
Comment: A long read. Only the introduction is below. Please go to the link to read the entire article.
Securitizing Kinmen: China’s Gray Zone Strategy and the Evolution of the Kinmen Model
This paper examines the evolving dynamics of cross-strait relations through the lens of securitization theory, focusing on China’s strategic deployment of what it calls the Kinmen Model and its implications for regional security. While existing discourse predominantly concentrates on a potential full-scale invasion of Taiwan, this study shifts attention to the strategic significance of the outlying islands and the nuanced employment of securitization to exert indirect control. Utilizing Vuori’s (2008) framework for analyzing securitization in non-democratic contexts, this research conducts a discourse analysis of nineteen Chinese language media sources to dissect the speech acts employed by Chinese media and their intended political functions. The study identifies a critical gap in the literature regarding a “Fifth Period” of Kinmen’s history, characterized by a transition from border infiltration to a more aggressive securitization strategy, contributing to a deeper understanding of China’s gray zone tactics and the securitization of territorial claims.
https://interpopulum.org/securitizing-kinmen-chinas-gray-zone-strategy-and-the-evolution-of-the-kinmen-model/
By
Ian Murphy
Published
5 days ago
Download PDF
Introduction
Kinmen’s modern history is marked by a dramatic transformation. Taiwanese scholars identify four distinct periods in its evolution from a heavily fortified battleground to a focal point in cross-strait relations. Once a site of armed confrontation, Kinmen’s identity and priorities have been reshaped by economic development and cross-strait management. This paper argues that Chinese media’s application of securitization theory to the so-called “Kinmen Model” signals the emergence of a distinct fifth period in Kinmen’s modern history.
CONTACT Ian Murphy | iansergeimurphy@gmail.com
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position of SecuriFense.
© 2025 Arizona Board of Regents / Arizona State University
While existing discourse largely concentrates on a potential full-scale invasion of Taiwan, this study shifts attention to the strategic significance of the outlying islands—particularly Kinmen—and the use of securitization to exert indirect control. It examines the evolving dynamics of cross-strait relations through the lens of securitization theory, focusing on China’s strategic deployment of the Kinmen Model and its implications for regional security. Utilizing Vuori’s 2008 framework for analyzing securitization in non-democratic contexts, this study conducts a discourse analysis of nineteen Chinese-language media sources that reference the Kinmen Model. The analysis aims to dissect the speech acts employed by Chinese media, identifying specific strands of securitization—raising an issue, legitimizing future actions, deterrence, justifying past actions, and control—and their intended political functions.
The paper reviews Kinmen’s historical trajectory, highlighting the shift from military confrontation to economic integration and, more recently, intensified gray zone activities. It identifies a gap in the literature regarding the “Fourth Period” of Kinmen’s history, characterized by a transition from border infiltration through legitimate interaction to a more aggressive securitization strategy. This research contributes to understanding China’s gray zone tactics and the securitization of territorial claims. By analyzing the Kinmen Model, it provides insights into China’s strategic goals, the nature of its securitization efforts, and whether these actions warrant recognition of a distinct historical period. Ultimately, the paper aims to bridge the gap in U.S. understanding of the actors, domestic political dynamics, and strategic objectives underlying China’s evolving approach to Kinmen and Taiwan.
Continued at this link: https://interpopulum.org/securitizing-kinmen-chinas-gray-zone-strategy-and-the-evolution-of-the-kinmen-model/
22. Pentagon: Change Radically or Lose
Summary:
Bing West warns that with defense spending at 2.7% of GDP and legacy forces dominant, the U.S. risks losing future wars. He urges firing many support contractors, shifting tens of billions into cheap AI-enabled unmanned systems, and cutting manned legacy platforms, arguing mass, expendable drones will decide twenty-first-century conflicts.
Comment: This is the challenge of the 21st century. A brutal, radical critique on contractors and drones from Bing West. We have to get this right. Graphics at the link.
Pentagon: Change Radically or Lose
Needless wars needlessly lost have undercut support for the military. Currently funded at 2.7% of GDP, the Defense budget is the lowest since 1937, when the U.S. was caught in the Depression and totally unprepared for the coming war.
Friday, November 14, 2025 4 min read
By: Bing West
https://www.hoover.org/research/pentagon-change-radically-or-lose
Research Team: Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group
Pentagon: Change Radically or Lose
By: Bing West
Needless wars needlessly lost have undercut support for the military. Currently funded at 2.7% of GDP, the Defense budget is the lowest since 1937, when the U.S. was caught in the Depression and totally unprepared for the coming war. In the five-year Defense plan, the Trump administration and the Congress do not increase that percentage. Quite the opposite: Our rising debt will continue to squeeze out Defense spending. A decade from now, procurement will be lower than it is today.
To avoid losing the next war, the Pentagon must radically change course. Two actions are imperative: fire the contractors and use that money to procure AI-driven unmanned systems.
1. Fire the support contractors. About 650,000 civilian contractors provide services to our military, at a cost of $270 billion, a quarter of the entire Defense budget. These are not the workers building ships and aircraft. Instead, service contractors perform everyday tasks (e.g., maintain computers, deliver supplies, patch communications, train the troops, etc.).
Since 1980, America’s combat arms forces have shrunk by 37% to about 400,000, while the contractor workforce supporting them has increased by 70%. In Iraq and Afghanistan, these service contractors saw unprecedented growth and did not abate after the wars ended.
A contractor costs twice as much as an O-6 or GS-15 doing the same work. The reason is that the contractor works for a mega corporation that has layers of well-paid executives, all requiring overhead and profit. Of the of $270 billion in mundane contractor support, at least $40 billion must be shifted to procure AI unmanned weapons.
2. Buy a Million Drones. AI-enabled unmanned systems have changed the face of twenty-first-century war. Russian ships have ceased sailing in most of the Black Sea. Drones have struck Russian airbases thousands of miles apart, and account for 70-80% of the frontline casualties. Ukraine has made drones central to its war effort, devoting roughly 30% of its defense budget to their procurement and use.
AI unmanned systems (drones and vessels) account for about 3% of the Defense budget. The U.S. Army and Marine Corps have exactly zero—not one—drones deployed in their 9,000 combat arms squads. In the commercial world, drones are a commodity, costing $500; U.S. military drones cost $50,000 per unit. Artillery rounds on average cost $1,500 per shell. Drones at the squad level should cost less than $500. They are munitions to be fired like mortar shells, nothing more and nothing less. Our exorbitant costs have placed us at a steep disadvantage.
The emphasis must be upon driving down costs of AI drones and delivery platforms. This requires adaptive competition among many small firms and government-private sector partnerships, while ensuring real-time feedback from the warfighters. The senior civilians in the Pentagon are emphasizing procurement decentralization. Defense Secretary Hegseth has authorized the operating forces, such as brigade commanders, to acquire cheap unmanned systems without having to seek permission from higher headquarters.
Going directly to the commercial market reduces overall costs because dozens of start-ups will offer their wares at competitive prices. Several hundred brands of shoes are sold annually in the United States. We don’t demand that everyone wear the same black shoe. Similarly, there can be dozens of suppliers of unmanned systems. Using this diversified approach, Ukraine is producing 4.5 million drones in 2025.
Congress is an impediment. To protect their local interests, the 535 members of Congress insert thousands of strict instructions into the procurement regulations, “We have 1,500 line items on things we need to buy,” a frustrated Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll said a few months ago. “We are in a holy war (against Congress) over 1% of our budget, to have the flexibility to buy different makes.”
Our services are also reluctant to change. In 1938, the best minds in France, England, Russia, and Germany went in different directions in procurement. France chose to defend by engineering, Britain began building fighter aircraft, Russia mass-produced inferior weapons, and Germany manufactured mechanized divisions.
Today, our four services are like those four countries—each going in a different direction. All four zealously protect their underfunded legacy systems—tanks, warships, aircraft, amphibious ships, etc. There is not one warfighting strategy against one enemy that provides a common pathway. The Air Force (31% of Defense budget) is investing in long-range, stand-off missiles launched from aircraft to strike deep inside China, targeting ports, air bases, command centers and missile installations. The Army (20% of budget) is foundering, with an undefined role in Pacific warfare. The Marines (4% of budget) have vacillating ideas but are tiny in any case. The Navy (26% of budget) is focused upon a sea battle against China, employing a surface fleet. In fiscal year 2025, the Navy allocated $20 billion for surface warships, versus $1 billion for unmanned vessels and drones. White House and Congressional support are strong for large, expensive warships, and for the jobs they create. This reflects an emotional reverence, if not nostalgia, for WWII, when large, manned vessels provided the firepower and logistical heft to propel our forces forward in both Europe and the Pacific.
But China’s satellites have turned the western Pacific into a transparent battlespace. Any carrier or amphibious ship near Taiwan will be surveilled and targeted by thousands of precision weapons. There is a brutal arithmetic to modern naval defense. The missiles to protect a carrier battle group cost millions of dollars each, while the drones that attack them cost tens of thousands. Our Navy must spend a million dollars to kill a $50,000 attacker—a losing exchange even before accounting for magazine limits and crew risk.
AI-equipped unmanned ships (200–300 feet long) can carry dozens of missiles or hundreds of small drones, and cost in the low hundreds of millions to build, versus $13–$15 billion for a single Ford-class carrier. The end purpose of the aircraft and its missiles on the carrier versus unmanned vessels packed with drones and missiles is the same: to destroy targets. Taking into account both costs and attrition rates per strike on target, unmanned vessels with AI-guided drones and missiles deliver strikes at a cost three times less than carriers and their escorts.
My sources (perhaps ironically!) for the analysis and the chart are Grok, Gemini, Claude, and Chat GPT. The data those AI models produced was voluminous. The chart and even the measure of effectiveness may be off the mark. But the issue—cheap AI unmanned systems versus our legacy manned systems—must be debated. DoD cannot continue to treat AI systems as a nice-to-have add-on.
Warfare in the twenty-first century is changing. Absorbability is the force multiplier in a strategy that depends upon attriting the enemy beyond his capacity to replenish.
If an attacking unit can launch thousands of cheap drones or missiles each day, it can deliver strikes for a fraction of what it costs the defender to intercept them. The defender’s magazines empty long before the attacker’s do. Unmanned, low-cost vessels hedge against catastrophic single-platform loss, provide magazine depth that sustains strikes on the enemy, and change the cost-exchange ratio so that attrition favors the U.S. Navy on the attack vs. China defending targets. A fleet of AI unmanned surface, subsurface, and aerial systems—cheap, numerous, and expendable—can absorb attrition, confuse Chinese targeting networks, and sustain operations when manned platforms must withdraw to distant, safer waters.
At Agincourt in 1415, the wealthy French knights brought tradition based on prior victories; the lowly English longbowmen brought cheap, mass firepower. English archers remained plentiful, long after France had run out of knights. In 2033, carrier battle groups are the knights—majestic, expensive, impossible to replace—while surface and aerial drones are the archers—disposable, numerous, and replaceable as a commodity. The historical comparison is obvious: The side that can absorb losses at 1/20th the cost wins the battle.
In summary, Congress will not increase the Defense budget. The Pentagon must transform itself by slashing its bloated contractor corps and cutting back legacy systems in order to put at least 25% a year of procurement into unmanned AI systems. To their credit, the senior civilian officials and the Pentagon DOGE team are fighting hard to achieve that transformation. The barrier is the fusion between Congress, the White House, major contractors, and the services—a coalition protecting legacy systems that are inferior on a cost per kill basis to cheap AI unmanned systems. Three percent funds for AI unmanned and 97% for WWII-era legacy weapons is a denial of twenty-first-century technology and commonsense.
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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